• Friend: "If you believe the Book of Mormon is divine scripture, you will keep having experiences and finding evidences to support that belief. If you don't believe the Book of Mormon is divine scripture, you will keep having experiences and finding evidences to support that non-belief. The choice is up to you."

      If you are saying that we all experience confirmation bias and it's a challenge to overcome that, I'm with you 100%

      But the literal reading, and especially the last sentence, suggests something that I just as completely disagree with, and would have suspected you did too. 

      It sounds like you're saying we can't know the truth. We will believe what we believe and we will never learn anything new? No, I think there are ways to judge an learn. The scientific method is, when applied correctly, a tool for avoiding or correcting for biases. And LDS scripture supports the idea of underlying spiritual truth and how to uncover it (Alma and Moroni).

      So valid critiques of both the late war hypothesis (actually there are many hypotheses involving it but let us simplify) and the Mormon hypothesis (ditto) should be rooted in methodology and epistemology, not in an appeal to confirmation bias.

    • Friend: In particular I suppose I am calling you out on "the choice is up to you". No, the truth is what it is. We can have different understandings and beliefs and we can certainly be accepting of others' beliefs. But there aren't two realities - the one where the bom was written and the one where it was translated - that we respectively live in.

      This complicates relationships. It's uncomfortable to know that X holds a belief that contradicts mine. To look past that contradiction requires maturity on both sides. One or both may be wrong, but we have to look past that and continue the relationship in spite of the contradiction - leaving room for it, and rising above it and loving through it.

    • Grant L. Vaughn Point taken. My language was hyberbolic. I was maybe too subtle on the issues. I don't understanded the statistical scientific analyses that the Johnsons and Mcguire argue about. Maybe [my statistician son] can enlighten. I did not go ad hominen or too angry, but I was disappointed with the references I was hearing that "The Late War" talked about "2,000 Stripling Warriors" and metal balls of curious mechanics that somehow served as the origin for ideas of the "2,000 Stripling Warriors" and the liahona respectively, among other things. 

      And while hyperbole and either/or thinking may have gotten the better of me, I still think Faith is a personal choice and very subjective even if the Mormon definition of Faith requires it to be in things that are true but not seen and subject to testing and personal examination. And I still feel, believe, and have experienced that Faith is more a choice than the result of any scientific method. They are completely different epistemologies with some overlaps in testing method. 

      I still stand by my final paragraph intended to be the conclusion. So I recognize there can't be two realities. And there can't be multiple parts of realities that don't mesh. And I'm still waiting for a complete explanation of how the Book of Mormon came to be. Only Joseph has come close to providing one- seer stones, angels, and all.

    • Friend: Can you choose to have faith in something that is not true? (Please don't take that as an incendiary rhetorical question but a sincere exploration of epistemology)

    • Friend: ie does evidence trump faith, or vice versa? When faced with an inconsistency does one choose faith or evidence? Is that what you mean by it's a choice?

    • Grant L. Vaughn People can always believe things that aren't true. And I think that is where the respect and love come in that you talk about. Whether it's a false quirk of scientific or historical knowledge or a religious belief in something that is perceived to be not true by another, we should respect our differences as we attempt to share knowledge and faith in a charitable manner. 

      Is the evidence the ultimate answer or conclusion of a particular question? Because when inconsistencies present themselves, which they do, I choose to exercise faith with regard to my religous beliefs while examining my faith to see if it needs modification. Any human, whether more scientific or faith-based (and that's not an absolute either/or), will learn new things that require adaption of the science or faith. That's the nature of the scientific method and should be the nature of faith, IMO. I can also suspend judgment of people and what I perceive to be facts or evidence until more information is gathered and that seems like a choice that is the very essence of faith and even love.

      Is there an ultimate, objective truth? That's a philosophical question for the ages. I believe there is with the understanding it is an eternal quest with a difficult challenge of death at the end, or the middle, of that process. I can't tell what's objective about that except the reality of death and decomposition with the faith, and some personal evidence, of entities who have transcended death. I don't know what more I can say about it.

    • Friend: I'll admit that the philosophical question "of the ages" as to whether there even exists objective truth or reality, has always seemed like complete nonsense to me. But I acknowledge that viewpoint exists. I will use objective "reality" and "truth" interchangeably and anyone who thinks they don't exist is welcome to ignore me. 

