Blake Ostler in Interpreter: "the Maxwell Institute is a pale reflection of its predecessor."

[Gadianton]

There is this weird cultural phenomena in Mormonism where among other Mormons, a person switches to 'testimony mode' and overreaches to make a profound observation. "This is something the world won't understand, but you my friends, surely will know thusly". So if I'm going to be totally fair to Blake on that Gettier point, I don't know if he was in testimony mode when he made it. He could have been, given the audience.

"The answer to this [intractable question that has stumped the wise of the world] was in Alma [or Nephi etc.] the entire time!"

If in "testimony mode" that doesn't mean the answer should be put together as a formal paper to claim the Nobel Prize. It's unsure what it means. Does it mean the Nobel Prize committee will be too blind to see the obvious? Not really. Does it mean the Mormon audience (perhaps lay persons to a Mormon professional overstepping the bounds within their profession) can see into the profession more clearly than the speaker's professional peers? Probably not. Is the observation meant metaphorically? maybe. While it seems as if the speaker is claiming to have achieved a great mental feat, what is intended is to show the awesome power resting within the scriptures, that the speaker was unprepared to behold. Maybe it means one can feel the power of the answer, and know that it is the answer, while not fully appreciating the details at that time. Maybe it means one is unabashedly stretching things for the sake of deferring to scripture. Maybe it means the scripture changes the terms of the question as Jesus might do with a Pharisee; it's right once the question is fixed.

well, I just don't know, but I had several occasions where teachers at the Y made profound observations that doth proved the scriptures true, but if pressed they wouldn't have owned up to the seeming implications that a paper should be written and off to guaranteed world fame.

[Kishkumen]

Very insightful point, Dean Robbers. I know what you are talking about, and I think you are right. In fact, you may have hit on the precise source of Ostler’s astounding overconfidence. Whereas others might credit the word of God for this wisdom, I have a feeling Ostler is more likely to see his special aptitude as working hand in hand with the divina mens.

[hauslern]

No one has responded to Ostler's paper. Must make Brant Gardener's job easy.

[Physics Guy]

There is this weird cultural phenomena in Mormonism where among other Mormons, a person switches to 'testimony mode' and overreaches to make a profound observation. "This is something the world won't understand, but you my friends, surely will know thusly".

That's an interesting observation and I seem to feel I recognise the mentality, but now I'm a bit stumped to think how.

I can't say it's actually common among evangelical Christians. They can be funny in different ways but I can't really see any of them solemnly reminding you that relativity is all there in Ephesians of course. For one thing the Bible really is ancient, and ancient texts just don't talk about modern issues that were not also ancient issues. For another the Bible has been widely read for many centuries, and everyone knows that, so it's just not plausible that a Biblical answer to an outstanding modern question isn't already well known.

Maybe some Catholics might enjoy nodding knowingly about how some undeservedly obscure Catholic thinker really had it all tapped.

I guess my feeling of familiarity with "testimony mode" comes from Scientology. Scientologists are indeed keen on marvelling together about how L. Ron Hubbard really did understand everything. The feeling of being one of the few who are in the know about everything is one of the main things Scientology offers.

I think the attitude may be a symptom of insecurity. The presumption that we have a lot of great insights that the world doesn't know is after all just another way of saying that the world doesn't respect us properly. And if a member of some insufficiently respected group can count on a fellow member knowing the trope of profound in-group wisdom being unknown to the world, that means that the sense of being disrespected is a consciously shared piece of group culture.

Scientologists tend to have that kind of chip on their shoulder. I think that few Catholics do, but some have grown up in assertively Protestant environments. If my theory holds up I guess it would predict similar behavior among Muslims or Hindus living in societies that look down on their faiths as primitive. It would be an understandable defense mechanism, I think, for people who know that their traditions have billions of person-years of civilisation behind them of which the ignorant masses around them know nothing at all.

Or, since the insecurity comes from feeling less respect than one feels one deserves, it might be more common in groups that feel entitled to huge amounts of respect and are therefore disgruntled at mere tolerance. Perhaps there's such a thing as group narcissism.

[Alphus and Omegus]

There is this weird cultural phenomena in Mormonism where among other Mormons, a person switches to 'testimony mode' and overreaches to make a profound observation. "This is something the world won't understand, but you my friends, surely will know thusly". So if I'm going to be totally fair to Blake on that Gettier point, I don't know if he was in testimony mode when he made it. He could have been, given the audience.

