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Category: Mormon Times

What I wish Mike Ash understood

2 April 2011 / / 3 Comments

Michael R. Ash is continuing his discussion of testimony over at the Mormon Times with a column titled “What critics don’t understand about testimony“.

Don’t understand testimony? What’s not to understand? I’ve had one and recovered. One thing I wish Mike Ash understood is that testimonial evidence is not good evidence, and relying on it is asking to be fooled.

He’s making an assumption here is that critics of the church don’t understand the church. (It’s a bit like the soggy drunk in a bar, saying “My wife doesn’t understand me.”) Many of us used to be LDS. Some of us served in the church for years, had a testimony, and remember the feelings that kept us believing with more certainty than was warranted by real evidence. So another thing I wish Mike Ash understood is that we do understand the church. We’re critical of the church because we understand it.

While a testimony must be grounded on a spiritual confirmation, the mind is an integral part of gaining our testimony. We are expected to use our minds to study the scriptures and learn what God wants.

Whoops, presupposition. Whether a god exists is one of the items still under consideration for the testimony-hunter. So the next thing that I wish Mike Ash understood is that if you start from your conclusion, and then try to amass facts to support it, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s not just creationists.

When Oliver Cowdery made his failed attempt at translating the plates the Lord told him: “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.”

It’s true that Mormon writings encourage you to think about things that you’re praying about. But encouragement to think does no good unless you learn how to think well — another thing Ash doesn’t seem to understand. That’s not an insult to any Latter-day Saints. Thinking well is a skill. No one’s automatically good at it, and everyone is bad at it when cherished beliefs are on the line. Including me — I’m not nearly as critical of ideas I agree with as I ought to be. But by learning only a few things about how to spot a fallacy and how we fool ourselves, the poor reasoning at church becomes easy to spot.

Here’s a good example:

In 2007, the church published a statement about LDS doctrine which read in part:

“The church exhorts all people to approach the gospel not only intellectually but with the intellect and the spirit, a process in which reason and faith work together.”

It’s no surprise that the church tells people that faith and reason work together. Magical thinkers have been borrowing the credibility of science for years. It’s just a way of muting concerns: Gee, if the leaders say that reason is good, then this testimony thing must be scientifically valid after all. But while reason is concerned with logic and evidence, faith encourages belief without evidence. You can’t use both at once. Faith and reason are opposite and incompatible methods. And that’s another thing I wish Mike Ash understood.

Proof is not in the eye of the beholder if they won’t show it to you.

22 March 2011 / / 9 Comments

I’m not a masochist, but I do check the Mormon Times occasionally. And Michael R. Ash’s latest column is a corker: Proof is in the eye of the beholder.

The next several installments will deal with evidence, proof, faith and Book of Mormon archaeology.

Evidence for the Book of Mormon? At last! Unfortunately, he then spends the entire column making excuses for why we shouldn’t expect evidence. That’s always a bad sign. If he had the evidence, he would rely on it. Instead, there’s tap dancing.

I should note two important points regarding the nature of evidence and the necessity of faith. First, I’m unconvinced that any critic would “convert” because of some alleged “proof” because I doubt that any “proof” could ever satisfy those who have truly hardened their hearts against Joseph Smith.

This is not quite right. When I deconverted, it was not because I had ‘hardened my heart’. In fact, I spent years making excuses for the church and trying to shoehorn the facts into my narrow religious belief. Only when I realised that it had no evidentiary basis did I abandon the religion I’d invested so much in.

Now, as someone who’s doing science, I will change my mind if the facts require. I can think of a few things that would make me reconsider the Book of Mormon. One would be evidence of Hebrew or Egyptian writing in Mesoamerica. Another would be if a Native American language showed good linguistic evidence of Hebrew or Egyptian loanwords — solid patterns of correspondence, not piecemeal lists of ‘similarities’. If Ash has this evidence, let him say so.

I might say that Ash’s presumption may be based on his own attitude. I wonder what evidence he’d accept that his beliefs are in error. I hope he shows up in comments, because I’d really like to ask him that one question.

Here’s his other point.

Secondly, the Lord doesn’t work via secular proofs because that would confound the primary principle of agency. While there are evidences that support religious convictions, there are no intellectually decisive proofs, and there will always be evidences that conflict with our beliefs
…
Non-LDS philosophers have argued that in order for us to have spiritual freedom — freedom to make choices — God cannot allow us to know — by secular proof alone — that he exists.
…
If humans had incontrovertible secular evidence for the existence of God, they would be unable to freely choose whether or not to accept God.

