You've written this post in a way that unnecessarily requires further research to understand what you are talking about. It's not clear from the post what is the object of skepticism or target of evidence discussed in the post, what is your own position on what, and how the Book of Mormon is relevant to anything.
It is difficult to guess what the argument is without the context of knowing more about the Mormon back story.
Why is it so important what a group of people knew or could have known?
For example ... I presume John Smith was in the U.S. And he wrote a book with lots of Middle Eastern influences. ...so? Why couldn't someone in the U.S. (an immigrant from Europe no less) have information about ancient cultures?
Joseph Smith wasn't an immigrant from Europe, though he could have had help from someone who was.
Unrelated to the current question but for the sociological record, I would like to point out that there are three Mormons on this blog (me, JohnF, and Arandur), none of us no each other in real life, and I detect no active, believing members of any other religion on LessWrong. (Swimmer963 doesn't believe so she doesn't count.)
If you want to compromise, read Alma 32 verses 21-46, 2 Nephi 2, Alma 7, Alma 42, and Moroni 10. They are probably the most interesting chapters from an intellectual perspective, and total about 8 pages of a 520-page book.
MrHen is a believing Christian. There have been many others, but I'm not sure how many currently remain.
Though from a religious perspective, I'd imagine that you'd want to recommend 3 Nephi, too...
Nice to see another Mormon on here! Thought I was alone. :P
Well, to be nitpicking, calcsam wrote "active and believing"- which is regarding to pastafarianism a valid differentiation, I think.
I told a friend that I'd read the Book of Mormon. I still intend to do it eventually as soon as I can figure out a way to mitigate its being extremely boring. I think I got four chapters in on my last try, and discovered that Orson Scott Card ripped off the plot for the Memory of Earth series, but his version took place in a science fiction setting, he took more care not to make the names too similar, and later on it had fuzzy bat-people and rat-people, so that was cool.
Ha! Imagine my confusion at taking the opposite journey. :P Got halfway through the first book before I realized why the story sounded so eerily familiar...
I would, ironically, recommend trying to read the Book as if it were a fictional narrative. You can't do that with the Bible, because that wasn't the purpose it was written for. However, with the Book of Mormon, Mormon compiled a millenium's-worth of religious documents into a cohesive, understandable narrative for the benefit of the reader. So you can afford to read it that way.
Also, yes, I know it's boring. Even Mormons have a hard time reading it cover to cover. xP
IMO the Old Testament reads OK as a narrative, though the recurring "and then God told Moses 'Tell the Children of Israel to do X, Y, and Z'" bits are admittedly distracting. The New Testament reads as a fictional narrative even better. (Or, rather, several parallel ones.) The Book of Mormon works OK, but is, yes, incredibly dull. While we're on the subject, though, IMO the Koran really doesn't work as a fictional narrative.
Not to mention the "... begat ... begat ...". :3 I know several Mormons who simply skip over Nephi's ten or so chapters of quoting Isaiah, it being interminable and dense, which is a shame, because those are chapters that Nephi included because he thought they were so important.
Agreed that Toldot (Generations? I forget what it's called in English) is tedious, but it's just one chapter. And it contains the highly entertaining line "And so-and-so begat Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter before the Lord; thus it is said 'Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord'" embedded in the middle of all the begats, which I could never read without giggling when I was a kid.
I believe (and someone else does too) that "nimrod" used as an insult stems from a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs says of Elmer Fudd, "What a Nimrod", in sarcastic praise of Fudd's hunting skill.
I was so excited to be able to say that thing that you just said, until I saw that you'd already said it. x3
I would've thought the protagonist's name would give it away.
I did try to read it like it was a novel. I probably shouldn't, because I prefer my novels less boring. I'm just not sure what to read it like it is instead. I don't read anything that boring under normal circumstances.
Hmm. Read one chapter at a time, and therefore spread out the torment? There are resources available on the internet - pandering to Mormons - that map out a plan for reading the whole Book in one year. This has the added benefit of allowing each chapter to separately marinate in your mind, that you can decide for each individual one how it contributes to your worldview and/or your confidence level in the Book.
Find a friend to read and discuss it with? A Mormon friend would be easier to find, but would likely view the situation in a light that you'd be uncomfortable (annoyed?) with. A non-Mormon friend would be harder to find, but would be able to discuss the text with you in an areligious context. Ideally you'd want a Bayesian.
Which leads me to an idea which terrifies me: Why not make this an online thing? Day-by-day, or perhaps week-by-week, post (somewhere, not necessarily on Less Wrong, so as to not clutter the site; though perhaps Less Wrong would actually be the ideal locale, due to familiarity, extant population, etc?) a chapter of the Book of Mormon and allow discussion of it, separately from the rest of the Book, using terms common to Rationalists.
What do you think?
EDIT: My terror at this idea, I just realized, is evidence that it's a good one, from a selfish perspective. This would be the strongest possible test of my belief system. xP
Surface response: under no circumstances should anyone be obligated to read that book (or any religious text that I know of).
Deeper response: you made a foolish promise. Skimming the thread, I conclude that you escaped, this time. Your interlocutor hardly confronted your characterization of his "evidence"; he or she just dug up more cached apologia.
I'd have recommended breaking your commitment if I'd judged you'd failed, so I have no ulterior motive.
I mostly agree with this comment, but breaking commitments is bad. I used a coin flip to give you an expected one-half downvotes.
Arandur did provide period citations that called ridiculous some of the specific claims made by the Book of Mormon where those claims (South American cement, ancient metal engraving) were later confirmed scientifically. I would say that your skepticism on some of the claims was partially unwarranted.
The Book of Mormon stuck its neck out and was vindicated. That's worth a lot of Science Points.
