Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 12:20:49 GMT -4
Well, you usually don't get to be a famous scientist if your peers consider you anti-science, and you don't usually get to be an accredited university unless you teach science, and people who aren't interested in science don't usually go to college and become educated in science. Are you sure? Pretty much, yeah. Not especially relevent. Saying silly things does not make you anti-science, and being gifted in one field does not make you "anti-science" in other fields. Are you arguing that Stephen Hawking is anti-science because he has made occasional goofs? Probably. By definition, if they left the Church and publicly criticize it then they are anti-Mormon. And what about all the linguists, historians, and biologists who remain in the Church? Nope. I am not talking about the papyri when I say that I think Mormons are anti-science. Their prophet did not take a huge archelogical find to any known scientist for observation or study. Oh yes, a small piece of writing was handed to a linguist who said it looked like a language of some kind. But any uniformed group of symbols could look like a language of some kind. Smith should have handed over the golden plates. [/quote]Joseph was specifically commanded by God to not hand the golden plates over to the science of the day. The purpose of the plates was to have the Book of Mormon come forth at a specific time and place in order to provide religious knowledge, not to act as an archaelogical find. The scientists of Joseph's day would not have been able to read them anyway.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 12:47:51 GMT -4
Wait. You are confusing me. You said that the piece that was recovered (back in 1966 or '67) was NOT part of the papyri that Smith translated. And now you are saying it was? I said that the fragments that have been recovered do not contain text from the Book of Abraham. They may well have been part of individual papyri that did contain the Book of Abraham text, however. Therefore the fragments may indeed be from the papyri that Smith translated even though the fragmentary text that has survived is not the source of anything Smith translated. You must keep in mind that only tiny fragments have been recovered. No one who knows the evidence disputes that point. It is true. I do not know these Mormons (if they are Mormon), and there is no reason to consider them experts in the field. Of the apologists I am familiar with, none make the claim that the surviving fragment is not the original of facsimile 1. Now, to take a step back, some do claim that the papyri did not contain the text of the Book of Abraham. They believe that the papyri acted as a "catalyst" for Joseph - allowing him to receive revelation relating to Abraham without actually having a text to directly work from. But even those who endorse the "catalyst" theory do not claim that the surviving fragment is not the original for facsimile 1. Incidently, I do not favor the catalyst theory. Seems to be from an Egyptian funary papyrus. It is bad methodology because it is mere conjecture - there is no way to tell at this point what really was on the missing fragments, and certainly there is no way to say "Smith got it wrong" with any certainty. Saying "this is what would be in the facsimile if it were the same as other funary documents," ignores the unique features that are still present in this particular document. Say someone claimed to have found a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle not previously published, in which Holmes meets a beautiful woman and marries her. The person publishes the story but the original manuscript is later lost in a fire. Experts look at the published story and note that while the style and word choice are dead ringers for Doyle's, none of Doyle's original stories had Holmes getting married, or indeed portrayed Holmes as very interested in romantic pursuits at all. Would their opinion that this story differs from the others in a significant way conclusively prove that the story must be a forgery? I'm not going to debate a series of youtube links, especially considering the quality of argument contained in the first one. If you find the youtube links helpful sources please put their argument in your own words and present it yourself. I was raised LDS, so yes, I was Mormon before I heard all this stuff, and it would be fair to say I am emotionally invested in the LDS Church. That does not mean that I have not asked these questions and found reasonable answers to them. I strongly disagree. Someone who believes mere chance could have provided all the "hits" Joseph scores is probably someone who does not know the evidence. They may also be someone who invests large funds in the lottery. The LDS Book of Abraham is not that long a document, and there aren't all that many surviving other Abrahamic texts. The OJ comparison would only be apt if there was a much larger quantity of both. Joseph Smith was not a scientist, and the texts he produced were not scientific. It would therefore be silly to try to apply the scientific method to try to determine if they were valuable religiously, which I believe they are.
