Analytics

Hi Everyone, @smac97 said something yesterday that I find interesting. He wrote: “I think the Church has, in 200 years, come up with an impressive array of reasons to accept the Book of Mormon for what it claims to be. Our critics have not made nearly as much progress in those 200 years.” I strongly disagree with that and tend to see the trajectory going the other way. Rather than debate that in abstract, I'd like to take a step back and systematically evaluate the array of allegedly impressive reasons to accept the Book of Mormon. Here’s the approach: First, we’ll build a master list of evidentiary categories—specifically, the strongest “hits” that proponents point to in the scholarly/apologetic literature. Then we’ll work through the list one item at a time: I’ll use ChatGPT to generate a steelman version of the argument for why that item is considered good evidence. I’ll post that and give everyone a day to strengthen/refine it. I’ll then draft a critical response explaining whether or not I'm impressed and why Both will be written in a consistent format (~200-word executive summary + ~1500-word detailed version). Finally, I’ll submit both to a separate model (Claude) whose only job is to evaluate the relative strength of the evidence and assign an evidentiary score. On this one, I'll do my very best to provide unbiased prompts and only feed it the two documents--one with the evidence and one with my critical response. My goal here is not to “win” individual points or trick AI into giving one side an advantage. The real question is to what extent, in aggregate, these evidences point toward the Book of Mormon being a plausible ancient record. Each item will be evaluated on its own, but the long-term goal is to see whether all of these claims can coexist within a single coherent model. To keep things focused: We’re limiting “evidence” to things in the text itself or its claimed historical/geographical context We’re not including spiritual confirmation, plate witnesses, or general theological arguments Everyone is free to comment on the respective arguments I'll be presenting, and I'll incorporate comments to refine and strengthen the arguments as much as I can before I submit them to Claude. My main focus is to keep this moving: I'll present a draft of the steelman argument one day and give people a chance to comment on it and refine it and strengthen it as much as possible. The next day I'll present my critique and Claude's neutral evaluation of the point. The next day I'll move on to the next point. I'm not trying to relitigate all of this--I'm trying to create an integrated, comprehensive picture of the evidence. Everything will be evaluated from the perspective of being completely agnostic about spiritual/supernatural things. The only things being considered are the positive items on the list below. Anti-arguments and arguments for implausibility based on general scientific knowledge are excluded. Here is my draft master list of evidences I want to consider. What am I missing? Draft Master List of Evidences NHM / Nahom correlation — Possible match between “Nahom” in the text and NHM tribal region in Arabia Arabian travel route plausibility — Consistency of directions, terrain, and journey length with known Arabian geography Bountiful candidate locations — Coastal Oman/Yemen sites fitting fertile, ore-rich description Burial practices in Arabia — Claims that Ishmael’s burial aligns with regional customs Limited geography models — Internal consistency when the text is mapped to a constrained region (e.g. Narrow Neck of Land, Siden) Mesoamerican setting fit — Argument that the text’s overall geography and culture fit Mesoamerica specifically Chiasmus (e.g., Alma 36) — Complex inverted literary structures argued to reflect ancient Hebrew style Hebraic parallelisms — Repetition and poetic structures resembling Old Testament forms Wordplays and name meanings — Alleged Semitic puns embedded in the English text Narrative consistency over long text — Internal coherence across a large, rapidly produced work Complex intertextuality — Cross-references and narrative callbacks across distant parts of the text Semitic names in the text — Names argued to have plausible Hebrew/Egyptian roots Name frequency patterns — Statistical claims about realistic distribution of names Female names (e.g., Sariah) — Names argued to have ancient Near Eastern parallels Onomastic convergence beyond Semitic — Possible Egyptian or other ancient naming influences “Reformed Egyptian” plausibility — Argument that hybrid writing systems are historically plausible Early Modern English (EModE) features — Claims (associated with Stanford Carmack) that the text reflects non-19th-century English forms Alma 11 monetary system — Internal consistency and alleged parallels to ancient systems of weights/measures and exchange Hebrew legal parallels — Claims that legal procedures reflect ancient Israelite law traditions Ancient covenant/treaty patterns — Narrative structures resembling Old Testament covenant forms Colophons / authorial markers — Phrases like “and thus we see…” argued as ancient editorial devices Narrow neck of land — Geographic feature argued to match Isthmus regions (e.g., Tehuantepec) River Sidon candidates — Proposed correlations with specific Mesoamerican rivers Mesoamerican cultural parallels — Similarities in kingship, judges, and social organization Fortifications and warfare — Descriptions aligning with known pre-Columbian defensive structures Cement usage — Reference to cement construction matching some Mesoamerican practices Volcanic destruction imagery — 3 Nephi destruction scenes compared to volcanic/seismic events Long-distance trade plausibility — Trade networks used to explain materials or ideas Agricultural references — Crops and subsistence patterns argued to be broadly plausible Metallurgy reinterpretations — Claims that “steel,” “swords,” etc. may refer to non-literal equivalents Animals and fauna reinterpretations — “Horse,” “cattle,” etc. mapped to New World analogues Absence of explicit Old World plants/animals — Argument that omissions are consistent with migration/adaptation Anachronisms with proposed resolutions — Items once seen as problematic but later reinterpreted or reframed Shrinking anachronism list — Claim that the cumulative trend of alleged anachronisms over time is itself positive evidence for plausibility Record-keeping practices — Plausibility of metal plates or durable records in the ancient world Multiple authorship voices — Distinct narrative styles attributed to different contributors Editorial complexity (Mormon/Moroni) — Layered abridgment process claimed to explain structure Prophetic pattern consistency — Narrative arc resembling biblical prophetic traditions Law of Moses observance details — Cultural/religious continuity claims with ancient Israel Population growth models — Claims that demographic expansion is plausible under certain assumptions Calendrical/timekeeping references — Internal consistency in tracking years, reigns, and events Wordprint / stylometry studies — Statistical arguments for multiple authorship