I think that if Arandur posts an opinion in this thread, then you should go with that. In the meantime, re-examine the evidence given in the prior thread, and reread the parts of the Book of Mormon under specific discussion.
The Book of Mormon stuck its neck out and was vindicated. That's worth a lot of Science Points.
When you make a lot of claims and the possibility space isn't too big, some are going to be right by sheer chance. If Joseph Smith had written of anything that existed at the time and place that should have been a completely novel concept to him, like giving a detailed description of an animal that there is no way he should have heard of, then that would be very significant. Making references to technological developments that have existed elsewhere that he would have known about, and having those references be vindicated is not very strong evidence, considering how much convergent development of technology has occurred in separate cultures. And those claims which have been vindicated have to be weighed against those claims which have not been vindicated, and those which apologists have to bend over backwards to justify as even being possible. That's a lot of negative Science Points. The Book of Mormon looks much less like an accurate document from Mesoamerica than it does like something someone from Joseph Smith's period with very limited familiarity with what was known about the region at the time and lots of biblical influences might imagine an accurate document from Mesoamerica would look like.
Other religions have made strictly empirical claims that have been vindicated. I remember talking with a Muslim some time ago who said that the Quran references a place with sea water and fresh water, with a "forbidding barrier* between them, so the waters never mix, and he said that such a place had been discovered long after the Quran had been written. I don't know the specifics, but Muslim apologists seem to see it as a significant case where the religion stuck its neck out and was vindicated. I'm sure Raw Power would be better prepared to come up with examples from Islam than I, and Christians frequently talk of ways in which the Bible has been vindicated by the archaeological record (although as with Mormons, archaeologists who're not religiously motivated are far less generous.)
The Book of Mormon looks much less like an accurate document from Mesoamerica than it does like something someone from Joseph Smith's period with very limited familiarity with what was known about the region at the time and lots of biblical influences might imagine an accurate document from Mesoamerica would look like.
Well said.
Having followed the thread, my impression was that the evidence offered for Mormonism did not exceed the (low) standards set by apologetics in other religions. There is nothing to distinguish it as worthy of particular attention out of all the religions you could investigate.
After a cursory reading of the arguments I do not think that Arandur provided significant evidence to overcome the prior very low probability of mormonism being correct. Therfore I conclude that skepticism is still warranted and you are by my judgement not obligated to read the book.
please comment below whether or not you believe the proposition [whether Arandur actually showed that a non-Mormon's skepticism is unwarranted] was satisfied.
This is not a vote on whether the evidence is factually correct or not!
Aren't these two demands incompatible? Arandur couldn't have shown anything by factually incorrect evidence.
Otherwise, be more careful with your promises and precommitments in the future.
Then you have probably misjudged the risk. When promising costly things (such as reading a thick boring book) if a condition X is satisfied, you should at least make sure that X is specific enough to be verified easily and unambiguously. X = "a religious apologist presents enough evidence" is too vague for that. More generally, never promise anything to religious apologists for their ability to construct arguments. Their debating strategy is optimised to exploit such promises. Even if you later realised that they weren't exactly fair and you weren't obliged to pay your part of the deal, your trustworthiness and status are nevertheless damaged by apparent defection.
It's been suggested that, if I should comment, you should go with my opinion. However, I will not give my opinion: I have a strong prior bias that everyone should read the Book of Mormon for the benefit of their eternal well-being; therefore, I judge myself unfit to offer an unbiased opinion in this matter, for much the same reason that you posted this article in the first place.
I will offer this point: It behooves us to examine the strongest points of opposing arguments. If someone were wanting to know more about atheism, you'd expect them to read atheist literature, not meta- atheist literature.
That thread is way too long, so I'm not going to read it, but I did a quick search for and didn't see any discussion on what I consider the dealbreaker when considering the evidence for or against most religions (but especially any flavor of Christianity), which is the existence of "souls." Simply put, the "soul" hypothesis doesn't jive with current evidence from physics, and it doesn't pay rent with regard to observations from neuroscience (or any kind of observations, for that matter). I strongly suspect that the Book of Mormon doesn't deal with evidence from neuroscience, which means that, due to the "soul" hypothesis being fairly central to Christian belief (it is the postulated mechanism by which a person is judged for "sins" committed in their life), you don't have to read it.
As an aside, I consider this line of reasoning to be something like "atheism for dummies" since most religions that I've seen depend on humans having something like a soul.
Why would you precommit to that? You're only supposed to do that with things where it would be good for you to do it from the point of view of now, but not from the point of view of the time you actually do it. That doesn't apply with this.
How unlikely do you think it is for you to get a feeling that the Book of Mormon is true given that it isn't? Given everything you've seen about biases, do you really think it's so unlikely as to result in the Book of Mormon being true the more likely hypothesis? If not, why bother with the test? If you know you won't believe either way, there's no point in bothering with the test.
In this comment thread, I stated that
I have read the Book of Mormon in the past, but I hereby precommit to reading it again and "searching in my heart" (I have a copy on my bookshelf) if you can demonstrate that my skepticism regarding your evidence is unwarranted.
In the resulting thread five evidences were given, and some back-and-forth occurred. Being myself somewhat biased, I feel unfit to judge if Arandur actually showed that a non-Mormon's skepticism is unwarranted.
So you, who wish to become stronger, I ask: please comment below whether or not you believe the proposition was satisfied.
Remember! This is not a vote on whether the evidence is factually correct or not!
Remember! This is not a chance to anonymously signal your agreement or disagreement with the LW hive mind!
Remember! If the sky is green, wish to believe that the sky is green!
I don't know what else I can say to forestall thread hijacking.