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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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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 19:20:46 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 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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Post by rick on Dec 23, 2009 4:10:15 GMT -4
Alright, I'm watching the video. First problem - the opening crawl says the papyrus was recovered. Period. In fact only a tiny fraction of what Joseph Smith had has been recovered. 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? Actually that is not true. Lots and lots of Mormons have come to the defense of their faith on YouTube by claiming just that. One is a guy who calls himself "The backyard Professor" and he quotes some prodomonate Mormons who use all sorts of logical fallacies to claim that the critisims of The Book of Abraham and the debunking of the papyrus is not valid. ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdwMJPpJivU ) The backyard professor mentions this work: Kevin L. Barney "astronomy papyrus and covenant" www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Kevin+%22astronomy+papyrus+and+covenant%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=www.amazon.com/Astronomy-Papyrus-Covenant-Brigham-University/product-reviews/0934893764The backyard professor claims that Barney insists that the recoverd piece is not part of the paprus that Smith used. I don't know if you agree or disagree. Here you disagree. Other Mormons agree. Wait a second. How do you figure that? The surviving document segment is from a Egyptian funary paprus. It is what would logically be part of The Book of the Dead. The other fascimies are also from The Book of the Dead. So what he did is simple logic. How is this bad methodology and not logical? Sure but other Youtube videos do. Here is a debunking of facsimile #2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViutCg0cyXA&feature=relatedIn short, the whole thing is debunked. I am fascinated by how your mind works. Were you a Mormon before you heard all this stuff? Are you emotionally invested in the LDS church? Smith gets more things wrong than he gets right. The things he seems to get right seem to be just by chance. You say "similarities between the Book of Abraham text and other Abrahamic texts that were not available to Joseph Smith, for instance". That sounds like the OJ Simpson defense where the lawyers said "if you throw enough at a wall, something is bound to stick". Good science would be "if Smith got anything wrong, it should be thrown out". Instead, he got most wrong. And yet you are pointing out a few things he got right? That sounds like luck and chance to me.
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Post by rick on Dec 23, 2009 3:42:23 GMT -4
I do not understand. How does the fact that the LDS church have a few famous scientists or that they are educated make them not anti-science? 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? The silliest things come out of the mouths of the most brilliant men. Being gifted in one school does not make you gifted in all schools. Let me think of some examples. Carl Sagan was regarded as being pretty mediocre as far as a scientist goes and yet he was famous because he had a way of presenting other people's discoveries to the masses. Phil Plait has written a few blogs that seem to have disappeared once he realized he made a huge goof. One was showing what star systems were getting what tv and radio broadcasts. Someone must have tipped him off that we now know that those signals deteriorate. Even Hawking has made some huge goofs. What about all the linguists and historians and biologists who have left the LDS church? Are they ALL "anti-mormon"? 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.
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Post by rick on Dec 22, 2009 20:38:41 GMT -4
So are you saying that Smith cannot translate? I do not know what you are suggesting or what conclusion you are going to. You said earlier that Egyptologists have said that Joseph mis-translated the surviving fragments. I pointed out that of the surviving fragments, only one can really be tied to the finished translation of the Book of Abraham - the drawing known as Facsimile 1 - and that it has no writing (neither heiroglyphics, which the other fragments have on them, nor any Hieratic nor Demotic script characters) on it. It is therefore inaccurate to say that Joseph mis-translated it, since there was no actual writing to translate in the first place. It is fully acknowledged that the remaining fragments which do contain writing do not seem to contain any of the text of the Book of Abraham. However, as I pointed out, what has survived to the present is only a fraction of what Joseph Smith had in his possession - the Book of Abraham text may well have been found on the portions of the scrolls that have not survived. If you saw the video, you would see that this is not true. The surviving piece lines up perfectly with a part of the fascimilie that smith mis-translated.
