Why would I end up saying that people don't believe that which they know?

Alma 32:18 [I]f a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.

But if knowledge was just a belief with 100% confidence, then that you knew it would mean you had quite a few causes to believe it.

I suppose you could also end up saying that knowledge was uncaused belief but that seems even more problematic

Take the Word of Wisdom for instance the experts in the health fields are still not able to agree as to whether coffee, tea, and alcohol are good or bad for you in the long run.

I'm not surprised, risk profiles don't tend to reduce to a substance being absolutely good or bad for you. It depends on your genetics and the interaction of various chemicals in the drink, not all of which have linear relationships with consumption.

So far as coffee goes, broadly speaking, the consensus among the experts - i.e. those publishing studies into the effects of coffee - seems to indicate that consumption beneath four cups a day has more health benefits than risks, unless you happen to have gastro intestinal problems or need iron supplements. Paper filters seem to reduce risks even further.

Tea seems to be okay as long as you don't put milk with it or drink it while it's incredibly hot. Or drink stupid amounts, of course.

Alcohol? Well one or two drinks seems to be linked to reduced mortality - at least in the UK. The French seem to do well with it, though it may just be because of their diets. Heavy consumption does seem to be very bad for you.

The LDS Church however has consistently said they were. If the revelations from God are correct then one would expect that those that follow the revelations would be healthier than similar populations, which is indeed the case. Is this the type of thing that you mean?

In principle, yeah. I don't think the WoW is very strong evidence by itself because there are loads of other possible explanations for health variances, and depending on the rationale the range of likely guesses may not have been all that wide, and because, IIRC, it was originally hot drinks in general which was changed later on when it became untenable; but it's the right sort of thing, yeah.

If LDS's prophets consistently make better predictions than experts, then they've probably got access to some sort of privileged information to narrow their range of answers down. Either that or they're just vastly more rational than the experts, but the odds of that are slim.

This is what I mean by knowledge, if you can come up with a better way of explaining it in terms of this site where there is no certainty other then what I have explained then please do so.

You seem to be meaning two things by knowledge, depending on the context in which you use it. I would suggest that you might find it easier if you use the words 'information' or 'evidence' when talking about justifications for a level of confidence/faith. And only use 'knowledge' to signify whatever high degree of confidence you've decided to use as your cut-off point for hands-in-fire-get-burned, I'm-looking-at-the-computer-and-it's-still-there levels of certainty.

It still seems to me that you're going to end up with problems if you hold faith as being another word for confidence. Since even certainty (100% confidence) is still a degree of confidence – and also knowledge under such a definition. But scripture holds that knowledge isn't faith – which is the same as saying if you hold that faith and confidence are synonymous – that knowledge isn't a degree of confidence (even 100% confidence).

It seems to me to be a deeper problem than one of definitions.

You're going to have problems if you say that faith just refers to the preceding 99.9 recurring % levels of confidence, too. You've said that it's a general enough idea, in “Lectures on Faith”, to just be taken as a synonymous term with confidence. But even putting that problem aside, when you wanted to start talking about scripture again I suspect you'd end up saying either, 'People don't believe that which they know.' Or, 'People don't believe that which they have faith in.'

But belief isn't one of those fuzzy terms, like knowledge or faith. The meaning can't be altered to fit a particular argument without doing significant damage to the network of references into which it fits. If I say I believe my computer is in front of me while I'm typing on it, (which going by your standards would also be knowledge,) then there's no significant question what I mean. Just as it's coherent for me to say that I believe my front door is locked, when strictly speaking I've heard one of the other occupants of the building come in and do not know if they locked the door. You might ask how strongly I believe it, but it's coherent for me to answer that in degrees of doubt/confidence; even to the point of saying that I have no doubt.

If you start saying that belief means something else to patch the problem in the epistemology, then you're going to have to explain how that new definition is coherent with all the other instances of its use. And that will alter more, even more well defined, meanings to do that which you're going to have to redefine along with everything that hooks onto those instances... and so on until eventually you've defined everything in terms of whether it makes your theology right. It doesn't seem to be a workable approach.

what do you mean by meaningful faith?

Better odds than the chance a similarly but non-testimony privileged observer has. Or to put it another way whether the faith adds any information. (With non-adding faith being meaningless.)

Take the coin-flip example:

If we were to say that somehow divine testimony could predict the outcome of a coin flip. (Not that I'm saying it can but if it could - or someone claimed it could.) You might get three groups – in separate rooms – and one group would commune with god and score down their predictions, and the other two groups would flip coins. And you'd see what the difference between the god group and one of the coin flipping groups was as compared to the difference between the two coin flipping groups. Do it a few hundred times to get the errors down to whatever you'd decided the noise level was and see whether the faith group was more reliable.

If at the end of all that you didn't have a higher degree of confidence in the predictions of divinity than those of a coin flip, then – assuming that was all the evidence you had for god – you may as well use the coin flip to dictate your actions. The faith wouldn't add any information, it wouldn't hook onto the world you were experiencing.

