I'm going to be the bad guy here, because I'm like that.
Your forest experience was probably a hallucination. Even assuming no previous experience with this moon god, it's very possible that you came across something mentioning her previously in life and it was tucked away somewhere deep. Cue running, dehydration, elation from breaking social norms, etc. there's a cocktail of neurotransmitters in your brain.
Current research suggests that hallucinations occur in almost everyone's life at least once or twice.
Now, how you approach this information is up to you. If I were you, I'd disregard it and enjoy worship of this new strange god that you connected so strongly with. You only live once, and you might as well have a fun, interesting life.
Depending on which forest he was running in, he could have easily come in contact with a skin-transmitted hallucinogenic. He could have just stepped in the wrong kind of mushroom.
But, I'm not sure such speculation was the point of the thread (but I am still trying to figure out that point).
LOL... umm... hey Essance? I just did some clicking on wiki... Where you in "Olympia WA" at the time, like your profile says you now live?
Because "Psilocybe azurescens," which has the highest known level of Psilocybin for a mushroom, is native to WA. Apparently "Cape Disappointment State Park, near Ilwaco, Washington, has a large population, but harvesting is a potential felony that is enforced by local law enforcement agencies."
Was it anywhere around there, by chance? Did you step on any mushrooms while running?
Should I believe in the Mormon God because it feels right to me, even though this other quasi-religious experience so powerfully and clearly shaped my life?
Maybe the basis of your belief is not as intellectually rigorous as some may want. The basis of your belief may get criticised for it lack of rigour and such criticism may not be unreasonable. It may also be not great at convincing other people of your religions truth but here is the real zinger...
Religion's truth claims can be true even if not every person who believes it has the capacity to defend his believes in a way that is intellectually engaging enough for everyone.
Like was mentioned before, repeatability leads to believeability.
That would exclude everything that happens only once as being believeable then.
If it's a fantastical event, I also am going to require more evidence. If you claim to have eaten a 10 lb pancake for breakfast, I'll want some proof, since that would be quite an ordeal (the kind that would get your photo on a diner's wall and win you some kind of reward). If you claim you ate a 50 lb pancake in one sitting, well, I'm not going to believe you based on your word or even normal photos and video at that point. So spectacularly defying normal feats of digestion would require an extraordinarily high standard of evidence (observation by trusted third-parties ensuring there's no slight of hand and so forth).
What if the 50 pounds of pancakes was eaten in front of 500 people and four of the people went and wrote detailed accounts of the events surrounding the pancake eating event. What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in. All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
What if the 50 pounds of pancakes was eaten in front of 500 people and four of the people went and wrote detailed accounts of the events surrounding the pancake eating event.
Then we only have the word of the four. The five hundred may as well be five or five million.
What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in.
That depends on what the flow of information was between the four and him. If he heard about their accounts, and wrote about them, that would not be persuasive at all.
All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
I would embarrassed to consider that as evidence.
How would that effect your beliefs then?
Probably wouldn't improve my likelihood of believing by very much. Anyone can write down anything they want. People wrote down stories of a dude coming back from the dead, and you'd have to be some sort of chump to believe those.
Papyrus is fragile. Having thousands of manuscripts surviving centuries upon centuries is evidence of miracle. Seeing that the third best attested document of the ancient world has 600 odd extant manuscripts and the New testament has 12 - 14 thousand manuscripts almost indicates that some sort of intelligence knew people where going to doubt it
To conclude that texts of the new testament are better preserved than other texts, you have to account for several factors:
1) Religious texts were written down far more frequently than other texts. When writing materials are scarce, and writing is time-consuming only those texts which are considered very important are actually recorded.
2) Religious texts are stored more carefully than other texts.
3) Early christian rulers ordered the destruction of many non-Christian texts. See for example Jovian's burning of the library of Antioch, the burning of the library of the Serapeum by Theodosius I, and others.
So, you have a situation where there are more of these texts than others, they are specifically preserved more carefully, and other texts are targeted for destruction, and you think it's some sort of surprise that more New Testament manuscripts make it to the present day? C'mon man. Just think these things through for a minute.
What if the 50 pounds of pancakes was eaten in front of 500 people and four of the people went and wrote detailed accounts of the events surrounding the pancake eating event. What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in. All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
Putting aside the "miracle from paper" argument, I would like some clarification on what you mean by "4 accounts" by eyewitnesses. I'm not aware of any eyewitness accounts cited by Tacitus.
What's worse is he thinks those 4 accounts are solid and credible, seeing as they weren't written for 60-100 years after his death.
Yeah, eye witnesses would NEVER forget parts, embellish parts, or even fabricate parts of a 60 year old story.
They would never dare make up details in order to prop their chosen religious beliefs.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Depending on which forest he was running in, he could have easily come in contact with a skin-transmitted hallucinogenic. He could have just stepped in the wrong kind of mushroom.
But, I'm not sure such speculation was the point of the thread (but I am still trying to figure out that point).
LOL... umm... hey Essance? I just did some clicking on wiki... Where you in "Olympia WA" at the time, like your profile says you now live?
Because "Psilocybe azurescens," which has the highest known level of Psilocybin for a mushroom, is native to WA. Apparently "Cape Disappointment State Park, near Ilwaco, Washington, has a large population, but harvesting is a potential felony that is enforced by local law enforcement agencies."
Was it anywhere around there, by chance? Did you step on any mushrooms while running?
He didn't necessarily even have to have contact with mushrooms, although great catch there, in order to hallucinate. He could have also been exhausted, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, very hot, or very cold.