So God exists, but he’s not going to give any evidence. And then when I don’t believe in him, he’s going to punish me for not believing in him despite the lack of evidence. If that’s the case, then he values ignorance over knowledge, which is not the kind of being I’d want to worship.

There’s something odd about Ash’s post. Take another look at his two reasons for not giving evidence.

Point 1: If you gave someone evidence, they could still just reject it.
Point 2: If you gave someone evidence, it would destroy their agency because they’d be unable to reject it.

So which is it? Can someone reject evidence, or can’t they? He’s rested his case on two points that contradict each other.

Is this really the best the Mormon Times can do?

Everyone worships the same god — ours.

30 January 2011 / / 7 Comments

Shorter Dan Peterson:

Atheists wonder why we Mormons think our god is the right god, while everyone else’s god is the wrong god. But in fact everyone really worships our god, which is the right god. When people find out they’ve been worshipping the wrong god (which is actually the right god), I have it on good authority that the right god will give them a pass.

How terribly condescending. I wonder if he’d be just as happy to admit that he worships Allah.

And what about polytheism?

‘Moroni’s promise’ still not evidence

25 January 2011 / / 7 Comments

I can’t do much better than profxm’s takedown of this drivel from the Mormon Times. A guy named Lane Williams bemoans the fact that some journalists have decided that atheism is interesting and worth writing about.

As disappointing as it is to say this, reporters may not be able to do much better than provide a balanced conduit for atheists in the modern world we live in.

Dontcha hate when that happens? I mean, balance? But have no fear — since journalists are providing a ‘balanced conduit’, he’s going to use his journalistic influence to unbalance the balance, or something like that.

So my point today, really, isn’t so much about reporters; my point is to use the opinion format of this blog to take a public stand because so few news reporters can or do so.

Way to go, Lane. That’s what journalists should do — argue their side, regardless of how true or well-supported it is. And here’s where things go awry.

Mormonism’s last evidence sits in the power of the Holy Ghost that comes to the hearts and minds of those who seek God through earnest, submissive prayer and faithful action. It is an “experiment” successfully repeated millions of times around the world.

Prayer is not any kind of experiment. As I’ve pointed out, it relies on bad sampling, since everyone who doesn’t get a revelation is either struck from the sample, or told to repeat the experiment until they get the “right” answer. Test subjects are told what emotions to expect, so bias enters the picture. And so on.

You can’t use a ‘holy ghost’ to confirm the existence of a god. They’re part of the same story! That’s what you’re trying to ascertain. It’s like saying “I know Santa Claus exists because I prayed to him, and one of his reindeer told me.”

Millions of Mormons, including me, would say that God answers prayers because of their own experiences with the Holy Ghost and prayer. Therein lies our evidence that God lives. I assume other religious believers feel much the same way.

That’s part of the problem. Many other religious believers feel the same way… about their mutually incompatible, multiply conflicting religious claims! Anyone who knows about science has heard that anecdotal evidence is not data. And notice the bandwagon fallacy. If this is the best Mormonism can do, they’d better give up their scientific pretensions.

Then he says, in a hushed voice, deep with portent, “I know.”

I study Shakespeare and have many books that have inspired me for years, but when I read the Book of Mormon for the 30th time or so and experience a deep, almost mysterious reassurance no other book has come close to giving me amid trial, I know.

I have experienced many joys of human interaction at holidays and in evening activities, but when I experience the quiet, soul power of priesthood blessing called down on a dark night, I know.

I am only one flawed journalist, but in the midst of the atheism debate that Gervais and others continue in our public space, I must say something. I know.

No, you do not know. You’re just certain. There is a difference. Even if your claims were coincidentally 100% right, you still would not know that they were true. Knowledge does not come from intuition or feelings. Knowledge comes from observation of real-world phenomena. And this kind of evidence is nowhere to be found.

This is my beef with religion and supernaturalism. It is such a lazy way of thinking (or not thinking). You take your own beliefs and preconceptions, and just assert them over and over again without trying to back them up with any real evidence. You get to feel all spiritual and believing. But it stops you from learning anything.

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