Some thoughts on the historicity of the BOM

[SeattleUte]

Don't a majority of people believe the Bible to be a historical document?

I don't know the answer to that; but if they do, they're not going at it like juries are supposed to (this happens sometimes, of course). You might get a different verdict in Seattle than in Salt Lake City just because of the jury pools. This is not unlike how different parts of California would have found differently whether OJ murdered his ex-wife and Mr. Goldman.

[beefytee]

If you put the Book of Mormon on trial you don't think a jury of 12 would find against historicity on that standard? Okay, maybe not, if 12-0 is required. Like Solon said, anything is "possible".

Are you attempting to make fun of this:

http://www.bookofmormontrial.com/jack-west.html

[UtahDan]

But your profession also thinks that eye-witness testimony is useful! In the real world, there's no such thing as proof. gd lawyers.

Law vs. science "real world" fight!

There isn't real "proof" in the law either. When ever we talk about the concept of "proof" we are talking about how much evidence is necessary and the standard is not always the same.

[SeattleUte]

But your profession also thinks that eye-witness testimony is useful! In the real world, there's no such thing as proof. gd lawyers.

Law vs. science "real world" fight!

lol that is why the law has cross-examination, and why there is such thing a s a hearsay rule (because of the inability to cross-examine hearsay). But of course this trial would just come down to experts testifying.

The testimony of the Book of Mormon witnesses may well not be admissible, based on such hurdles as authentication, foundation, etc. Where is the original signed document? BUt a smart defense lawyer might let it in just to be able to have at it and not let the jury think that he's afraid of it (juries often have a nose for things being kept from them). The First Vision is more likely admissible, especially since you couldn't even have a trial without it. But it would have to withstand cross-examination.

Ultimately, science is wholly dependent on eyewitness testimony.

[ERCougar]

Are you attempting to make fun of this:

http://www.bookofmormontrial.com/jack-west.html

I can't think of a better way to present a scholarly analysis than cute fonts and cartoons with thought bubbles.

[creekster]

I can't think of a better way to present a scholarly analysis than cute fonts and cartoons with thought bubbles.

Some of th eposts here would benefit from such presentation. Would they also be less worthy of consideration by you?

[beefytee]

I can't think of a better way to present a scholarly analysis than cute fonts and cartoons with thought bubbles.

http://www.bookofmormontrial.com/came-to-be.html

[Rosebud]

Don't want to threadjack, but I need a link here. McMurrin was correlated? If it weren't for DOM's intervention, he would have been excommunicated.

Disclaimer: I don't know all that much about McMurrin or correlation. I'm still just spewing the ideas I got from Daymon Smith's work. (I'm using CUF to process.)

Over the last couple of weeks I've been mentally synthesizing his work with my own ideas about and observations of Mormon culture. I have a tendency to get a few facts mixed up whenever I engage in this process. I usually make a point to reread the work to straighten myself out. I don't have the time to do that right now, so nobody shoot me if I've mixed up any obvious facts or taken a plunge away from Daymon's (I'm using his first name 'cause "Smith" is confusing on a Mormon site) original intent. Really, I shouldn't be representing something I'm not very sure of. IOW, take this for what it's worth. I'd also appreciate anybody confirming anything that is right and correcting anything that is wrong.

******

Supposedly, at some point David O. asked Harold B. to look through the church materials to make sure they were consistent. Harold took this request very seriously and set out to really magnify his calling. His resulting project was the birth of what we experience as correlation.

David O. was evidently a bit flabbergasted by Harold B.'s intensity and didn't really feel comfortable putting his stamp of approval on the project. Harold B., OTOH, felt like correlation was the next important step the church needed to take in making the gospel accessible to the world. Lee, then, got up in general conference and spoke about how David O. had rested an important calling on his shoulders and had put his full support behind correlation. In the ensuing years, correlation was heralded as the new movement of the church that would save the world (as the polygamy and consecration movements had previously been heralded).