Note that all of this is if we take at face value his claim that he was "under the influence of exactly zero mind-altering substances and with otherwise perfect clarity" prior to deciding to run through the woods naked.
What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in.
Depends on what you mean by "corroborates."
Tactitus wrote the following:
Quote from Annals by Tacitus, 15.44 »
Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.
So to say they corroborate the four Gospels depends on what, exactly, you mean. The Annals do say that there were such people as Christians, they were the followers of a man named Christus, that Christus suffered at the hands of Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, and that this movement originated from Judaea.
This is, however, all it corroborates.
All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
How would that effect your beliefs then?
They survive because they were retranscribed again and again. We don't just have one copy of the Gospels. All of the Gospels you read in Bibles are composed from numerous different copies.
Then we only have the word of the four. The five hundred may as well be five or five million.
Oh we most certainly do not have the word of the Four. None of the Gospels were written by the people whose names later traditions attached to them. The earliest Gospel, the one called Mark, was written some 30-40 years after Jesus' crucifixion.
If I have a personal experience that tells me that, as a random example, bankers are untrustworthy, and someone in Canada has a personal experience that tells them that bankers are honest, we can totally both be correct.
That's just playing a word trick by being vague. You can't both be totally correct if you really mean "bankers are untrustworthy" and "bankers are honest". You can only both be correct if you significantly qualify those statements. The resolution to that is NOT that one is correct for me and another correct for you.
Why not? If every banker I meet is untrustworthy, and every banker the Canadian meets is honest, each one of us is completely correct. The world is chock full of this kind of thing. There's no reason for either of us to consider the other option if we never come across the opposite experience.
If it's true that a diety (say a moon goddess) exists, then that's a true fact. Not a true fact "for me" or a true fact "for you". It's a true fact for all of us because we all live in the same universe. The statement that something exists is always universally applicable.
I entirely disagree. If you never meet the goddess and she never does anything to anyone you know, she effectively doesn't exist as far as your life is concerned. It's a different claim when you're talking about something omnipresent or something that created the universe, but seriously trying to talk about something that I alone experienced as though it necessarily must or must not exist in an absolute sense is not just philosophically silly, but actually scientifically silly, too, at least if you adhere to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. If Schrodinger's cat can be simulaneously alive and dead until the waveform collapses, the moon goddess can be simultaneously existent and nonexistent until someone else either sees her or finds some sort of way to prove her nonexistence. Assuming I am sane and my memories are accurate, the only thing we know is that at one point, she existed. Not knowing the rules of goddesshood, we don't know whether or not that implies her continued existence.
I'm not really shaken much by most anti-Mormon critique, including the links you provided, because I'm aware that every religion has profound critiques leveled against it. Including atheism.
No, that's neither logic nor truth. That's denial.
Oh, it's absolutely true.
The criticism against Mormonism is that Joseph Smith never translated the Book of Mormon from any tablets, and that it is instead a lie created by a false prophet.
On other hand, the criticism against Christianity includes things like "If God created everything, then clearly He created Lucifer, Hell, and sin, for the explicit purpose of putting the vast majority of humankind into eternal torture because they failed the test that He, by definition, knew they would fail, all the while keeping Himself deliberately hidden from them once they had the intellectual understanding to create the scientific method and the technology to equip 90% of the world's population with readily available cameras, despite having regularly stopped the sun, parted seas, and otherwise performed giant flashy miracles right up to about the time that science began to really become a commonplace pursuit."
Do you really think that someone who believes in God at all in the face of that giant, fundamental problem with the very core of Christianity isn't going to be able to overlook a few claims that some guy made that science hasn't been able to back up?
Oh, I've never claimed that Mormonism is objectively true. There are lots of reasons why that claim is very difficult for me to make, not the least of which is the subjective experience I've had with an apparent moon goddess.
I'm not asking you to prove Mormonism. I'm asking you if youthink--based on your gut--that it IS true.
I think, based on my gut, that all religions are true, and I've invented a very complex cosmology to explain how that all works out. I think, based on my gut, that it doesn't matter which religion you believe in, including atheism, because all religions, including atheism, are simultaneously true. I also think, based on my gut, that of the religions available to participate in in my local area, Mormonism is the one that has the best effects on my life.
As a linguist, I also know that Reformed Egyptian and Joseph Smith's ability to translate it is basically bunk.
I'd love to hear more details about this.
But plenty of people have had similar experiences that are mutually incompatible (so they can't all be true)
This is where my cosmological creation steps in. The only reason that we assume these experiences are mutually incompatible is that we assume that we're beings of exactly one world -- the physical world -- and that we're all beings of the same world. If you posit the existence of a myriad of non-physical worlds and allow each person to be a part of both the physical world and one or more non-physical worlds (call them "spiritual worlds" because it makes intuitive sense), with each religion being true in it's own spiritual world, you can totally have a four-omni god in a few of the worlds, pantheist spirits in another, shintoist ancestors in another, and so on.
So to my mind, it's more likely that you hallucinated or misinterpreted what you saw, or that you had a less fantastical experience that you misremembered later.
That's how I explain it away to myself, too. When I decide it wasn't real. I change my mind on that every once in a while, mostly because on the one hand, it's inexplicable, but on the other hand, my life seems to largely be better when I believe that my wife and I are bound together by more than just a series of highly improbable coincidences and one significant hallucination. It's a pragmatic insanity.
Quote from magickware99 »
The truth is the truth. If there is a way to arrive at the truth, then it must be the only method and it should be infallible. Because the truth is, well, the ****ing truth.