You could do the same sort of thing with the more day to day predictions of prophets from the Church but you'd need to compare them against experts in whatever field the prediction was being made in since the real world provides more information than they'd have in the coin flip case. The advantage of the coin flip is that there are fewer confounding variables more than anything else.

If faith is just another word for confidence then knowledge would just be a high degree of faith and that doesn't fit in with how it's used in the Book; where it's held that if you know you don't have faith/believe.

If you keep using knowledge to mean a very high degree of confidence and maintain that all meaningful faith is based on knowledge - and not just in the sense of exceeding the level of confidence that evidence justifies - then I'm not sure how it's possible for meaningful faith to exist.

Since:

If it meets the level of confidence that the knowledge justifies, then it's not faith. And if it exceeds the level of confidence that evidence justifies then it doesn't fit how it's used in "Lectures on Faith". And I take it just as a given that faith is not to believe /less/ than the evidence justifies - especially with 1 John 4:1 commanding people to test their prophets.

If you are trying to do what you know to be right then you have lost nothing. If you aren't trying to do what you know to be right then revealing himself to you could very well get you cast out, which is not what God is in the business of doing.

So why has he revealed himself even at a low level of confidence? People supposedly already know right from wrong so that's not it.

If his revealing himself helps people to do right rather than wrong more than it imperils them, then in his not revealing himself to me I have lost something. (It's less probable that I will do right and thus I have been imperilled.) If he helps at a particular level of confidence less than he imperils then it doesn't make sense for him to reveal himself to anyone. If they're equal then there's no purpose in it.

Assorted thoughts on the rest:

That is, there are reasons God operates the way He does and they are directly related to why we are here on Earth.

Eh, there's a tension between power and justification. If you take it to the extreme, omnipotence and reason are mutually exclusive criteria. (Outside, perhaps, of an inability to commit logical contradictions, but that doesn't really seem to be involved here.)

Therefore the goal is to have us obtain the same state of power and knowledge that God has and just as we do not wish to give god-like power to an AI that is then going to screw things up so too God does not wish to do the same to us.

I'd be more than happy to give symmetrical power to an AI, assuming I had godly powers. The whole issue is that a recursively improving AI might become far more powerful than ourselves.

Those of us who get born on Earth did not fall but followed what was right when we knew for a surety that it was right.

Why do we need to qualify to return if we followed him and didn't fall?

Due to this state of failure, or sin, to follow what we know to be right we become unworthy of entering back into the presence of God.

Above you said we were here to gain a body and to qualify to return to the presence of God. However, if we become unworthy of returning to God that removes a lot of the reason for being here. Why not be embodied and immediately die? The purpose of life then having been completed.

As to eternal life it is up to us on earth to live according to what we know to be right. Not what we wish was right but what we actually know to be right.

You've already said knowledge is an incredibly high degree of confidence – indeed you've said that it's practically indistinguishable from certainty - which you've in turn tied to proof. I've seen no proof of right and wrong. A feeling certainly isn't proof; asides from anything else I've felt different ways about ethical issues at different points in time. Then you have the cultural variances in preferences and emotions....

This is the primary way with which God communicates with us as it testifies of the truth and lets us know what is right. It is also easily drowned out by other emotions and feelings and easily confused with other things (uncontrollable crying, a sense of community, trances, babelling incoherently, a sense of confusion are common things mistaken for the spirit) .

Again you've tied knowledge to being a high degree of confidence. If it's easily confused with other things then it doesn't provide that high degree of confidence. It also has the same problems as communication in general concerning its purpose. If the value of the guidance of testimony is exceeded by the peril of knowing more then it shouldn't be done. If the inverse holds then it should be done for everyone. If they're equal then there's no purpose in it one way or the other.

If God is real and is all knowing then when He says something then that is the way it is. How is that not consistent?

If X then Y

X

Therefore Y

This is the form of your statement (X is "God is real and all knowing" and Y is "Things are the way He says they are") and I fully agree it is consistent. It is the second step - X is true - that you have not taken. "If X then Y, X, therefore Y" does not assert the truth of X, it conditions the truth of Y on the truth of X.

By way of analogy, there are many mathematical systems that are consistent yet do not apply to reality (in some senses, I believe, they are more consistent than the system(s) that do apply to reality!). Asserting their consistency will not make them apply to reality.

I have the belief that there are reasons for what God does and what is in revelation.

This is already deeply nested and derailed so I don't feel bad pursuing this - could you please tell me what brought you to this belief (that there are reasons for what God does)? Be as concrete as possible, if you could!

Why would we be willing to believe that they will stop the torture if we killed ourselves? Further, if we killed ourselves why wouldn't they delete or kill the people being tortured?

They gave us the diagrams of themselves if I understand correctly and from the story we have the understanding to tell they tell the truth. What is to stop us from building massive super computers that can simulate some way of torturing trillions of them unless they stop simulating the torture of us? By communicating this possibility to the aliens and letting them know that if they don't stop by the time the torture computers are built we will immediately begin construction on yet another torture computer to double the amount of torture then, if the aliens have the morality that they are assuming of us, they will immediately stop torturing the simulations.

