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!

You could have one Bayesian network to show how likely Mormonism is, and a separate one for how likely it is for a holy book to say that otherwise. Alternately, you could just give the ratio of how likely it is if Mormonism is true and how likely it is to be stated otherwise. I suppose you'd have to calculate for a given religion, and then multiply by the number of religions.

Well really, that would be far to general. If we're questing for the One True Religion - or, rather, the One True Belief System, with atheism included in there as a belief in the Merely Real - then we'd need separate Bayesian networks for each religion. Otherwise one of the less wacky religions would have its score brought down by one of the more wacky ones, when in fact they exist independently of one another.

Sounds like a daunting project. Shall we get started? :P

-1

Book of Mormon Discussion

-1

-1

-1

Book of Mormon Discussion

-1

-1