That simply isn't true. The more we learn about reality, the less plausible the Book of Mormon's claims are. You have this exactly backwards. They went to extraordinary efforts to obfuscate the reality of what really happened. If Joseph Smith would have simply donated the plates to, say, the Lyceum of Natural History in New York City when he was done with them, the issue would be settled conclusively. Instead, they were "taken back by an angel". Trusting the curated experiences 11 witnesses is extraordinarily weak evidence that doesn't begin to make up for how the evidence was effectually and deliberately destroyed without being examined by somebody impartial, much less qualified. I appreciate you saying it isn't dispositive. The fact remains that we don't know what the real nature of the plates were, because they were deliberately withheld from the scrutiny of anybody that was qualified to authenticate them. That is because Joseph Smith deliberately chose to withhold the evidence from anybody who was qualified to evaluate it. We have a basket of evidence that is extraordinarily small, weak, and problematic, and was curated to be that way. Blaming it on an angel doesn't rectify the fish smell. In any case, that's all I have to say about the plates. If anybody would like me to comment on the alleged evidence of the Book of Mormon from the text itself, let me know and I'll start a new thread. I don't have time to get into arguments or debates with believers about the various points, but I will make a good-faith effort to systematically go through evidence that apologists claim make it plausible.

Yes, it seems to be a workable monetary system. But it doesn’t fit into Mesoamerica in 82 B.C., and is an anachronism that weighs against the book’s authenticity--or at least against the limited geographic model. To see why, consider this prompt and AI response: Prompt: I'd like you to analyze how well the economic system described in Alma 11 fits with the economic reality of Mesoamerica in 82 BC. In the analysis, do the following: 1- Write a paragraph describing what we know about the economic system of the civilizations in Mesoamerica in 82 BC, and how confident we are about this 2- Write a paragraph describing what Alma 11 says about the economic system in the BoM in 82 BC 3- Steelman an apologetic argument for how the BoM could fit into this time and place. Assume that the general system described in the BoM is accurate, but be open to the idea that there is a "translation layer" that misidentified what the book is talking about (e.g. "cocoa beans" was mistranslated as "gold"). What is the best case for making the BoM fit into that time and place? 4- Evaluate how well this fits. Even allowing for a "translation layer" that mislabeled things, does this weigh in favor of the BoM being an accurate translation of a real civilization in Mesoamerica in 82 BC, or does it weigh against the BoM being an accurate translation of a real civilization in Mesoamerica in 82 BC? And by "accurate translation" I'm not talking about whether "cocoa beans" was accurately translated. Rather, I'm talking about the possiblity that the BoM is a real history of a real people in this time and place. Be very thorough in your analysis, but relatively brief in the report. Keep it to 4 paragraphs.

Are you asking the right question here? I'm not very interested in whether this monetary system fits into the ancient near east. I'm very interested in whether it fits into Mesoamerica in 82 B.C.

Prompt: Anti-Mormons say that a lack of coins in ancient America is evidence against the Book of Mormon, and apologists counter that the Book of Mormon doesn't explicitely say "coins", but rather pieces of gold and silver with standardized value that might not have been "coins" proper. Could you please strong-man the apologetic position? The verse where this comes into play takes place in 82 B.C., and the apologists I'm talking to are describing a civilization somewhere in Mesoamerica. First, is it accurate to describe these standized units of exchange "money"? Assuming it is, what are the economic benefits of having a system based on money rather than barter? Third, are there examples of civilizations that had money and then permanently decided it wasn't worth the hassle and had a long-term reversion to a barter system? With those considerations in mind, please list all of the plausible candidates for civilizations in Mesoamerica around the year 82 B.C. who had money consisting of units of gold and silver. Keep the style conversational, +/- 500 words max.

