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God probably won't allow us to find Nahom


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1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

So even if NHM really is quite unlikely as a coincidence, it isn't an isolated event that represents the one and only time the Book of Mormon was put on the spot. Instead it's the single best find that Mormon apologists have turned up in over one hundred years of searching a lot of land, and a lot of time, and all through the Book. 

Precisely reckoning the odds seems unlikely to be worthwhile to me, but my rough statistical sniff test tells me that NHM is not significantly more unlikely than I would expect the most unlikely find to be, after all this time. 

It is more complex than just finding a place name NHM. It would also have to date to the era Lehi was supposed to have been in the area. It would also have to be on a route that would fall in with the travel narrative in the Book of Mormon. Finding a place named NHM in any other area that would not fit the travel narrative would not fit the travel narrative and would not count as evidence even if it were dated to Lehi's time because it would not fit the travel narrative.

 As far back as 1950, before Nehem was found on a map, Hugh Nibley had predicted pretty much where it should be found. And he was close. There are several possibilities that come to mind on this as I noted to SamuelTheLamanite (there may actually be more). (1) Is that the travel narrative was written by a person who had traveled through the area, (2) Joseph had seen a map with Nehhm or Nehem on it and just changed a couple of letters to get Nahom, or (3) he just made up the whole thing off the top of his head. Of the three scenarios and with our present data base, which of the three would be the least likely?

Glenn

 

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The travel narrative seems pretty vague to me, though. Making out that it picks out the NHM site precisely, in either space or time, seems like Texas sharpshooting. So I don't buy that it takes any fantastic one-in-a-zillion coincidence for this to just be a fluke. The best you're likely to be able to argue for is something around the one-in-a-hundred level, and skeptics might never see it as getting even that low, because of the chance of the map. 

But the point of my last post is that that level of unlikeliness is just not enough, because this is not a single sample. It's post-selected for success, after Mormon apologists have been combing their Book and the world for archaeological confirmation for the past hundred years and more. Given that amount of time and effort, it would take astonishingly bad luck not to have turned up something like NHM by now.

I'm also starting to wonder how solid NHM is, at that. That Muslim blog to which Samuel linked seems to confuse Lehi's Ishmael with Abraham's, but the blog author quotes a Dr. Mohammed Maraqten to the effect that the NHM on the stones is indeed really NHM and not N(H-with-a-dot-under-it)M, whereas only N(H-with-a-dot-under-it)M could be related to Nahom. If this is true, then the NHM inscription would be only a close-but-no-cigar near-coincidence of exactly the kind that skeptics expect.

If you google the Sabean alphabet, you find that the glyphs which we render as H or (H-with-a-dot-under) are actually things that look more like blocky Ys, with the dot-version having a distinct jog in the Y's upright. So calling this inscription as H rather than (H-with-a-dot) is probably not ambiguous. Whether it's clear that Nahom had to have been H-with-a-dot instead of plain H, I can't say. But if we get to the point where we discover that Nahom could be confused with an ancient Arabean word for "stonecutter", then suddenly the chance of finding something like Nahom on a stone anywhere in ancient Arabia jumps up quite a lot. It'd be like some future novelist writing a book with a made-up location that happened to sound kind of like "Stop". Somebody in that future time conjectures that the place was actually real, and digs into an early 21st century street intersection ...

Edited by Physics Guy
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On 10/10/2017 at 8:17 PM, SamuelTheLamanite said:

For 50 the odds would be 1 in 46  (2300 Biblical names). For 20 the odds would be 1 of 115. I wouldn't be impressed with 1 in 115 odds, let alone 1 in  46. There are many possible aspects about the Book of Mormon, so we can reasonably assume NHM = Nahom is "a modest coincidence" like the Physics Guy says.  You won't impress anyone if you win 10 dollars with 1 in 500 odds in a lottery ticket, why should we be impressed by 1 in 115? To clarify finding 50 is not less than 1/100.  We can never prove coincidence, you can only demonstrate that it is a decent possibility.  

Why are we going from 20 to 50?  If I find 50 would you tel me to find 200? 

Samuel,

You are forgetting that you have to multiple your total of 2.17% (1/46) by .42 because Joseph Smith only had a 42% chance in the first place of using a Biblical name. The total turns out to be .91% or just under 1/100 chance of him getting a match with a Biblical name. So, yes, 50 toponyms is still not very meaningful.