I'm here to tell you that the only thing that is Capital-T true is that you have the ability to choose what you believe. There is absolutely nothing else that is inarguably True.
Quote from exoclipse »
If I were you, I'd disregard it and enjoy worship of this new strange god that you connected so strongly with. You only live once, and you might as well have a fun, interesting life.
But, I'm not sure such speculation was the point of the thread (but I am still trying to figure out that point).
Dude. I've told you explicitly like twice now AND it's the title of the thread. The point is try to come to a conclusion about whether or not it's a good decision to use your own personal subjective experiences as a basis for your belief system. How is this even still a question?
LOL... umm... hey Essance? I just did some clicking on wiki... Where you in "Olympia WA" at the time, like your profile says you now live?
No, I lived on the North Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, halfway between Sequim and Port Angeles.
Because "Psilocybe azurescens," which has the highest known level of Psilocybin for a mushroom, is native to WA. Apparently "Cape Disappointment State Park, near Ilwaco, Washington, has a large population, but harvesting is a potential felony that is enforced by local law enforcement agencies."
Was it anywhere around there, by chance? Did you step on any mushrooms while running?
Well, seeing as it's a costal mushroom that grows in dune grass, whereas I was in the forest, and it's found (according to Wikipedia) as "far north as Grey's Harbor County", which is as north as Olympia, but not as north as Sequim/Port Angeles, it's not bloody likely. Which is not to say that I wasn't hallucinating for some reason -- but that's not it.
Quote from Highroller »
He didn't necessarily even have to have contact with mushrooms, although great catch there, in order to hallucinate. He could have also been exhausted, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, very hot, or very cold.
Well, I can tell you that I wasn't exhausted or sleep-deprived. I was pretty cold and pretty thirsty, as I'd been running for a while.
Note that all of this is if we take at face value his claim that he was "under the influence of exactly zero mind-altering substances and with otherwise perfect clarity" prior to deciding to run through the woods naked.
It was a pretty normal activity for me at the time. My nearest neighbor was a mile away, and there was at least one direction in which I could run for as far as the roads and deer paths went without seeing a soul. Most of it was owned by the Department of Natural Resources. So yeah, I gave no ****s about being naked. I used to get great milage out of pretending to be a high-level druid.
Just in case anyone actually cares:
The round building was my home, built by my mom and dad over the course of a decade or so, out of cordwood masonry. They were hippies. It's still there, just being rented to someone who likes living in the middle of nowhere. The "A" isn't relevant except that it's where Google Maps says my home is according to my address.
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
Why not? If every banker I meet is untrustworthy, and every banker the Canadian meets is honest, each one of us is completely correct. The world is chock full of this kind of thing. There's no reason for either of us to consider the other option if we never come across the opposite experience.
There is a big difference between 'every banker you meet' and 'every banker'.
I entirely disagree. If you never meet the goddess and she never does anything to anyone you know, she effectively doesn't exist as far as your life is concerned. It's a different claim when you're talking about something omnipresent or something that created the universe, but seriously trying to talk about something that I alone experienced as though it necessarily must or must not exist in an absolute sense is not just philosophically silly, but actually scientifically silly, too, at least if you adhere to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics.
Note the key word hidden in there: 'effectively'. Things either exist, or don't exist. There are certainly things we might be ignorant of, or which don't effect us, but those still exist. This is not peek-a-boo, and we're not two years old.
If Schrodinger's cat can be simulaneously alive and dead until the waveform collapses, the moon goddess can be simultaneously existent and nonexistent until someone else either sees her or finds some sort of way to prove her nonexistence. Assuming I am sane and my memories are accurate, the only thing we know is that at one point, she existed. Not knowing the rules of goddesshood, we don't know whether or not that implies her continued existence.
Schrodinger's cat is not an attempt to explain how one should apply quantum physics, it's an attempt show how absurd your interpretation is. Schrodinger's point was that the cat CAN'T be alive and dead, and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation was silly as applied to macroscopic objects (and in fact Schrodinger contended it was therefore also silly as applied to the quantum scale).
There is a big difference between 'every banker you meet' and 'every banker'.
Not to me. Every banker I meet is every banker, as far as my experience is concerned. Therefore I'd have exactly no reason to assume, if every banker I met was dishonest, that there exists a banker who was trustworthy.
Note the key word hidden in there: 'effectively'. Things either exist, or don't exist.
Schrodinger's cat is not an attempt to explain how one should apply quantum physics, it's an attempt show how absurd your interpretation is. Schrodinger's point was that the cat CAN'T be alive and dead, and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation was silly as applied to macroscopic objects (and in fact Schrodinger contended it was therefore also silly as applied to the quantum scale).
None of which is relevant whatsoever to my argument. Shrodinger's critique of the Copenhagen interpretation nonetheless creates a situation in which a macroscopic entity is given quantum properties. The fact that he thinks it's silly to do so doesn't mean that the premise doesn't apply. How do we know that a goddess has macroscopic, rather than quantum, properties?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I wasn't sleeping. I'm a beta-tester for Google Eyelids...I was just taking the opportunity to update my Facebook page." -- Morgan Freeman, accused of napping during a TV interview.
Not to me. Every banker I meet is every banker, as far as my experience is concerned. Therefore I'd have exactly no reason to assume, if every banker I met was dishonest, that there exists a banker who was trustworthy.