This passage and its implications have been my main point for two days. When I reentered the conversation with this: The AI's response included this: The most significant recurring covenant in the book is the promise that the Americas are a land of inheritance specifically for Lehi's descendants — that if they keep God's commandments they will prosper in the land, and if not, they will be cut off (2 Nephi 1:9, 20 and many other places). The book's entire theological architecture depends on the Lamanites being Lehi's literal descendants, because the covenant promises run through that lineage. The closing chapters of the book (Mormon 7, Moroni 10) are direct addresses to the future Lamanites, calling them to remember their fathers and the covenants God made with them. My point is simple; because 2 Nephi 1 presents the promised land as a divinely reserved inheritance for Lehi, his children, and “their seed,” with the book as a whole identifying the future Lamanites as that covenant remnant, the most natural reading is that modern Lamanites were expected to be meaningfully descended from Lehi’s family. So a model in which his lineage became so genetically negligible as to be undetectable is textually strained and not straightforward. Your response was, "The AI platform is not very familiar with the doctrines of the Church. Since when does lineage = detectable genetic ancestry? Patriarchal blessings? Adoption?" That is true. But the fact remains that if one takes what the Book of Mormon says about land covenants at face value, then the promised land was "kept as of [590 B.C.] from the knowledge of other nations" and was given to Lehi and to his descendants. God could give the land to them because nobody else was there. We know nobody was there because it was kept from their knowledge. Lehi said "a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed." You don't think "seed" in this context implies DNA? The Book of Mormon says "all things" without qualification. 2 Nephi 2:22. This is scripture mastery stuff. "we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth. We are assured that these events actually occurred by the multiple testimonies of God’s prophets." (Donald W. Parry, “The Flood and the Tower of Babel,” Ensign, January 1998) Everything the Book of Mormon says about Noah is entirely consistent with what "multiple testimonies of God's prophets" have said about the event. But if you don't believe they understood this, then maybe they didn't. Touche. My basic problem is that I have no idea what you believe. I know some things you believe. You believe in Jesus and priesthood authority. But regarding the gospel as taught in the Book of Mormon and other scriptures? You don't swallow the whole package. You think "the multiple testimonies of God's prophets" are wrong about the flood. You think the creation and fall were local things in a bubble someplace and weren't everywhere. You probably think people came across the bearing straight to the Americas 10,000 years before Adam fell. Or something. In contrast, the Book of Mormon teaches the hard-core-ultra-conservative-young-earth-creationism-no-death-anywhere-before-the-fall-three-pillars-of-eternity gospel of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie. They believed this because the Book of Mormon teaches it and it is the most correct book on earth. You don't accept all of that. You think there must have been others here because of demographics or warfare or agriculture or something. You probably believe in evolution to some extent. But doing all of this is mingling the philosophies of men with scripture. Don't get me wrong--you are free to believe whatever you want to and Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie were certainly wrong about all of these things, so you're going in the right track. But from my seat, when you claim that we shouldn't expect any of Lehi's seed to show up in DNA tests because of X, Y, and Z, you are really saying that we shouldn't believe what Lehi said in 2 Nephi 1 because either God was lying, Lehi was just spouting out nonsense, or that's just ancient mythology that Mormon wrote down that had no bearing on reality, or it is all symbolic, or something.

