Boylan backs out

[Rivendale]

The Jenkins-Hamblin debate effectively ended when Jenkins told Hamblin he would concede if Hamblin could show him one shard of Nephite pottery. Not being able to, the debate was over.

LDS apologists learned an important lesson that day: They would need to have the BYU Art Department produce realistic Nephite pottery fragments and have them transported back in time and scatter a ton of them throughout Central Mexico in order to ever take part in another such debate.

HQ never responded to the funding request for this project.

And the past does not exist! It didn't take long for Jenkins to spot the rhetorical device of assuming something is true and finding evidence for it. Muhelstein ran with that.

[Tapir Rodeo]

LOL Bobby whinges that the “debate was too broad for me!”

http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com ... allop.html

Grow a pair of testicles, Bobby. Your entire blog is a steaming pile of gish gallop.

His accusation of gish gallop is really just an admission that the LDS Scriptures have so many historical issues that they can't be defended as a group. I think its likely that Bobby B was trying to narrow the debate down to something so specific he could drag Akin into a rabbit hole and make sure the debate never got off the ground.

[drumdude]

LOL Bobby whinges that the “debate was too broad for me!”

http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com ... allop.html

Grow a pair of testicles, Bobby. Your entire blog is a steaming pile of gish gallop.

His accusation of gish gallop is really just an admission that the LDS Scriptures have so many historical issues that they can't be defended as a group. I think its likely that Bobby B was trying to narrow the debate down to something so specific he could drag Akin into a rabbit hole and make sure the debate never got off the ground.

Correct. Boylan has surely seen the myriad Mopologists who got their butts handed to them over and over again when engaging in debates.

Notice how Mopologists don't do debates anymore? Just this one weird amateur named Boylan, or maybe Quacku, who real apologists like DCP don't even acknowledge exist.

[Physics Guy]

I don't feel called to be a champion of Boylan in general, but I think I'd be frustrated, too, at having to defend "the reliability of Mormon scriptures" in fifteen minutes, even if I believed in those scriptures.

What the heck does "reliability" even mean, as a possible property of Mormon scriptures? It would probably only take a few minutes to establish their reliability as a doorstop, but what can we do beyond that?

The faithful Mormon defines "reliable" with such a low bar that even Apple Maps counts as reliable, the Catholic insists that "reliable" can't possibly mean anything less than the original burning bush, and fifteen minutes are gone in wrangling over the definition of the topic. Anyone who has ever attended a religious debate on any subject knows that that's all that was ever going to happen.

[Moksha]

The Jenkins-Hamblin debate effectively ended when Jenkins told Hamblin he would concede if Hamblin could show him one shard of Nephite pottery. Not being able to, the debate was over...

I know you like to make puns, but for the people who are new to the jenkins hamblin debate series, that is not a true summary at all.

Maybe you see a different turning point in the Jenkins-Hamblin debate. I see it as Jenkin's challenge not being met. For these "new people" give us your summary.

[Marcus]

I know you like to make puns, but for the people who are new to the jenkins hamblin debate series, that is not a true summary at all.

Maybe you see a different turning point in the Jenkins-Hamblin debate. I see it as Jenkin's challenge not being met. For these "new people" give us your summary.

Jenkins asked for one piece of evidence from practically his first post, and continued to do so every subsequent post, through dozens more exchanges. The debate ended when Jenkins ended it, not "when Jenkins told Hamblin he would concede if Hamblin could show him one shard of Nephite pottery." The debate went on for a very long time after that, with Hamblin becoming increasingly angry and disjointed in his responses.

But let's read Jenkins himself on the matter:

Of Bill Hamblin, History and the Book of Mormon
JULY 18, 2015 BY PHILIP JENKINS

I have been engaged in a debate of sorts with Bill Hamblin on the historicity of the Book of Mormon, over at his blog, Enigmatic Mirror. (For the uninitiated, he is a prominent figure in “Ancient Book of Mormon Studies”). He is a trooper about posting my stuff on his site, which I appreciate.

Meanwhile, this posting of mine builds on recent debates. I think this present response is important because it gets to the heart of all the discussions we have been having here recently, and to any and all of my requests for concrete, specific evidence. I don’t for a second think his latest comments answer these problems, nor do they even address them directly. I was amused to see how far he is trying to divert the debate from any topic at all that might touch on any embarrassing discussions of the Book of Mormon!

The whole historicity issue necessarily involves issues of methodology. Throughout, Hamblin has grounded himself in what I regard as bizarre assertions that history and archaeology are not empirical disciplines. Following from that, he denies the concept of objective evidence, a phrase he usually (and scornfully) puts in quotes. He does not believe we can speak of objective evidence of the past: we cannot seek it, will not find it, and it is futile to attempt to do so. Although his approach is clearly and heavily post-modern in tone, he rejects that label. Fair enough on that last point, if that is what he thinks, but in that case, where is he coming from?

