A Challenge to Smoot & Rappleye

[_kairos]

The possibility of NHM being actual evidence of a historical Book of Mormon must also be linked with the possibility of group of Israelites leaving Jerusalem and heading hundreds? of miles south to build a boat in Arabia and have a magic stone guide them for a year to a landing in Meso America. Utter nonsense!!

[_Physics Guy]

I for one am willing to [acknowledge NHM as evidence for the historicity of the Book of Mormon], provided that [Mormon apologists] are willing to name things that count as evidence against the Book of Mormon.

This.

Some people define "evidence" in such a way that lots of things count as evidence, of varying degrees of weight. These people would then have us weigh up the total evidence for and against something, to decide how firmly we should believe or disbelieve it. I prefer this definition of "evidence" myself, when I think I can manage to apply it—or when I'm content with agnostic conclusions. When there's a lot of evidence whose weights are unclear, this approach may lead only to conclusions that are weaker than you need to find in order to act.

Others don't count anything as evidence if they feel they can explain it away somehow, by constructing an alternative theory that is also consistent with the supposed evidence. I'm willing to work with this use of the term "evidence", too, sometimes. It tends to make you look for a smoking gun rather than letting yourself be convinced by a mass of circumstantial details, so this approach tends to be ambiguous when people disagree about which guns are smoking.

In any given discussion, though, one should pick one definition or the other, and stick with it. Apologists often seem to use the second definition for evidence against their views, but then apply the first definition for evidence in favor. The problem isn't with either of these two usages separately, but with their inconsistent combination. That's just having your cake and eating it, too.

Because the two different concepts of "evidence" are both widely used, but the sharp distinction between them is not often emphasized, it is too easy to get away with not noticing the inconsistent combination of the two definitions, if you just let a few minutes go by—or a few paragraphs—between discussing the evidence for and against you. You may even be able to do better than just not noticing the fallacy, and actually congratulate yourself on your rigorous approach to evidential reasoning, twice, without noticing that your two admirably rigorous approaches are contradictory.