"The answer to this [intractable question that has stumped the wise of the world] was in Alma [or Nephi etc.] the entire time!"

If in "testimony mode" that doesn't mean the answer should be put together as a formal paper to claim the Nobel Prize. It's unsure what it means. Does it mean the Nobel Prize committee will be too blind to see the obvious? Not really. Does it mean the Mormon audience (perhaps lay persons to a Mormon professional overstepping the bounds within their profession) can see into the profession more clearly than the speaker's professional peers? Probably not. Is the observation meant metaphorically? maybe. While it seems as if the speaker is claiming to have achieved a great mental feat, what is intended is to show the awesome power resting within the scriptures, that the speaker was unprepared to behold. Maybe it means one can feel the power of the answer, and know that it is the answer, while not fully appreciating the details at that time. Maybe it means one is unabashedly stretching things for the sake of deferring to scripture. Maybe it means the scripture changes the terms of the question as Jesus might do with a Pharisee; it's right once the question is fixed.

I couldn't make it through the Ostler paper, it was so filled with nonsensical attempts to make the Alma-Korihor exchange seem as if it were profound.

The irony that was lost by Ostler is that perhaps one reason why the rhetorical context of the debate is not provided by Wrathall is that it would certainly point to the Alma-Korihor battle as one of far-too-many 19th century frontier American sectarian debates that were of interest to Joseph Smith. There are no such "debates" of the Alma-Korihor exchange recounted in the Jewish Bible, religious disputations seem primarily to have been about magic contests (Aaron vs. the Pharaoh's priests, Elijah and the Baal priests) or sooth-saying contests (i.e. prophets are put to death if they give incorrect advice about battles). Even the rhetorical battle between Satan and Yahweh recounted in the Job legend is nothing more than a contest of who will predict Job's actions correctly.

There is no evidence from the Bible itself that religious debates of the Alma-Korihor nature were even allowed to take place. People who were alleged to have blasphemed were simply killed. They were not allowed to make a defense of their arguments. The only issue was whether one said the blasphemy, not why. If so, then a swift death was meted out. That Korihor was allowed to live after losing his "debate" is a further indicator that the story never happened.

Context is killer with this story.

Beyond the tale's obvious contradictions to the Biblical narratives, the "arguments" put forward by Korihor are downright pitiful by any sort of atheist metric. They read more like the portrayals of godless professors in contemporary evangelical flicks. ("God's Not Dead" being my personal favorite.) Korihor and the nefarious academicians are all utter contrivances which evince an utter lack of understanding of the opposition. The character of Korihor, in other words, is exactly the sort of plot device that you would expect an autodidactic farmboy and his frontier school-teacher friend to construct.

In a Mormon intellectual world which was tiny enough to begin with, the church-approved press must cater to the three major factions of traditionalists, neo-traditionalists, and liberals. For that reason, it makes complete sense that these MI volumes would only be concerned with textual analysis.

[IHAQ]

When one criticises the Maxwell Institute, going as far as to call it 'Faithless', isn't that simultaneously a criticism of the Church and the Brethren who oversee that Church institution, and a claim that they too are, faithless?

[dastardly stem]

This thread is a gem, for sure. And, no doubt, my participation only brings it down at this point. I can't help myself, hoping the corrections I get help me see a little more clearly.

claims made about and by Mormon scripture are often empirical claims that must be addressed by assessment of evidence. There is a vacuum of this kind of approach or response to issues of faith by the Maxwell Institute. In this respect, the Maxwell Institute is a pale reflection of its predecessor. The predecessor demonstrated that the Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price would be able to withstand and even foster faith in the face of such empirical challenges. The Maxwell Institute either currently lacks that faith or just wants to avoid it.

My mind feels like it gets all twisted up, all over again when I consider, yet again, what Ostler says here. Fostering faith isn't an academic enterprise. That the predecessors helped foster faith in some believers hardly has anything to do with whether there has been a good assessment of the evidence of the empirical claims. He actually seems to think that some Mormons weren't seeing all this going down, coming to the realization that these predecessors had far less than they were bilking people to think.

These astute Mormons realized, somewhere along the line, that pretending that a fair assessment of the evidence could in anyway bring a dispassionate educated observer to an intellectual acceptance of Mormonism, was the type of scam that was putting their other Mormon MLM buddies in hot water. Its hard for me to get anywhere past that.

