Why is it that you’re here, MG?

[Res Ipsa]

I'm not sure if you're asking me about my usage, or just remarking on exmos' tendencies.

Both. I’m not sure if it’s an “automatic-ish” byproduct and want to explore and think through those impacts and implications.

For me, it’s largely reflex, especially in this forum. I have to consciously shift mental gears to talk about a credal God.

[huckelberry]

..I thought my comment about outside sources was pretty simple. Considering patriarchal blessing outside sources are important. It is a special moment , moment time individual understood as sacred. The hands on head are neureologically powerful. The words though somewhat standardized have both individual and social meaning. These are all inputs contributing to creating a spiritual experience.

This is exactly what DrW was talking about when he was describing human experiences and responses generated inside one's brain as being NOT supernaturally caused. A patriarchal blessing in the LDS church comes from another human being, and the hands on the head are only 'neurologically powerful' if you are indoctrinated to think that. The term 'external' is being used in this case to mean originating from outside human sources. A group delusion doesn't qualify.

And speaking of patriarchal blessings, 'standardized' doesn't even begin to explain their generic words and structure. A horoscope published in a newspaper for one's astrological sign has as much meaning as an LDS patriarchal blessing, if one is so inclined to interpret it that way. If it was a special moment for you, i can respect that, but it doesn't mean it came from a source external to human experience. In my opinion, it is part and parcel of the human response DrW referred to--not a supernatural input.

One more comment about the 'social meaning' in patriarchal blessings. Yes, in mine also there is considerable 'social meaning,' wrapped in the politely but stiflingly sexist blueprint of how Mormons expect genders to behave, based on the stereotypes of the religion. This 'social meaning' is not comforting nor supportive for those who don't fit the stereotypes the LDS would like to impose, and hopefully not for anyone who recognizes the inappropriateness of the stereotyping.

Marcus,
I guess what I thought clear in my comment was not. I thought the blessing was a spiritual witness for a few years as a teenager then stopped seeing that way about age 18. I then started seeing it as culturally and physiologically created.i do not have any disagreement with your observations about the blessing.

[Limnor]

Both. I’m not sure if it’s an “automatic-ish” byproduct and want to explore and think through those impacts and implications.

For me, it’s largely reflex, especially in this forum. I have to consciously shift mental gears to talk about a credal God.

Between patriarchal blessings and the great gulf between Mormon and creedal God I’m not sure where to go with the conversation.

For the kinds of practices we’ve been discussing—patriarchal blessings from a trained “blessing producer” that could just as easily be mistaken for personalized horoscopes, to a changing landscape of what similar mouthpieces for the Mormon god have said and been retracted—I’m stuck wondering what kind of God are we even talking about for any of this to make sense? I’m sure many of you here have already gone through this realization. I’m struggling with how to say “but there is a different portrayal that might be true” without sounding like back-door proselytizing.

[bill4long]

It seems that during the War in Heaven, in the "pre-existence", we had full disclosure, and were allowed to make a clearcut binary** decision - Jesus' plan, or Satan's plan - based on an understanding of the choice, the competing options, and the inevitable consequences. But not so now. Yes, I know that the official answer includes the idea that we were sent here with incomplete knowledge and information in order to develop faith, but clearly that is not working for all of us.

The War in Heaven, whether from the Bible believing Christians, Mormons or others, has always seemed rather absurd to me. 1/3 of Father's children (Mormonism), angels (Christianity), jinn (Islam), shaking their fists at one who has All Power™ in all out defiance, only to be doomed for eternity.

This is a Post Hebrew Bible concept. Embraced by Christian writers. Modified by Islamic (Jinn) and Mormons (pre-humans, not angels.) Nothing like that exists in the Hebrew Bible. (Non-canonical 1 Enoch and medieval Kabbalistic texts mention this concept, but it is not in any Talmudic writings and is not mainstream.)

