I’ve been reading a few pages every few days in Jordan Eilenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking (New York: Penguin Books, 2014). Jordan Eilenberg is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Here are a couple of items from his book:
“To paraphrase Clausewitz: Mathematics is the extension of common sense by other means.” (13)
“Mathematics is not settled. Even concerning the basic objects of study, like numbers and geometric figures, our ignorance is much greater than our knowledge. And the things we do know were arrived at only after massive effort, contention, and confusion. All this sweat and tumult is carefully screened off in your textbook.” (14)
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... 5mK18X7.99
This is wonderful stuff that he is reading Ellenberg's book. Now if he would only actually read the rest of the book and quit farting around with an irrelevant Islamic comparison to Mormonism (by the number of comments, no one really gives a flying flip about Muhammed or Islam, let alone silly parallels that mean next to nothing in relation to Mormonism. I mean so Muhammed and Joseph Smith were both men, big woop).
For instance, on pp. 98 and 99 we read the reasons why "improbable things happen all the time." Ellenberg emphasizes this and repeats it with very interesting "common sense" and evidence. Ellenberg might actually help show Dr. Peterson that the probable occurrences of the improbable help explain why miracles (the ones which are claimed are rather blase boring when one thinks them through as Matt MacCormick has more than demonstrated, Google him, you'll see what I mean) are simply not believable. It is vastly more probable that someone is imagining them or making them up than that they are literally occurring, and Ellenberg might help that idea break through a thick obdurate faithist faith were the inclination to really understand is there in the first place.
And chapter 10 on Bayesian thinking is simply superb and ought to help him do credible probability tests on the Book of Abraham, or any other subject in Mormonism to help him see the really low probability of it panning out as valid and actual scripture, let alone history. He's going to have to see though, the serious importance of accounting for all the evidence that is available, not just the stuff that supports what he hopes is true, while ignoring the rest. The Bayesian idea Ellenberg presents on God is quite amusing, telling, and startling as well. I hope this doesn't persuade Dr. Peterson to fall short of this chapter. Ellenberg is very good in this arena! So it's exciting that Dr. Peterson is approaching knowledge here from a very credible source that could help him out in learning how trivial the majority of "Interpreter" apologetics really is, and why the rest of the world sees it thus. There is hope! Go Dr. Peterson, Go! Read the entire book, it is quite good! I would love to see a full and honest report of his on chapter 10 most of all. Truly I would! Dr. Peterson is finally reading a book that could actually help him out in his apologetics mission to convince the world Mormonism is rational. (I'm not going to say though that doing it properly will destroy his testimony, and demonstrate with very sound probability that he's in error in believing in it, that might not sit well with him)