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Post by rick on Dec 29, 2009 16:20:05 GMT -4
Wait. You are confusing me. You said that the piece that was recovered (back in 1966 or '67) was NOT part of the papyri that Smith translated. And now you are saying it was? I said that the fragments that have been recovered do not contain text from the Book of Abraham. At the end of the day, so to speak, doesn't that mean that Smith could not translate Egyptian and merely pretended to? It is obvious that he used the fragment to translate the Book of Abraham. It is also obvious that the proper translation of the fragment is not in the Book of Abraham. I have sat through several long-winded LDS apologist videos of faithful Mormons trying to explain this. THey have said that Smith was not really translating in the modern sense. Some say that he was reading a hidden meaning. Some say that he was speaking form the heart and the Egyptian scrolls were merely a guide. Some say that we must not look at this logically but with our faith. There have even been people who use the cases against the papri for their benefit. They note that since the Egyptian scrolls are from the first century and that Abraham was from much earlier that the original scrolls are lost and so on and so forth and that the text had been copied into a hidden message that only Smith could see. This does not differ from the idea that Smith just made it all up. It is just explained in different terms. We are expected to reject the scientific reality and substitue Smith's reality as being real. All the LDS people give are outlandish theories, not proof. And yet the people you and people like you would label as being "anti-mormon" actually do give proof. According to Occom's Razor we are supposed to accept the easiest explaination and not go with the outlandish one or ones. Yet Mormons, in the interest of defending their belief, will take the outlandish explaination. This is why Mormonism is Anti-Science.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 16:41:10 GMT -4
At the end of the day, so to speak, doesn't that mean that Smith could not translate Egyptian and merely pretended to? Not at all. Lets say I have a 20-page book in Dutch (or other language unknown to you) and I make my own translation of a page of the book and give it to you. Then someone tears up and burns the book. Years later you happen upon a fragment of the last surviving page of the book, have someone else translate it from the Dutch, and learn that it's not the same as the page I copied out for you. In fact, it seems to be from a different story altogether. Do these facts provide proof positive that I cannot in fact speak Dutch?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 16:55:32 GMT -4
I have sat through several long-winded LDS apologist videos of faithful Mormons trying to explain this. Then I advise you to stop looking at long-winded videos and examine the text for yourself to determine if it has spiritual value for you personally. It's available here. Or better yet, start with The Book of Mormon.Stop making your judgements based only on what others have to say and take a look for yourself. Radical, I know. By a certain very loose definition of "proof", perhaps. Occam's Razor (or parsimony) is not the ultimate guide to determining truth. Sometimes the more complex explanation actually is the more correct one.
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Post by rick on Dec 29, 2009 19:20:46 GMT -4
I have sat through several long-winded LDS apologist videos of faithful Mormons trying to explain this. Then I advise you to stop looking at long-winded videos and examine the text for yourself to determine if it has spiritual value for you personally. It's available here. Or better yet, start with The Book of Mormon.Stop making your judgements based only on what others have to say and take a look for yourself. Radical, I know. Jason, a spiritual interpretation that is not the real interpretation amounts to nothing better than reading tea leaves. The long winded apologists are the ones trying to find meaning or explaination that supports the LDS faith. It is they who are the ones on your side. Their believes amount to just taking Smith's word for it. Why should we do this when even the most faithful Mormon supporters admit that the interpretation is literally wrong?
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Post by rick on Dec 29, 2009 19:36:36 GMT -4
At the end of the day, so to speak, doesn't that mean that Smith could not translate Egyptian and merely pretended to? Not at all. Lets say I have a 20-page book in Dutch (or other language unknown to you) and I make my own translation of a page of the book and give it to you. Then someone tears up and burns the book. Years later you happen upon a fragment of the last surviving page of the book, have someone else translate it from the Dutch, and learn that it's not the same as the page I copied out for you. In fact, it seems to be from a different story altogether. Do these facts provide proof positive that I cannot in fact speak Dutch? Jason, the fragment is from a part that Smith transltated. It is not some missing part, and there is not some other parts that will completely change the meaning of the fragment. It is a direct one-on-one translation because the fragment matches the fascimile.You change your mind. You said that all Mormons agree that the fragment was from the text that Smith translated. Now you say that the other framgments are really from what Smth translated. Or maybe you are saying that magically the other fragments change the meaning of what Smith translated from the fragment. This does not make any sense. What is more is that people have not only debunked the fragment as being translated wrong, they have also debunked the fascimilies and debunked the hypocephalus. Smith got it all wrong. The Mormon apolgist Egyptologists admit this. Why can't you?
