Terryl Givens: The Book of Abraham is Fine; the Problem is You

[_Shulem]

If i were TG and wanted to remain Mormon i would stay away from the BOA- no one can revive that black cat or even name that king you ask about.

Ed Goble just told me that he's going to work on the king's name and get back with me on it. When it comes to the king's name there is no half full glass or half empty glass because the glass is totally empty -- nothing in it.

The apologists can't ignore this. It stares them in the face and is scary stuff. So also is Anubis being a slave -- it's a real problem. They know it just doesn't work. The label above Anubis is definitive in verifying that it's him and not some slave by the fictitious name of Olimlah. The hacked out snout is a nightmare scenario for the apologists. They don't want to touch it. I'm going to continue to push it and shove it right down their throats.

[_Res Ipsa]

The church is fine; the problem is you.

Blame the victim. An abusive culture. Givens should be ashamed.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nelson is absolutely corrupt. The church parasitically exploits its hosts, as a social disease as well as a cult.

At first blush, Givens appears to me to present a kinder, gentler style of apologetics. But it all boils down to what you said. The message is: we've given you rationales for all the problems, so it's must a matter of choosing to believe. If you make the wrong choice, that's not our problem.

That's the same message the apologists have been sending for decades.

[_Philo Sofee]

And since we do have a choice to believe or not, the finest way in our finite way to help us decide whether to believe or not is based on evidence, rational use of evidence, and probability based on ALL evidence both for and against any proposition. So based on that, with full understanding of my own finitude of being able to grasp something or not, I feel completely comfortable in my choice, either way, because if I am wrong, and the evidence actually does show this, I can change my mind, which is the point. Being wrong isn't a spiritual crime as they insinuate it is. When I came to this realization I was open to the idea that God really an be approached with love as He/She is a being of love, so choice of belief cannot change that love either from my end or God's. In other words, it's all good, even if we don't all end up thinking alike.

I can live with that just as I can live with my being wrong, if that is the case, and with my own finiteness. Living guilt and fear free is one of the singular greatest things I have ever discovered! I am in no need to have to believe as someone else does because they believe someone once had a spiritual experience and therefore I should follow everything that person said. I simply no longer have to worry about others' spiritual experiences, they are theirs. My spiritual experiences are for me. I feel no necessity of making sure anyone else believes me or believes in what I believe in. That is fundamentally irrelevant to my life. A group belief does not make truth or falsity. This is the meaning of Jesus saying ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

[_Gadianton]

He's taking the cart before the horse in a major way. Most of us recognize that the simplicity of the core beliefs of Mormonism is itself a core belief of Mormonism. But it's certainly logically possible that we are wrong about that, and the real gospel is an 11-dimension equivalent. That's all conceivable. It's stupid, but it's conceivable.

Just because it's conceivable, and just because there could be an analogy to post-Newtonian phyisics, doesn't mean there is. Quantum Mechanics might be bizarre beyond words, but the evidence for it is probably better than the evidence for anything. What in Mopologetics has the kind of evidence going for it that many post-Newton theories of physics have going for them? That's right, there aren't any. All he has is a vague analogy, which may very well be a false analogy, that religious ideas could go through the same kind of revolution. What is the best example of such a revolutionary idea within Mopologetics?

What idea has so much evidence for it that we can't deny it, no matter how weird it seems? There isn't one. So thank you, and goodbye.

[_kairos]

And since we do have a choice to believe or not, the finest way in our finite way to help us decide whether to believe or not is based on evidence, rational use of evidence, and probability based on ALL evidence both for and against any proposition. So based on that, with full understanding of my own finitude of being able to grasp something or not, I feel completely comfortable in my choice, either way, because if I am wrong, and the evidence actually does show this, I can change my mind, which is the point. Being wrong isn't a spiritual crime as they insinuate it is. When I came to this realization I was open to the idea that God really an be approached with love as He/She is a being of love, so choice of belief cannot change that love either from my end or God's. In other words, it's all good, even if we don't all end up thinking alike.

I can live with that just as I can live with my being wrong, if that is the case, and with my own finiteness. Living guilt and fear free is one of the singular greatest things I have ever discovered! I am in no need to have to believe as someone else does because they believe someone once had a spiritual experience and therefore I should follow everything that person said. I simply no longer have to worry about others' spiritual experiences, they are theirs. My spiritual experiences are for me. I feel no necessity of making sure anyone else believes me or believes in what I believe in. That is fundamentally irrelevant to my life. A group belief does not make truth or falsity. This is the meaning of Jesus saying ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Philo- the above is perhaps the most profound and honest thing you have ever posted! We are all glad that you are on this board!

thanx
k

[_Dr Moore]

Seconded, Philo, wonderful thoughts.

[Guest]

I've read some Givens books and he (and his wife, when she is coauthor) makes a faulty assumption in one of his first steps of logic.

He doesn't ever really state, but assumes, that correct belief about unknowable facts is a moral choice. This is a faulty assumption. Believing the wrong thing about something that you do not know makes you mistaken, not bad. It is okay to be mistaken. To a small extent, I think it is immoral to have excessive epistemological hubris (Mormons are probably guilty of this more than almost anyone), but finding out you were mistaken and adjusting your beliefs is nothing to feel guilty about. Only an asshole God would judge a person bad who has false beliefs but who is doing their best to make sense of the world. And really, who isn't already doing their best to make sense of the world?

Most of Givens' arguments boil down to: God is mixing things up a bit so that we can "exercise faith," the assumption being that exercising faith in a correct, yet unknowable fact is a virtue. So we should stick with a belief that may not make a lot of sense to us, since God wants us to prove ourselves to him by having the correct belief, even though the belief may not make sense. After all, God is the one who made sure that there would be some evidence against the correct belief, so that we could show that we are exercising faith by believing in it. Taken to its extreme, this could lead us to conclude that the more absurd the belief, the more virtue would be exercised by believing it. Maybe God really is behind Scientology!

