Are there still liberal Mormons?

[Res Ipsa]

If someone is going to claim a bloke in the Middle East came back from the dead, I’m going to need more than third hand iron-age hearsay from generations after the event supposedly happened.

If someone is going to claim that the body of evidence surrounding the resurrection of Jesus is third hand iron-age hearsay from generations after the supposed event, I am going to need a lot more than some random bloke on a message board saying so.

I think there's a pretty strong consensus among New Testament scholars that the gospels were not written by the Apostles and are at least second-hand accounts. If you want the evidence, it's not hard to find.

[Res Ipsa]

I agree. It dovetails very nicely with his argument that something must have happened with Jesus’ death and reported resurrection.

It’s a much better apologetic than NHM!

I think it depends on the flavor of Christianity. I've had discussions with evangelicals that are pretty close to Mopologetics, but it's not been universal.

[MG 2.0]

I realize this is a ‘make it or break it’ issue. And it’s been tossed back and forth for many years now. It’s not like I’m going to prove anything to you one way or the other. It becomes at some point a matter of trust and faith.

https://www.ldsliving.com/why-the-three ... te/s/94408

I think there is good reason to look at the three witnesses as honest men who described what they saw and stuck with it through thick and thin.

I’m not going to relitigate it here. For one thing, you would win through rhetorical arguments and logic. I can’t beat your expertise and training.

What I can say is that I think that I’ve looked at this particular issue enough to make an educated judgement that falls in line with the larger narrative.

Regards,
MG

No, It’s not make it or break it at all. It’s one piece of evidence among thousands. Even if it’s the strongest piece of evidence that the COJCOLDS is God’s one and only true and restored church on earth, that doesn’t mean it’s strong evidence, let alone definitive evidence.

I’m perfectly happy to let your testimony be a matter of trust and faith for you. Full stop. What I’m not happy to do is watch you make ridiculous claims about evidence. Dude, when you make arguments based on evidence, you are entering the realm of logic and reasoning. In the realm of faith, you can get away with just asserting stuff. But that doesn’t fly when you start making claims about evidence. You can’t just assert that the three witnesses are compelling evidence and expect to be taken seriously.

I don’t consider myself a strong rhetorician. I aspire to be pretty good at looking for and evaluating evidence for purpose of drawing good conclusions from it. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life doing it, so I hope it’s paid off to some degree.

If you want to make good, evidenced based arguments, you’ve got to learn how to do it and then practice. For example, whether the witnesses were honest men is a red herring when we are trying to address the evidential value of their statements. We don’t have nearly enough information about these men to draw any conclusions about their honesty in general. Even if we did, honest men lie and dishonest men tell the truth. So, their general proclivity for truthfulness tells us nothing about their truthfulness in this specific case. On top of that, I’m not asserting that they were lying in their statements. Reliability of evidence isn’t determined by honesty. We don’t need to choose to believe anything about the general honesty of the three men in order to make a realistic assessment of the reliability of their witness statements. So, appealing to the honest nature of the three men is simply a bad argument if we are assessing the reliability of their statements as evidence.

Similarly, “didn’t deny” is a bad argument. First of all, you don’t know that they didn’t. These folks lived lots of years after their statements. You have no idea what they may have said privately to any number of people. You have evidence of relatively small snippets of their lives. You see only what someone recorded and preserved, and you need to take into account who was motivated to preserve what exists today. Second, it’s not like these folks were coerced in some way to deny their statements. Like I said, people just don’t go around issuing public denials of things they were mistaken about in the past. I bore my testimony hundreds of times when I was a faithful Mormon. I haven’t believed in Mormonism for over 40 years, but I don’t recall ever denying my testimony. After I die, someone could truthfully claim that, even though I left the church, I never denied my testimony.

So, again, red herring.

But the most important thing is not to be focused on “winning,” whatever that means on a message board. I mean, it’s not like we give trophies out here. You’ve got to want to make a good argument, even if it leads you to a conclusion you’d rather not make.

In this particular situation dealing specifically with the three witnesses to the angel and the plates what would it take for you, living now and looking back, to have a high degree of confidence that not only were they telling the truth as they knew it…but that it WAS the truth?

In other words, what would be your demands…otherwise you’re not going to believe it?

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

4. More than one eye witness increases likelihood that testimony is true if the testimony is corroborated by the other witnesses. More so than if the testimony relies on one eyewitness. Over time if the corroboration remains intact the testimony becomes even more reliable.