For EVERYONE ELSE

It seems like everyone is missing the point of what Samuel is doing. He is looking at this as if Joseph Smith were just making up names for his fictional Book of Mormon story and  deriving a significant portion of these names from the Bible. His overall approach is potentially relevant, but the Bible's high volume of names (around 2600, which I hypothetically reduced to 2300 because of potential consonant overlap with some names) and the Book of Mormon's 42% usage of Bible names make his effort unlikely to be significant. 

Let's suppose, just to hypothetically explain what Samuel is is trying to argue, that the Bible had only 100 names (instead of 2300) and that 80% of Book of Mormon names were derived from the Bible (instead of just 42%). Then assume that in the region surrounding the Nihm tribal grounds we could find 50 distinct toponyms from around Lehi's time period that have valid consonant matches with names from the Bible. That would mean that Joseph Smith's fabricated toponym  would have about a 40% chance of matching the consonants of a real toponym near the Nihm tribal region. In other words, if the total number of Bible names were really that low, and if the percentage of Book of Mormon names derived from the Bible were really that high, and if the number of toponyms in the Nihm region with distinct consonant matches with Bible names was really around 50, then Joseph Smith would have a good probability (40% is definitely not statistically unlikely) of randomly choosing a Bible name that matched the consonants of a real toponym from the right time period in this region of Arabia.

Forget about etymologies and everything else. What the names actually mean is a moot point in Samuel's approach. And in theory, the approach is valid. Yet it is only valid if one is (from the outset) open to the possibility that Joseph Smith was just randomly making up names in a fictional story. In other words, it is an argument that can potentially be used by believers to show non-believers that the chance of Joseph Smith making up this name and surrounding it with the specific details that he did is unlikely (or, depending on the results, it could be used by non-believers to show believers that it was actually likely, and therefore statistically insignificant). It is NOT, however, an argument that is very relevant or convincing to someone who already believes that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, that Nephi was a real person, and that Nephi's family stopped at a real place in southern Arabia transliterated as Nahom. Whether the chances of Joseph Smith guessing such a name are good or not is a moot point to believers because they have a testimony that Joseph Smith is a prophet. They already know that Nahom is a real place and thus to them the only relevant argument pertaining to its discovery is about how many NHM names there are in ancient Arabia and which ones, if any, are a likely candidate for Nephi's description of Nahom. Believers can forget about Samuel's little project when it comes to convincing themselves or other believers about how likely it is that God will allow us to find Nahom. His project is completely irrelevant in that situation.

Yet, as I pointed out above, the odds are not at all in favor of Samuel's project being a significant deterrent to the apologetic argument meant for the assumptions of non-believers. Even if you find 100 toponyms, Samuel, it is still going to be less than 1 out of 50 chance for Joseph to have gotten a match. Still not good. But then you have to account for the other unlikelihoods. In probability situations, these must be multiplied when they are concentrated around the same event or issue. Let's say the probability of Joseph Smith randomly generating the valid wordplay related to Nahom is 1 out of 10, and let's say the probability of him placing the eastward turn at a place called Nahom is 1 out of 4, and let's say the probability of him describing a place like Bountiful, with all its unlikely details, a long journey eastward of Nahom is 1 out of 10. These estimates seem way too high to me, but even hypothetically placing them that high, it still results in the probability of Joseph guessing this name in conjunction with these details at .005 %. That is about than 1 out of 20,000. Not good odds. And that is the point being made in the evidence video. 

 

 

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16 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It seems like everyone is missing the point of what Samuel is doing. He is looking at this as if Joseph Smith were just making up names for his fictional Book of Mormon story and  deriving a significant portion of these names from the Bible. His overall approach is potentially relevant, but the Bible's high volume of names (around 2600, which I hypothetically reduced to 2300 because of potential consonant overlap with some names) and the Book of Mormon's 42% usage of Bible names make his effort unlikely to be significant. 

Thanks for articulating Sam's theory. But it ignores context. I think that is what you are saying later in your post. The fact that a region called Nehem has been found on a map that is analagous to the Book of Mormon Nahom is not surprising in and of itself. After all several words that fit the nhm consonants are found in the Bible. There is also biblical precedent for a person's name also becoming a a place name such as Dedan. It is the context that is important that makes the Book of Mormon mention of nhm as a place name plausible as evidence (not proof).

