the narrator

Unfortunately many high-profile apologists (and leaders) loudly claim the opposite and reinforce the belief that the BofM must be an accurate historical representation if it is to have religious value. For example, Stephen Smoot writes, "To abandon faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to effectively abandon — whether intentionally or not — faith in Joseph Smith’s sanity, honesty, and divine ordination."--a claim I entirely reject. As I have long argued, religious apologetics that attempt to tie religious truth claims to secular epistemology not only completely misunderstand what it means for something to be a religious truth but do more in the long term to harm faith--especiallly as the gap (aka "How could have Joseph known?!?!") apologetics increasingly fall by the wayside as more secular knowledge emerges. (We can see a very similar thing happening as the arguments utilized by Christian creation apologetics have been almost entirely and conclusively eliminated in the past few decades.)

No they don't.

Seems post-Mormon is used more frequently now.

No they don't.

It was first coined in the late 90s. I first encountered it a few years ago, and had not seen anybody yet discuss it in the context of Joseph Smith and the BofM.

He was wrong.

I guess you should add it to the long list of wrong things Church leaders have said.

This question has been posed repeatedly for years without an answer, and there will never be one. That's because Carmack isn't doing linguistics. If he was, he'd be trying to understand why and how the text is the way it is. But, he isn't, and any attempt to conjure up a supernatural systematic explanation of the supposed EModE will be ridiculous enough to end it all.

Or Romney was wrong.

Lolz.

In this case, the three people Davis thanked were for checking grammar, a helpful conversation 2 decades ago, and another who read an early draft but had no substantive suggestions. None of these come close to what Carmack was claiming or implying. Davis was simply being nice and thanking people. (I've done much less for people who helped more with some of my publications.) As I noted before, the reason why Carmack seems to make his claim is tied to his constant need to emphasize his supposed skills and training over others to cover up the fact that he isn't engaging in linguistics but is just acting as a glorified grammar nerd attempting to identify and force EModE syntax and language in the Book of Mormon. If he were actually doing linguistics he would be trying to understand and explain why the supposed EModE appears in the text intermingled with 19th century language, phrases, and ideas. But he can't do that. And so, instead, he throws out ad hominins and dupe people like Ryan by his appeals to his own authority.

Why you gotta be so calm about things...?

Well, it's best I leave this thread. As I noted, my autistic brain gets triggered by fallacious reasoning, and the utterly absurd EModE thesis (and even moreso attempts to defend it) are about as fallacious as things could get. So consider this my last contribution (if they could be called that) to this. Looking forward to an actual substantial reply to Davis from Carmack in which he actually responds to what Davis actually argued instead of his usual strawman adventures.

Nobody assisted Davis with the creation of his article, and no scholar would consider a peer reviewer or journal editor to be "involved in the creation of an article." Perhaps I would give Stan the benefit of the doubt of not understanding scholarship, however his claim of "various people" and then later claim of assistance of "his colleagues" beyond the blind reviewers and editor make it clear that Stan was lying (or carelessly repeating a lie). We could spend plenty of time wondering why Stan wrote out his lies, but it would probably be better if he just explained himself. Davis does thanka few people for helpful suggestions, but that is hardly a claim of various people being in the creation of his article. It's obvious why Stan portrayed the article as being multi-person creation. It's part of his schtick of feigning skills of a linguist that any critic of his couldn't possibly match--despite him not actually doing linguistics in his grammar labeling.

1. How is that disrespectful? 2. Is it more disrespectful than Stan lying about Davis's article being created by multiple persons?

My goodness, why are you being so daft. You literally just quoted the initial lie from Stan that I called out, when he claimed that "Various people were involved in the creation of the article." You clearly cannot dialogue in good faith. Bye, for really reals this time.

Whether he made it up or just repeated someone else's lie, he still shared something to try to win some points to offset his incompetence. Nope. It isn't. Stan explicitly claimed others ("his colleagues") beyond the typical peer review process. I consider your complaining about me calling out his lies instead of asking him about it to be whining. Stan's "scholarship" is awful, and he is not doing any linguistic analysis. He's acting like the most annoying of grammar nerds and not doing any real analysis to understand the language of the Book of Mormon. Scholars like Davis and Gardner are doing that. Stan is just labeling things, often arbitrarily for his own apologetic cause. I hope that you are able to see that someday, but I doubt you will. I'm done engaging you. It's pointless. Maybe someday we could meet up at a conference and chat about anything else, but definitely not this. Best of luck to you.

