MG 2.0 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 21, 2022 4:27 pm
You say based upon your experience. What experience?
Ordinary experience. I don't think this needs clarification, and it comes off as a hook to say "well just because you haven't seen an angel help a farmer translate gold tablets doesn't mean another person didn't." Of course that is logically true, but it is irrelevant to the point at issue, which is that this is very, very far outside the realm of normal experience.
Do you still think/believe that Joseph Smith was a sub-literate farmhand that wrote the Book of Mormon? These days how do you explain the Book of Mormon?
Yes I think he was a subliterate farmhand, though I don't think he
wrote the Book of Mormon: he dictated it. My own view is that the techniques of oral composition we find in many cultures where literacy is limited or non-existent and where writing interacts with orality in complex ways can explain a great deal about the Book of Mormon's composition; it fits the descriptions we have about the its production. There was a time when I wanted to write that into a book, but I don't know if my interest could sustain such a project. I wonder why some of these apologists haven't picked that up, because it could actually help their case if they frame it the right way. It's a method that is fairly neutral, and you could even find a way to fit the "early modern English" canard into there respectably.
To me, it seems as though from the very outset you were inclined to disbelieve in that which could not be proven/seen through physicality or evidence in the immediately accessible world or what was observably left behind and could be shown to have existed, and that faith was an anomaly/roadblock which got in the way of knowing...Am I close?
No, because I don't think that is reflective at all. If you follow my commentary here at all, you'll see how skeptical I am of the strident populist empiricism so common here. Most of what we "know" in our heads we know because someone told us so, not because we've studied it and measured it by examining physical evidence. I personally have never in my life ever seen a germ and accept germ theory on a combination of authority alone and practical experience (infections have gone away after taking anti-biotics, and though I can never be sure that they worked, the germ explanation fits well with that experience).
Now, suppose I was motivated enough by curiosity to spend some of my vast fortune at the microscope store so that I could see a germ for myself upon acquiring one. Suppose that, when I fire up the microscope and have a look, I don't find one in a sample labelled "germs," so I go to a professor of germ theory to get her help. And then suppose she tells me: "well, Symmachus, germ theory is true—in fact, it is the truest theory on earth, and I know that germ theory is true with all my heart. Although some of our greatest scientists have seen germs because it is given to some to see, yet for others such as yourself it must be taken on faith, and the germs are to be seen with your spiritual microscope. And in any case, why do you need to see them? Are you disinclined to believe? Faith is hard, and the true test is not of germ theory but of your capacity to believe in it." Well, I hope you can understand why I'd start to get a bit skeptical about germ theory.
But then, unless I’m misunderstanding, you said that faith is a non sequitur. How is that so? It seems directly applicable to the plates and Joseph’s story as to how they were obtained and accessed for translation. Yes, the plates are no longer accessible…remote and unseen… but the Book of Mormon readily available to handle and read its contents.
Appealing to faith in the case of things observable by our senses is a non sequitur. And anyways, it's not the plates alone but the entire civilization, for which there is no conclusive evidence at all. The existence of a millennia-long civilization isn't a faith claim but an empirical one. Although we have found many, many civilizations up and down the Americas, we have yet to find one with the characteristics described in the Book of Mormon.
If Joseph was indeed this illiterate farmboy as you describe, how did he create this book?
See above. If you are interested, you can Google Ruth Finnegan, John Miles Foley, Albert Lord, and Milman Parry and pursue the issue from there.
It is an act of faith to take him at his word that the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God. Faith IS the crux of the matter. Faith can’t be pulled out of the equation in this instance or others where God is seemingly taking a position in the background remotely and unseen.
See that is another issue that I am getting at: how Book of Mormon historicity is almost analogous to idolatry because it displaces god as its subject. To take Joseph Smith at his word, as you put it, is to have faith in Joseph Smith (and I'm not even getting into his credibility issues, just emphasizing that the faith is centered on him or on claims derived from him). Be my guest, but it's an inversion of the way that faith is used in other Christian contexts and makes Mormonism uniquely susceptible to the problems it faces. Most traditional Christians don't believe in Jesus because they are taking some guy named John and some guy name Luke at their word. They assume that they are in main reliable on the essentials, but an assumption is not faith or at any rate not what Christian faith focuses on.
The problem we have and critics harp on it, is that because, say in the instance of Scientology, the ‘stringing along’ dynamics exist to the outside observer, that it’s one and the same for practicing members of the LDS Church. Religionists are all placed in the same boat.