Glenn

Edited by Glenn101
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The point about all this being moot for believers is true, I believe. Very low probability estimates reached by multiplying many small chances are always iffy, however.

First of all the multiplication tends to amplify even a mild tendency to underestimate the individual chances. So you can easily sound as though you're making reasonable estimates, albeit on the low end, and then you come out with a product that equals "virtually impossible". Someone else might make equally reasonable estimates on the high end, and come out with a final product that wasn't nearly so tiny. Issue by issue, you're not so far apart from each other, but on the final conclusion, you're a long way apart.

So the more meaningful thing is to try to come up with a range of final probabilities, by comparing the product of all the high-end estimates to the product of all the low-end estimates. What this usually produces, though, is a probability range that extends from "virtually impossible" all the way up to "not so unlikely at all". Which really just means that once you have a conclusion that depends on a long series of poorly known issues, you have no idea at all what the odds are.

The other problem with multiplying probabilities is that it assumes the issues are uncorrelated. If there's even a low probability for a case in which all the issues would be tightly correlated together, then that case may easily be much more likely than one would estimate by multiplying all the individual probabilities as if they were uncorrelated. Only a few people are dumb enough to leave their password at "password", for example, but the fraction of all passwords that are "password" is way more than (1/26)^8. So as soon as somebody arrives at a very low total probability estimate by multiplying individual probabilities, they pretty much undermine their own result, because the chance that they have overlooked some possible scenarios in which the issues would be correlated is sure to be much higher than their very low estimate.

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On 10/13/2017 at 9:12 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

Samuel,

You are forgetting that you have to multiple your total of 2.17% (1/46) by .42 because Joseph Smith only had a 42% chance in the first place of using a Biblical name. The total turns out to be .91% or just under 1/100 chance of him getting a match with a Biblical name. So, yes, 50 toponyms is still not very meaningful.

Ryan,

You are absolutely right, I did forget that only 42% are Biblical. However, many other Book of Mormon names are very similar to Old Testament names such as Kish being nearly identical to Akish.  I don't think the 42% is fair, I say it should be at least 60%. Secondly, most of the Biblical names in the Book of Mormon are Old Testament names. Jesus is one of the very few New Testament names in the Book of Mormon. I have no idea how many names are  in the Hebrew Bible, I wish I knew.

Ryan, to make things simple let's assume 1 in 500 odds.  Ryan, I want you to think about all the claims and all possible aspects of the Book of Mormon. With many claims and possible aspects you are likely to get a hit, read Little Wood's law. Now, think about all the religious books that have been published. There are thousands religious books in the US, and because there are thousands it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit. 

Ryan, it is impossible to prove that NHM = Nahom is a coincidence, but it is a reasonable assumption. There is no need to be impressed.

14 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

 It is the context that is important that makes the Book of Mormon mention of nhm as a place name plausible as evidence (not proof).

I agree it is possible Glenn, you can take it as evidence if you want. 

 

Edited by SamuelTheLamanite
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23 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I understand, please read his comments.

If you understand what Ryan says, Sam, you should be able to articulate that in a meaningful way.  Why haven't you done so?  Here are Ryan's relevant comments for your perusal:

Quote

..................................So, yes, 50 toponyms is still not very meaningful.

....................................................

It seems like everyone is missing the point of what Samuel is doing. He is looking at this as if Joseph Smith were just making up names for his fictional Book of Mormon story and  deriving a significant portion of these names from the Bible. His overall approach is potentially relevant, but the Bible's high volume of names (around 2600, which I hypothetically reduced to 2300 because of potential consonant overlap with some names) and the Book of Mormon's 42% usage of Bible names make his effort unlikely to be significant. 

........................................................
Yet, as I pointed out above, the odds are not at all in favor of Samuel's project being a significant deterrent to the apologetic argument meant for the assumptions of non-believers. Even if you find 100 toponyms, Samuel, it is still going to be less than 1 out of 50 chance for Joseph to have gotten a match. Still not good. But then you have to account for the other unlikelihoods. In probability situations, these must be multiplied when they are concentrated around the same event or issue. Let's say the probability of Joseph Smith randomly generating the valid wordplay related to Nahom is 1 out of 10, and let's say the probability of him placing the eastward turn at a place called Nahom is 1 out of 4, and let's say the probability of him describing a place like Bountiful, with all its unlikely details, a long journey eastward of Nahom is 1 out of 10. These estimates seem way too high to me, but even hypothetically placing them that high, it still results in the probability of Joseph guessing this name in conjunction with these details at .005 %. That is about than 1 out of 20,000. Not good odds. And that is the point being made in the evidence video. 