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Post by rick on Dec 29, 2009 19:49:32 GMT -4
Then I advise you to stop looking at long-winded videos and examine the text for yourself to determine if it has spiritual value for you personally. It's available here. Or better yet, start with The Book of Mormon.Stop making your judgements based only on what others have to say and take a look for yourself. Radical, I know. By a certain very loose definition of "proof", perhaps. Occam's Razor (or parsimony) is not the ultimate guide to determining truth. Sometimes the more complex explanation actually is the more correct one. Sometimes. But not without proof. A theory or a wish or a dream or a hope is not proof. Wanting to believe with all your heart is not proof. Saying that something is true and relying on magic as the source of your belief or proof is not proving anything. I remember when my brother was little and he figured out that Santa was not real. And yet he loved the tradition and the belief and so during the Christmas season he did the act of believing. What you seem to be saying underneath it all is that that is exactly what you are doing and what you expect others to do. In Logic class in college they will teach you that it is not possible to prove that something does not exist. The burden of proof is on those who claim that somethnig is real. Even the most faithful Mormons have admitted that the Papari translation that Smith had is scientifically wrong. So the proving it is correct has failed. We are obligated to believe it is not real if we are to be taken seariously as logical thinkers. Jason, Michael D. Rhodes is an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University (BYU). He is a faithful Mormon. He also has provided accurate interpretation of the Hypocephalus and the papyri and admits that Smith got it wrong. But he defends the Mormon faith in a sense that the interpretation that Smith gives has some sort of spiritual purpose. And that we should not give the interprtation that Smith gave the same meaning as a modern, literal interpretation. That is nothing better than saying Smith made it up.
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Jason
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 22:22:45 GMT -4
Jason, a spiritual interpretation that is not the real interpretation amounts to nothing better than reading tea leaves. What if the spiritual interpretation is the real interpretation? Then I will ask them to stay off my side. I don't have to subscribe to their interpretation of what the papyri are all about just because we shares some other views. I don't want you to take Smith's word for it at all. I certainly didn't. The way to tell if something is from God is to ask Him.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 22:31:55 GMT -4
Jason, the fragment is from a part that Smith transltated. NO, it isn't. One of the existing fragments has a drawing that is in the Book of Abraham. The drawing has no writing on it, and so couldn't be translated. There is no way to tell what else was on the missing fragments in the scroll which contained the drawing. No, I'm not saying that either. I am not saying that either. I am saying that the text of the Book of Abraham - a text that would have been decipherable to someone without spiritual help of any kind - was in the portion of the scrolls we no longer have - perhaps appended to the Book of Breathings which we do have surviving fragments from, perhaps on a completely seperate scroll. In either case Facsimile 1 was used by the author of the Book of Abraham to illustrate his work, even if he borrowed an existing lion couch scene originally from a completely different work and altered it to serve. Smith did not get it all wrong. Egyptian is open to multiple interpretations, especially when considering that the author of the Book of Abraham was not Egyptian, but someone of the Semetic/Hebrew tradition making use of Egyptian materials and symbology.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 29, 2009 22:41:24 GMT -4
Occam's Razor (or parsimony) is not the ultimate guide to determining truth. Sometimes the more complex explanation actually is the more correct one. Sometimes. But not without proof. A theory or a wish or a dream or a hope is not proof. Quite right. You obviously do not understand the basis for my belief in God and the LDS Church. I believe because not because I heard plausible theories, but in the simplest terms because God told me He exists and that this is His Church. Not in a voice or by an angel, but by direct, personal communication without words - a very spiritual and sacred experience. That is why your comparison to Santa Claus falls completely flat for me. There simply is no comparison to my one-time belief of Santa Claus and my knowledge of the existence of God. I believed in Santa Claus for completely different, and inadequate, reasons than the reasons I believe in God. Perhaps Mr. Rhodes doesn't know as much as he thought he knew about what is happening with the papyrii.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 16:19:08 GMT -4
