Challenge for Radio Free Mormon

[GoodBoy]

As a lawyer, whom I presume has tried cases before a jury, I would love to hear you, or some other lawyer discuss the principles of finding truth in a court of law, to finding the truthfulness about the church.

For example:

• Choosing an unbiased jury without predjudices or biases. Removing candidates with fear, ignorance, biases, and potential for self-advancement from the jury pool and why such jurors would be unsuitable.
• Forbidding jury tampering (dangling the carrot of unimaginable rewards, and the stick of unbearable eternal torture).
• Disallowing hearsay (reporting another person's, or possibly God's, words by a witness) or double hearsay. If God reveals something to one person and not others, that revelation applies to that person only and those not receiving the revelation directly are not obligated to believe it. -Thomas Pain, "The Age of Reason"
• Ways to identify non-truthful testimony such as a changing story (first vision, migrating doctrine), contradictory witnesses (Brigham Young vs. modern prophets for example).
• The preference for hard evidence and expert, unbiased witnesses.

Etc... You would know better than I how the truth is established in a court of law.

[Arcturus]

May I suggest as well, GoodBoy, for any scientists or philosophers to contribute to this question from the angle of Karl Popper's falsification approach for scientific inquiry?

Beforehand, I'm not sure which method (court of law vs. falsification) would be more subjective and/or incite more disagreement. But thought I'd throw it on here since there seems to be some pretty smart people on NOM.

*I am not a scientist or a philosopher so I am not qualified to give a substantive opinion from the Popper view regarding the church's truthfulness. But I like the falsification approach to seeking knowledge.

[Palerider]

[*]Ways to identify non-truthful testimony such as a changing story...

This was going to be my first suggestion. Every real life cop/lawyer knows that the moment someone's story starts to change, there's real trouble ahead for that witness or suspect. If they're a witness, they're deemed unreliable. If they're a suspect they're viewed even more suspiciously. In all of the police documentaries I've watched this is usually where the case changes significantly. Enough evidence is gathered that a suspect's story doesn't hold up and they start changing it to fit the facts or wiggle free.

And yet these poor sappy apologists somehow think that Joseph's changing story is a sign that he's actually being honest and isn't lying. They would be surprised if his story didn’t change!

Straining at gnats, swallowing camels....

[GoodBoy]

May I suggest as well, GoodBoy, for any scientists or philosophers to contribute to this question from the angle of Karl Popper's falsification approach for scientific inquiry?

I don't know much about Karl Popper, but I can tell you that the way that I taught people on my mission to find truth (pray and if you feel good, that is God telling you the church is true) breaks lots of rules for the scientific method, which is our best known and tested way to find truth.

Here are some rules/parts of the scientific method or scientific inquiry that helps scientists avoid false positives.

1. You have to compare against a control. Do adherents of other religions prove the truthfulness of their own religions via their feelings? Yes they do. That means this particular methodology for finding truth doesn't work.
2. Can you disprove it? If I pray and ask God if the church is NOT true do I feel good? I've tried this and yes, I feel "the spirit" when I do this.
3. You have to avoid biases including your own. Starting with the conclusion and only focusing on evidence that supports your conclusion and discarding all evidence that refutes your conclusion is not how you find truth. Apologists are terrible offenders of this one.
4. You have to be aware of potentially confounding variables and account for these in your experiments. This includes the placebo affect.
5. Correlation doesn't prove causation. Just because you did A and B happened, doesn't mean A caused B. Just because you got better after getting a priesthood blessing doesn't mean that the blessing made you better.
6. Anecdotes and testimonials aren't proof. Natural variability and the effects of lurking variables may be responsible. Testimony meeting is about stating "I'm a member of your tribe! And an awesome member at that!" I can find 100 times more people that "know" Islam is true than Mormonism is true. It doesn't mean Islam is true either.
7. You can't prove a negative. Especially if they keep moving the target whenever you present any contrary evidence.
For example, I can't prove that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist on the far side of the moon.

[Arcturus]

I agree that the scientific method can be challenging when applied to mysticism. However, I think the idea can be applied to the claims of Mormon restoration. As Teryl Givens said, we make big claims that are presumed to be historical facts, and that opens up Mormonism to a host of scrutiny.

An example of falsification that can be applied IMO is Joseph Smith’s claim that he knew Egyptian. I think Hagoth shows in his commentary on the church’s BofA essay that Joseph failed fantastically on that claim. Through our knowledge today, we can falsify the claim that the BofA was “translated” from a historic Egyptian primary text by Joseph. No questions left on the table on that topic except the amazing gymnastics that apologists are demonstrating in attempting to work around the counter evidence.

[GoodBoy]

As a lawyer, whom I presume has tried cases before a jury, I would love to hear you, or some other lawyer discuss the principles of finding truth in a court of law, to finding the truthfulness about the church.

For example:

• Choosing an unbiased jury without predjudices or biases. Removing candidates with fear, ignorance, biases, and potential for self-advancement from the jury pool and why such jurors would be unsuitable.
• Forbidding jury tampering (dangling the carrot of unimaginable rewards, and the stick of unbearable eternal torture).
• Disallowing hearsay (reporting another person's, or possibly God's, words by a witness) or double hearsay. If God reveals something to one person and not others, that revelation applies to that person only and those not receiving the revelation directly are not obligated to believe it. -Thomas Pain, "The Age of Reason"
• Ways to identify non-truthful testimony such as a changing story (first vision, migrating doctrine), contradictory witnesses (Brigham Young vs. modern prophets for example).
• The preference for hard evidence and expert, unbiased witnesses.

Etc... You would know better than I how the truth is established in a court of law.

Ah... one more. The problems with eye witness testimony and/or false memory.

[BlackMormon]

There is nothing to prove or disprove. If you proved in court that the church is nothing more than a Gospel Marketing institution, there would still be people following it for lack anything better to replace it with. Seriously, NOT one Jewish person ever in the Q15. A jewish person is neither called nor chosen to lead the church whose head is Jewish. A bunch of very educated and accomplished american white old men running the show since the beginning with a few black token folks and women here and there so they don't complain much and to avoid charges of discrimination. No serious prophecies or revelations since JS, BY and the older leaders have died.
Taking the church to court would be a nightmare. Plus all those witnesses: "I know the church is true..." would mess up the jury.
Like everyone says, best take it by faith and leave it at that. At least Mormons are raising good, productive people for our decadent society and by doing so, they are making this country and the world a better place. The value of the church is its assets but also its people. I used to worry about whether the church was true or not. Now I don't really care. I don't pervert its ways either. I just try to live my life the best I can with the knowledge I have.