You'll notice that Ryan doesn't just focus on one single issue.  He combines them and rates the likelihood (about which reasonable people might disagree).  His conclusions are uniformly negative for your project.  Seems fair to me.  How do you feel about it, Sam?

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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6 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You'll notice that Ryan doesn't just focus on one single issue.  He combines them and rates the likelihood (about which reasonable people might disagree).  His conclusions are uniformly negative for your project.  Seems fair to me.  How do you feel about it, Sam?

You told me Old Testament names are irrelevant remember?  He wrote, "His overall approach is potentially relevant".

Please read my response to him above where I tell him "it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit."

My project isn't flawed at all, and I hope to see Ryan's response to my response soon.

Edited by SamuelTheLamanite
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10 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

The point about all this being moot for believers is true, I believe. Very low probability estimates reached by multiplying many small chances are always iffy, however.

Physics Guy,

Would you be impressed with a lucky hit of only 1 in 500 odds of pretty much anything?  Please read where I tell Ryan "to make things simple let's assume 1 in 500 odds". I am interested in knowing your opinion.

Do you agree with Littlewoods law which "states that a person can expect to experience an event with odds of one in a million (defined by the law as a "miracle") at the rate of about one per month." ?

Edited by SamuelTheLamanite
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On 10/13/2017 at 3:12 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

.............................................................

It seems like everyone is missing the point of what Samuel is doing. He is looking at this as if Joseph Smith were just making up names for his fictional Book of Mormon story and  deriving a significant portion of these names from the Bible. His overall approach is potentially relevant, but the Bible's high volume of names (around 2600, which I hypothetically reduced to 2300 because of potential consonant overlap with some names) and the Book of Mormon's 42% usage of Bible names make his effort unlikely to be significant

..........................................................

Forget about etymologies and everything else. What the names actually mean is a moot point in Samuel's approach. And in theory, the approach is valid. Yet it is only valid if one is (from the outset) open to the possibility that Joseph Smith was just randomly making up names in a fictional story. In other words, it is an argument that can potentially be used by believers to show non-believers that the chance of Joseph Smith making up this name and surrounding it with the specific details that he did is unlikely (or, depending on the results, it could be used by non-believers to show believers that it was actually likely, and therefore statistically insignificant). It is NOT, however, an argument that is very relevant or convincing to someone who already believes that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, that Nephi was a real person, and that Nephi's family stopped at a real place in southern Arabia transliterated as Nahom. ........................ His project is completely irrelevant in that situation.

.... as I pointed out above, the odds are not at all in favor of Samuel's project being a significant deterrent to the apologetic argument meant for the assumptions of non-believers.

Basing scholarship on apriorism here seems fruitless to me, Ryan.  We should never be concerned with the personal beliefs of this or that person on whether the BofM is historically authentic.  For a scholar, that puts the cart before the horse.  All the tests conducted must apply dispassionately to the observable facts.  Interpretations might differ, but hopefully for a rational, articulable cause.

For non-scholars, of course, it is the wild, wild West, and anything goes in the midst of Bible and Book of Mormon bashing and yokelized apologetics -- which you do not do.  Thank you for your even-handed approach.

On 10/13/2017 at 3:12 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

Even if you find 100 toponyms, Samuel, it is still going to be less than 1 out of 50 chance for Joseph to have gotten a match. Still not good. But then you have to account for the other unlikelihoods. In probability situations, these must be multiplied when they are concentrated around the same event or issue. Let's say the probability of Joseph Smith randomly generating the valid wordplay related to Nahom is 1 out of 10, and let's say the probability of him placing the eastward turn at a place called Nahom is 1 out of 4, and let's say the probability of him describing a place like Bountiful, with all its unlikely details, a long journey eastward of Nahom is 1 out of 10. These estimates seem way too high to me, but even hypothetically placing them that high, it still results in the probability of Joseph guessing this name in conjunction with these details at .005 %. That is about than 1 out of 20,000. Not good odds................

I like the way you combine disparate features of the text and calculate the overall likelihood, Ryan.  It might be dead reckoning, but it is fair.

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17 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

You told me Old Testament names are irrelevant remember?  He wrote, "His overall approach is potentially relevant".