In one sense he has a point, Mormonism makes all sorts of claims that would require all sorts of empirical evidence to justify. From my vantage point, he's got not legs to stand on. His appeal here sounds foolish as soon as you realize Mormonism can't survive unless they decertify every
empirical claim, watering the faith down to how it helps people feel better.

and especially so in our culture steeped in the fallacy of scientism regarding faith

Yeah, well, okay and falling for scientism feels far more helpful than falling for the claim that a fair assessment somehow leaves room for Mormon faith. But I would be one to say science is our best tool to arrive at something demonstrable. And if that's what he's wanting, why is he pointing out his fallacy?

It hits home, though, when you've spent time wanting to see little snippets of possibility, when it comes to evidence, if you will, inspiring one's faith. And I suppose it's not like the defeaters of the predecessors don't want to see things like Nahom as evidence. They probably want to, but realize they'd be trying too hard to pull the wool over their followers' eyes if they spent essays trying to explain it's status of bullseye. (feeling comfortable saying that after typing in Nahom in search at the current Maxwell and getting a "Sorry, nothing to display").

The text of the Book of Mormon is robustly fulfilling, complex, intellectually impressive, and inspiring even on its own terms — and these introductions drive that point home abundantly.

Yeah right...reading his take on the profundity of these stories has me wondering if he understands what "robustly", "complex", "Intellectually impressive" mean. I'll give him inspiring since that is so easy to accomplish given all our parameters.

[Gadianton]

They can be funny in different ways but I can't really see any of them solemnly reminding you that relativity is all there in Ephesians of course

lol. yeah, that's a pretty heavy reference. I have had two math teachers make lighter observations.

The one must have referred to this passage:
"Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span" from Isaiah,

but I'm pretty sure he was taking it from the Book of Mormon. He related this to "spanning sets", which were the topic that day. That is on the low end of the scale and qualifies as metaphor probably. Another teacher bore testimony of e^x as God's signature within creation. Also on the low end. More to the point of this thread was a phil teacher who insisted that problems Kierkegaard "solved" already had the solution right there in Alma 32 of the Book of Mormon "the entire time". Note also that at BYU, LDS professors are required to make spiritual insights. You can actually get your teacher in trouble if you really want to push the point that s/he didn't relate the gospel to the course material at all.

Given that you are a physic's guy, if relativity is your standard, I don't have any personal experiences with that one, but here is something similar from the institute manual:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/man ... n?lang=eng

Albert Einstein, in the early part of this century, developed what is known as the theory of relativity. Einstein postulated that what men had assumed were absolutes in the physical world—space, gravity, speed, motion, time—were not absolutes at all but were interrelated with each other. That is why the theory was called the theory of relativity. Physicists now agree that a person’s time reference will vary depending on his relative position in space.

According to Einstein’s theory, if a body moves at very fast speeds (those approaching the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second), that body’s time slows down in relation to the time of a body that is on earth; and for the body in motion, space contracts or shrinks. In other words, time and space are not two separate things but are interrelated. Physicists refer to this as the space-time continuum. If an astronaut were to journey out into space at speeds approaching the speed of light, though to himself all would seem perfectly normal, to someone on earth it would appear as though his clock were ticking slower, his heart were beating slower, his metabolism operating slower, and so on. He would actually age more slowly than would a person who remained on the earth. Though the finite mind tends to reject such concepts, Einstein’s theory suggests that reality to us is a product of our relative position in the space-time continuum.

According to this theory, if a being achieved the speed of light, to that being all space would contract to the point that it would be “here” for him, and all time would slow down until it became “now” for him. The theory of relativity thus may suggest how, for a being of light and glory like God, all space and all time could be present.

It continues on if you are curious and click the link.

Remember, in Mormonism, God is a dude, and his body is resurrected and glorified "flesh and bone" -- I guess a being "of glorified light" is as good as moving at light speed with respect to every possible reference frame?

[Alphus and Omegus]

They can be funny in different ways but I can't really see any of them solemnly reminding you that relativity is all there in Ephesians of course

lol. yeah, that's a pretty heavy reference. I have had two math teachers make lighter observations.

The one must have referred to this passage:
"Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span" from Isaiah,

but I'm pretty sure he was taking it from the Book of Mormon. He related this to "spanning sets", which were the topic that day. That is on the low end of the scale and qualifies as metaphor probably. Another teacher bore testimony of e^x as God's signature within creation. Also on the low end. More to the point of this thread was a phil teacher who insisted that problems Kierkegaard "solved" already had the solution right there in Alma 32 of the Book of Mormon "the entire time". Note also that at BYU, LDS professors are required to make spiritual insights. You can actually get your teacher in trouble if you really want to push the point that s/he didn't relate the gospel to the course material at all.

