Created: 31 January 2009
Last Updated: 31 January 2009
Last Updated: 31 January 2009
These entries here, here, and here, are Mormanity's attempts to refute critic's claims that the Mormon leadership lacks divine inspiration. In so doing, he admits that during the Mark-Hofmann-Episode of history the leadership did indeed lack divine inspiration, but that this is O.K. His logic is that many prophets of the bible also had bad days. Of course this argument is only valid for the minor percentage of humanity that believes the Christian bible to be more than a piece of archeology.
However, his point would be valid if the critics were ‘proving’ and not ‘demonstrating’. How does one prove a negative (the negative being that the Mormon leadership lacks divine inspiration)? However, if the critics were merely demonstrating a lack of divine inspiration, then his argument is more of a straw man. I imagine the critics picked the Mark-Hofmann-Episode, because if at any time the leadership should have displayed divine inspiration that was it. To properly refute the critics one would have to show that at some time in the leadership’s recent history they have displayed a form of divine inspiration the rest of humanity lacks. In the articles referenced above Mormanity FAILS TO DO THIS.
After reading this entry I could not help but realized that Mormanity failed to provide a single example of recent divine revelation. Once again, I did not need to point this out, because a another commentator already had. Once again, the comment went completely ignored by Mormanity.
In summary, all Mormanity has done is pointed out that it is difficult to prove a negative and falsely suggests that in pointing this out he as refuted the critics. Given Mormanity’s academic achievements, it is hard to believe that he doesn’t understand that this is poor reasoning.
Though difficult, it is possible to prove a negative. Usually it is a proof by contradiction, where the existence is assumed and one then finds a resulting contradiction. However, just because one does not find a contradiction does not mean one does not exist (back to the original problem).
ReplyDeleteI'm no genius, but what I see from Jeff's posts are logic twisted to prove a point. Which is somewhat backwards and what has always bothered me about Jeff being that he is supposed to be a scientist. What is the point of studying something if no matter what answer you come up with it is wrong unless it adheres to the known fact that the Church is True, Jesus is the Christ etc etc etc
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