If plates then God

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Isn't Adam Jortner critical of the Book of Mormon? Like, he sees it as fiction, no?

He's not a Mormon, so he probably does see it as fiction, but he doesn't discuss that in his books. He describes his approach in the Introduction to Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (which also looks at early Mormonism). He is not concerned with adjudicating the truth or falsity of the beliefs that he writes about, but is interested in how beliefs affect behavior.

So we get passages like this:

By the time Joseph Smith had his first visit from the angel Moroni (traditionally dated to 1823), angels had already visited Universalists, Catholics, Native American prophets, Freewill Baptists, and Shakers — and those are simply the angelic visits whose subjects did not claim to be dreaming. If we include all those who saw angels in a mental state only, the list gets much longer: Jemima Wilkinson visited heaven in 1776; John Colby took the same trip in 1815. Polly Davis was instantly healed when an angel appeared to her in 1792. Angels guided Sarah Alley from heaven into hell in 1798. A Vermonter named Bullard dreamed an angel warned him of the approach of bears. Julia Foote saw an angel with a scroll who commanded her to become a preacher. Abel Sarjent built his Halcyon Church in Ohio in part based on angelic communication.... (Jortner, Blood from the Sky, 7-8)

Huh, that really frames the ‘religious fervor’ of the time. Luckily, we can add Denver Snuffer to that list, excepting, of course, that he views himself as an angel now.

- Doc

* for those who don’t know Abel Sarjent might’ve been the inspo for Spalding and had ties to the early Mormons:

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/saga/saga01b.htm

… Abel M. Sargent, Sr. and Solomon Spalding were educated easterners, contemporaries from Calvinist clerical backgrounds, who had moved [to] the thinly populated edges of frontier Ohio, during the first decade of the nineteenth century: Rev. Sargent may have never heard of Solomon Spalding, but Spalding scarcely could have escaped hearing about Sargent.

Anyhow, Uncle Dale made mention of this a few times.

- Doc

[Gadianton]

First of all, listing a lot of pre-literate epics and boasting that the Book of Mormon is longer than them is like listing a lot of bicycles and boasting that a motorcycle is faster. Yeah, they're all two-wheelers, but only it has a motor. Only the Book of Mormon was written down and printed in mass after being dictated. As Morley points out, that's completely different from circulating orally over generations in a pre-literate culture.

What limits the length of a pre-literate oral performance is how much a performer can memorize word-for-word, and how long a piece audiences want to hear at one sitting. None of those limits has even the slightest effect on a text that is being dictated to a scribe for printing. So the comparison is worse than meaningless. The lengths of those oral epics so obviously have nothing whatever to do with how long a book Smith could have dictated, that only a dim or dishonest person could possibly mention them as evidence against Smith's composition of the Book of Mormon.

Morley called out the apex of the embarrassment, but down from there is plenty of bad stuff. MG was asked to present an example of the work he finds impressive and this is pure fail. It falls just behind the Dales and Ky R. It's the perfect example of why someone should never take Mopologetics serious in the least. A member in good standing would to well to look away and not get involved with such horrible argumentation. Anyone who was impressed with this argument deserves rounds and rounds of laughter at their expense. Absolutely amazing.

[Gadianton]

He's not a Mormon, so he probably does see it as fiction, but he doesn't discuss that in his books. He describes his approach in the Introduction to Blood from the Sky: Miracles and Politics in the Early American Republic (which also looks at early Mormonism). He is not concerned with adjudicating the truth or falsity of the beliefs that he writes about, but is interested in how beliefs affect behavior.

So he's one of these postmodern commentators? I don't have an issue with that per se, but it gets thorny.

If an apologist argues that serious historical monographs don't pass moral judgement on historical figures, okay, point taken. But then there's the "narrative" crowd who tell the story from the perspective of the subject. And so the underdogs of history become the protagonists of the story -- the marginalized become the center. Even that's fine, it makes for great TV and often vindicates some truly fine people. But there's no rule that says whose story you can or can't tell this way. In fact, in terms of entertainment value, the real dirtbags make for the best TV. In general, I'm fine with exploring the internal logic of a religion. The problem becomes when by scholarly association, only an rube or a positivist would dare judge. Or by becoming complex, a historical figure is redeemed.

If I were stuck in Russia looking for a way out and I'm thinking, this Putin guy is off his rocker, a stalwart neighbor could show up with a 2000 page history of Putin's life published by the most celebrated historian of Moscow University and tell me how unbelievably ignorant I am. How lacking in nuance my opinions are. Back on Z it got like this all the time. Scholars at Yale aren't looking for the truth, how silly we all are for believing in historical facts. The new thing is to explore religion from the inside. And so postmodernist method by the fact that it's a thing appeared automatically makes the Church invincible to criticism.

[Dr. Shades]

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was also orally dictated. If one doesn’t count the copied-and-pasted portions of the King James Bible (in the Book of Mormon), the word counts of Smith’s and Hitler’s books are, I believe, comparatively similar.

If we hold the Book of Mormon up as an example of a book that’s amazing due only that it was composed orally with no revisions, then we must do the same with Mein Kampf.