Given that you are a physic's guy, if relativity is your standard, I don't have any personal experiences with that one, but here is something similar from the institute manual:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/man ... n?lang=eng

Albert Einstein, in the early part of this century, developed what is known as the theory of relativity. Einstein postulated that what men had assumed were absolutes in the physical world—space, gravity, speed, motion, time—were not absolutes at all but were interrelated with each other. That is why the theory was called the theory of relativity. Physicists now agree that a person’s time reference will vary depending on his relative position in space.

According to Einstein’s theory, if a body moves at very fast speeds (those approaching the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second), that body’s time slows down in relation to the time of a body that is on earth; and for the body in motion, space contracts or shrinks. In other words, time and space are not two separate things but are interrelated. Physicists refer to this as the space-time continuum. If an astronaut were to journey out into space at speeds approaching the speed of light, though to himself all would seem perfectly normal, to someone on earth it would appear as though his clock were ticking slower, his heart were beating slower, his metabolism operating slower, and so on. He would actually age more slowly than would a person who remained on the earth. Though the finite mind tends to reject such concepts, Einstein’s theory suggests that reality to us is a product of our relative position in the space-time continuum.

According to this theory, if a being achieved the speed of light, to that being all space would contract to the point that it would be “here” for him, and all time would slow down until it became “now” for him. The theory of relativity thus may suggest how, for a being of light and glory like God, all space and all time could be present.

It continues on if you are curious and click the link.

Remember, in Mormonism, God is a dude, and his body is resurrected and glorified "flesh and bone" -- I guess a being "of glorified light" is as good as moving at light speed with respect to every possible reference frame?

God is apparently infinitely heavy as well, which is quite an achievement being made out of "light and glory"

[Physics Guy]

Einstein didn't invent the concept of relativity. The idea that speed is relative, for example, was first stated formally by Galileo but has surely been known by everyone who ever tried to throw or catch something while running or riding a horse. Einstein just tweaked relativity, in a way that is negligible in practice at any ordinary speeds but still shocking conceptually—and drastic at high speeds. When we speak of Einstein's theory of relativity it's like speaking of his theory of gravity. Everyone already knew that the thing existed but he changed how we think about it.

(Einstein actually did make a new theory of gravity, which did drastically change how we think of it. What is now called his "special theory of relativity" is a special case of the more general theory that he developed ten years later. The special theory doesn't include gravity but the general theory does. His theory of gravity was by far Einstein's most important contribution to physics; in comparison to it everything else he did, including the thing for which he got the Nobel prize, is a footnote.)

It's a curious feature of Einstein's relativity that if you are moving at the speed of light in any one reference frame, then you are indeed also moving at the speed of light in all possible reference frames. Einstein's theory of relativity by no means rejects absolutes and makes everything relative. It merely alters which things are relative and which are absolute. In Einstein's theory the speed of light is an absolute.

Alas, however, moving at the speed of light does not make all space and time present. If you're going in one direction you still will never get to any places that are not on that line. And although you may travel without aging, you still travel.

You start at point A and arrive at point B, one whole light-year away, one year later. For you no time has passed, but if there's a football game happening today at point B, when you get there it will have been over for a year.

"But I left home just before the scheduled kickoff and I haven't even had time to sip my beer," you'll say.

"While you were not even taking that sip, we played a whole football season," they'll say. "That game last year was the game of the century. You should have stayed home and waited for the live broadcast. It's reaching Point A right now."

So you pay another bazillion bucks to hop right onto a ship back to point A at lightspeed, hoping to catch that epic broadcast. You still get there in no time, but the broadcast ended a year ago.

"Hilarious news from Point B just now, though," your friends tell you. "Some doofus spent a fortune to go from here to see last year's epic game, and missed it by a whole year. By the way, where've you been?"

At least you're now two years younger than they are.

Anyway, having to make little gospel tie-ins to subjects like physics would be a real drag. Even if you believe in God and think of physics as trying to "know God's thoughts" as Einstein once put it, digging through physics for connections to theology would be like a devoted Shakespeare scholar trying to mine the plays for clues about Bill's personal life. It would be cool if you could really find something, perhaps, but it would be an awfully perverse way to read the oeuvre (body of work) that we have.