There are way to many amazing posts with very little karma and mediocre posts with large amounts of karma.

Not enough productive projects related to the site, like site improvements and art. The few that do show up get to little attention and karma.

To much discussion about things like meetups and growing the community and converting people. Those things are important but they dosn't belong on LW and should probably have their own site.

There is a category of religiously inspired posts that creep me out and set of cult alarms. It contains that post about staring from Scientology and that Transcendental meditation stuff that while I found it interesting and perhaps useful doesn't seem to belong on LW and now recently these Mormon posts abut growing organizations. shudder

Caffeine is not what is prohibited, that is an assumption that many people make but that is not well founded as there are many things that contain caffeine that are allowed.

See the footnote under (1).

The argument remains: if the reason behind section 89 is the principle that because there exist people too weak to resist the addiction of X, then we must ban X, the prohibitions of section 89 are at least laughably incomplete, and at most incoherent.

If, on the other hand, this isn't the reason behind the prohibitions of section 89, then there is no other reason stated. So the assertion that "You are free to read section 89 where it is so forbidden to see why." is false, because there is no "why" given.

Also see Explaining vs. Explaining Away.

I'm just not sure we're having the same conversation here, John. I really didn't want to debate Mormon theology or the existence of God. My main point was that the Mormon church is too restrictive in terms of what is "allowed", both in terms of behaviors and beliefs. Too restrictive on things that might give Wednesday happiness some day.

However, you started that sentence by saying it wasn't a logic game. If logic and reason are not to be used in determining what is really right and wrong and divine revelation is out then what are you left with? Are you trying to say you have taken then indefensible but unassailable position of a relativist that also believes logic itself is relative? In which case, you should have let us know this to start out with as any claims of contradiction, if that is what you hold, may as well be saying that 1=1 is a contradiction.

This is EXACTLY what I mean by "playing logic games". Are you really trying to understand my position here, or just reductio-ad-absurdum everything I say? Because I have a seven-year-old, and I get plenty of that already. :-)

And one of my points is that even with this definition most of what you have posted as being fun can and does hurt people and society.

I suspected you would say this, which is why I mentioned "candles and canned corn" in an attempt to skip over this part: yes, alcohol can hurt people, and it does. So do swimming pools. (I'm not even sure which one is responsible for more deaths per year, but they are both WAY more than for marijuana, in any case.) Yet the Mormon church forbids alcohol, but not pools. I am saying that both are fun, but only if handled responsibly.

Forgive me if I'm mischaracterizing your arguments, but I feel like you are spending more energy trying to point out why I'm wrong and Mormonism is right, than you are in honestly trying to understand my position: hurting people is bad, and having fun is good. Some things can be fun in some contexts and hurtful in others. The fun ones are good, and the hurtful ones are bad. But I didn't really need to spell that out, did I? I think you knew what I meant.

For alcohol, for instance, Wednesday is less likely to remember what she is doing if she is drunk

Yeah... I don't mean to ad-hominem you, but, just as a meta-statement: this really sounds like the kind of thing someone without a lot of experience with alcohol would say. Obviously she doesn't need to get totally drunk every time she drinks... this is certainly not what I had in mind. But the Mormon church also forbids a glass or two of wine with dinner, once a week. And that hurts nobody. And is pretty fun for many people. The kind of fun they will remember.

Myths of the flood exist in almost all cultures so to me it seems arrogant to say it did not exist.

Arrogant?? Do you have any idea how incredibly impossible such a thing would have been?? Run the numbers on this one... (unless, of course, you just say "God did it"). In any case, one can look at the rings of trees, match them up to older trees, match those up to still older trees... there's been no flood for many MANY thousands of years, on that evidence alone.

Argh! I really don't want to point-by-point debate you on your beliefs! I am not trying to convince you of anything. But if you are interested, you can look into it: the flood was either allegory, or it was a serious "God just did it, then covered up the evidence" moment (and obviously I can't argue against that).

Anyway... if you find peace and happiness in the Mormon church, and you don't feel hindered by all the things you can't do, and you don't feel stifled that you can't decide for yourself what is right and wrong in all cases (I am speaking of coming to a decision that it is unethical to eat animals, for example, which the church would find to be incorrect), then fine.

However, I did not feel that way.

You should look at information gain when evaulating the strength of a prophecy. For instance, "closed countries will become open at some point in the future." Assume this requires a major change in government, then look at the expected rate of major government change--I'm going to make a guess of a 2% chance per year. After 14 years (1976-1990), observing a government change major enough to open a country gives you around 2 bits of information.

That means this "prophecy" is approximately as impressive as prophecying correctly that a fair coin will come up heads twice.

Even if you read the prophecies with no bias whatsoever, if you're charitable enough to forgive 3 failures for each 1 amazingly correct prediction, the prophet cannot lose.