Lolz. Maybe you should ask Stan why he made up things that weren't true rather than whine that I called him out on it. Sorry that my autistic brain gets so triggered by fallacious reasoning and feels a need to point it out without putting on white gloves. It's a serious personality fault of mine.

Up until 1835 with the Lectures on Faith (the "doctrine" of the original Doctrine and Covenants) the Godhead was still viewed as 2 personages with the Holy Spirit being their shared mind. I believe the first time Joseph Smith describes them as 3 personages isn't until 1841.

Hey Stan. I know you're incapable of responding to the actual arguments that Davis has made, but I am really hoping you will explain why you lied about Davis's article have multiple authors. Why did you lie about it?

Lolz. Good luck with life.

The fact that the phrases could be removed without making the sentence incomplete or losing meaning very clearly shows that they are an aside or interruption of thought not essential to the sentences. I showed this in every single example I offered. Then you should not have said that I was "inserting something else in its place" No it doesn't, and if this is what you learned from your college education you should get a refund on your tuition. They don't rearrange the structure. The arrangement remains the same. The added explanatory clauses simply make the sentence more complex while keeping the core structure in place and in the same order. "frequency rates" is a made up measure that does not show what Carmack thinks it does. Yeah, and Carmack's whole rarity argument is nonsense. He'd be laughed out of a room if he tried to argue this in front of others linguists--even if it was applying it to something without religious baggage. You're beginning to see! And what is that degree? Probability estimates can determine little about specific persons. Probability estimates make it very unlikely for someone to win the lottery. But guess what? Someone will likely win that lottery. You sure do love the strawmen. Nobody is arguing that. What Davis, I , Gardner, and others have simply argued that it is possible. None of us live in Joseph's head and know for certain what was going on. However, the possibility that Joseph could have worded the text necessarily negates the demand that he could not have worded them. Well, Ryan, we are getting nowhere, and I need to spend my time on things other than pointing out how much you enjoy beating straw. Best of luck to you.

Well I certainly hope you actually respond to his arguments. I also hope that you rescind your lie about Davis's article having multiple authors or having help from colleagues. Seriously, why would you lie about that, Stan? 2 Ne. 9:34 has a warning for you, buddy. This is another example of your absurd methodology (if it could even be counted as such). You here insist that "extinct" has a very specific definition and usage and then demand that others accept this premise. As a trained linguist (as you really love reminding people of), you should know that this is not how language works. Davis doesn't need to show examples of the term with your very specific uses. He is simply showing how Bunyan is an example of a text that Joseph could have acquired a usage that he applied in the Book of Mormon. While you may be unhappy that it doesn't live up to your predetermined EModE usage, Bunyan's usage of "extinct" works just as well in Alma 44:7. You should read Mosiah 27:22: Here, the text says that Alma1 wanted the "priests [to] assemble themselves together . . . to fast, and to pray to the Lord their God" so that God "would open the mouth of Alma, that he might speak "and also that his limbs might receive their strength" so "that the eyes of the people might be opened to see and know of the goodness and glory of God." In other words, the text explicitly says that a purpose/cause of the priests praying was so that people could see it and that it would be a sign "of the goodness and glory of God." So here, Mosiah 27:22 explicitly states that Alma2 standing would testify of the goodness of God. With that in mind, reread Alma 36:23: Just as Alma1 desired, Alma2's limbs receiving strength "did manifest unto the people that I had been born of God." If that reading is insufficient to you, that's your problem. I wish my autistic brain wouldn't get fixated on addressing each of your poor arguments, but I have to be strong and spend my time better. But one last thing, why did you lie about Davis's article having multiple authors? Are you simply repeating a lie someone else told you? Or did you come up with the lie yourself?

More obsession over a strawman here.

It doesn't need to prove or show anything. As a linguist you should know that very little, if anything, could be proven. However, those examples show that Joseph could have worded the syntax, and if he could have then by logical necessity it isn't the case that Joseph must not have. Stan, my man, stop with the strawmen. Davis never claimed a "Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith wording the Book of Mormon." He simply provided Bunyan as one example of the myriad of publications available to Joseph, and how such publications could provide Joseph with words, phrases, ideas, etc that for his register that Joseph could then use, adapt, misuse, etc. Your focus and emphasis on Bunyan goes well beyond what Davis is doing. So no point in replying to the rest of your strawman here.