Again, that's not the same as 'existing'. A banker that I've met and you haven't exists. A banker you've met and I haven't exists. If you tell me about him, he doesn't magically pop into existence - he's always been there.
Again, not an example of what you're talking about...
[url=http://www.livescience.com/17948-red-green-blue-yellow-stunning-colors.html]Red/green and blue/yellow.[/url] There are a lot of states of being between "existing" and "not existing". It's not a binary thing.
Still not a thing that exists and doesn't exist.
Every single example you've given either exists or doesn't exist. Not both. Not in between.
None of which is relevant whatsoever to my argument. Shrodinger's critique of the Copenhagen interpretation nonetheless creates a situation in which a macroscopic entity is given quantum properties. The fact that he thinks it's silly to do so doesn't mean that the premise doesn't apply. How do we know that a goddess has macroscopic, rather than quantum, properties?
Well, suppose she does have quantum properties, just for fun. You observed her, so it's a bit late for that, isn't it?
I think, based on my gut, that all religions are true, and I've invented a very complex cosmology to explain how that all works out. I think, based on my gut, that it doesn't matter which religion you believe in, including atheism, because all religions, including atheism, are simultaneously true. I also think, based on my gut, that of the religions available to participate in in my local area, Mormonism is the one that has the best effects on my life.
But--at the very least--it honestly sounds like you're Mormon in name only if you're not willing to say YOU--personally--believe that the Mormon doctrine is likely more true than every other religion, not because it's convent to call yourself one. Believing it more true than any alternative seems like a necessarily requirement to be "truly" part of a faith, IMO anyway.
Dude. I've told you explicitly like twice now AND it's the title of the thread. The point is try to come to a conclusion about whether or not it's a good decision to use your own personal subjective experiences as a basis for your belief system. How is this even still a question?
Well, seeing as it's a costal mushroom that grows in dune grass, whereas I was in the forest, and it's found (according to Wikipedia) as "far north as Grey's Harbor County", which is as north as Olympia, but not as north as Sequim/Port Angeles, it's not bloody likely. Which is not to say that I wasn't hallucinating for some reason -- but that's not it.
Which isn't to say there aren't other hallucinogens you could have come in contact with while in the forest, like another breed of mushroom.
But, as I said before, I'm not sure that's really the point.
Highroller and Tiax already covered this (while I disagree with Highroller on a lot, I appreciate that he calls out other Christians on things like this), but...
What if the 50 pounds of pancakes was eaten in front of 500 people and four of the people went and wrote detailed accounts of the events surrounding the pancake eating event.
1. You're going to have to be more specific about which event is standing in for the pancake (is it the resurrection, is it some other miracle).
2. The Gospels, as Highroller said, probably weren't written by followers of Christ from when he was alive, and in any case, weren't written down until decades after his death
3. The level of detail doesn't make an account more likely to be true
4. Particularly when the Gospels don't agree with each other
5. The Gospels were not written independently of each other
6. The Gospels make references to historical events which we know to be false (such as the Roman census as described in the NT)
What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in.
Highroller already covered this, but Tacitus does not corroborate anything that demonstrates the truth of Christianity. He corroborates that Christians existed in the 1st century CE, that they followed someone called Christ who was crucified and their religion originated in Judea.
As far as whether he "unknowlingy corroberates" what he does corroborate, it's possible that some of what he states about Jesus originated from Christians rather than Roman records.
All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time
Tiax covered this. How unlikely this is depends on how many copies were made. The destruction of non-Christian documents by early Christians is also documented, making Christian documents more likely to survive.
Also, you realize that Muslims make similar arguments about the perfection, lack of alterations and "unique preservation" of the Qur'an, right?
and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
Why should I be impressed by the survival of documents from two centuries later from a rapidly growing religion?
How would that effect your beliefs then?
You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, so...
Assuming I am sane and my memories are accurate, the only thing we know is that at one point, she existed.
No, all we know is that you think you saw and heard a moon goddess.
Do you really think that someone who believes in God at all in the face of that giant, fundamental problem with the very core of Christianity isn't going to be able to overlook a few claims that some guy made that science hasn't been able to back up?
So your argument is that I can overlook even bigger contradictions, so these contradictions don't matter?
I think, based on my gut, that all religions are true, and I've invented a very complex cosmology to explain how that all works out. I think, based on my gut, that it doesn't matter which religion you believe in, including atheism, because all religions, including atheism, are simultaneously true. I also think, based on my gut, that of the religions available to participate in in my local area, Mormonism is the one that has the best effects on my life.
Religions are mutually incompatible as practiced in their orthodox forms. So you really think that the Abrahamic religions, at least, are somewhat false, since you think the parts that imply that other religions can't be true are false.
But I find this perspective to be very muddled and not well thought out.
As a linguist, I also know that Reformed Egyptian and Joseph Smith's ability to translate it is basically bunk.
I'd love to hear more details about this.
Egyptologists have examined supposed documents of Reformed Egyptian.
They all conclude that they are either:
-simply made up symbols attempting to look like Egyptian hieroglyphics (and also bearing no resemblance to Demotic script, another form of Egyptian writing that did originate from hieroglyphics
or
-authentic Egyptian documents whose translations bear no resemblance to what Joseph Smith translated them as, such as the Book of Abraham. These were unexceptional Egyptian funerary documents consistent with Egyptian polytheism, not documents that have anything to do with Mormonism.
No non-Mormon linguist believes that Reformed Egyptian ever existed. There is no evidence that any pre-Columbian indigenous American group had a complete writing script other than the Maya (once adopted, advanced writing systems tend to survive given how useful they are). There is no evidence of any Semitic language influence in the New World.