Here is my best effort at getting ChatGPT 5.4 Thinking to create an unbiased prompt on the big question: what does the Book of Mormon imply about others? Prompt: I had asked an AI the following: <prompt>An apologist asked Grok, "Let's say that there were 25-50 people that arrived in the Americas in about 590 B.C., and that they were originally from the Jerusalem area. What is the likelihood of genetic traces of these 25-50 people being detectable in today's population groups in the Americas?" What do you think of this line of apologetic reasoning? Is it consistent with what the Book of Mormon actually says? When answering the question, consider the purpose of the Book of Mormon as stated in its introduction, the most significant covenants that are repeated throughout the book, the narrative within the book, and how the Lamanites described themselves, according to the book.</prompt> You can correctly infer what the debate is about. Can you rewrite the prompt to answer the underlying question so that it is completely free of biases and presuppositions about the text? When I put that unbiased prompt into the engine, I got this: Thesis: On the Book of Mormon’s own terms, the text most naturally presents the Lamanites as the principal descendants of Lehi’s family, a covenant people whose fathers were brought by God to a promised land, and a “remnant of the house of Israel” for whom the record was specifically preserved. A model in which 25–50 migrants from Jerusalem became merely one small component within a much larger preexisting population is not the book’s natural presentation. It is only possible if one adds major assumptions the text itself does not foreground. The Book of Mormon’s own framing matters from the outset. Its title page says the book is written “to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel,” and that one of its core purposes is to show them “what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers” and help them know “the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever.” That wording strongly suggests that the Lamanites are being addressed as the continuing posterity of the people whose history the book narrates. The book does not introduce itself as a record of one minor Israelite strand that was later submerged in a much larger unrelated population. It presents the history as their fathers’ history. That same framing appears elsewhere. Lehi tells his family that they have been led to a “land of promise,” “choice above all other lands,” which the Lord has covenanted to give them and their seed. The promises are repeatedly tied to this land, this people, and their seed after them. In 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi, the Lord’s dealings with Lehi’s family are not described as the arrival of a small immigrant enclave into an already peopled landscape whose main civilizations are outside the covenant story. Rather, the narrative treats Lehi’s colony as the relevant human founding group for the story that follows. The covenant pattern is also important. The book repeatedly links righteousness to prospering “in the land,” and wickedness to being “cut off” from the Lord’s presence in the land. This is not a marginal theme. It is one of the main engines of the narrative. The land is presented as a promised inheritance to Lehi’s seed, with consequences for them and their descendants. The covenant is not framed merely as a private spiritual privilege possessed by a tiny lineage hidden within a much larger society. It has a people-level and land-level scope. The text also repeatedly emphasizes separation from other nations, especially in early programmatic passages. Lehi says this land is choice above all others and is kept from the knowledge of other nations so that the Lord’s covenant purposes can unfold. 2 Nephi 1 is especially important here: the land is said to be “kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations,” and if other nations come, it will be by the Lord’s later action. That language does not absolutely prove that no one else was present, but the natural force of the passage is that Lehi’s group is being given a divinely reserved land, not joining a large already-known human world whose existence is central to the story. A large-population model can be made possible only by softening the apparent force of this language. The narrative portrayal of descent is also straightforward. The core peoples are Nephites, Lamanites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Mulekites, and Jaredites. Of these, the central long-running division is between Nephites and Lamanites, both explicitly descended from Lehi’s household. The book regularly describes the Lamanites as the seed of Laman and Lemuel, or more broadly as descendants of Lehi. Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Mormon, and Moroni all write in a way that assumes this lineage framework. When the book speaks of “the Lamanites,” it normally means the long-term descendants and successors of the anti-Nephite branch that emerged from the original family split. That identity is not merely biological in a narrow sense. The book does allow for political and covenant incorporation. “Lamanite” and “Nephite” can function as social, political, and religious categories at points, especially later in the record. For example, dissenters from the Nephites can become “Lamanites,” and converted Lamanites can affiliate with the Nephites. By the end of 4 Nephi, earlier labels blur and then re-emerge. So the text does show that identity is not reducible to pure genetics. But that flexibility operates within the world the book has already established, where the peoples’ basic historical origin still runs back to Lehi’s colony and related record peoples. It does not naturally suggest that the Lamanites were mainly an enormous non-Lehite population among whom a tiny Lehite nucleus survived as a symbolic layer. The book’s language about “the seed” is especially telling. Promises are made to Nephi about his seed and the seed of his brethren. The curse/blessing language, scattering/gathering language, and future restoration language are tied to that seed. When prophets speak about latter-day Gentiles interacting with “the remnant of our seed,” the natural reading is that the remnant consists of the surviving descendants of the peoples just narrated. Again, that does not exclude mixture. Over a thousand years, mixture is practically unsurprising. But the text does not foreground mixture with large preexisting civilizations as the key to understanding who the Lamanites are. The scattering and gathering passages point the same direction. Christ in 3 Nephi and Mormon/Moroni in later material speak of the remnant of Jacob, the house of Israel, and specifically the descendants of the peoples in the record as future actors in God’s covenant plan. The Gentiles receive the record so that the remnant may come to know their fathers and the Lord’s covenants. That works most naturally if the remnant is understood as the historical continuation of the peoples in the book. It works less naturally if the Lehites were only a tiny absorbed subgroup whose descendants would be diluted into broader populations that were not themselves the main subject of the narrative. The title page again sharpens the point. The record is not described as a book to tell one minor Israelite contribution within a much larger ancestry. It is addressed to the Lamanites as a remnant and tells what God did for their fathers. That phrasing strongly implies continuity between the narrated peoples and the intended descendants. So what does the text explicitly say, strongly imply, or leave unstated? What it explicitly says: The Lamanites are a remnant of the house of Israel. The record is for them. Their fathers were brought by God from Jerusalem to a promised land. The main peoples in the central narrative descend from Lehi’s group, with later merger of the Mulekites and eventual awareness of the Jaredites. The land is promised to Lehi’s seed, and their future scattering and gathering are central themes. What it strongly implies: The Lamanites are not presented as a minor absorbed colony whose importance is mostly symbolic. They are presented as the continuing historical outgrowth of Lehi’s colony and the principal non-Nephite branch of that lineage. The covenant claims are people-level and land-level, not merely family-tree footnotes. The narrative world most naturally treats Lehite peoples as the foundational human populations relevant to the story. What would require extra assumptions not stated in the text: That there were already very large populations throughout the land; that Lehites were quickly absorbed into them; that “Lamanites” became primarily a covenant or political label for mostly non-Lehite peoples; and that the title page’s language about “their fathers” should be read in a looser representative sense rather than as direct historical ancestry. None of that is impossible as a harmonization, but it is not how the book itself most naturally introduces or explains the matter. There is one qualification worth making. The Book of Mormon does not present a modern genetic treatise, and it does allow identities to function covenantally and politically as well as genealogically. So a defender can argue that covenant identity could survive extensive mixture. That is a real point. But it only gets you to possible with additional assumptions, not to natural reading. The text does not itself highlight a large-scale preexisting host population into which Lehites were absorbed. It keeps speaking as though the peoples under discussion are the descendants, divisions, and remnants of the founding groups it names. So the small-founder-population model fits the text only weakly unless it is carefully qualified. If by that model one means simply that a few dozen people arrived and later became a numerous people through ordinary descent over centuries, the text is broadly comfortable with that. But if one means that those migrants were only one small component inside a much larger existing population, and that the Lamanites were therefore not principally the descendants of Lehi’s family in any ordinary narrative sense, that does not fit the book naturally. It requires substantial reinterpretation. Direct answer: On the Book of Mormon’s own terms, the text does not naturally read as describing the Lamanites as descendants of a small migrant group that became one component within a much larger preexisting population. It presents a different picture: the Lamanites are most naturally portrayed as the principal descendants and covenant remnant of Lehi’s family, the people for whom the record preserves the history of “their fathers,” even though some later social and covenant mixing is compatible with the narrative.