Reading one latest post, I may have the answer. As I read it, either he does not know the conventional meaning of the word empirical, or else he is using it in an arbitrary and idiosyncratic way that has no relationship to common usage. His view is this: as you cannot experiment on the past, or observe it directly at first hand, therefore neither history or archaeology can be empirical. QED, right? And by the same token, he says, there is no such thing as objective evidence of the past.

But don’t follow what I say on the subject, check it out for yourself. Please read what Hamblin wrote in that post, then look up any number of dictionary definitions of empirical and see if you can find one that meets his usage. In reality – in all standard usage – empirical means primarily using observation, which need not be of the actual first hand events. The word actually comes from a Greek original meaning “From Experience,” ie as opposed to just theorizing. Observation does not necessarily involve experiment, and in most cases, it does not.

In my view, his post indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of historical and archaeological methodologies. No wonder he is getting stuff wrong.

Let me elaborate.

Dr. Hamblin is obviously and undeniably correct in saying that the past does not presently exist. He is also right to say that “our only capacity to interact with the past is inherently indirect. We interact with the Past by studying the evidence left by past people–texts, inscriptions, art, artifacts, monuments, tools, tombs, etc. We can understand the past only by studying those things, which were made or done in the Past, but which still exist in the present.” No less obviously, “data from the Past needs to be interpreted precisely because the Past no longer exists.” Amen and amen. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

It is flagrantly wrong, though, for him to conclude that “Hence, the study of history is not empirical–that is, we cannot directly observe with our senses or experiment on the Past. History is a non-empirical discipline.” This is false, and a non-sequitur. From his subsequent remarks in his earlier post, about “This is not objective,” I understand him to take the same wildly incorrect approach to archaeology.

By the way, I think his most recent material about “observing the present in the past” versus observing the past is casuistical hair splitting in the extreme, and would make sense to virtually no historians or archaeologists. Where on earth does he get this stuff from?

Let me define my terms. I am taking these definitions from general dictionaries, and they seem adequate for the purposes of discussion:

“Objective evidence is data that shows or proves that something exists or is true. Objective evidence can be collected by performing observations, measurements, tests, or using other suitable methods.”

Alternatively, objective evidence is “Information based on facts that can be proved through analysis, measurement, observation, and other such means of research.”

“Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation. This data is recorded and analyzed by scientists and is a central process as part of the scientific method.”

Empirical means “based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.”

Will he accept those?

True, the past does not currently exist. As he rightly says, though, it has left traces that do – in the form of archaeological remains, documents, inscriptions, pottery, buildings, metalwork, whatever – and those traces, those data, can be subjected to empirical research. They can be observed, collected and analyzed, commonly through quantitative techniques. Any such research is empirical, and that is what archaeologists do every day. Look at any archaeological article in any mainstream journal, and this is what you see. Accompanying that process of observation and data collection are such standard scientific techniques as the formation and testing of hypotheses.

I suppose history need not be empirical in each and every instance, but most of it assuredly is. Any historical study that involves quantification of any kind is of necessity empirical. It means collecting and presenting data in a way that they can be tested and replicated by other scholars. That is empirical study. Other forms of history, using qualitative data, are also empirical.

This is not a matter of opinion, of “Well, Jenkins has his view and his definitions, and I have mine.” I can cite any reputable dictionary or science textbook for these definitions, he can cite none to support his view. Please show me some other scholar asserting that History is a non-empirical discipline?

If you want to see such verification and testing at work in the discipline of History strictly defined, then observe the national scandal involving Michael Bellesisles, who made far-reaching claims about the possession and use of firearms in early American history. His claims, which were heavily quantitative and (apparently) empirical in nature, were examined and debunked by other scholars, and his whole argument was shown to be false. Bellesisles presented what he claimed to be objective evidence, and other scholars showed that it wasn’t. The scientific process worked beautifully.

Obviously, most examples of testing and falsification are nothing like as thoroughgoing and traumatic, and subsequent researchers merely modify and adapt the claims in light of further research. But testing is indeed what they do.

I assume Dr. Hamblin is not arguing that because data need interpretation, therefore they cannot be objective? But equally, when I observe something at first hand, I must necessarily be exercising my interpretive skills to see and understand what is going on around me. Or perhaps he is saying that nothing whatever is objective, whether we see it first hand or not? If so, then we are indeed wandering into the deepest swamps of post-Modernism.

Let me give another example, which does not bear directly on the Book of Mormon. It is by Tim Beach, with several co-authors, and it is entitled “Ancient Maya impacts on the Earth’s surface: An Early Anthropocene analog?” Quaternary Science Reviews 124 (2015): 1-30. I note that one of the co-authors, Richard Terry, is BYU faculty. If Hamblin cannot access the article, I will be happy to send a copy.

This fine article describes how the Maya transformed the landscapes in which they lived, with a major focus on the Classic Maya. “Highlights” of the findings include the following: “The Ancient Maya left a richly variegated landscape of the Early Anthropocene. … Ancient erosion truncated soils and buried sinks, leaving golden spikes in strata …. They left positive impacts or landesque capital such in terraces and wetland fields. … They lived through pluvials and droughts, perhaps exacerbating Late Classic drought. …. They left myriad adaptive features such as reservoirs and useful species still extant.”

