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Alicorn comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
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Speaking of the read-the-book-of-Mormon-and-pray-about-it-and-get-a-straight-answer experiment, I've actually told a couple of my friends that I will eventually do this in the name of empiricism, but it's such a profoundly boring book that I haven't gotten very far yet. Is there a way to read it that makes it more interesting? Why isn't scripture better-crafted?
It is hands down the most boring religious text I have ever read; I would be surprised if there was a more interesting way to read it. The Koran confused me more, and Dianetics annoyed me more, but the Book of Mormon wins on boring.
Yeah, but I didn't tell any of my friends that I would read the Koran or Dianetics.
I did find some entertainment value in the fact that when I opened the Book of Mormon for the first time, I discovered that Orson Scott Card ripped off its plot for the Memory of Earth series, but... he's a much better writer.
Yeah; I got the same amusement in the other direction, though it makes Card seem to be reaching harder.
Liveblog it. Chapter by chapter.
Would you read that?
No clue, see Ether 12:23-29 where Moroni the last prophet in the Book of Mormon pretty much appears to ask that very question of the Lord.
I looked it up, and it does seem that the question is asked, but it does not appear to be properly answered. Can you interpret God's reply there for me in some answer-ish way? It's pretty hazy.
If you are going to do this, make sure that you set aside in advance what you are going to test. And make sure that it is a) easily verifiable and b) not something that could be in your subconscious memory. The most obvious thing to do would be to have now a computer pick a random number, store that in a file somewhere and then when you are done, check if the number (if any) that comes from inspiration matches the number in question.
Mark Twain had some comments about that.
Would you like to generate and hold onto a random number for me that I can request as proof, or should I just do this myself?
I've generated a random number. To verify, there's a relevant SHA-1 string. I will send the string to any trusted user. I'm not going to put the SHA-1 hash here to eliminate the possibility that someone will claim that Alicorn inverted the hash, either deliberately or subconsciously. I would consider such subconscious inversion to be unlikely, but it is nice to control for as many variables as possible.