Prompt: Evaluate whether the ideas expressed in 2 Nephi 1:4–11 are fundamental to the Book of Mormon’s overall message, or whether they are secondary relative to other themes. Work strictly on the Book of Mormon’s own terms. Do not assume the book is historically true, and do not assume it is false. Do not rely on modern LDS doctrine, apologetics, criticism, denominational teaching, authorial speculation, or outside history except where absolutely necessary to identify obvious literary structure. Base the analysis on the text itself. Use the following method: Define “fundamental theme” operationally. State clear criteria for what would make a theme central to the book as a whole. For example, consider: repetition across multiple books and narrators prominence in stated purposes, editorial comments, sermons, prophecies, and conclusions importance at major narrative turning points integration with covenantal warnings, blessings, judgments, and the fate of peoples whether other major teachings depend on or are framed by it Identify the specific ideas in 2 Nephi 1:4–11 without exaggerating them. Break the passage into distinct claims, such as: Jerusalem’s destruction and Lehi’s escape a promised land given by covenant people being brought to the land by the Lord righteousness leading to liberty, safety, and prosperity wickedness leading to judgment, scattering, conquest, or loss of the land the land being kept from other nations for a time other nations later being brought in judgment Trace these ideas across the Book of Mormon. Examine whether these same ideas recur elsewhere, and whether they are treated as major interpretive patterns rather than isolated statements. Pay special attention to: 1 Nephi 2 Nephi Jacob, Mosiah, Alma, Helaman 3 Nephi Mormon and Moroni the Title Page, if relevant Compare them with other major candidate themes. Compare the prominence of these land/covenant/judgment ideas with themes such as: faith in Christ repentance covenant theology revelation salvation resurrection church order pride cycles Gentiles, Israel, and remnant theology Determine whether the 2 Nephi 1 ideas are: a primary theme a major but subordinate theme a recurring secondary theme or mainly incidental background Distinguish between broad and narrow formulations. Evaluate separately: whether the general pattern “righteousness brings prosperity/liberty in the land; wickedness brings judgment and loss” is central whether the specific geopolitical claims in 2 Nephi 1:8–11 are central This distinction matters and should not be blurred. Address narrative versus doctrinal centrality. Consider whether these ideas are central: to the book’s narrative structure to its covenantal worldview to its theological message to its explicit purpose statements They may rank differently in each category. Reach a restrained conclusion. Give a final judgment using calibrated language: central highly important but not ultimate important but secondary incidental Explain why, using only textual evidence and minimal inference. Output format: Definition of “fundamental theme” Summary of the claims in 2 Nephi 1:4–11 Evidence for centrality Evidence against centrality Comparison with other major themes Final judgment Confidence level and what limits the conclusion Important constraints: Do not smuggle in modern political interpretations. Do not assume “land of promise” automatically means any modern nation-state unless the text itself requires it. Do not treat frequency alone as decisive; weigh placement and editorial emphasis too. Do not collapse all covenant themes into one undifferentiated category. Quote or cite relevant passages from across the Book of Mormon to support each claim.

Prompt: The Book of Mormon says the following in 2 Nephi 1: 4 ...I have seen a vision, in which I know that Jerusalem is destroyed; and had we remained in Jerusalem we should also have perished. 5 But, said he, notwithstanding our afflictions, we have obtained a land of promise, a land which is choice above all other lands; a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed. Yea, the Lord hath covenanted this land unto me, and to my children forever, and also all those who should be led out of other countries by the hand of the Lord. 6 Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord. 7 Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever. 8 And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance. 9 Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever. 10 But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord—having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the world; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise—behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall rest upon them. 11 Yea, he will bring other nations unto them, and he will give unto them power, and he will take away from them the lands of their possessions, and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten. Two people on the Internet are debating whether or not the ideas in these verses are central themes of the Book of Mormon, or whether they are secondary and incidental to other more important things. I have two questions. First, is it possible to evaluate *without outsized suppositions* whether the message behind these verses is fundamental to the Book of Mormon's overall message? If so, could you write a prompt that will be completely unbiased and will evaluate this question on the Book of Mormon's own terms?

