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Religious Book Exchange

rcronk said:
I suspected, I misread your statement - you were uneasy with self deception, not afraid of it - I read afraid when it became a reason for leaving the church but what you described was that you thought you were deceiving yourself by turning a blind eye to parts of the religion. I was answering cyborg by reiterating it because I didn't know if he would read the apology and explanation I gave to you in your part of my reply. Again, I apologize.
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Thanks.

I agree that people can self deceive and groups can too. It's funny that I'm on the side against 9/11 conspiracy theories and they have group self deception too. One thing I have found in working through issues with the 9/11 CT's is that they stop digging when they hit what they want to hit. As soon as the evidence looks like their government is out to get them, they stop digging. And yes, this digging dysfuntion can be found on all sides when the person in question loves their agenda more than the truth. I wonder if you and I could talk through the issues you found one at a time in PM's? I would like to know what you found and how deep you went on each item. I have investigated anti-mormon claims and have found, in my experience, that the anti's stopped digging as soon as it looked like the LDS church was a fraud. As I continued to dig a little deeper and found that they had missed things or assumed or relied on flawed logic or whatever. Would you be willing to go through these issues with me one at a time?
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I would be happy to but I think they should be public. I have nothing to hide and nothing is secret to me.

I think the experiment is perfect because only whose who really want to find God find him, those who don't want to find him for whatever reason, don't.
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I have so many problems with this. Many people who sincerly want to find him don't. That is demonstrable. You use circular reasoning to assume that those who don't find god are not sincere. The lives (fruits) of these individuals speak against this reasoning.

He only wants those who want to be with him to be with him. He doesn't want anyone to feel compelled by physical proof, etc. He wants an honest personal search that cannot be borrowed from someone else as we do with the scientific method.
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It is demonstrable that our internal sense can and often is fooled. I can cite many examples.

I have presented the Monty Hall problem to many Mormon friends and family. It's a benign mathematical problem based on statistics. It's a magicians trick so to speak that, like sawing a woman in half, is counter intuitive. However it is often troublesome to people and especially believers in god. Not always, but it seems that the more sure a person is in his or her beliefs the more they are confused and upset. I have had friends and family simply state that I am wrong and they refuse to discuss the issue any farther. Years later when I bring up the subject they are still upset and don't want to talk about it. They simply declare that I am wrong. Their choice is the right choice and no evidence can convince them otherwise.

I understand why. Our world view is precious to us. We paint ourselves into a corner and we can't question our beliefs. We tell ourselves that we are honest with ourselves but we just can't get past certain things.

Having read Ramachandran's book A Brief Tour of Consciousness I now understand that for some with an organic problem like a lesion to the brain it is not even possible to accept the truth in some circumstances. More interestingly perhaps, not all problems are identifiable through brain scans. Some people who lose children demonstrate abnormalities that can't be detected by scans (to date). These people refuse to accept that their child is dead even when they are presented with the body.

Given this I find the notion that god could communicate to our internal states in such a way as to preclude self deception counter to a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

If people who are demonstrably self deceived can't recognize that they are wrong, how do you know that you are right?
 
rcronk said:
I think the experiment is perfect because only whose who really want to find God find him, those who don't want to find him for whatever reason, don't.
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A perfect No True Scotsman if I ever saw one.
 
Tanstaafl said:
The claims made by Smith take the phrase "extraordinary claims" to the extreme. So it would take very, very extraordinary evidence to even take such claims seriously.

And since I've lived in Mesa, AZ for the past 11 years, I've been exposed to a great deal of the claims of Mormonism, and the level of evidence for those claims. And as far as DNA, there's no question that the indiginous peoples of America were not descended from the Hebrews.