Were the rebels insane? Did they think they could win against the Most High? Did they figure out a way to jam his All Powerful Gears if they enlisted enough rebels in the cause? They already had a blissful existence in the Presence of God. Didn't they know the consequences if they lost?

Seems like extreme anthropormophism off into the weeds.

develop faith

I ask why? What good is it? Nobody has ever answered that to my satisfaction either. Nobody has ever explained why such a blind mortal existence is necessary for anything. Learning? Bah. The Most High could just download everything he knows into each one of us. Or better yet, be transpersonally One with us.

If there is a Creator, the only explanation that's ever made sense to me is that this is a virtual reality game being played by Super Cosmic Entities (who are modes of Brahman) as entertainment. It could be multiple levels. And when you die you pop back into the more fundamental level, and when you're really Out of the Game, you enter back into undifferentiated unity with with/as Brahman, which we all are/is. Think of the Hindu Lila/Leela concept. Brahman at play. Of course, this could all be rubbish as well. Limited human reason cannot figure it out. Very "transcendent" experience beyond normal are available for humans. But nobody knows what the Ultimate is. I call it the Black Box and The Root.

Sorry if that bored you. Pop the stack.

[Physics Guy]

Like the guy at the party who's been asleep on the couch for a little while and wakes up, I want to come back to the Sorites "heap" paradox that some people keep invoking.

One standard resolution to the Sorites paradox is just to allow a continuum of intermediate states between "heap" and "not a heap", which can be assessed as being more or less heap-ish. Past a certain point, that collection of grains is a darn good heap; below another point, those few specks are definitely not a heap. In between, though, it's just not right to call the collection of little bits as "heap" or "not heap" and leave it at that. At the least you have to assign a rough number to how far along they are between clear heap and clear not-heap.

Even if this intermediate zone is in practice quite narrow, with few instances lying within it, it eliminates the paradox, that was based on the common-sensical axioms that taking one grain away from a heap cannot instantly eliminate its heap status, and neither can adding one grain to a non-heap suddenly make it a heap. If "heap" and "non-heap" are the only options, then these axioms imply the paradox (along with the additional axioms that one object is not a heap, and that an arbitrarily large pile of things is one). What the add-or-subtract-one-grain principle is really getting at, though, is precisely the fact that heap-ness is not actually a binary condition. Removing or adding a grain cannot make the full difference between heap and non-heap, but it may well make something slightly more or less heap-ish.

One interpretation of the heap-to-non-heap continuum is that every collection of little bits has a probability P to be considered a heap, so that it also has a probability (1-P) to be a non-heap. A little pile smack-dab in the middle between heap and non-heap is something for which, if you had to call it heap or non-heap, you could go either way. This perspective on the continuum is an example of what is called "fuzzy logic", where statements are not necessarily true or false, but can have some probability for each.

Fuzzy logic may just found like fuzzy thinking, but there's a lot to be said for it as a practical tool for situations in which we have too little evidence to be completely sure what is true. These are most situations. Fuzzy logic is a natural fit for Bayesian inference. And in Bayesian inference, just as people like MG would seem to want, one is allowed to retain high confidence in a conclusion in spite of strong evidence against it, without even being irrational. One simply needs to have a strong prior.

Bayesian inference reduces logic to a learning rule, which tells you how to revise your previous probability estimates in light of new evidence. The rule is multiplicative, but in a slightly complicated way that ensures that the total probability of all cases together must always be one. Perfectly consistent Bayesian inference allows stubbornness: if one is really, really sure of something, then one is allowed to retain most of that confidence even in the face of seemingly powerful counter-evidence. And it's really not bad that it lets us do that. This feature is the Bayesian justification for not being too fazed by occasional coincidences.

So, yeah, it's not necessarily irrational for a conservative Mormon to just shrug off all kinds of awkward evidence and keep insisting that the Mormon stuff is all true. The conservative Mormon just needs to have a prior probability for it being true that is very close to 100%. In the heap-of-sand analogy, they need a definition of "heap" that barely concedes that the whole Sahara is a little bit heap-ish, and won't give a firm vote of "heap" to anything less than the planet Dune. That position may not be unassailable, but what is wrong with it is not exactly that it's illogical.