As a believer in the exclusivity of the CofJCofLDS I’m not sure how to navigate around this conundrum. To the outsider or critic/disbeliever it is natural and reasonable to put all religionists into the same boat of unreasonable superstition.
I certainly don't put it into all the same boat and put a label like "superstition" on it. I don't think Mormons are all that superstitious. I think believing in Book of Mormon historicity is absurd, not superstitious, because it is demonstrably not true. There is no evidence for Nephite civilization, etc. Now, I have no problem with people believing that. Why should I?
The issue is again about the reach of the claim: it extends beyond the realm where faith is applicable and into the real world, where we can actually test it (Nibley used to brag about this aspect of the Book of Mormon!). The wise thing is not to test it because by the usual standards that these tests are run, Book of Mormon of historicity is absurd. The mature thing is to admit that, to "own it," as they say, but instead our apologists friends tamper with the standards and rewrite the tests so that they can make it look like it has passed. "I believe there were Nephites" is good enough for me, but "the linguistic data support my belief that there were Nephites" is inviting a take down. It's hubris.
It is different from the something like the Trinity, which is also absurd, but that logical absurdity, which can't be empirically verified or refuted, is accepted and reinterpreted as a mystery, something beyond ordinary understanding. That is why no traditionalist Christian with a PhD in math goes around trying to revamp number theory and all of mathematics in order to show that, contrary to billions of humans have believed, one and three really are the same number and are interchangeable in calculation. Christian apologists who argue about the Trinity with other Christians don't make appeals to math.
Marcus wrote: ↑Sun Aug 21, 2022 5:36 pm
In a Facebook group dedicated to the cause of fighting the IBWO status change, people regularly post their opinions, pro and con, about various possible sightings. One memorable poster gave a very convincing story, with many details, about how she has repeatedly seen one in her yard, which is located in a very rural area not far from where the last sightings of the bird were documented about 80 years ago.
She then said she had pictures and would post them.
people were very excited and encouraged her to do so, asap! Finally the pictures went up, to the confusion of the group members. One person politely posted, "I'm not seeing any birds in your pictures, just background. Are you sure these are the correct photos?"
The woman wrote back, "oh no, these are the right pictures. They show the location where the bird was when I saw it..."
This is perfect! The people
want to believe the claims and are predisposed to, if they don't already believe them. They assume it's true. They are then
confused when the proffered relic doesn't confirm what they believe.
Gadianton wrote: ↑Sun Aug 21, 2022 4:56 am
Mormonism isn't the only church like this, as an easy example, Scientology is similar because of the no-nonsense hands-on approaches they take with auditing to remote viewing, to manipulating mass, energy, space, and time with their minds. It's generally a different modality of literalism, but your essential point about distance I believe holds, because many Scientologists when working up to the higher levels feel that "distance" when the carefully guarded secret of the next run is revealed and fails to deliver in the tangible way advertised. Moving ahead is a matter of sunk costs and compartmenting. Mormonism may have one or two direct parallels. You may get called for the Second Anointing one day, but then the ordinance comes and goes, but no personal visit by Jesus Christ as you'd always understood it. Hell, what about UFO tours with Stephen Greer that promise interactions with spaceships but end up with everyone locking hands, closing their eyes, and feeling the presence spiritually?
I think there are tradeoffs with these kinds of religions. Sure, it sounds like a big liability and in one sense it is, but the literalism, the hope of real mysterious unfolding in the here and now is what attracts people in the first place.
I would only add one thing that the topic of the OP is unique to Mormonism. The distance (and confusion) between the expectations created by a claim and the instantiation of that claim in the real world are not inherently the problem, because as you point out this can arise in any religion—and probably does in every religion. This gives way to all kinds of metaphysical speculation which can be fruitful and which allows adherents to discover or just make up responses of great emotional depth. I don't see how senines and the Reign of the Judges can do that, however. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if these would-be theologians in Mormonism were serious they would find something better than the Religious Studies explanation ("these texts build communal identity" and similar mundane obviousness couched in ever shifting neologisms) or the "god is testing you" explanation. My own view is there just isn't enough depth to the Book of Mormon anyway, and anyone attempting a deep dive is bound to get a head injury plunging into such shallow waters. But perhaps "god is testing you" really is the best use of it.