Please read my response to him above where I tell him "it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit."

My project isn't flawed at all, and I hope to see Ryan's response to my response soon.

See my comment to Ryan, which I just posted.  Not sure that you get what he is saying, Sam.  I have bolded and underlined for you.  Try focusing on and replying to those specific items, please.

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1 hour ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

There are thousands religious books in the US, and because there are thousands it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit. 

I do not believe that you can provide evidence to back up that assertion. (death and taxes are not really inevitable either, but are highly likely). Try finding Lachoneus or Paanchi in any pre 1830 book, religious or not.

 

1 hour ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I agree it is possible Glenn, you can take it as evidence if you want.

Plausible as evidence.

------------------------------------

So, if place names from the Bible show up in Ancient Arabia that is just a coincidence?

Isaiah 21:
13 The a burden upon Arabia.
In the forest in Arabia shall ye
lodge, O ye travelling companies of
Dedanim.
14 The inhabitants of the land of
Tema brought water to him that
was thirsty, they prevented with
their bread him that fled.

"Dedan is an ancient oasis city that was once the capital of one the oldest kingdoms of Arabia, along with Tayma. It is located in today’s town of Khuraybah which is at the bottom of the cliffs of Jebel Ath-Thumayd (also called Jebel Dedan), a sandstone massif that stands on the eastern side of the valley where lays the modern city of Al-Ula, in Madinah Province."
http://www.saudiarabiatourismguide.com/dedan/

"It is interesting to find memorials of the nation founded by this son of Ishmael, not merely referred to by classic and Arab geographers, but existing to the present day, in the very region where we naturally look for them (see D'Anville, Geog. Ancienne, 2, 250; Abulfeda, Descript. Arab. p. 6 sq.; Seetzen, in Zach, Monatl. Correspondenz, 18:374). Like other Arab tribes, the children of Tema had probably a nucleus at the town of Teima, while their pasture-grounds extended westward to the borders of Edom, and eastward to the Euphrates, just as those of the Beni Shummar do at the present time."
http://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/T/tema.html

Or, since they are mentioned in the text, is it something that we would expect?

Glenn

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On 10/13/2017 at 5:12 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

Yet, as I pointed out above, the odds are not at all in favor of Samuel's project being a significant deterrent to the apologetic argument meant for the assumptions of non-believers. Even if you find 100 toponyms, Samuel, it is still going to be less than 1 out of 50 chance for Joseph to have gotten a match. Still not good. But then you have to account for the other unlikelihoods. In probability situations, these must be multiplied when they are concentrated around the same event or issue. Let's say the probability of Joseph Smith randomly generating the valid wordplay related to Nahom is 1 out of 10, and let's say the probability of him placing the eastward turn at a place called Nahom is 1 out of 4, and let's say the probability of him describing a place like Bountiful, with all its unlikely details, a long journey eastward of Nahom is 1 out of 10. These estimates seem way too high to me, but even hypothetically placing them that high, it still results in the probability of Joseph guessing this name in conjunction with these details at .005 %. That is about than 1 out of 20,000. Not good odds. And that is the point being made in the evidence video. 

Is there any scientific way that anyone could calculate those probabilities. That is what I keep knocking my head against, i.e. coming up with some kind of rational odds. It seems that absent that we are all really just whistling in the dark. Right now I am just looking at things in a range of more or less likely, which is the best I can do right now.

Glenn

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3 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I do not believe that you can provide evidence to back up that assertion.

With thousands of religious books it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit,  please study Ramsey Theory. Improbable coincidences are only special when our minds give meaning to them.  

3 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Try finding Lachoneus or Paanchi in any pre 1830 book, religious or not.

When a large number of people buys the lottery it is very likely that there is a winner somewhere, but it is very improbable that a given person wins it.  Asking me to find Lachoneus or Paanchi is like asking me to find the next lottery winner.  Like Cinepro wrote, "it's misleading to only consider the probability of events after they occur (i.e. the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy)." 

No one calculated the probability of finding Nahom before the discovery of Nihm tribe near Sanaa. 

3 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

So, if place names from the Bible show up in Ancient Arabia that is just a coincidence?

It depends. According to an expert Biblical NHM has nothing to do with NHM in Yemen. 

Edited by SamuelTheLamanite
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4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

See my comment to Ryan, which I just posted.  Not sure that you get what he is saying, Sam.  I have bolded and underlined for you.  Try focusing on and replying to those specific items, please.