Sometimes. But not without proof. A theory or a wish or a dream or a hope is not proof. Quite right. You obviously do not understand the basis for my belief in God and the LDS Church. I believe because not because I heard plausible theories, but in the simplest terms because God told me He exists and that this is His Church. Not in a voice or by an angel, but by direct, personal communication without words - a very spiritual and sacred experience. That is why your comparison to Santa Claus falls completely flat for me. There simply is no comparison to my one-time belief of Santa Claus and my knowledge of the existence of God. I believed in Santa Claus for completely different, and inadequate, reasons than the reasons I believe in God. Perhaps Mr. Rhodes doesn't know as much as he thought he knew about what is happening with the papyrii. You can say perhaps this or perhaps that, but lets discuss facts. The fact is, BYU and FARMS hold him up as the authority for supporting the faith in light of the damage that the papri's true translation shows. And Rhodes says that "we should not think of 'translation' in the modern sense". Instead Rhodes says that Smith was getting a deeper and more spirutual message by looking at the papyri and the hypocephalus. So he is admitting that Smith made it up whilst saying so in more eloquent terms. This is a conclusion he makes after first trying to poke holes in the studies that show that Smith got it all wrong. But minor errors do not make for an incorrect conculsion, so Rhodes has to conclude that we need to look at the Book of Abraham in a spiritual way and not a scientific way. What this means to me is this. You might be Mormon. But if you raise your kids to be Mormon they might hate you for doing so when they grow up. You are conditioned to see the world through a mind that has been built around believing only one thing to be true and anything that distracts you from it is bad or wrong. But fresh eyes and fresh minds will not see things this way. I asked some Mormons "what if you are wrong". One answered, "if I am wrong, then I am in good company". That is the Biblical Fundamentalist view that God is looking down and seeing that you mean well; or maybe he means that he is surrounded by good people by being a Mormon and so all is good because they mean well. But the road to hell is paved by good intentions.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 30, 2009 16:37:39 GMT -4
You can say perhaps this or perhaps that, but lets discuss facts. The fact is, BYU and FARMS hold him up as the authority for supporting the faith in light of the damage that the papri's true translation shows. And Rhodes says that "we should not think of 'translation' in the modern sense". Instead Rhodes says that Smith was getting a deeper and more spirutual message by looking at the papyri and the hypocephalus. Rhodes is quite right that Joseph Smith didn't use the word "translation" the way we do. He called his work on the Bible a translation even though he was not working from ancient texts. Or that Smith was authentically receiving revelation from God that did not relate directly to the text he had before him - something quite different. How is any of that idea specific to Mormons? You might as well say "You might be atheist, but if you raise your kids to be atheist they might hate you for doing so when they grow up...." etc. Substitute pretty much any other label you wish for "Mormon" or "atheist" and it's equally valid.
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Post by rick on Dec 30, 2009 16:55:12 GMT -4
This is a lot like people who believe that crop circles are made by aliens. When the people who made the crop circles come forth the believers first try to attack the legitmaticy of the people who confess that they made the crop circles. Failing that, the believers say that the crop circle makers were somehow telepathically influenced by unseen aliens.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Dec 30, 2009 17:57:32 GMT -4
This is a lot like people who believe that crop circles are made by aliens. When the people who made the crop circles come forth the believers first try to attack the legitmaticy of the people who confess that they made the crop circles. Failing that, the believers say that the crop circle makers were somehow telepathically influenced by unseen aliens. False analogy. No one has ever come forward and plausibly said "I was really the source of the Book of Mormon/Book of Abraham". Joseph Smith endured a huge amount of persecution and went to his death without recanting his testimony. The three witnesses of the Book of Mormon who said an angel showed them the plates never recanted their stories and affirmed them late in their lives, despite having a falling-out with Joseph and leaving the Church. The fact that the surviving fragments of the Joseph Smith papyri do not contain the text of the Book of Abraham does not prove that Joseph was "making it up" by any means. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
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