I am still quite interested in the remainder of the contents of the D&C, from the standpoint of better understanding what many of my neighbors believe. What I believe doesn't affect the usefulness of this exercise from that point of view.
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I live in Las Vegas, and we are heavily populated with Mormons too-- many work at the test site (area 51)... and Utah is a hop skip and a jump away. I always wonder about the DNA thing. Utah is a great place for genetic studies because they have big families a history of closer inbreeding and they keep good geneological records. And they encourage education. So what sort of cognitive dissonance must happen with people who are learning about genes and learning how science disproves every testable claim made by the book of Mormon? I've heard some of the rationalizations and I just can't believe it. "Horses were actually tapirs?" "How could a teen age boy write such a great piece of work and know that coffee was bad for you?" Stuff like that. The evidence they want to disprove the silliness is unfathomable and yet they believe these inanities on the flimsiest of evidence and an "inner feeling" (testimony--a Mormon must-have.) Sure they love science... but only to the extent that it can confirm their beliefs. They don't talk a lot about planet Kolob anymore.

I wonder what will happen as faith keeps clashing up against reality. For some people they start dashing about for confirmation bias and converts--they become even more certain they have the truth-- and that worries me. http://www.whenprophecyfails.org/

The more I think about it, the more I worry about what all this rabid inculcating and indoctrination of children is doing. It's preparing them for a world that doesn't exist while keeping them attaining the facts necessary to make this world better for them and others.

I hope someone somewhere reads this and a seed of thought is planted. Once you start questioning your "faith"-- it seems to start falling apart or command your attentions so you can prop it up with testimony, converting others, etc. It takes work to keep the cognitive dissonance going. It takes a desire to know the truth and not the assumption that you already have it.
 
cyborg said:
If someone says that we're afraid to believe it's almost certainly a sure sign of their own emotional insecurity being projected onto us.

Humans are so predictable.
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I tell my students that-- if people want to make you feel bad for asking questions, they are probably lying to you or themselves. Truth shouldn't be afraid of questions and examination. It just keeps being true even if nobody believes in it.
 
rcronk said:
RandFan - So why do you make assertions about me and my beliefs and experiences with no physical evidence other than guessing about me based on comparing my experiences with others? Why the double standard? If you want to see rebuttal to your 30-year old anti-Mormon literature, please see
www.fairlds.org.
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I don't need a rebuttal; I worked in genetic counseling-- I've seen the DNA. I would like a reason to believe Mormonism was valuable or true in any way. I find former Mormons much more honest and humble than current Mormons.

rcronk said:
Nice strawman video. It's funny, but still a strawman. People have the wrong idea about God and so they take that wrong idea, easily knock it down and proclaim atheism as truth without any evidence other than a strawman god on the floor. Oops!
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Ah, so you (and your fellow Mormons) have the RIGHT idea about god. And your caricature of atheism is incorrect. Who says atheism is the "truth". Atheism is just a lack of belief in gods, not a statement about what is true. You don't believe in Zeus and Allah and the Pope, right? That's not a statement about the truth. It's a non belief. Generally, atheists would rather not know something than believe something that isn't true-- it's why evidence becomes important-- it's the evidence that is the same for everybody...this reality. We let the evidence compile before we believe... and we learn the ways we can be fooled. We don't look for the evidence for the truth we want--that only leads to self deception. All religions do that. The successful ones do anyhow. The more you can get one to feel like they've suffered for their belief (even if it's just suffering embarrassment)--the more they will cling to their beliefs. And the more likely they are to do something awful to prove they believe (remember Abraham and Isaac-- would you kill your kid for god?-- how would you know it's god if he communicates in a manner indistinguishable from a schizophrenic delusion?)

And Mormonism still teaches the multiple wives in the next life part-- the stuff bout being a god on your own planet etc. Yes, there's apologists for every religion that try to distract people from the facts and get the membership to believe that they have "the truth".

cyborg - Re-read the thread, RandFan said he was afraid of self-deception, I reiterated that fear. I did not project it or invent it. If I'm wrong about it or misunderstood him, I apologize. I already apologized for my delivery though, which was less than friendly - I must have been in a mood yesterday.