I am not qualified to assess the detailed methodologies used here, but the article seems to me thoroughly convincing, indeed revelatory, and it is a significant contribution to the archaeological literature. It also has enormous implications for future historians studying the ancient Maya. The scholars observe the surviving traces of the past in order to reconstruct that past, and they do so richly. They are telling us about how people lived and worked, how they organized themselves, and how they reshaped their world. What could be more fundamental historical questions?

This study is one of a couple of thousand I could offer to show modern scholars using objective evidence, and clearly empirical evidence, to be assessed through empirical techniques in order to form a picture of the past – in this case, the past of more than a millennium ago.

With that in mind, let us return to Hamblin’s statement:

“Hence, the study of history is not empirical–that is, we cannot directly observe with our senses or experiment on the Past. History is a non-empirical discipline.”

So, does he think the “Ancient Maya impacts on the Earth’s surface” article is empirical or not? If not, why not? Or does he believe the authors constructed a time machine to go and observe the ancient Maya directly at first hand, in 1000AD? Research via TARDIS?

Is he confusing archaeology with ethnography?

To the contrary, then, history and archaeology are indeed empirical disciplines, and can be used to test claims about the past, such as those implied by the Book of Mormon. Claims can and must be made, and then tested.

If it is scholarship, it is neither subjective nor impressionistic. If it is subjective and impressionistic, it is not scholarship. And at no point does a volume of subjective and impressionistic ideas, no matter how abundant, suddenly transmute to become objective fact. The plural of anecdote is not data.

And as I have urged in the past, I am still waiting for Dr. Hamblin to produce the slightest single piece of plausible or credible evidence – yes, that’s objective evidence – to confirm any single story, fact or statement about the New World found in the Book of Mormon. As yet, he has offered nothing that comes close to qualifying...

But it does raise an interesting thought. If the apologists are so fundamentally in error about core issues of methodology, does that explain why they get into such total absurdities?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbe ... l-hamblin/

[bolding added to answer the penguin's question]

[Kishkumen]

I don't feel called to be a champion of Boylan in general, but I think I'd be frustrated, too, at having to defend "the reliability of Mormon scriptures" in fifteen minutes, even if I believed in those scriptures.

What the heck does "reliability" even mean, as a possible property of Mormon scriptures? It would probably only take a few minutes to establish their reliability as a doorstop, but what can we do beyond that?

The faithful Mormon defines "reliable" with such a low bar that even Apple Maps counts as reliable, the Catholic insists that "reliable" can't possibly mean anything less than the original burning bush, and fifteen minutes are gone in wrangling over the definition of the topic. Anyone who has ever attended a religious debate on any subject knows that that's all that was ever going to happen.

Yeah, the premise of the debate was nonsensical. I don’t see how debating such a subjective claim could go anywhere.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I was amused to see how far he is trying to divert the debate from any topic at all that might touch on any embarrassing discussions of the Book of Mormon!

The whole historicity issue necessarily involves issues of methodology. Throughout, Hamblin has grounded himself in what I regard as bizarre assertions that history and archaeology are not empirical disciplines.

Yep. This is why the mopologists work so hard at, 'an assertion is evidence'. All they have is layers of assertions that they spin into 'history'. It's absolutely ridiculous, but you'll see The Midge and Dowsin' Dan Peterson state over and over and over again that 'someone saying something at some time' is evidence, much like one might see at a trial.



They rely on rhetorical technicalities to get around the fact that 'Mormon history' is just larp upon larp.

- Doc

[Tapir Rodeo]

I don't feel called to be a champion of Boylan in general, but I think I'd be frustrated, too, at having to defend "the reliability of Mormon scriptures" in fifteen minutes, even if I believed in those scriptures.

What the heck does "reliability" even mean, as a possible property of Mormon scriptures? It would probably only take a few minutes to establish their reliability as a doorstop, but what can we do beyond that?

The faithful Mormon defines "reliable" with such a low bar that even Apple Maps counts as reliable, the Catholic insists that "reliable" can't possibly mean anything less than the original burning bush, and fifteen minutes are gone in wrangling over the definition of the topic. Anyone who has ever attended a religious debate on any subject knows that that's all that was ever going to happen.

Definitions would have to be agreed upon before hand and then explained by the moderator. The "15 minute" thing is also an absurd cope from Bobby B since he would have nearly an hour of speaking time on the whole. In addition, Christians defend thousands of years of scripture and theology all the time in 10 or 15 minute openings. Boylan shut it down because he knows there are so many issues with the unique LDS scriptures that they really can't be defended outside the LDS echo chamber.

Boylan has attempted to foist much more ludicrous debate topics onto people he has challenged in the past. He then called them cowards and all manner of rude things for refusing. By his own standard, he is a coward.

[drumdude]

What is Bobby B's day job?

He hasn't published a book since 2017. And he gave out most copies of his books out for free to friends as PDFs. Since he knows the books are essentially worthless, and according to Amazon reviews, riddled with basic spelling errors.