How many of our Mormon friends are willing to do this?

[Physics Guy]

I reckon that a liberal Mormon could say that sure, Smith and some cronies made it up, but at least in places they were genuinely inspired, because God can be weird. They could go on to admit that a lot of the LDS church structures and practices are human inventions designed to sustain a patriarchal elite, but still believe that parts of it all work well as meaningful symbols. Against that kind of moderate apologetics I have nothing to say. It wouldn't work for me, but who am I to judge anyone else?

The conservatively literal kind of Mormonism, with real historical Nephites and miraculous translation from plates and all that, is just obvious nonsense. So it's not the apologists' fault that they only have ludicrous arguments. There are no good arguments for them to find. Their best efforts are useful in that they save time for sincere investigators. You can read just a few of their supposedly best arguments, and realise quickly that you are done with these people.

That's probably not the goal that they are trying to achieve. But what goal are they attempting? It can hardly really be a rational effort to make room for faith in their angels and plates, because that fight's just unwinnable. They have several huge blocks of evidence against them and nothing at all on their side.

What I reckon they're really doing is not apologetics, but apologetics theatre. Whether they realise it or not, they're not actually even attempting to influence anyone with genuine doubts—not neutral never-Mormon seekers, not anti-Mormon critics, not wavering Mormons. What they're doing is going through motions, so that people who aren't even interested in thinking about whether the conservative Mormon story can really be true will be able to suppose that a good strong case can be made, and is being well made, for those other poor souls who are doubting.

The structure they build doesn't hold up to inspection at all, but to a glance from afar, it looks nice. It's a house made of paint, a Potemkin apology.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was also orally dictated. If one doesn’t count the copied-and-pasted portions of the King James Bible (in the Book of Mormon), the word counts of Smith’s and Hitler’s books are, I believe, comparatively similar.

If we hold the Book of Mormon up as an example of a book that’s amazing due only that it was composed orally with no revisions, then we must do the same with Mein Kampf.

How many of our Mormon friends are willing to do this?

An astonishing amount, surprisingly.

- Doc

[Chap]

What I reckon they're really doing is not apologetics, but apologetics theatre. Whether they realise it or not, they're not actually even attempting to influence anyone with genuine doubts—not neutral never-Mormon seekers, not anti-Mormon critics, not wavering Mormons. What they're doing is going through motions, so that people who aren't even interested in thinking about whether the conservative Mormon story can really be true will be able to suppose that a good strong case can be made, and is being well made, for those other poor souls who are doubting.

The structure they build doesn't hold up to inspection at all, but to a glance from afar, it looks nice. It's a house made of paint, a Potemkin apology.

Any other explanation of Mormon apologists' activity that assumes that they seriously intend to convert sceptical non-believers requires us to assume a degree of psychological abnormality on the apologists' part that is ruled out by Occam's Razor.

What they are doing is clearly just trying to stop ordinary chapel-going Mormons worrying about what the critics are saying, and feeling that they ought to take a serious look at it one of these days. Just pray, pay, and obey, like Mom and Dad did, and raise your kids the same way, and everything will be fine.

[Kishkumen]

I reckon that a liberal Mormon could say that sure, Smith and some cronies made it up, but at least in places they were genuinely inspired, because God can be weird. They could go on to admit that a lot of the LDS church structures and practices are human inventions designed to sustain a patriarchal elite, but still believe that parts of it all work well as meaningful symbols. Against that kind of moderate apologetics I have nothing to say. It wouldn't work for me, but who am I to judge anyone else?

The conservatively literal kind of Mormonism, with real historical Nephites and miraculous translation from plates and all that, is just obvious nonsense. So it's not the apologists' fault that they only have ludicrous arguments. There are no good arguments for them to find. Their best efforts are useful in that they save time for sincere investigators. You can read just a few of their supposedly best arguments, and realise quickly that you are done with these people.

That's probably not the goal that they are trying to achieve. But what goal are they attempting? It can hardly really be a rational effort to make room for faith in their angels and plates, because that fight's just unwinnable. They have several huge blocks of evidence against them and nothing at all on their side.

What I reckon they're really doing is not apologetics, but apologetics theatre. Whether they realise it or not, they're not actually even attempting to influence anyone with genuine doubts—not neutral never-Mormon seekers, not anti-Mormon critics, not wavering Mormons. What they're doing is going through motions, so that people who aren't even interested in thinking about whether the conservative Mormon story can really be true will be able to suppose that a good strong case can be made, and is being well made, for those other poor souls who are doubting.

The structure they build doesn't hold up to inspection at all, but to a glance from afar, it looks nice. It's a house made of paint, a Potemkin apology.

I think it is accurate to say that apologetics are made because not making them is tantamount to abandoning the belief in the minds of apologists. If you believe, you must make a defense unless you are prepared to admit that no effective defense is possible. That is an unacceptable place to land.

[Gadianton]

An astonishing amount, surprisingly.

Liz, who used to post here, for starters.

[Kishkumen]

An astonishing amount, surprisingly.

Liz, who used to post here, for starters.

Trumpy?