= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Alicorn comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (320)
How are they evidence against Mormonism? Considering that only one of those can be accepted as valid prophecy by anyone other then a Latter-Day Saint without theological complications, I think they are stronger evidence for Mormonism in particular then for prophecy in general.
The prophecies were given beforehand so I don't understand this part of your response. Are you asking for prophecies that haven't happened yet? If so, how would that be evidence of anything?
Please find a wrong example. I am unaware of any specific prophecies that meet the criterion to be prophecies that were not stated as being conditional on some action that have turned up false.
Convinced me of what?
I had experiences with the Spirit that would be applicable for almost any religion on the planet before I had experiences that were specifically about my religion. So knowledge that there was a God came before knowledge of which Church was correct. Going back to Moroni 10:3-5, I eventually decided that I needed to know for myself if the Book of Mormon was true. So I read it as directed and prayed about it as directed and relieved the answer that it was indeed true.
It was only afterwards that experience that I actually read the D&C, The Pearl of Great Price, The Old Testament, and everything other then the Gospels in the New Testament. I likewise repeated the procedure for all of them, and due to the insistence of evangelicals I have dealt with repeated the procedure multiple times on the entire Bible, the New Testament, and the Gospels. This was under the hope that when they said they would do the procedure on the Book of Mormon if I did on whatever it was they said (their idea not mine (and no, none of them ever cracked the Book of Mormon that I can tell )).
Does that answer your question?
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.