Book of Mormon Discussion

Arandur

In this comment thread, I gave the following idea, on the topic of a method by which one might judge the Book of Mormon from a rationalist perspective:

Why not make this an online thing? Day-by-day, or perhaps week-by-week, post (somewhere, not necessarily on Less Wrong, so as not to clutter the site; though perhaps Less Wrong would actually be the ideal locale, due to familiarity, extant population, etc?) a chapter of the Book of Mormon and allow discussion of it, separately from the rest of the Book, using terms common to Rationalists.

I would appreciate feedback on this idea, for an admittedly selfish reason: I am trying to instigate in myself a Crisis of Faith. So, here are the questions I pose to you:

Would it be a Good Idea to subject the Book of Mormon, chapter by chapter, to a group rationalist judgement?
Would it be a Good Idea, given the above, to ask Less Wrong to host this discussion? On the one end, we want the maximum number of rationalists to input the maximum number of times, so we should host our discussion near the nexus of rationalist gathering. On the other end, if this discussion is judged to be frivolous and wasteful by the majority of active posters on Less Wrong, then we don't want to detract from the true meaning of the site.

Remember: This is a good chance to examine the best arguments of those who believe that the sky is green. If the sky is green, then you should want to believe that the sky is green, too!

In this comment thread, I gave the following idea, on the topic of a method by which one might judge the Book of Mormon from a rationalist perspective:

Why not make this an online thing? Day-by-day, or perhaps week-by-week, post (somewhere, not necessarily on Less Wrong, so as not to clutter the site; though perhaps Less Wrong would actually be the ideal locale, due to familiarity, extant population, etc?) a chapter of the Book of Mormon and allow discussion of it, separately from the rest of the Book, using terms common to Rationalists.

I would appreciate feedback on this idea, for an admittedly selfish reason: I am trying to instigate in myself a Crisis of Faith. So, here are the questions I pose to you:

Would it be a Good Idea to subject the Book of Mormon, chapter by chapter, to a group rationalist judgement?
Would it be a Good Idea, given the above, to ask Less Wrong to host this discussion? On the one end, we want the maximum number of rationalists to input the maximum number of times, so we should host our discussion near the nexus of rationalist gathering. On the other end, if this discussion is judged to be frivolous and wasteful by the majority of active posters on Less Wrong, then we don't want to detract from the true meaning of the site.

Remember: This is a good chance to examine the best arguments of those who believe that the sky is green. If the sky is green, then you should want to believe that the sky is green, too!

I'm not sure if LW is the best place for this. Right now, it won't drown out any other discussion, but I fear that the whole atheist debate might creep in and then LW becomes just another skeptics blog full of science fanboys and trolls. A one-time post or advertisement of another blog/forum to have the discussion seems acceptable, though. There have been many cases of theists becoming useful rationalists.

Personally, I'm not interested in the whole Mormon thing at all. It's just way too silly. The mere requirements to make Mormonism even an idea worth thinking about aren't met in any way. (e.g., the world doesn't look supervised, Old Testament is entirely unhistorical nonsense, New Testament is at best the product of political propaganda and at worst Sai-Baba level myth, the texts aren't in any way compatible with each other ("god" in Amos, Deuteronomy, Mark, John and Revelation means entirely different things), "let's tell a small tribe and ignore the majority of humanity for thousands of years" is totally how a benevolent god would act and so on). I mean, try to step back, ignore everything you know about religion and history and ask yourself, if there were a very powerful and interested entity, predating all of humanity, what would it do? How would it act? Compare that to the much weaker variant of FAI and how it's typically depicted of acting. After you've made predictions based on this belief, does the world look anything like that at all? (Seriously, it tells a dude to write a book? And not even a good one?!)

(Also, if you have to write ancient mythology fan-fiction, please don't just rip off the Sumerians and claim it's original. I'm looking at you, Hebrews.)

(Also, if you have to write ancient mythology fan-fiction, please don't just rip off the Sumerians and claim it's original. I'm looking at you, Hebrews.)

On a tangential note, it seems that the author of that article is seriously confused about the chronology of the Ancient Near East. The earliest Sumerian cuneiform documents date from circa ~3100BC, and the earliest examples of Middle Eastern proto-writing are at most 300-400 years older than that. The literalist Biblical chronology used by the young Earth creationists places the date of the creation mu... (read more)

0jsalvatier15y

Well put.

2Arandur15y

:3 Thank you for demonstrating your own point; it's well taken.

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Book of Mormon Discussion

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