I just did. Hopefully you respond to my comment. Here it is in case you missed it. 

Quote

You are absolutely right, I did forget that only 42% are Biblical. However, many other Book of Mormon names are very similar to Old Testament names such as Kish being nearly identical to Akish. I don't think the 42% is fair, I say it should be at least 60%. Secondly, most of the Biblical names in the Book of Mormon are Old Testament names. Jesus is one of the very few New Testament names in the Book of Mormon. I have no idea how many names are in the Hebrew Bible, I wish I knew. Ryan, to make things simple let's assume 1 in 500 odds. Ryan, I want you to think about all the claims and all possible aspects of the Book of Mormon. With many claims and possible aspects you are likely to get a hit, read Little Wood's law. Now, think about all the religious books that have been published. There are thousands religious books in the US, and because there are thousands it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit. Ryan, it is impossible to prove that NHM = Nahom is a coincidence, but it is a reasonable assumption. There is no need to be impressed.

 

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Basing scholarship on apriorism here seems fruitless to me, Ryan. 

Robert, there are limitations and even problems with ancient scholarship.  

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6 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

With thousands of religious books it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit,  please study Ramsey Theory. Improbable coincidences are only special when our minds give meaning to them.  

You still have not provided evidence to back up that assertion

6 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

When a large number of people buys the lottery it is very likely that there is a winner somewhere, but it is very improbable that a given person wins it.  Asking me to find Lachoneus or Paanchi is like asking me to find the next lottery winner.  Like Cinepro wrote, "it's misleading to only consider the probability of events after they occur (i.e. the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy)." 

That is irrelevant to my request to "Try finding Lachoneus or Paanchi in any pre 1830 book, religious or not." That would test out your theory that "With thousands of religious books it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit" Nothing is really inevitable. Some things are very unlikely. I am even expanding your "thousands of religious books" to include all books, fiction and non-fiction. You are misapplying the Texas sharpshooter fallacy here. No one took a map of the Arabian peninsula, found Nehem and fashioned a travel narrative to fit that map. As we have already discussed, Hugh Nibley in 1950 predicted approximately where the area called Nahom should be based upon the current maps and knowledge of the area and based upon the travel narrative in the Book of Mormon. It wasn't until 1978, 28 years later, that Professor Christensen made the possible connection between "Nehhm" on a 1772 map and Nahom in the Book of Mormon. The fertile strip in the Dhofar region of present day Oman was not known or shown on any maps extant in Joseph Smith's day. Wadi Tayyib Al Ism was not known or shown on any maps extant in Joseph Smith's day. The fact that the old frankincense trail also took an eastward turn at Marib also was not known in Joseph Smith's day. Those things have only come to light many years later. Evidence has been found that fits the Book of Mormon travel narrative. It is logical and fits what we know now of the area through which the Lehites would have traveled.

You are partaking of the minimalist approach where everything is a coincidence until proven otherwise. Using your logic you cannot prove that your mother and father are your mother and father. They may have the same names that appear on your birth certificate but with all of the millions of peoples names it is inevitable that that there would be a lucky hit. You just may be the one. Can you prove that is not the case. Of course there is DNA, but that still only gives statistical odds and there is always the possibility of laboratory contamination.

Based upon that logic it would be almost impossible to get a conviction in a murder case, etc. I don't think too many people would buy it.

6 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

It depends. According to an expert Biblical NHM has nothing to do with NHM in Yemen. 

And he is absolutely correct. But we are not talking about the Biblical NHM. We are talking about the Book of Mormon NHM, the Book of Mormon Nahom. There are no inscriptions in present day Yemen saying "This is Nahom/Nehem." There were none when Carsten Niebuhr and Jean Baptiste D’Anville were exploring the area and made their maps. Those cartographers derived the spelling of their names based upon how they sounded and at least in the case of Niebuhr, the help of a linguist. Niebuhr is quoted as saying: “I have had no small difficulty in writing down these names; both from thediversity of dialects in the country, and from the indistinct pronunciation of those from whom I was obliged to ask them.” Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia, 1:35

And that is exactly what Nephi would have done. He would have written down the name of the place called Nahom the way it sounded to him (or Lehi).

I notice that you did not respond to my points about place names Dedan and Tema found in the Bible and matching place names found in Arabia. Would you care to comment on that? Would you consider it a coincidence that the Bible references those two place names and places them in Arabia with place names found in Arabia, one from inscriptions and the other still in use?