Once you realize the obvious point that correct belief about unknowable supernatural things has nothing to do with morality, his arguments become nonsense. They only work in the first place (IMHO) mostly because childhood indoctrination is effective at instilling this "faith is a virtue" belief at such a low level that we forget that we can pull it out, examine it, and see if it makes any sense. It doesn't.

[_Holy Ghost]

And since we do have a choice to believe or not, the finest way in our finite way to help us decide whether to believe or not is based on evidence, rational use of evidence, and probability based on ALL evidence both for and against any proposition. So based on that, with full understanding of my own finitude of being able to grasp something or not, I feel completely comfortable in my choice, either way, because if I am wrong, and the evidence actually does show this, I can change my mind, which is the point. Being wrong isn't a spiritual crime as they insinuate it is.

Mormonism is a carefully crafted web that ensnares many. It maintains that God is happier with and will reward those that believe despite the absence of evidence for the proposition. Somehow--not in any logical way, mind you--belief and acting upon it without evidence is better than those that rely on evidence. You can't be trusted with god-like status and powers if you must rely on evidence. Of course, that is nonsensical, but part of God's "mysterious ways." You have to be satisfied with the Mormon answer that you just have to rely on it for now; God will, in His own due time, make it all clear and understandable to us.

When I came to this realization I was open to the idea that God really an be approached with love as He/She is a being of love, so choice of belief cannot change that love either from my end or God's. In other words, it's all good, even if we don't all end up thinking alike.

Again, Mormonism has a different twist on this. Maybe God's love does depend on your choice of belief. In the pre-existence, there was a 'war in heaven' that was won by 2/3 of the hosts of heaven siding with Jehovah and the free agency/testing plan, over the other 1/3 siding with Lucifer and the we'll all be saved approach. What if the proportions were flipped? Would Lucifer's plan have won because it garnered a majority (even a supermajority, at that)?

I can live with that just as I can live with my being wrong, if that is the case, and with my own finiteness. Living guilt and fear free is one of the singular greatest things I have ever discovered! I am in no need to have to believe as someone else does because they believe someone once had a spiritual experience and therefore I should follow everything that person said. I simply no longer have to worry about others' spiritual experiences, they are theirs. My spiritual experiences are for me. I feel no necessity of making sure anyone else believes me or believes in what I believe in. That is fundamentally irrelevant to my life. A group belief does not make truth or falsity. This is the meaning of Jesus saying ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Well, Pascal, you can keep your wager. I'm going to do what I think--THINK being the operative word--and will live with the consequences. But, as much as anything in this part of your post is that just because someone had a 'spiritual experience' (whatever that somehow means separate and apart from an emotional experience, with or without hallucinating), you don't have to "follow everything that person said." Yet following everything so said is precisely the notion on which religious organizations depend.

[_Philo Sofee]

I've read some Givens books and he (and his wife, when she is coauthor) makes a faulty assumption in one of his first steps of logic.

He doesn't ever really state, but assumes, that correct belief about unknowable facts is a moral choice. This is a faulty assumption. Believing the wrong thing about something that you do not know makes you mistaken, not bad. It is okay to be mistaken. To a small extent, I think it is immoral to have excessive epistemological hubris (Mormons are probably guilty of this more than almost anyone), but finding out you were mistaken and adjusting your beliefs is nothing to feel guilty about. Only an asshole God would judge a person bad who has false beliefs but who is doing their best to make sense of the world. And really, who isn't already doing their best to make sense of the world?

Most of Givens' arguments boil down to: God is mixing things up a bit so that we can "exercise faith," the assumption being that exercising faith in a correct, yet unknowable fact is a virtue. So we should stick with a belief that may not make a lot of sense to us, since God wants us to prove ourselves to him by having the correct belief, even though the belief may not make sense. After all, God is the one who made sure that there would be some evidence against the correct belief, so that we could show that we are exercising faith by believing in it. Taken to its extreme, this could lead us to conclude that the more absurd the belief, the more virtue would be exercised by believing it. Maybe God really is behind Scientology!

Once you realize the obvious point that correct belief about unknowable supernatural things has nothing to do with morality, his arguments become nonsense. They only work in the first place (IMHO) mostly because childhood indoctrination is effective at instilling this "faith is a virtue" belief at such a low level that we forget that we can pull it out, examine it, and see if it makes any sense. It doesn't.

Great post Fetch! Profound insight.........thanks for posting!

[_Sophocles]

Most of Givens' arguments boil down to: God is mixing things up a bit so that we can "exercise faith," the assumption being that exercising faith in a correct, yet unknowable fact is a virtue. So we should stick with a belief that may not make a lot of sense to us, since God wants us to prove ourselves to him by having the correct belief, even though the belief may not make sense. After all, God is the one who made sure that there would be some evidence against the correct belief, so that we could show that we are exercising faith by believing in it. Taken to its extreme, this could lead us to conclude that the more absurd the belief, the more virtue would be exercised by believing it. Maybe God really is behind Scientology!

Once you realize the obvious point that correct belief about unknowable supernatural things has nothing to do with morality, his arguments become nonsense. They only work in the first place (IMHO) mostly because childhood indoctrination is effective at instilling this "faith is a virtue" belief at such a low level that we forget that we can pull it out, examine it, and see if it makes any sense. It doesn't.

So well put.

It's like Jesus said to Thomas: "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

And Thomas exclaimed, "My Lord and my God!"

To which Jesus replied, "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

I wish Thomas had thought to ask at that point: "Why? Is it a race?"