If I understand correctly, Daymon is using the word "correlation" to mean more than just the department and the way that church materials are produced. He's sort of saying that we, as church members, are correlated because for so many years we've been fed religious doctrines that are packaged so cleanly that we ourselves are used to thinking, discussing, and writing about religion within a well-defined, absolute framework. I've had this in mind while reading CUF the last little while. I've started to notice how many of our discussions are really centered around abstract philosophical terms and whether or not the ideas they represent are true or false.

I think what Daymon is pointing out is that we as a people have drunk so much watered-down correlation that we are unable to stand back from the way things have been defined for us and see them more for what they are. Therefore, we debate them as if they were absolute concepts that must either be true or false when we're really just struggling with definitions that were provided by a particular department that grew out of a particular place/time in world (post WWII) and Mormon (post-polygamy/breaking away from the fundamentalists) history.

IOW, we are correlated because we don't know how to think outside of the framework of correlation. The sad thing about this, IMO, is that it seems like we're reacting to this black/white dichotomy set up for us and taking sides in it. I wonder if the sooner we can back away from the paradigm as it has been repetitively presented for us, the sooner we can see that maybe we're all kind of on the same side. We don't need to accept such strict definitions of reality. It sounds to me like David O. didn't and may have even been concerned about correlation having this sort of negative impact on us.

As for McMurrin, Daymon just mentioned in passing that he felt like one of McMurrin's works was correlated. I didn't go grab the link, but I think it's in the last one of his dialogues with Brad. I think Daymon's point is that even McMurrin had picked up on the use of correlated definitions of absolutes for the purpose of simplifying communication and that in that sense even the brightest of us have become "correlated." It's easy, after accepting for a while that certain terms/ideas have absolute meanings, to get stuck in those thought processes and to therefore miss obvious other explanations. I think Daymon was saying that McMurrin's work was narrow in that sense. Not totally sure, though... haven't even read the McMurrin link or finished the dissertation.

And why are we calling him "Elder"?

I was following Seattle's lead as I consider him to be the board McMurrin expert. I'm guessing he used the title out of respect for oxcoug.

[creekster]

Disclaimer: I don't know all that much about McMurrin or correlation. I'm still just spewing the ideas I got from Daymon Smith's work. (I'm using CUF to process.)

Over the last couple of weeks I've been mentally synthesizing his work with my own ideas about and observations of Mormon culture. I have a tendency to get a few facts mixed up whenever I engage in this process. I usually make a point to reread the work to straighten myself out. I don't have the time to do that right now, so nobody shoot me if I've mixed up any obvious facts or taken a plunge away from Daymon's (I'm using his first name 'cause "Smith" is confusing on a Mormon site) original intent. Really, I shouldn't be representing something I'm not very sure of. IOW, take this for what it's worth. I'd also appreciate anybody confirming anything that is right and correcting anything that is wrong.

******

Supposedly, at some point David O. asked Harold B. to look through the church materials to make sure they were consistent. Harold took this request very seriously and set out to really magnify his calling. His resulting project was the birth of what we experience as correlation.

David O. was evidently a bit flabbergasted by Harold B.'s intensity and didn't really feel comfortable putting his stamp of approval on the project. Harold B., OTOH, felt like correlation was the next important step the church needed to take in making the gospel accessible to the world. Lee, then, got up in general conference and spoke about how David O. had rested an important calling on his shoulders and had put his full support behind correlation. In the ensuing years, correlation was heralded as the new movement of the church that would save the world (as the polygamy and consecration movements had previously been heralded).

If I understand correctly, Daymon is using the word "correlation" to mean more than just the department and the way that church materials are produced. He's sort of saying that we, as church members, are correlated because for so many years we've been fed religious doctrines that are packaged so cleanly that we ourselves are used to thinking, discussing, and writing about religion within a well-defined, absolute framework. I've had this in mind while reading CUF the last little while. I've started to notice how many of our discussions are really centered around abstract philosophical terms and whether or not the ideas they represent are true or false.

I think what Daymon is pointing out is that we as a people have drunk so much watered-down correlation that we are unable to stand back from the way things have been defined for us and see them more for what they are. Therefore, we debate them as if they were absolute concepts that must either be true or false when we're really just struggling with definitions that were provided by a particular department that grew out of a particular place/time in world (post WWII) and Mormon (post-polygamy/breaking away from the fundamentalists) history.

