BKP was right-some truths are just not useful!

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_Dr Moore
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Dr Moore »

I understand how this analogy may be tempting for teachers like Wilcox -- (a) complex communication & display device, (b) compact, (c) readability sensitive to ambient light, (d) inexplicable, even magical, in function, (e) especially to people from other (earlier) times.

But the analogy is false and, in my opinion, harmful to a truth-seeking pedagogy.

This has likely been discussed before, but after seeing the video, I simply have to get this anvil off my chest.

The smartphone is a work of collective human engineering.

Constituent parts, and the finished device, can all be explained by the people who spent, collectively, millions of people-hours creating it. It is documented extensively in, literally, millions of pages of specifications, schematics, test results, simulations, bug reports, and guides.

Nothing about the assembly or functionality of the modern smartphone has not been exhaustively tested and refined. Its operation is predictable and repeatable, as is its assembly, allowing for mass production.

The seer stone is a singular, purportedly magical, relic found in nature, used by only one person.

Its operation is not understood, by anyone, even those who witnessed its use first hand. No one has a clue how it worked.

Questions of how aside, explanations as to what it did are, unfortunately, totally incongruous with the product of its supposed preparation. No theory - tight or loose - offers consistency between observed events and the written account (the Book of Mormon) it supposedly helped produce.

Nothing about the seer stone's operation is well documented. Its operation is not repeatable.

It has never been tested. Unless... unless we count the instance where Martin surreptitiously switched stones. Joseph claiming he could see nothing proved, at least, that Joseph intended others to believe that the rock held mystic powers.

To all other observers, it is just a rock. To Joseph, we don't really know, but the simplest explanation for the evidence points to it also being just a rock.

A better analogy to the seer stone in modern times: healing crystals
_Dr. Shades
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Dr. Shades »

Dr Moore wrote:A better analogy to the seer stone in modern times: healing crystals

Are you sure "crystal ball" isn't a better analogue?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"

--Louis Midgley
_Maksutov
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Maksutov »

Dr. Shades wrote:
Dr Moore wrote:A better analogy to the seer stone in modern times: healing crystals

Are you sure "crystal ball" isn't a better analogue?


Dr. Shades is right. Healing crystals are used extensively in Reiki. They are not for scrying, which is what Smith was doing.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Dr Moore
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Dr Moore »

Crystal ball. Perfect!
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Dr Moore wrote:It has never been tested. Unless... unless we count the instance where Martin surreptitiously switched stones. Joseph claiming he could see nothing proved, at least, that Joseph intended others to believe that the rock held mystic powers.


Not that Dr. Moore is NOT intending this to be a diversion, but I always wondered what Mormons were thinking when they would trot this one out. How in the world would Joseph Smith not know his long-held 'seer' stone wasn't swapped out? It's not like Martin Harris found a perfect replica. Joseph Smith would've known this immediately, if we're to believe the story about Martin Harris is true.

eta: I originally meant to say 'NOT a diversion'. Sorry about that!

- Doc
Last edited by Guest on Mon Sep 23, 2019 5:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_Shulem
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Re: BKP was right-some truths are just not useful!

Post by _Shulem »

Apologetic fool wrote:The characters upon the papyrus in conventional form are of little importance. But, when they were interpreted through the use of a seer stone, they were transformed into the "Egyptian Alphabet & Grammar" which tells the story of the Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith practiced this unique art of interpreting a language by transmutation in which the nature of the characters taken from the papyrus were transformed. The characters he read and transcribed were derived from the hieroglyphs on the papyrus through the process of revelation. This is a gift of a seer (see-er), which means one who SEES through the Urim and Thummim or peeps through the holes of a seer stone. Revelation flowed and the story unfolded before the prophet's eyes, but the characters on the papyrus served only as a catalyst through which the Book of Abraham was produced. This translation process operates in another sphere, a different level of thinking. Abraham and Joseph Smith looked into a Urim & Thummim and beheld wonderful things. The Egyptian language was a backdrop for a greater picture − something that many fail to accept, let alone recognize.
_Dr Moore
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Dr Moore »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Dr Moore wrote:It has never been tested. Unless... unless we count the instance where Martin surreptitiously switched stones. Joseph claiming he could see nothing proved, at least, that Joseph intended others to believe that the rock held mystic powers.