Edited to add: On your comment that "No one calculated the probability of finding Nahom before the discovery of Nihm tribe near Sanaa," you are probably correct, although that is just a coincidence. Actually no one has really calculated the probability of finding Nahom at all that I am aware of. I am not aware of any scientific method right now that can be used to compute the probability of making up a place name randomly and finding it in the general area indicated. I don't know how one would compute the odds of a person that knew nothing about Jerusalem and the area could have randomly described a place with water continuously flowing into the Red Sea, then many years later finding one. I don't know how to compute the chances of a person who knew nothing about the area describing a change in direction at a specific place which took the party to a fertile, lush and verdant area not shown on any maps extant at the time nor noted in any books of the time. That is one of the frustrations of dealing with this type of topic.

Glenn

Edited by Glenn101
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8 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I just did. Hopefully you respond to my comment. Here it is in case you missed it. 

Quote

You said to Ryan:

Ryan, I want you to think about all the claims and all possible aspects of the Book of Mormon. With many claims and possible aspects you are likely to get a hit, read Little Wood's law. Now, think about all the religious books that have been published. There are thousands religious books in the US, and because there are thousands it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit. 

 
RFS reply:
You have got it completely backwards, Sam.  It is precisely a work of historical fiction which provides great detail and makes many claims which exposes itself to discovery of many historical mistakes and anachronisms.  This is especially true as major historical discoveries are made after publication of such a work of fiction.  Lucky guesses are just not a real likelihood, as Ryan pointed out to you.
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12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Basing scholarship on apriorism here seems fruitless to me, Ryan. 

Robert, there are limitations and even problems with ancient scholarship.  

I was speaking to Ryan on his different statistical considerations depending  on whether we are dealing with believers on the one hand and non-believers on the other.  You need to look up "apriorism," Sam, which refers to assuming the conclusion before the facts are in -- a major problem for both believers and non-believers, but which is something scholars do not do.  So you clearly missed the point again, which is that we must try to analyze issues in a scholarly fashion, rather than decide what we want to believe and then try to find support for it.

There are no problems with "ancient scholarship," as you put it.

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I was speaking to Ryan on his different statistical considerations depending  on whether we are dealing with believers on the one hand and non-believers on the other.  You need to look up "apriorism," Sam, which refers to assuming the conclusion before the facts are in -- a major problem for both believers and non-believers, but which is something scholars do not do 

I am not sure how all of that applies to my project. The only thing I am saying is that it is reasonable to assume that NHM = Nahom is a coincidence, there is no need to be surprised. 

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

There are no problems with "ancient scholarship," as you put it.

With ancient history. 

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You have got it completely backwards, Sam. It is precisely a work of historical fiction which provides great detail and makes many claims which exposes itself to discovery of many historical mistakes and anachronisms.

Saying that with thousands of religious text books some are going to have a lucky hit is completely backwards? 

8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

This is especially true as major historical discoveries are made after publication of such a work of fiction. Lucky guesses are just not a real likelihood, as Ryan pointed out to you.

I think you are missing the point, just like you missed the point on how Bblical names are relevant.  

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11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

You still have not provided evidence to back up that assertion

I told you Ramsey Theory as one example. With big numbers you find lucky hits, ask any mathematician.  With thousands of religious books it means some of them are going to have a very lucky hit. 

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

That is irrelevant to my request to "Try finding Lachoneus or Paanchi in any pre 1830 book, religious or not." That would test out your theory that "With thousands of religious books it is inevitable that some are going to have a very lucky hit" Nothing is really inevitable

It is not irrelevant because our brains find lucky hits after they happen.  You have got it completely backwards like Robert told me.  

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

And he is absolutely correct. But we are not talking about the Biblical NHM. We are talking about the Book of Mormon NHM, the Book of Mormon Nahom. There are no inscriptions in present day Yemen saying "This is Nahom/Nehem."

I was simply answering your question "if place names from the Bible show up in Ancient Arabia that is just a coincidence?" 

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

You are misapplying the Texas sharpshooter fallacy here. No one took a map of the Arabian peninsula, found Nehem and fashioned a travel narrative to fit that map.

That is not the sharpshooter fallacy, I am not saying someone took a map of Arabia. 