5. If the witness reports seeing dragons, unicorns, angels, or any other fantastical creature, the testimony should be considered highly suspect.

Same question I’m asking Res Ipsa.

Interested in your thoughts.

Regards,
MG

[Physics Guy]

I think my bottom line here is that to the degree you take it seriously, it's only because you were raised Christian of some kind.

As I said in my edits of my post after this reply, entertaining the possibility that Jesus physically rose from the dead isn't really an important thing for me, and has not been for decades. It's kind of like wondering whether there's a sly, subtle joke in a well-known text of which the explicit meaning is important enough that any secondary meanings are afterthoughts.

The thoughts that are most important to me, about how patterns and detail and background make up reality, are ideas that I first encountered in Christian theology. In particular I owe them as explicit ideas to a theologian who is most known for her other work: Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, translated the Divine Comedy into English terza rima, and in her day job as an advertising agent is supposed to have coined the meta-jingle, "It pays to advertise."

I might well never have encountered Sayers's theological thoughts, or thought enough about them to care about them, if I hadn't been raised as I was. In that sense, sure, I likely wouldn't have thought much about any of this if I hadn't been raised as a Christian.

I can't say that these thoughts about Trinity are clearly right about how reality works, or that they imply the existence of a God who cares enough about us to perpetuate us after our deaths. I don't think it's just a parochially subjective attachment that makes the hypothesis seem profound, though. Sayers's concept of Trinity really is awfully close to multiple scale analysis, and that really is in the heart of how reality works. The leap to believing in God may well be a false bet, but it isn't a stupid bet. Perhaps the only reason that Trinitarian theology has persisted so well is that beside all the dogma and jargon it happens to echo some basic aspects of how reality works. Or perhaps this doesn't just happen. That's the bet.

If I had been born and raised in different circumstances, I probably wouldn't believe in quantum field theory, either. That's not because quantum fields aren't real.

[MG 2.0]

What I did say that I don't like Is the gang mugging that occurs far too often on this board.

I would attribute that to the natural human tendency to be dominant. In the story, “The Lord of the Flies”, we see that with Jack’s desire to exercise control and dominance over the other boys on the island. It was the beginning of savagery and lawlessness which later resulted in violence.

It happened and others didn’t challenge the prevailing narrative. Ralph and his group were treated poorly and others didn’t step in because of apathy and/or fear.

Anytime mob mentality rules there will always be those that are considered by the strong to be weak, for one reason or another. The strong will always do whatever is necessary in order to prevail.

Ceeboo, what I think you might be referring to is a time when people were gentler and kinder and had a natural affection for their fellow human beings. Technology had not yet shattered some of the social norms that we had.

There are too many ‘Jacks’ fighting for intellectual supremacy. It’s happened as a nation and it’s infiltrated into online conversations. As I’ve said before, if we were simply sitting down face to face and breaking bread together we would be more than likely find common ground and see each other as human rather than the ‘other’ to be conquered and dominated.

Regards,
MG

[ceeboo]

If someone is going to claim that the body of evidence surrounding the resurrection of Jesus is third hand iron-age hearsay from generations after the supposed event, I am going to need a lot more than some random bloke on a message board saying so.

I think there's a pretty strong consensus among New Testament scholars that the gospels were not written by the Apostles and are at least second-hand accounts. If you want the evidence, it's not hard to find.

Putting aside the strong consensus among New Testament scholars claim, because I wasn't referring to the gospels. There is resurrection evidence (evidence that one can reject for sure) about the resurrection preaching, which you can track back to immediately after the crucifixion - Bart Ehrman (a critic) suggests that when Paul had his Jesus appointment on the road to Damascus, there was already data (called the "early creeds" that were later written in the New Testament) about the Death/Deity/Resurrection of Jesus that existed. So, my only point was to say that third hand iron-age accounts from generations after the event is not the entire body of evidence. And there is more - much more that ought to be put on the table. Can it all be rejected? Of course.

[MG 2.0]

If someone is going to claim a bloke in the Middle East came back from the dead, I’m going to need more than third hand iron-age hearsay from generations after the event supposedly happened.

I don’t think you’re alone. I think I would be in the same camp if it wasn’t for the Book of Mormon and the restoration narrative.

Book of Mormon…another testament of Jesus Christ.