The linguistics of the Book of Mormon are either farcically false or completely unsubstantiated.
This is also the case for the entirety of the history of Nephites and Lamanites.
This is where my cosmological creation steps in. The only reason that we assume these experiences are mutually incompatible is that we assume that we're beings of exactly one world -- the physical world -- and that we're all beings of the same world. If you posit the existence of a myriad of non-physical worlds and allow each person to be a part of both the physical world and one or more non-physical worlds (call them "spiritual worlds" because it makes intuitive sense), with each religion being true in it's own spiritual world, you can totally have a four-omni god in a few of the worlds, pantheist spirits in another, shintoist ancestors in another, and so on.
While I'm rather doubtful that you could make this make sense, I could also posit that atoms are actually tiny elves and we're all part of a society of quadrillions of elves and chemical reactions are because of certain types of elves liking to meet up with other types of elves, etc. etc.
Just because I could posit this doesn't mean that there's any reason to believe it.
I'm here to tell you that the only thing that is Capital-T true is that you have the ability to choose what you believe. There is absolutely nothing else that is inarguably True.
I don't have the ability to choose to believe whatever I want.
Perhaps you could, but I could not sit here and believe that I'm actually on Mars, no matter how hard I try.
@Highroller. He mentions that he was crucified at the hand of Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.
If a historian as anti Christian as Tacitus mentions that then surely it goes far to prove the Bible as historically accurate.
From the quote you mentioned
Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
Putting aside the "miracle from paper" argument, I would like some clarification on what you mean by "4 accounts" by eyewitnesses. I'm not aware of any eyewitness accounts cited by Tacitus.
I was referring to the Synoptic Gospels.
What's worse is he thinks those 4 accounts are solid and credible, seeing as they weren't written for 60-100 years after his death.
Yeah, eye witnesses would NEVER forget parts, embellish parts, or even fabricate parts of a 60 year old story.
They would never dare make up details in order to prop their chosen religious beliefs.
If the eye witness made it all up why is their not people mentioning it? Why is Tacitus not telling us all how it is a fable? He is as anti Christian as they come. He could have squelched Christianity before it even started. Why is a Jewish historian like Josephus not also mentioning it? The Jews would not be silent on such a heresy if there where any chance it was just made up. Even Christianity most vocal first and second century critic considers Jesus not a figment of anyone's imagination but a historical figure.
The existence of a historical Jesus who was crucified does not prove much of anything.
And, no, it doesn't go a long way to proving the Bible as historically accurate. Tacitus's statements go only as far as what they are: that there is some (not very strong, considering it's what, 80-90 years after the fact?) corroborating evidence that Jesus existed and was crucified.
It doesn't prove **** about any miracles or resurrection. It doesn't demonstrate that the stories of Noah or David or Moses are true. Why would it?
If Mohammed included some accurate history of Arabia in the Qur'an, would you take that as proof that the Qur'an is true?
They're talking about things that happened but a few decades earlier. Of course they're going to get the basic facts mostly right.
They couldn't go around claiming Jesus was the emperor of Rome without appearing ridiculous, could they? What exactly would I expect them to write, that Jesus was born in the Sumerian empire and was the son of Tutankhamen, Alexander was the king of Judea and the Carthaginians were invading?
But as I mentioned, they DIDN'T get all the history right. The part the Gospel of Luke about Joseph and Mary needing to return to Bethlehem for the Roman census? Bunk.
It also is inconsistent with Jesus being born during King Herod's reign, who died years before that census. But yet the Gospel of Matthew claims that he was born during King Herod's reign.
If they got that wrong, "surely it goes far to prove the Bible as historically inaccurate", yes?
(Those aren't the only inconsistencies between the Gospels, btw. There are also other discrepancies you would expect, like events being described as occurring around the same time that were actually several years apart, etc.)
If a handful of Branch Davidians (a cult spin-off of 7th Day Adventists) survived the Waco incident at their Mt. Carmel Center compound. 50 years later write about everything David Koresh said, did, and about the raid which killed him and 80+ other Branch Davidian followers.
Then, I, the FBI Director, also 50 years later, support their stories about the Waco incident, and that David Koresh was killed...
Exactly how is any of that evidence that God exists, or even that David Koresh was his messenger? How is it evidence that their divine claims (and not their history) are true?
Now just replace Branch Davidians with Christians (a cult spin-off of Judaism), and the Waco incident with Jesus' crucifixion.
And, no, it doesn't go a long way to proving the Bible as historically accurate. Tacitus's statements go only as far as what they are: that there is some (not very strong, considering it's what, 80-90 years after the fact?) corroborating evidence that Jesus existed and was crucified.
You do not seem to realise how much independent corroborating evidence means when when we try to discern the truth of historical claims.
You really should attribute your quotes to the proper book/chapter. This one came from 2 Peter, and you were talking about the Synoptic Gospels, of which 2 Peter is not one.
Try again.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"[Screw] you and the green you ramped in on." - My EDH battle cry. If I had one. Which I don't.
You can only adopt criteria that make it more likely you hold correct beliefs.
According to my criteria, I should not believe that Essence met a moon/wind spirit/goddess nor should I believe in Mormonism.
Your forest experience was probably a hallucination. Even assuming no previous experience with this moon god, it's very possible that you came across something mentioning her previously in life and it was tucked away somewhere deep. Cue running, dehydration, elation from breaking social norms, etc. there's a cocktail of neurotransmitters in your brain.