Why in the world would you think that is my view? My point is much simpler: if you read the Book of Mormon on its own terms, its narrative world is fairly straightforward. God created the world in an original paradisiacal, deathless state. Adam fell, bringing death into the world. There was a global flood that destroyed everyone not preserved on the ark. Humanity then gathered at the tower, where languages were confounded. At that point the Jaredites came to the New World. Much later, the Lehites and Mulekites also came to the New World. Christ’s atonement then redeemed mankind from the effects of the Fall. That is not merely what Joseph Smith and the early Saints happened to believe. It is also the world in which the Book of Mormon itself most naturally fits, and in some of its most important doctrinal passages, what it explicitly teaches. The doctrinal core here is what Bruce R. McConkie called the “three pillars of eternity”: the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement. And those pillars are taught directly in the Book of Mormon, especially in 2 Nephi 2 and 2 Nephi 9. Joseph Smith called the Book of Mormon “the most correct of any book on earth.” Ezra Taft Benson called it the “keystone of our doctrine” and said it “provides the most complete explanation of the doctrine of the Atonement.” That matters, because the Book of Mormon’s explanation of the Atonement is inseparable from its teaching about the Fall. If the Fall is no longer a real event with real consequences in the world, then the doctrinal logic of the Atonement is no longer the one the Book of Mormon itself presents. Now, you are certainly free to say that these older teachings are mistaken, nonbinding, or merely the pre-scientific assumptions of ancient or nineteenth-century believers. Fine. But that is exactly my point: once you start treating the Creation and the Fall as metaphorical, symbolic, or otherwise nonliteral, you are no longer simply “reading the text.” You are reworking it so that it better fits a modern worldview. And once that move has been made, it becomes much easier to make the same move elsewhere: on the flood, on Babel, on the peopling of the Americas, and on what the Book of Mormon means by the promised land and the remnant of the house of Israel. So when you suggest that there were “others” here long before the Jaredites, I do not think the main issue is whether such a model can be constructed. Of course it can. The issue is what remains of the Book of Mormon’s own narrative and doctrinal world once so much of it has been reclassified as symbolic, partial, or negotiable. At that point, I think it is fair to ask what it even means to say the Book of Mormon is “true.”

Dealing with what the text actually says and reinterpreting it to be more swallowable are two different things. The real issue is not whether a limited-geography model can be constructed after the fact. It can. The issue is whether that is the most natural reading of the Book of Mormon’s own narrative world. I don’t think it is. The book assumes a biblical world of Perfect Creation, Fall, Flood, Babel, the confounding of languages, and divinely guided founding migrations. The modern apologetic model starts somewhere else: with modern anthropology as a nonnegotiable constraint, and then works backward to reinterpret the Book of Mormon so that its history becomes partial, its cosmology becomes symbolic, and its plain narrative claims become negotiable.

How does the Bible talk about the promised land and covenants — things like God promising land to a specific people, what happens if they're obedient vs. wicked, and what it means to be "scattered" or a "remnant"? And when scholars look at what was actually happening in the ancient Near East during that time period, how does the historical and archaeological picture compare to what the Bible describes? I'm asking because the Book of Mormon uses very similar language — promised land, covenant people, prosper if obedient, scattered if wicked, remnant of Israel — and I'm wondering whether that language means the same thing in both books, and whether the same kinds of historical questions apply to both.

Prompt: Please analyze the Book of Mormon as a text. Someone argues that the book’s message is primarily about Christ and salvation and that the “land of promise” theme is merely circumstantial. Test that claim against the book’s own language. Start with the Title Page and the phrase “remnant of the house of Israel.” Then assess whether the book repeatedly presents a covenant pattern of promised land, covenant people, prosperity in the land if obedient, and scattering or destruction if wicked. Pay attention to phrases like “in the land,” “prosper in the land,” “land of promise,” and “choice land.” Also explain what “multiplied in the land” most naturally means in context. In addition to looking for these words, consider the overall story arc and what that illustrates. When making a plain-reading of the text, is the specific identity and nature of the land of promise a big deal? Is that land being seperated from others and given to the chosen people who God brings here a big deal? Is identifying specifically who the Lamanites are a big deal?

