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!

Can you be the sole determinant about which pieces of information do and do not matter? Let me tell you: if I had to take that "40 days" literally, I would drop the whole claptrap and take up the atheist flag. That wouldn't be raining; that would be hydraulic mining. Nothing on earth would survive, not even an "ark made out of gopher wood".

You're not facing the problem. You can't write off any of the nodes and say "well, this one doesn't matter". You cannot know what other people know unless you ask them. This project of mapping the Bayesian networks of every belief system on the planet is difficult, insanely difficult, impossible. That doesn't mean you can skip over some parts and pretend they don't matter. Do you know what happens if you try to do that in quantum mechanics? You get the wrong answer. And considering what's at stake here, that would be devastating.

So, covering the entire surface of the Earth and putting two of every animal on one boat is feasible, but raining for 40 days without destroying the boat isn't?

The issues here are that if this happened, God would be violating the laws of physics and committing genocide.

8[anonymous]15y

Is there a rule for which parts of the bible you're not supposed to take literally, besides "whichever ones would be evidence against the Bible"?

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Book of Mormon Discussion

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Book of Mormon Discussion

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