Current research suggests that hallucinations occur in almost everyone's life at least once or twice.
Now, how you approach this information is up to you. If I were you, I'd disregard it and enjoy worship of this new strange god that you connected so strongly with. You only live once, and you might as well have a fun, interesting life.
Loam Pox
Standard:
Boros Burn
But, I'm not sure such speculation was the point of the thread (but I am still trying to figure out that point).
LOL... umm... hey Essance? I just did some clicking on wiki... Where you in "Olympia WA" at the time, like your profile says you now live?
Because "Psilocybe azurescens," which has the highest known level of Psilocybin for a mushroom, is native to WA. Apparently "Cape Disappointment State Park, near Ilwaco, Washington, has a large population, but harvesting is a potential felony that is enforced by local law enforcement agencies."
Was it anywhere around there, by chance? Did you step on any mushrooms while running?
Maybe the basis of your belief is not as intellectually rigorous as some may want. The basis of your belief may get criticised for it lack of rigour and such criticism may not be unreasonable. It may also be not great at convincing other people of your religions truth but here is the real zinger...
Religion's truth claims can be true even if not every person who believes it has the capacity to defend his believes in a way that is intellectually engaging enough for everyone.
That would exclude everything that happens only once as being believeable then.
What if the 50 pounds of pancakes was eaten in front of 500 people and four of the people went and wrote detailed accounts of the events surrounding the pancake eating event. What if one of the person like this one for instance this One wrote a account of how he did not believe the pancake eating event but unknowlingy corroberates the 4 accounts that the pancake eating believers believed in. All of these accounts being written on a substance almost as fragile as tissue paper yet almost miracously these accounts survive the test of time and even two thousand years after the great pancake eating event their still survives writtent accounts of the pancake eating event written within two centuries of the death of the great pancake eater.
How would that effect your beliefs then?
Then we only have the word of the four. The five hundred may as well be five or five million.
That depends on what the flow of information was between the four and him. If he heard about their accounts, and wrote about them, that would not be persuasive at all.
I would embarrassed to consider that as evidence.
Probably wouldn't improve my likelihood of believing by very much. Anyone can write down anything they want. People wrote down stories of a dude coming back from the dead, and you'd have to be some sort of chump to believe those.
Shall we regard it as a miracle of equal significance that one can still read, say, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura?
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
1) Religious texts were written down far more frequently than other texts. When writing materials are scarce, and writing is time-consuming only those texts which are considered very important are actually recorded.
2) Religious texts are stored more carefully than other texts.
3) Early christian rulers ordered the destruction of many non-Christian texts. See for example Jovian's burning of the library of Antioch, the burning of the library of the Serapeum by Theodosius I, and others.
So, you have a situation where there are more of these texts than others, they are specifically preserved more carefully, and other texts are targeted for destruction, and you think it's some sort of surprise that more New Testament manuscripts make it to the present day? C'mon man. Just think these things through for a minute.
Really Bakgat?
Argument From It's A Miracle Really Old Paper Survived
It's, like a spin-off of http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/astonishment.html it's that bad.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Yeah, eye witnesses would NEVER forget parts, embellish parts, or even fabricate parts of a 60 year old story.
They would never dare make up details in order to prop their chosen religious beliefs.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
He didn't necessarily even have to have contact with mushrooms, although great catch there, in order to hallucinate. He could have also been exhausted, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, very hot, or very cold.
Note that all of this is if we take at face value his claim that he was "under the influence of exactly zero mind-altering substances and with otherwise perfect clarity" prior to deciding to run through the woods naked.
Depends on what you mean by "corroborates."
Tactitus wrote the following:
Source: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/tacitus/tacitusannals15.html
So to say they corroborate the four Gospels depends on what, exactly, you mean. The Annals do say that there were such people as Christians, they were the followers of a man named Christus, that Christus suffered at the hands of Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, and that this movement originated from Judaea.
This is, however, all it corroborates.
They survive because they were retranscribed again and again. We don't just have one copy of the Gospels. All of the Gospels you read in Bibles are composed from numerous different copies.
Oh we most certainly do not have the word of the Four. None of the Gospels were written by the people whose names later traditions attached to them. The earliest Gospel, the one called Mark, was written some 30-40 years after Jesus' crucifixion.
Why not? If every banker I meet is untrustworthy, and every banker the Canadian meets is honest, each one of us is completely correct. The world is chock full of this kind of thing. There's no reason for either of us to consider the other option if we never come across the opposite experience.
I entirely disagree. If you never meet the goddess and she never does anything to anyone you know, she effectively doesn't exist as far as your life is concerned. It's a different claim when you're talking about something omnipresent or something that created the universe, but seriously trying to talk about something that I alone experienced as though it necessarily must or must not exist in an absolute sense is not just philosophically silly, but actually scientifically silly, too, at least if you adhere to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. If Schrodinger's cat can be simulaneously alive and dead until the waveform collapses, the moon goddess can be simultaneously existent and nonexistent until someone else either sees her or finds some sort of way to prove her nonexistence. Assuming I am sane and my memories are accurate, the only thing we know is that at one point, she existed. Not knowing the rules of goddesshood, we don't know whether or not that implies her continued existence.
Oh, it's absolutely true.
On other hand, the criticism against Christianity includes things like "If God created everything, then clearly He created Lucifer, Hell, and sin, for the explicit purpose of putting the vast majority of humankind into eternal torture because they failed the test that He, by definition, knew they would fail, all the while keeping Himself deliberately hidden from them once they had the intellectual understanding to create the scientific method and the technology to equip 90% of the world's population with readily available cameras, despite having regularly stopped the sun, parted seas, and otherwise performed giant flashy miracles right up to about the time that science began to really become a commonplace pursuit."