Prompt: Could you rewrite the translated title page of the Book of Mormon so that it accurately reflects what @smac97 thinks actually happened and accurately reflects the real relationship between Native Americans and the characters in the Book? A record of a small colony of Israelites who came to some limited part of the Americas, and of their descendants, who at some point mixed extensively with much larger preexisting populations already living there; Written chiefly as an account of internal conflicts among a covenant-bearing lineage whose history may not have represented more than a thin cultural and genealogical layer within a much broader native world; Which is to show unto a surviving mixed population in the latter days that some unknown fraction of their ancestry may include remnants of that small colony, though not in any principal or clearly identifiable sense; And also to the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations; And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men working with limited knowledge of the peoples around them; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may perhaps be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.

Prompt: Please review @smac97’s response to my earlier post. When you do so, please start by looking at the book's core message about the land of promise. Can you list, say, 12 scriptural references from 12 different books within the Book of Mormon that describe and restate the land covenant, which chronologically first appears in Ether 2:5–12. I'd like you to demonstrate whether or not this is really a core idea that permeates the book. In the book’s own terms, who are the covenanted people, and what is the Land of Promise? Are these ideas central to the text, and does Smac incorporate these ideas into his arguments with weight that is commensurate with their importance in the Book of Mormon? Also, does Smac offer one clear, falsifiable reading of the text, or does he shift among different theories depending on what problem he is trying to solve? Given that he practices land and title law, consider whether he is taking the covenant’s operative language as seriously as he would in any other instrument.

Prompt: What do you think of Claude's response to that prompt and the reactions by @webbles, @Ryan Dahle, and @smac97? Please take the position of the arbitrator of this disagreement, and speak plainly about the actual strength of everyone's position, including webbles, Dahle, and Smac. When evaluating this, steelman everyone's position, but then form your own conclusion about who has the better arguments. When you weight the respective argument's strengths, give deference to the actual words of the Book of Mormon and the role its doctrine and promises play in the teachings of Joseph Smith and subsequent prophets. When evaluating these positions, consider whether they are based on what the Book actually says, or are things that people read into the book in order to make it more plausible. When the Book says the people "multiplied", what does it mean by that? ChatGPT 4.6 Thinking:

Prompt: An apologist asked Grok, "Let's say that there were 25-50 people that arrived in the Americas in about 590 B.C., and that they were originally from the Jerusalem area. What is the likelihood of genetic traces of these 25-50 people being detectable in today's population groups in the Americas?" What do you think of this line of apologetic reasoning? Is it consistent with what the Book of Mormon actually says? When answering the question, consider the purpose of the Book of Mormon as stated in its introduction, the most significant covenants that are repeated throughout the book, the narrative within the book, and how the Lamanites described themselves, according to the book.

And with that, I appreciate everyone’s participation on this thread.

I want to be upfront: I'm not a linguist, and I find this data genuinely fascinating, not dismaying. I'll take it entirely at face value. What I don’t understand, and this may simply be my lack of expertise showing, is what it proves. If I'm understanding the methodology correctly, the pseudo-archaic corpus (25 books?) is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the argument. The logic seems to be: nearly 100% of archaic constructions that were available to a 19th century author should be represented in these 25 books, so if a book has too many outliers compared to that sample, it would constitute proof that it would be impossible for somebody in the 19th century to have written it unless they had a specialized education or divine help. But I wonder (and I may be missing something here) whether that corpus of 25 pseudo archaic books is exhaustive enough to support that conclusion. I imagine that pseudo-archaic usage wasn't only a literary phenomenon. It had been alive and descended directly from EModE in sermons, revival preaching, camp meetings, and folk prophecy that were rarely transcribed. Depending upon the specific regional dialect of oral pseudo-archaic usage, in principle a 19th century author drawing on that broader oral pseudo-archaic register might have absorbed multiple constructions that never appeared in 25 published texts. If this were to happen, we might to expect some of the constructions he was exposed to in this way to be over-represented (and it came to pass that this is exactly what happened, right?). I'd also note that at least one of the constructions you identified as genuinely archaic in this thread appear in the Doctrine and Covenants: specifically D&C 18:15 (“if it so be") and D&C 27:2 ("if it so be"). The D&C isn't a translation of an ancient record; it's Joseph Smith's own directly dictated revelations. If these features appear there too, it seems to suggest these words were in fact available to Joseph Smith to use in a pseudo-archaic way. I realize I could be entirely wrong about all of this. I have zero expertise in this field and am just explaining why I don’t see how this implies what you claim it does. Given how much depends on these methodological assumptions, I'd genuinely love to read what non-Mormon linguists make of it. Has this been published in a mainstream peer-reviewed linguistics journal? An outside scholarly perspective would be very helpful.