Not that Dr. Moore is intending this to be a diversion, but I always wondered what Mormons were thinking when they would trot this one out. How in the world would Joseph Smith not know his long-held 'seer' stone wasn't swapped out? It's not like Martin Harris found a perfect replica. Joseph Smith would've known this immediately, if we're to believe the story about Martin Harris is true.

- Doc


Vogel addresses this with a theory that Joseph knew all along, but played along with Martin's con in order to amplify the magic.
_mentalgymnast
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _mentalgymnast »

Dr Moore wrote:By drawing the analogy to a smart phone, is Brad not advocating for the hard translation theory of the Book of Mormon? If words appeared on the rock, then there should have been no room for Joseph Smith to insert so much contemporary material.


Hi Dr Moore,
You're new here. You may be interested in this thread from a while back.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51468

As is often the case critics seem to look at things with a binary and/or black and white perspective. A fundamentalist view. That has always been a pet peeve of mine as I read much of what the critics have to say. What's actually kind of fun/challenging is looking for alternate explanations other than the same ol' same ol' somewhat repetitive regurgitations of stuff that's been around since the first years of the restoration.

You may also be interested in reading in depth some of Blake Ostler's works.

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-cont ... N01_68.pdf

https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchiv ... on-theory/

http://blakeostler.com/docs/criticexpansionth.pdf

Ultimately, scriptural fundamentalism is untenable and fails to account for what Judeo-Christians accept as scripture in general and for the Book of Mormon in particular.
http://blakeostler.com/docs/criticexpansionth.pdf


Regards,
MG
_kairos
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _kairos »

President Newsroom has just reported that the Brad Wilcox video will be at the top of a list of videos missionaries are urged to use in the first or second discussion with investigators- to recover funds that will be expended, the Church Intellectual Reserve Office has entered into an unlimiteded use of the video by Saturday Night Live.

The Newsroom also reported that President Nelson had a revelation last evening that the video is TRUE according to Wendy Nelson who said she observed her husband testing the head in the hat theory with his own Iphone and a surgical skull cap.Wendy recalled hearing the prophet shout Tis True Tis True I believe!

k
_Physics Guy
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Re: Boyd K. Packer was right-some truths are just not useful

Post by _Physics Guy »

I believe the smartphone analogy is an attempt to answer the question, Why didn't God just give Smith a vision of the Book of Mormon instead of communicating the text through a rock in a hat? A rock in a hat sounds like primitive superstition, whereas a vision is a more sophisticated New Agey thing. I think the Mormon apologetic line about smartphones is an attempt to make the rock out to be more modern than a New Age vision, instead of less. They play up the idea that the Mormon God is not really supernatural, just highly advanced compared to us, and then suggest that it might be natural for a God like that to convey revelation by means of a camouflaged smartphone instead of by more purely spiritual means. If you're an eager Mormon believer hearing this you might even get excited about the rock in the hat as a great example of how your technological religion is so much more modern and scientific than religions that invoke supernatural explanations.

That would be fine, I suppose, except that Mormonism really only has two examples of revelation via device: the liahona and the seer stone. It has a ton of other communications from God through the traditional mystical channels of dreams and hallucinations. So it's just not at all true that devices rather than visions are the way the geeky Mormon God rolls. The Mormon God is overwhelmingly an old-fashioned, old-school deity who speaks in archaic English and threatens people with swords. You can try to dress him up like a hipster in Starbucks for a few minutes while you talk about the seer stone but as soon as that discussion is over he's back to his actual Old Testament style. And he did not drink his coffee.

And of course there's the other problem with the whole smart phone thing. Suppose, best case: you get someone nodding along going, "Yeah, hey, I guess a special stone might be something God would use." Within half a minute they're just going to snap out of it and say, "Wait, it's still a rock in a freaking hat!"
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