      Evidence is not truth. It is only a manifestation of it. A clue. Although we have to be careful to recognize the limitations of our measurements, and doubly careful to distinguish the evidence from our interpretations of it, evidence stands paramount in our quest for understanding what is.

      So you see, we can't have evidence of both "A" and "not A". The evidence will support one or the other but not both (or of course it is very possible the evidence supports neither). If it appears to support both, then we need to adjust our understanding of either what we are measuring, or what we are claiming (perhaps "not A" isn't really a contradiction of "A" but something which is compatible)

      So my question remains—if my understanding of the evidence leads me to believe "not A", but my faith tells me to believe "A", which trumps the other? In particular, let's set aside science vs religion and consider instead two religious claims (two scientific claims works just as well). If a hindu has prayed and received a feeling that is a spiritual confirmation of his beliefs, and a muslim has done the same and received the same confirmation, and hindu and muslim beliefs are utterly incompatible, then who is right? We can argue that neither has sufficient evidence to support his claims (I would), but that is a debate about epistemology and dodges the question. (In a scientific example you would debate the methodologies or statistical significance etc.) I assert that if both reasoning and faith are to be tools of truth, then they both must be able to hone in on truth and reject untruth and it will be impossible to get into a situation where they are fundamentally in contradiction. So if there is an apparent contradiction then either one of these tools is not suited to the job, or we have a problem of methodology that can be debated. We can't dismiss that debate as straining at gnats, because the camel in the room is that either you can square the evidence with the theory or you can't.

    • Grant L. Vaughn I don't accept that the Muslim and Hindu prayer results are incompatible just because the religious systems appear to be. And I don't see the camel in the room as "squaring the evidence." I think the camel is more like faith, hope & charity. So I think we're coming at this from different directions and maybe faith for me is the ultimate trump card which I know can seem to be unfair. But I don't think faith has any validity without the charity. Which is why I don't see a conflict between the Hindu & Muslim prayers or with mine.

    • Friend: "… maybe faith for me is the ultimate trump card which I know can seem to be unfair." I don't see it as unfair, but it is the question I'm asking. 

      "I don't accept that the Muslim and Hindu prayer results are incompatible just because the religious sy      stems appear to be." I like that, but I think it necessarily restricts the domain of those results. Do you agree? i.e. they can both get spiritual confirmation of the good parts (e.g. charity) of their religions, but their spiritual confirmations are invalid for settling a question of contradictory doctrines. (I'm only presuming there are, I chose those two because they are both relatively foreign to us)

      A concrete example in the religion domain. Mormon doctrine requires baptism after the age of 8 by recognized authority. Catholic doctrine accepts baptism performed by their authority as infants. Mormons and Catholics alike may get spiritual confirmation of their beliefs, but does that say anything about which model of baptism and which priesthood is the "correct" one? (If either)

      A concrete example in the religion/science domain. Some born-again Christians believe that the earth is literally a few thousand years old. Mountains of scientific evidence and inquiry consistently point to the earth being much older than that. They have a spiritual confirmation that directly contradicts scientific evidence. Should they let science trump their faith, let faith trump science, or should they seek to adjust both their faith and scientific beliefs to get as close to the objective reality as possible? The latter is my personal approach.

    • Daughter: I actually think that truth is subjective in a lot more ways than most people want to admit. I know that sounds silly, but you never know how another person's experience, bias, physiology, or brain connections will affect how they perceive the world. Multiple people can observe the same thing and tell completely different stories about it. I think science and faith both try to reconcile that by saying that repeated experiences and observations will lead to truth. Every person really does have to reconcile their faith, whatever it may be, in their own terms.

    • Friend: I agree with you except I would caveat that truth/reality is not subjective, it just is. It's our understanding of it that is necessarily incomplete and therefore somewhat subjective. But conceding that we see through a lens darkly, I do not concede that the truth is not out there and I maintain that we can enhance our understanding by improving our methods and filtering out biases with the magic of statistics and other tools (and I am perfectly content to include spiritual tools in that toolbox).

      And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Statistics is magic. Deep, beautiful, mysterious magic of light.

    • Grant L. Vaughn There's a lot more magic and truth out there than I could ever imagine.