Do you really think that someone who believes in God at all in the face of that giant, fundamental problem with the very core of Christianity isn't going to be able to overlook a few claims that some guy made that science hasn't been able to back up?
I think, based on my gut, that all religions are true, and I've invented a very complex cosmology to explain how that all works out. I think, based on my gut, that it doesn't matter which religion you believe in, including atheism, because all religions, including atheism, are simultaneously true. I also think, based on my gut, that of the religions available to participate in in my local area, Mormonism is the one that has the best effects on my life.
I'd love to hear more details about this.
This is where my cosmological creation steps in. The only reason that we assume these experiences are mutually incompatible is that we assume that we're beings of exactly one world -- the physical world -- and that we're all beings of the same world. If you posit the existence of a myriad of non-physical worlds and allow each person to be a part of both the physical world and one or more non-physical worlds (call them "spiritual worlds" because it makes intuitive sense), with each religion being true in it's own spiritual world, you can totally have a four-omni god in a few of the worlds, pantheist spirits in another, shintoist ancestors in another, and so on.
That's how I explain it away to myself, too. When I decide it wasn't real. I change my mind on that every once in a while, mostly because on the one hand, it's inexplicable, but on the other hand, my life seems to largely be better when I believe that my wife and I are bound together by more than just a series of highly improbable coincidences and one significant hallucination. It's a pragmatic insanity.
I'm here to tell you that the only thing that is Capital-T true is that you have the ability to choose what you believe. There is absolutely nothing else that is inarguably True.
I love you.
Dude. I've told you explicitly like twice now AND it's the title of the thread. The point is try to come to a conclusion about whether or not it's a good decision to use your own personal subjective experiences as a basis for your belief system. How is this even still a question?
No, I lived on the North Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, halfway between Sequim and Port Angeles.
Well, seeing as it's a costal mushroom that grows in dune grass, whereas I was in the forest, and it's found (according to Wikipedia) as "far north as Grey's Harbor County", which is as north as Olympia, but not as north as Sequim/Port Angeles, it's not bloody likely. Which is not to say that I wasn't hallucinating for some reason -- but that's not it.
Well, I can tell you that I wasn't exhausted or sleep-deprived. I was pretty cold and pretty thirsty, as I'd been running for a while.
It was a pretty normal activity for me at the time. My nearest neighbor was a mile away, and there was at least one direction in which I could run for as far as the roads and deer paths went without seeing a soul. Most of it was owned by the Department of Natural Resources. So yeah, I gave no ****s about being naked. I used to get great milage out of pretending to be a high-level druid.
Just in case anyone actually cares:
The round building was my home, built by my mom and dad over the course of a decade or so, out of cordwood masonry. They were hippies. It's still there, just being rented to someone who likes living in the middle of nowhere. The "A" isn't relevant except that it's where Google Maps says my home is according to my address.
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
There is a big difference between 'every banker you meet' and 'every banker'.
Note the key word hidden in there: 'effectively'. Things either exist, or don't exist. There are certainly things we might be ignorant of, or which don't effect us, but those still exist. This is not peek-a-boo, and we're not two years old.
Schrodinger's cat is not an attempt to explain how one should apply quantum physics, it's an attempt show how absurd your interpretation is. Schrodinger's point was that the cat CAN'T be alive and dead, and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation was silly as applied to macroscopic objects (and in fact Schrodinger contended it was therefore also silly as applied to the quantum scale).
Not to me. Every banker I meet is every banker, as far as my experience is concerned. Therefore I'd have exactly no reason to assume, if every banker I met was dishonest, that there exists a banker who was trustworthy.
Time. Death. Electrons. Red/green and blue/yellow. There are a lot of states of being between "existing" and "not existing". It's not a binary thing.
None of which is relevant whatsoever to my argument. Shrodinger's critique of the Copenhagen interpretation nonetheless creates a situation in which a macroscopic entity is given quantum properties. The fact that he thinks it's silly to do so doesn't mean that the premise doesn't apply. How do we know that a goddess has macroscopic, rather than quantum, properties?
Wit and wisdom from my four-year-old son. Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good belly laugh.
Again, that's not the same as 'existing'. A banker that I've met and you haven't exists. A banker you've met and I haven't exists. If you tell me about him, he doesn't magically pop into existence - he's always been there.
The idea that time may not exist seems to support my contention. They're not arguing it both exists and doesn't.
Again, he's not saying both categories. He's saying one or the other.
Again, not an example of what you're talking about...
Still not a thing that exists and doesn't exist.
Every single example you've given either exists or doesn't exist. Not both. Not in between.
Well, suppose she does have quantum properties, just for fun. You observed her, so it's a bit late for that, isn't it?
But--at the very least--it honestly sounds like you're Mormon in name only if you're not willing to say YOU--personally--believe that the Mormon doctrine is likely more true than every other religion, not because it's convent to call yourself one. Believing it more true than any alternative seems like a necessarily requirement to be "truly" part of a faith, IMO anyway.
Because it's non-obvious if you're doing that.
Which isn't to say there aren't other hallucinogens you could have come in contact with while in the forest, like another breed of mushroom.
But, as I said before, I'm not sure that's really the point.