Without a high level of confidence in the validity of this book in being what it purports to be I would find myself wanting more than the Bible. As it is, the Book of Mormon testifies of this same Jesus and I am able to give the Bible a higher degree of confidence as it teaches and testifies of Jesus Christ being the Son of God and being resurrected on the third day.

Regards,
MG

[ceeboo]

If someone is going to claim a bloke in the Middle East came back from the dead, I’m going to need more than third hand iron-age hearsay from generations after the event supposedly happened.

I think I would be in the same camp if it wasn’t for the Book of Mormon and the restoration narrative.

Really? You would reject the resurrection claim if not for the Book of Mormon?

Forgive my ignorance when it come to the Book of Mormon: What, in the Book of Mormon, lends additional support directly to the resurrection claim?

[Res Ipsa]

No, It’s not make it or break it at all. It’s one piece of evidence among thousands. Even if it’s the strongest piece of evidence that the COJCOLDS is God’s one and only true and restored church on earth, that doesn’t mean it’s strong evidence, let alone definitive evidence.

I’m perfectly happy to let your testimony be a matter of trust and faith for you. Full stop. What I’m not happy to do is watch you make ridiculous claims about evidence. Dude, when you make arguments based on evidence, you are entering the realm of logic and reasoning. In the realm of faith, you can get away with just asserting stuff. But that doesn’t fly when you start making claims about evidence. You can’t just assert that the three witnesses are compelling evidence and expect to be taken seriously.

I don’t consider myself a strong rhetorician. I aspire to be pretty good at looking for and evaluating evidence for purpose of drawing good conclusions from it. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life doing it, so I hope it’s paid off to some degree.

If you want to make good, evidenced based arguments, you’ve got to learn how to do it and then practice. For example, whether the witnesses were honest men is a red herring when we are trying to address the evidential value of their statements. We don’t have nearly enough information about these men to draw any conclusions about their honesty in general. Even if we did, honest men lie and dishonest men tell the truth. So, their general proclivity for truthfulness tells us nothing about their truthfulness in this specific case. On top of that, I’m not asserting that they were lying in their statements. Reliability of evidence isn’t determined by honesty. We don’t need to choose to believe anything about the general honesty of the three men in order to make a realistic assessment of the reliability of their witness statements. So, appealing to the honest nature of the three men is simply a bad argument if we are assessing the reliability of their statements as evidence.

Similarly, “didn’t deny” is a bad argument. First of all, you don’t know that they didn’t. These folks lived lots of years after their statements. You have no idea what they may have said privately to any number of people. You have evidence of relatively small snippets of their lives. You see only what someone recorded and preserved, and you need to take into account who was motivated to preserve what exists today. Second, it’s not like these folks were coerced in some way to deny their statements. Like I said, people just don’t go around issuing public denials of things they were mistaken about in the past. I bore my testimony hundreds of times when I was a faithful Mormon. I haven’t believed in Mormonism for over 40 years, but I don’t recall ever denying my testimony. After I die, someone could truthfully claim that, even though I left the church, I never denied my testimony.

So, again, red herring.

But the most important thing is not to be focused on “winning,” whatever that means on a message board. I mean, it’s not like we give trophies out here. You’ve got to want to make a good argument, even if it leads you to a conclusion you’d rather not make.

In this particular situation dealing specifically with the three witnesses to the angel and the plates what would it take for you, living now and looking back, to have a high degree of confidence that not only were they telling the truth as they knew it…but that it WAS the truth?

In other words, what would be your demands…otherwise you’re not going to believe it?

Regards,
MG

The fundamental problem here is that you asking questions that are antithetical to what I think is required to fairly evaluate evidence. It's a type of pre-judging evidence that I haven't actually seen. That's an invitation to bias. Before I look at the evidence, I have no idea what it's going to look like or how it's going all fit together. And that fitting together is an important part of the process. The question is a cool rhetorical device, but it asks an unreasonable and misguided question if one is interested in drawing good conclusions from evidence.

Given the difficulty of reading someone's mind, I would simply assume that the witnesses are telling the truth as they understand it unless there is an evidenced based reason to conclude otherwise.

You're still not, in my opinion, clearly defining the proposition you are evaluating. "Plates" is too general. You are setting yourself up for equivocation if you aren't clear about exactly what it is that you are looking to show. I've already explained that not specifying plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated muddies the exercise. Evidence of "plates" does not advance anything if what you are actually trying to show is specific plates.