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

. As we have already discussed, Hugh Nibley in 1950 predicted approximately where the area called Nahom should be based upon the current maps and knowledge of the area and based upon the travel narrative in the Book of Mormon. It wasn't until 1978, 28 years later, that Professor Christensen made the possible connection between "Nehhm" on a 1772 map and Nahom in the Book of Mormon.

Okay, I honestly didn't read a Nibley prediction, perhaps I missed it. But even if it is true we all know Nibley was a great scholar. I would find it hard to believe that Nibley wasn't aware of the Nihm tribe. 

11 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

You are partaking of the minimalist approach where everything is a coincidence until proven otherwise. Using your logic you cannot prove that your mother and father are your mother and father. They may have the same names that appear on your birth certificate but with all of the millions of peoples names it is inevitable that that there would be a lucky hit. 

Again,  you have it completely backwards. Hopefully the Physics Guy explains to you what I am talking about. 

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32 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I am not sure how all of that applies to my project. The only thing I am saying is that it is reasonable to assume that NHM = Nahom is a coincidence, there is no need to be surprised. 

With ancient history. 

What are these imaginary problems with ancient history or ancient scholarship?

32 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Saying that with thousands of religious text books some are going to have a lucky hit is completely backwards? 

The overall effect is that with any work of historical fiction, you will have a large number of errors of fact or anachronisms.  Especially after a long period of archeological & historical discovery has taken place.  That is unavoidable.  That you believe in magical lucky hits instead bespeaks a lack of rational thinking on your part.

32 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I think you are missing the point, just like you missed the point on how Bblical names are relevant.  

You need to face the reality which Ryan has provided for you, or have you decided that he is untrustworthy now -- because he doesn't share your imaginary worldview?

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7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What are these imaginary problems with ancient history or ancient scholarship?

Too many assumptions and educated guesses.  

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The overall effect is that with any work of historical fiction, you will have a large number of errors of fact or anachronisms.  Especially after a long period of archeological & historical discovery has taken place.  That is unavoidable.  That you believe in magical lucky hits instead bespeaks a lack of rational thinking on your part.

I think you are still missing the point Robert. 

7 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You need to face the reality which Ryan has provided for you, or have you decided that he is untrustworthy now -- because he doesn't share your imaginary worldview?

What imaginary worldview? All I am saying is that Ryan agrees with me that Biblical names are not irrelevant like you told me earlier. Me and Ryan disagree with everything else, except with the idea that Biblical names can have a potential impact.  

Edited by SamuelTheLamanite
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1 hour ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Again,  you have it completely backwards. Hopefully the Physics Guy explains to you what I am talking about. 

Sam, you need to be able to articulate what you are talking about. Your entire response to me was based upon an appeal to authority. If you cannot make your own case, there is little reason for you to even engage in a discussion. You keep talking about lucky hits as if they are the rule rather than the exception, making them "inevitable" yet not accepting the challenge to find an inevitable lucky hit for the Book of Mormon words I gave you prior to 1830.

1 hour ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Okay, I honestly didn't read a Nibley prediction, perhaps I missed it. But even if it is true we all know Nibley was a great scholar. I would find it hard to believe that Nibley wasn't aware of the Nihm tribe. 

You definitely missed it. But he did not mention anything about the Nihm tribe in "Lehi in the Desert" or in any other works that I an aware of. Please feel free to do some research and disabuse me of that notion.

Sam, I do not have anything backward. And you do not really seem to understand the arguments concerning Nahom and the context.

Although coincidences do happen in this world it would be foolish to posit that any one thing is merely the result of coincidence. All of your calculations will show is that there is a possibility that finding a place named NHM in ancient Arabia is a coincidence. Coincidence is nearly always a possibility. But a possibility is not a probability. When one adds context to the situation the probability of a coincidence is lessened with each added detail. Whatever case you may make for any particular name being a possible coincidence is really moot if you cannot account for the context. A single word in and of itself is useless without the context in which it appears. I have not seen you deal with that aspect of the situation. That is something Ryan pointed out.

1 hour ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

What imaginary worldview? All I am saying is that Ryan agrees with me that Biblical names are not irrelevant like you told me earlier. Me and Ryan disagree with everything else, except with the idea that Biblical names can have a potential impact. 

This is classic. You quote someone when they agree with you, but then they are off their rocker when they disagree with you. ;)

Edited to add: Just having a little fun on the last Sam. Not really serious.

Glenn

 

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