2. The Gospels, as Highroller said, probably weren't written by followers of Christ from when he was alive, and in any case, weren't written down until decades after his death
3. The level of detail doesn't make an account more likely to be true
4. Particularly when the Gospels don't agree with each other
5. The Gospels were not written independently of each other
6. The Gospels make references to historical events which we know to be false (such as the Roman census as described in the NT)
Highroller already covered this, but Tacitus does not corroborate anything that demonstrates the truth of Christianity. He corroborates that Christians existed in the 1st century CE, that they followed someone called Christ who was crucified and their religion originated in Judea.
As far as whether he "unknowlingy corroberates" what he does corroborate, it's possible that some of what he states about Jesus originated from Christians rather than Roman records.
Tiax covered this. How unlikely this is depends on how many copies were made. The destruction of non-Christian documents by early Christians is also documented, making Christian documents more likely to survive.
Also, you realize that Muslims make similar arguments about the perfection, lack of alterations and "unique preservation" of the Qur'an, right?
Why should I be impressed by the survival of documents from two centuries later from a rapidly growing religion?
You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, so...
Not at all.
No, all we know is that you think you saw and heard a moon goddess.
So your argument is that I can overlook even bigger contradictions, so these contradictions don't matter?
Religions are mutually incompatible as practiced in their orthodox forms. So you really think that the Abrahamic religions, at least, are somewhat false, since you think the parts that imply that other religions can't be true are false.
But I find this perspective to be very muddled and not well thought out.
Egyptologists have examined supposed documents of Reformed Egyptian.
They all conclude that they are either:
-simply made up symbols attempting to look like Egyptian hieroglyphics (and also bearing no resemblance to Demotic script, another form of Egyptian writing that did originate from hieroglyphics
or
-authentic Egyptian documents whose translations bear no resemblance to what Joseph Smith translated them as, such as the Book of Abraham. These were unexceptional Egyptian funerary documents consistent with Egyptian polytheism, not documents that have anything to do with Mormonism.
No non-Mormon linguist believes that Reformed Egyptian ever existed. There is no evidence that any pre-Columbian indigenous American group had a complete writing script other than the Maya (once adopted, advanced writing systems tend to survive given how useful they are). There is no evidence of any Semitic language influence in the New World.
The linguistics of the Book of Mormon are either farcically false or completely unsubstantiated.
This is also the case for the entirety of the history of Nephites and Lamanites.
While I'm rather doubtful that you could make this make sense, I could also posit that atoms are actually tiny elves and we're all part of a society of quadrillions of elves and chemical reactions are because of certain types of elves liking to meet up with other types of elves, etc. etc.
Just because I could posit this doesn't mean that there's any reason to believe it.
I don't have the ability to choose to believe whatever I want.
Perhaps you could, but I could not sit here and believe that I'm actually on Mars, no matter how hard I try.
If a historian as anti Christian as Tacitus mentions that then surely it goes far to prove the Bible as historically accurate.
From the quote you mentioned
I was referring to the Synoptic Gospels.
If the eye witness made it all up why is their not people mentioning it? Why is Tacitus not telling us all how it is a fable? He is as anti Christian as they come. He could have squelched Christianity before it even started. Why is a Jewish historian like Josephus not also mentioning it? The Jews would not be silent on such a heresy if there where any chance it was just made up. Even Christianity most vocal first and second century critic considers Jesus not a figment of anyone's imagination but a historical figure.
And, no, it doesn't go a long way to proving the Bible as historically accurate. Tacitus's statements go only as far as what they are: that there is some (not very strong, considering it's what, 80-90 years after the fact?) corroborating evidence that Jesus existed and was crucified.
It doesn't prove **** about any miracles or resurrection. It doesn't demonstrate that the stories of Noah or David or Moses are true. Why would it?
If Mohammed included some accurate history of Arabia in the Qur'an, would you take that as proof that the Qur'an is true?
They're talking about things that happened but a few decades earlier. Of course they're going to get the basic facts mostly right.
They couldn't go around claiming Jesus was the emperor of Rome without appearing ridiculous, could they? What exactly would I expect them to write, that Jesus was born in the Sumerian empire and was the son of Tutankhamen, Alexander was the king of Judea and the Carthaginians were invading?
But as I mentioned, they DIDN'T get all the history right. The part the Gospel of Luke about Joseph and Mary needing to return to Bethlehem for the Roman census? Bunk.
It also is inconsistent with Jesus being born during King Herod's reign, who died years before that census. But yet the Gospel of Matthew claims that he was born during King Herod's reign.
If they got that wrong, "surely it goes far to prove the Bible as historically inaccurate", yes?
(Those aren't the only inconsistencies between the Gospels, btw. There are also other discrepancies you would expect, like events being described as occurring around the same time that were actually several years apart, etc.)
Then, I, the FBI Director, also 50 years later, support their stories about the Waco incident, and that David Koresh was killed...
Exactly how is any of that evidence that God exists, or even that David Koresh was his messenger? How is it evidence that their divine claims (and not their history) are true?
Now just replace Branch Davidians with Christians (a cult spin-off of Judaism), and the Waco incident with Jesus' crucifixion.
Thanks to Xenphire @ Inkfox for the amazing new sig
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments
are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
You do not seem to realise how much independent corroborating evidence means when when we try to discern the truth of historical claims.
And also not to realize that we already know that the Gospels make factually incorrect claims. Why didn't you respond to that part?
You really should attribute your quotes to the proper book/chapter. This one came from 2 Peter, and you were talking about the Synoptic Gospels, of which 2 Peter is not one.
Try again.
Pristaxcontrombmodruu!