Yet another paper Mopologists will ignore...

[_sock puppet]

What sort of remains would show what kind of "understanding" of the Book of Mormon,

Pre-Columbian horse remains.

Steel scimitars dating to 600 BC-424 AD.

Remains of hundreds of thousands of slain soldiers on a single hill.

Archaeological evidence of polities, both of the size and the era described in the Book of Mormon.

Present them, mfb, please.

[_asbestosman]

One of the biggest differences between naturalists and supernaturalists is their assessment of prior probability. For a naturalist, the failure to reliably reproduce "supernatural" phenomena in a laboratory combined with the large number of "supernatural" claims that have been debunked as hoaxes or fantasies makes it incredibly unlikely that future claims of this sort will turn out to be valid. For the believer, a combination of anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and rationalization about the non-observability of the supernatural bolsters the probability of such events. The supernatural, for the believer, is a bit like quantum uncertainty: it goes away if someone is observing it too closely, which explains why no one's been able to reproduce or record it under controlled conditions.

Bingo.

This is also why I don't agree with Intelligent Design arguments. Nobody can agree on a good assessment of prior probability.

[_harmony]

Do you think religion is something which most consider provable scientifically, or through observable evidence?

"Most" know nothing about science, observable evidence, or Bayes. Why extrapolate to "most" when the discussion centers on something "most" have no experience with?

"Most" of the world's population doesn't even admit Christ was God. So arguing for "most" seems counterproductive.

[_Runtu]

Do you think religion is something which most consider provable scientifically, or through observable evidence?

Mormonism makes some very specific claims about the world, its history, its peoples, and the origins of certain scriptures that can all be tested scientifically. Spiritual claims cannot be tested through observable evidence, but the correctness of the facsimiles or the existence of Pre-Columbian Christian Jews in America are things that science has a lot to say about.

[_mfbukowski]

If we could bridge these divides, then we'd have a much firmer basis for discussion and mutual understanding.

Let's work on it!

[_mfbukowski]

I don't think everyone is so positive you are wrong. That's generally the basis of discussion: differing opinions and perspectives. We should be able to learn from other people's perspectives, even when we don't agree with them. For example, I think you have motivated me to read more about Pragmatism than I ever expected. I still don't find it a particularly enlightening approach to life, but I do understand it better, and for that I thank you.

Do you have evidence for the first part?

I am glad about the last part.

[_mfbukowski]

Do you think religion is something which most consider provable scientifically, or through observable evidence?

...Spiritual claims cannot be tested through observable evidence...

...And are not logically reducible to observable evidence, are they?

And what is the difference between a "claim" and a "belief"? What is the role of faith?

[_mfbukowski]

What sort of remains would show what kind of "understanding" of the Book of Mormon,

Pre-Columbian horse remains.

Steel scimitars dating to 600 BC-424 AD.

Remains of hundreds of thousands of slain soldiers on a single hill.

Archaeological evidence of polities, both of the size and the era described in the Book of Mormon.

Present them, mfb, please.

So if I do, that will prove Joseph Smith to be a prophet and that Jesus is the Christ who died for our sins?

[_MrStakhanovite]

What sort of remains would show what kind of "understanding" of the Book of Mormon?

Well, that is just it, if your understanding that the Book of Mormon is just some vague metaphor that God inspired in Joseph Smith the same way he inspired Goethe, then you really don’t have the Mormonism that is preached every General Conference.

Is there a religious "understanding" of the Book of Mormon, perhaps analogous to the fact that even physical evidence of the resurrection cannot prove the religious belief that Jesus took away our sins?

Christianity is rooted in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ didn’t exist, suffer and die under Pontius Pilate, and become resurrected on the 3rd day, then all the real power behind Christianity fails to materialize, it’s just some story meant to illustrate some principle, that is it.

Now Christian Apologists who make use of Bayesian arguments in the context of the resurrection do so using a strategy of apologetics called ‘Evidential Apologetics’, they are going to point at some feature, event, or phenomenon and say nothing explains this feature, event, or phenomenon as well as the Christian explanation, and we will demonstrate this using bayes as the medium.

And how would such an analysis show that Joseph was or was not a "prophet"?

Let’s take Archeology as an example. At this stage in the game, there is no indication that Native Americans in Central America has horse-like creatures that pulled chariots, and I think a reasonable agreement that the probability of us finding either of these things is pretty low.

Now let’s say that a digs in Venezuela and Mexico have uncovered the existence of a creature that was large enough to be used as a mount/pull chariots, and was domesticated by ancient inhabitants at a date that was roughly when the Book of Mormon was supposedly taking place, say plus or minus 100 years. On top of that, we discover that these peoples also had the capacity to make wheels sturdy enough to be used in chariots.

A Faithful reading of the Book of Mormon predicted we’d discover these things, when the consensus was that we wouldn’t, so the chance that Book of Mormon at least semi-accurately depicts ancient Americas raises the probability that Joseph Smith really had divine help.

I see.

And how would we obtain this evidence?

Depends on what your looking for.

If we are looking for a being who is anthropomorphic in that they have a perfected body (never mind what having a perfected body means, and what it means to have a perfected digestive system and what have you), I guess we start looking in space.

And of course, the first objection being, what if God lives so far away, we don’t have any means of detection. This only complicates things for a believer, because if God is just a jaunty 50,000 light years away, it would take 50k years for him to hear and respond to prayers.

And the next objection is, maybe God operates on some level of physics we have yet to discover, but this isn’t helpful either, because now you are taking the best means of empirical investigation we have, and saying they are completely useless in detecting a humanoid shaped being.

[_Kishkumen]

I really don't see how the chances of the Book of Mormon being ancient--meaning that its events took place in antiquity--are anything above minute. I mean, if you have faith in it being historically ancient, then fine, but this entire conversation seems to me to be silly. One also can't disprove Scientology's cosmology and the existence of Xenu, but why waste one's time on such a snipe hunt? Granted, the idea of migrating ancient Hebrews sounds more familiar, and hence more plausible, but when one adds all of the apparent anachronisms of the text, and, moreover, the provenance of the translation, it all begins to sound just as fantastic.

I love the Book of Mormon. I certainly value its teachings much more than those of Scientology, but when it comes to making an honest historical judgment, I just don't see how any historian, setting aside the issue of faith, could seriously view the notion of a large, pre-Columbian, Christian civilization as described in the Book of Mormon as a remotely likely scenario, given what we know of that world. I understand that Mormon scholars keep moving the goalposts in their explanations in order to maintain the possibility that the book may yet be considered ancient. I fully get that and understand why. But, seriously, who aside from the person who, for reasons of faith commitment, is desperate to insist that it must be ancient really cares, except for the odd crank?