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Costanza comments on The elephant in the room, AMA - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (428)
I'd want to see some or all of the points brought up here addressed. For example:
The source is overtly an ex-Mormon site. But if Mormon doctrine is what they say it is, and the archeology is what they say it is, then it woudn't look good for Mormonism.
Many of of the claims in the quote aren't true or are misleading.
There are about 60 things that the Book of Mormon claims to have existed in the New World in the designated timeframe, about 8 of which were known to exist in 1830. Between now and then, how many would you expect now to have been found? I'm going to put the rest of this on the next comment; estimate and then read the next one to see how close you were.
I know your prior is that "well, obviously religion isn't true, so this is probably true," but be a bit more careful.
Here are the misleading points of the above quote.
You may want to adjust your priors of archaeology. The Huns didn't leave any horse remains.
And the answer to the above question is 35 have been found, along with 10 that are tentative. The second link is a long article; the first is a short summary.
Are you referring to my question? You may want to quote questions for clarity. Use '>'
Which particular limited geography theory do you personally subscribe to?
Are 60 and 8 your own figures, independently counted, or are you quoting a Mormon authority?
Quoting a Mormon archaeologist. The link is in my next post. He doesn't give the full list in the link but he gives ~20% of it. I will write him and ask for the full list.
I'm not in a hurry.
To be frank, I would have been much more impressed if a young, ambitious non-Mormon anthropologist had used the Book of Mormon as a cheat sheet to make new discoveries in order to get tenure and fame. That would have been interesting. A religious believer reading his chosen "scripture" and retroactively adjusting his view of the historical record to match is not new. The other religions -- the ones to which you did not choose to convert -- do the same thing. You know they do.
That is true, good point.
It would. Keep in mind though that in the social sciences a lot of research is data-driven rather than hypothesis-driven. My economics professor was explaining last week that most recent good papers in economic history have come because someone got their hands on an interesting data set and then asked 'what can I do with this?', rather than thinking of a clever hypothesis and then looking for a data set to test it out.
Only slightly facetiously, why aren't you studying to be an archeologist or geneticist then? If in your judgment there is a substantial gap in scientific knowledge and it isn't being filled for whatever reasons, why aren't you pursuing it?
I don't think the animal or plant life claims are that important. Maybe they were evidence against before, but with new discoveries, their mention is neutral. It's not like Smith was consciously defying an establishment when he said there was barley in the Americas. I'm also willing to accept that God or Smith might have taken license in translating these terms. The question of whether or not the Nephites had horses pales in comparison to the implication that modern genetics is wrong.
The basic claim of the Book of Mormon is that Jews settled in the Americas, established a fairly large civilization, and most Amerinds are partially descended from them. It's not like these are disputed, minority positions in academia; they aren't even on the radar.
A slight technicality, they weren't Jews (being from Judah) but Israelites (being Ephraim and Manasseh).
I have to say, to your great credit, you seem to be attempting to answer these questions in good faith so far. If you want to stay a Mormon in good standing, you should watch out! If you carry your honesty much further, it will do nothing but get you into trouble with your chosen faith. Remember, we can always check your statements with the local stake or with the Mormon church at large. Do you trust your church to be as rational as you might choose to be?
I don't understand why you posted that paragraph.
Religious doctrines have huge differences, or at least they seem so different to the believers as to result in persecution and terrorism and wars. The methods that big organized hierarchical religions employ to enforce conformity are...less so. There's no uniformity without a text. There's no text without a whole lot of big, obvious stupefying whoppers. In the context of organized religions, there are no stupefying whopping lies without otherwise brilliant apologists, performing amazing feats of logical contortion in order to justify and reconcile the stupid lies with which they are burdened.
By coming to LessWrong and courageously presenting himself as a believing Mormon and facing the criticism of his religion, calcsam is now at a crossroads. He can attempt to answer the criticism fairly and rationally. Or, he can defend the faith he has chosen, using the time-honored techniques of pipul and casuistry.
If calcsam wants to stay a member of the Mormon church in good standing, as authorized by the authorities in Salt Lake City, then he is on a leash held by those authorities. He is not at liberty to liberalize the doctrine, which might enable him (temporarily) to avoid facing the choice between fact and fiction. I hope he breaks from his leash. I don't want the discussion on LessWrong to let him pretend he can lengthen that leash, when in fact he can't. I don't want to let him say that Mormon people are nice and decent (which I would concede, in plenty of instances -- but not all) and therefore Joseph Smith was a prophet. I don't want to let him say that Mormonism is just a general instruction to be nice to people. It's not. I want him to feel choked by his own espoused doctrine. I didn't choose it for him. I want him to want to be free of it. I want him to choose to be free of it.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Can you please elaborate? Since I do try and defend my faith you should be able to come up with examples of me doing whatever you are implying here, using those as examples would be helpful for me to understand what you see as wrong. I have reason to believe you have recently looked at a majority of my posts so you should be familiar with them, if not then any other example would be helpful.
I fail to see why him being honest will get him into trouble being that one of the basic beliefs of the LDS Church is honesty.
The claim is that it is perfectly rational and that, even if there currently is not, there will be answers for everything.
It seems silly to say this, but Costanza probably believes that Mormonism, as a claim, is nigh-impossible.
Not this one.