all - Please either try the experiment or revert to lurk mode.
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That's not the way it works here. You came to a skeptics forum under false premises. You came to preach, and you got a taste of what skepticism is. We don't read and "feel" our truths. We already know what a recipe that is for self deception. We don't pray to know whether something is true, because that is a way for self deception. This is the James Randi Educational Foundation-- we aim to teach the facts, discuss the facts, and educate others to actual verifiable facts. We aim to teach others to think critically and to learn the ways we fool ourselves. We practice on forums such as this, so that other lurkers might learn something too. We are grateful not to be encumbered by belief. And instead of shutting people up-- try reading them and really hearing them--listen to them the way you want to be listened to. You might learn something. You won't find any converts here, I'm afraid. All the woos are too into their own particular woo (that they are sure is the ture woo--as sure as you are that yours is) and the rest of us demand evidence for beliefs. You stick around here, and you are like an alien-- a real brainwashed person who stumbled onto our forum-- we think maybe we can deprogram you or that our words will resonate with some future kid programmed by well meaning parents into some other "true woo".
 
Oh, and how exactly is Kissing Hank's Ass a strawman? How are your claims, beliefs, and sway tactics different. Sure, they're not as amusing, -- but to me, they are the same... and I'd like to hear the differences from your mouth.

I think that stumbling upon Randfan may be a day you'll one day remember with great fondness... even if it's many years down the road. Please keep your conversations with him public... we may all learn something. The truth shouldn't be afraid of having the light shined on it.
 
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I started this thread because some people here at jref wanted to try the experiment.

The problems with going through the things RandFan found in a public forum are:

1. Noise
2. Pride
3. Distraction
4. Contention

It's just a lot more difficult. It's not about secrecy, it's about the items above. I don't have much confidence in public forums when it comes to discussing things one at a time - you see the same failure in 9/11 conspiracy forum discussions. I would therefore choose to do it through PM's but if RandFan is not willing to do that, then perhaps I could start a new thread for it.
 
rcronk said:
I started this thread because some people here at jref wanted to try the experiment.

The problems with going through the things RandFan found in a public forum are:

1. Noise
2. Pride
3. Distraction
4. Contention

It's just a lot more difficult. It's not about secrecy, it's about the items above. I don't have much confidence in public forums when it comes to discussing things one at a time - you see the same failure in 9/11 conspiracy forum discussions. I would therefore choose to do it through PM's but if RandFan is not willing to do that, then perhaps I could start a new thread for it.
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We could ask that others stay out of the discussion. We could have a moderated thread. Perhaps both.

If that is possible would you be willing to do that?

Regardless, it should be a new thread I agree.
 
Based on your experience here, do you think asking others to stay out would work? What's involved in a moderated thread?
 
If he agrees, post a link here too.

Rconk, this would be a great way for you to demonstrate exactly the way you hoped people would respond to you when you posted here. We could all learn something.
 
If we can have a moderated thread with just RandFan and I discussing the evidence he found that led him to believe that the Mormon church was a fraud and we can address one item at a time until we both agree to move on to another item, then I'll do it.

articulett - I have seen the pdf that you link to in your signature and it's a great paper.
 
I'm a go.

Just understand that I might have time constraints and not respond right away. Given that rcronk doesn't spend time here everyday this might be a bit of a slow process.
 
I expected it to be a bit slow - hopefully that will make it more thorough and thoughtful - I need all the help I can get in those areas. :) I guess we'll let prewitt81 set it up and let us know where to go?

What shall we call the thread?
 
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I'm open to suggestions about the title.

Note: To my knowledge, there has never been a case of a moderated thread being restricted to two people, so I want to make absolutely sure this is ok with the rest of the mod team before we proceed.
 
prewitt81 - Thanks!

RandFan - You go ahead and introduce the first item and I'll reply to it and we'll go back and forth until we reach an agreement to move on to the next item. Sound ok?
 
rcronk said:
prewitt81 - Thanks!

RandFan - You go ahead and introduce the first item and I'll reply to it and we'll go back and forth until we reach an agreement to move on to the next item. Sound ok?
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Glad to help. I look forward to the discussion. I was going to ask how to choose who posts first, but I see you have made the invitation to RandFan. Thanks!
 
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