In case anyone has read this far, though, here is what I actually want to say about Bayes and Sorites.

These are not high cards to play. They are not sophisticated and subtle grounds that automatically make conservative viewpoints respectable. The Sorites "paradox" is elementary analysis of language, and Bayes's theorem is two lines of basic arithmetic. "Sorites" and "Bayes" may seem like good names to drop if one isn't familiar with them, but the ideas involved are quite basic.

Saying, "From my perspective your pile of evidence does not make a heap," or, "My prior is so strong that your evidence hardly budges my needle," is only a fancy-sounding way of saying, "BLAH-BLAH-BLAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE MY EARS ARE COVERED!"

Sometimes it's smart to cover one's ears and ignore things. One is not obliged to debate every soundbite, or throw away all the science textbooks every time somebody posts a weird TikTok. Invoking Sorites or Bayes is not an argument, though. It's just stonewalling.

Yes, we can all stonewall, and sometimes we should. But everyone knows that. So you don't get any respect or credit just for exercising your right to ignore things. If you want credit for anything more than that, you have to make an actual case of some kind. Invoking your personal freedom to believe as you wish is not making a case. And name-dropping Sorites or Bayes doesn't make it into making a case, because those are just fancy-sounding ways to say that you are free to cover your ears.

[I Have Questions]

I find it psychologically fascinating that someone who criticises others for binary thinking invokes the Sorities Paradox in defence of his own ideas. I’m not even sure that he sees the inherent irony of that.

[Gadianton]

So make a heap like a pound? That would force skeptics to defend the need for ambiguous language. I think there is a defense, but the defense undercuts the designs of the skeptic. In other words, the skeptic is trying to create an unnecessary problem rather than understand any necessity to ambiguity.

[Res Ipsa]

For me, it’s largely reflex, especially in this forum. I have to consciously shift mental gears to talk about a credal God.

Between patriarchal blessings and the great gulf between Mormon and creedal God I’m not sure where to go with the conversation.

For the kinds of practices we’ve been discussing—patriarchal blessings from a trained “blessing producer” that could just as easily be mistaken for personalized horoscopes, to a changing landscape of what similar mouthpieces for the Mormon god have said and been retracted—I’m stuck wondering what kind of God are we even talking about for any of this to make sense? I’m sure many of you here have already gone through this realization. I’m struggling with how to say “but there is a different portrayal that might be true” without sounding like back-door proselytizing.

I'm not a believer, and I talk about why "no God" might be true from time to time. Obviously, I don't speak for anyone other than myself, but I don't see anything wrong with describing a different portrayal of God that might be true.

[Gadianton]

I’m curious how well the average Christian understands the creeds such that how they talk about god is radically different from how Mormons talk about god. Other than ticks, I don’t see much effective difference. Example: the most emphasized doctrine a typical believer might go on about is faith and works. Ed decker said you don’t work to get saved, you work because you are saved. Cute, but then silence. Well, he’s right about that doctrine, but I’ve heard many sermons about this and there is no effective difference once the full theology is understood. Because if you don’t work, you must not be saved. I’ve heard more than one preacher explain if not elect, then a persons salvation prayer is a failed attempt to secure something that isn’t for them. This becomes an important after the fact crooked line doctrine to explain backslidden Christians.

[Physics Guy]

I dunno. From my decades of participation in a range of mainstream Christian denominations and groups, I'd say that the whole "elect" thing is an isolated minority view. It's a Reformed thing (Calvinist), and I don't ever recall anyone else ever using similar words or intending similar ideas. I think the great majority of Christians believe pretty simply in free will, and take the "eleventh hour" parable to mean that anyone at all can repent and be saved right up to their last breath—maybe even beyond that point.