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Post by rick on Dec 22, 2009 20:22:35 GMT -4
The video shows that the mormon claim that the part of the surviving parchment does not match what Smith translated from a corresponding facsimile is baseless. That doesn't seem to make sense. The video is claiming that the surviving fragments do in fact contain the text of the Book of Abraham, contrary to Mormon claims that they do not? Are you sure you didn't get things a little backwards there? OK, let's wait until I transcribe the video. I do not understand. How does the fact that the LDS church have a few famous scientists or that they are educated make them not anti-science? One of my doctors is Mormon. That does not make him a bad or a good doctor. He could believe in a geocentric universe and that would not make him a bad doctor. I think Mormons are anti-science. Their prophet did not take a huge archelogical find to any known scientist for observation or study.
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Post by rick on Dec 22, 2009 14:47:50 GMT -4
Would you care to sumarize the video? I don't watch youtube at work. If you look at my earlier posts, you'll see I already addressed this point. I will transcribe the video's dialog when I have the time. The video shows that the mormon claim that the part of the surviving parchment does not match what Smith translated from a corresponding facsimile is baseless. Jason, is Mormonism anti-science?
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Post by rick on Dec 22, 2009 14:45:01 GMT -4
But the drawing matches the surviving piece. I mean, the facsimile matches the surviing piece. THe surviving piece even has a drawing over missing fragments ( I guess by Smith). Yes it does match. And Facsimile 1 does not contain hieroglyphs and the fragment which is its apparent source does not either. No one knows who drew in parts of the missing drawing on the current fragment, or what the state of the drawing was when it was owned by Joseph Smith, except that the reports are that the fragment was still part of a scroll when he obtained it. So are you saying that Smith cannot translate? I do not know what you are suggesting or what conclusion you are going to. First of all, Egyptologists have drawn in the missing parts of the fragment and the missing parts do not match what Smith or his friends drew in and the drawn in parts are part of the Facsimile 1. Jason, let me cut to the chase. The man who sold the scrolls to the Mormons told them that they were written in a dead language. Completely dead. Common sense tells me that Smith felt free to present an interpretation benefitial to himself and his religious sect. The Rosetta Stone had been discovered in Smith's time but I understand that its importance had not been understood during Smith's time. I believe that if Smith had known that ancient Egyptian could be scientifically translated, he would have steered away from the scrolls and would not have tried to translate them.
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Post by rick on Dec 22, 2009 14:37:42 GMT -4
How is the Clavius web site going to handle the fact that a low orbital probe has taken clear photos of all of the Apollo landig sites? Does the website already address these? I mean, it seems like pretty definate proof and so the argument, I would assume, is all over and we can put the debate to bed at last. Or do HB's think that the photos were photoshopped and Clavius is debunking that?
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Post by rick on Dec 21, 2009 22:21:30 GMT -4
How is Clavius going to handle the lunar photos?
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Post by rick on Dec 21, 2009 21:18:48 GMT -4
The other two facsimiles do have hieroglyphic writing on them, but no fragment of their originals has survived to the present day. None of the facsimiles found in the LDS Book of Abraham use the Hieratic or Demotic scripts. Is this youtube wrong? www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2aDsy8hM0oIf it is wrong, how so? Also, haven't Egyptologists examined the other facsimiles and determined that Smith's translatios were wrong?
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Post by rick on Dec 21, 2009 21:17:37 GMT -4
But isn't all Egyptian writing in the form of pictures? Ancient Egyptian writing consists of hieroglyphs - pictoral symbols used as a writing system. Facsimile 1 does not contain any actual hieroglyphs. But the drawing matches the surviving piece. I mean, the facsimile matches the surviing piece. THe surviving piece even has a drawing over missing fragments ( I guess by Smith).
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Post by rick on Dec 15, 2009 16:36:43 GMT -4
But what about the fact that the fascimile that Smith had matches part of the surviving scroll that people can say that was translated by Smith incorrectly? You refer to Facsimile 1 - a scene of Abraham on an alter about to be sacrificed by an Egyptian priest. A fragment of the drawing that was apparently used as the source for Facsimile 1 is among the scroll fragments recovered by the Church. The facsimile doesn't have any writing in it, so it would be imprecise to claim that Joseph Smith translated it incorrectly. But isn't all Egyptian writing in the form of pictures?
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