IOW, we are correlated because we don't know how to think outside of the framework of correlation. The sad thing about this, IMO, is that it seems like we're reacting to this black/white dichotomy set up for us and taking sides in it. I wonder if the sooner we can back away from the paradigm as it has been repetitively presented for us, the sooner we can see that maybe we're all kind of on the same side. We don't need to accept such strict definitions of reality. It sounds to me like David O. didn't and may have even been concerned about correlation having this sort of negative impact on us.

As for McMurrin, Daymon just mentioned in passing that he felt like one of McMurrin's works was correlated. I didn't go grab the link, but I think it's in the last one of his dialogues with Brad. I think Daymon's point is that even McMurrin had picked up on the use of correlated definitions of absolutes for the purpose of simplifying communication and that in that sense even the brightest of us have become "correlated." It's easy, after accepting for a while that certain terms/ideas have absolute meanings, to get stuck in those thought processes and to therefore miss obvious other explanations. I think Daymon was saying that McMurrin's work was narrow in that sense. Not totally sure, though... haven't even read the McMurrin link or finished the dissertation.


I was following Seattle's lead as I consider him to be the board McMurrin expert. I'm guessing he used the title out of respect for oxcoug.

I have not read 'Daymon's' work, but based on your post I am struggling to understand exactly what burden I am bearing in my discussions here as a result of my correlated training. Can you give some examples?

[SeattleUte]

McMurrin was an Elder. He taught Seminary and Institute for a while. This interview with Blake Ostler (published when I was in college and very influential to me then) starts with a biographical sketch and then Ostler begins asking McMurrin about his past as a Seminary and Institute teacher.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/doc...CISOSHOW=14326

Maybe his works are correlated in that this could be a progressive Mormon's manifesto (K-Dog once accused me of ripping off this interview for all my views, but I have not really read it except for searcing for snippets I remember since college).

[LA Ute]

McMurrin was an Elder. He taught Seminary and Institute for a while. This interview with Blake Ostler (published when I was in college and very influential to me then) starts with a biographical sketch and then Ostler begins asking McMurrin about his past as a Seminary and Institute teacher.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/doc...CISOSHOW=14326

Maybe his works are correlated in that this could be a progressive Mormon's manifesto (K-Dog once accused me of ripping off this interview for all my views, but I have not really read it except for searcing for snippets I remember since college).

I don't agree with McMurrin, so I am probably opposed to progress and thus not a progressive Mormon. I need to get a better understanding of this progress thing. I hate to be against the progress of the Church.

[creekster]

McMurrin was an Elder. He taught Seminary and Institute for a while. This interview with Blake Ostler (published when I was in college and very influential to me then) starts with a biographical sketch and then Ostler begins asking McMurrin about his past as a Seminary and Institute teacher.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/doc...CISOSHOW=14326

Maybe his works are correlated in that this could be a progressive Mormon's manifesto (K-Dog once accused me of ripping off this interview for all my views, but I have not really read it except for searcing for snippets I remember since college).

Wait, does this mean you see yourself as a progressive mormon?

[Rosebud]

I have not read 'Daymon's' work, but based on your post I am struggling to understand exactly what burden I am bearing in my discussions here as a result of my correlated training. Can you give some examples?

What burden you are bearing? You crack me up. How about I point out your burdens as we go? That way I can be a significant annoyance in your life.

[SeattleUte]

Wait, does this mean you see yourself as a progressive mormon?

McMurrin and I are different in that he never called himself an apostate, and I believe he continued to go to church. This interview makes clear he still regarded himself a Mormon, late in life. Yet our views are similar. Like atheism vs. agnosticism, it's a matter of self-identitification (labels).

[SeattleUte]

I don't agree with McMurrin, so I am probably opposed to progress and thus not a progressive Mormon. I need to get a better understanding of this progress thing. I hate to be against the progress of the Church.

Which part don't you agree with? That debates about historicity involve a lot of mendacity on the part of the LDS church and are a huge waste of time and effort? That the LDS Church has treated its members like children? With his condemnation of the priesthood ban? With his unbelief in golden plates, etc.? His self-identifiaction as a Mormon?