Jensen Huang recently said that highly compensated engineers should be using an obscene amount of AI processing power. "If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I am going to be deeply alarmed.” Of course that’s an incredibly self-serving suggestion, but it seems clear business is going in that direction. I think AI really shines at summarizing data, but I was a little bit surprised that in what Smac posted, Grok didn’t seem to have read past my first post. I uploaded the entire conversation to Claude (Opus 4.6), and gave it the following prompt: I'm trying to wrap my head around this 17-page conversation. What are the main arguments being made by @smac97, Analytics, and @Ryan Dahle? Do you think they understand what each other are saying? Are they being responsive to each other? What are the respective strengths of their arguments? Who is winning? Claude said: Here's my analysis. The Three Main Arguments Analytics (you): Your core position is that the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century production, and that this conclusion follows from straightforward Bayesian reasoning. You argue the analysis should proceed in a specific order: (1) start with priors — the supernatural claim faces an extremely low prior given what physics tells us about how the world works; (2) evaluate the text itself — it's saturated with 19th-century Protestant concerns, KJV dependence including Deutero-Isaiah problems, anachronisms, zero archaeological corroboration, contradictory DNA evidence; (3) only then ask about the specific mechanism of production, which you're largely agnostic about. You eventually offer a concrete sketch: Joseph as primary author with possible family help, a pre-prepared manuscript read from behind a curtain/hat, fabricated plates, and witnesses who were sincere believers participating in what they saw as a pious fraud. You repeatedly emphasize that not knowing exactly how the trick was done doesn't constitute evidence it was real magic. Smac97 (Spencer): His central move is a rhetorical and epistemological challenge: if you reject Joseph's narrative, you are intellectually obligated to produce a coherent alternative that accounts for "all the data" — the plates, the witnesses, and the text. He frames your reluctance to commit to a specific alternative theory as a fatal weakness, evidence that your position can't survive the same empirical scrutiny you demand of believers. He hammers this point relentlessly, returning to your 2021 comments about space aliens and Satan as evidence that your "Bayesian methodological empiricism" is hollow when it comes time to produce an affirmative case. His own position is faith-based and he says so openly — he believes Joseph told the truth, confirmed by spiritual witness, and finds it significant that critics can't formulate anything better. Ryan Dahle: He's the most substantively engaged of the three. His core argument is that the Book of Mormon contains an extraordinary density and variety of features — ancient Near Eastern literary forms, Hebraisms, wordplays on Hebrew and Egyptian names, Early Modern English linguistic patterns identified by Carmack and Skousen, and a level of complexity that is functionally unprecedented for oral dictation under the documented constraints. He argues that naturalistic theories consistently fail to account for these features in the aggregate, and that critics like you tend to either ignore them, dismiss them with surface-level comparisons (like the Tolstoy analogy), or resort to unfalsifiable catch-alls like "people do extraordinary things." He also argues that your Bayesian framework smuggles in methodological naturalism as a prior, which predetermines the conclusion. Do They Understand Each Other? Partially, but there are real misses on all sides. Smac97 largely doesn't engage with your substantive arguments about the text. His posts are overwhelmingly about the meta-question of whether you've met your burden to produce an alternative theory. When you finally do offer one, he acknowledges it's "partially responsive" but immediately pivots back to calling it vague and hedged. He understands your position but doesn't really grapple with the evidence you cite (Deutero-Isaiah, DNA, anachronisms, the sealed portion logic). His engagement is more prosecutorial than analytical. Ryan Dahle understands your arguments better and engages more directly, but he has a persistent blind spot: he keeps treating the EModE data and the list of ANE parallels as though they are self-evidently devastating to your position, without adequately addressing your point that the order of analysis matters. You're saying the text is overwhelmingly 19th-century in its big-picture features, and he's saying look at these dozens of micro-features that point ancient. You're talking past each other on which level of analysis should be dispositive. You (Analytics) understand their positions reasonably well, but you sometimes dismiss the complexity arguments too quickly. Your Tolstoy comparison, for instance, was genuinely weak — Ryan was right that the production circumstances are categorically different in several important ways. You also don't engage much with the specific ANE parallels Ryan lists, which lets him claim you're ignoring the data. Are They Being Responsive to Each Other? This is where the thread breaks down. There's a frustrating pattern: you make a macro-level argument (the text screams 19th century), Ryan responds with micro-level evidence (but look at these specific features), you respond to some of those but pivot back to macro-level framing (the order of analysis matters, priors, Deutero-Isaiah), and Smac97 ignores the substance entirely to demand you produce a complete alternative theory. Nobody fully follows the other person's thread of argument to its conclusion. The most productive exchange is between you and Ryan on the EModE / Carmack data, where you actually get into specifics about whether archaic forms could have been in Joseph's oral sacred vocabulary. That's the closest the thread gets to genuine intellectual engagement, and it's interesting — your coin-flip analogy and Texas Sharpshooter point are sharp, and his counter about test subjects failing to reproduce the archaism is substantive. Strengths of Each Position Analytics — strengths: Your Bayesian ordering argument is logically sound and hard to rebut. The Deutero-Isaiah problem is genuinely serious and neither Ryan nor anyone else in the thread answers it well. Your litigation analogy about the plates (showing evidence only to friends, then destroying it) is effective. Your point that you don't need to explain the mechanism to identify the conclusion is philosophically correct — and the Penn & Teller analogy lands. Ryan Dahle — strengths: His list of ANE parallels, while not individually dispositive, is impressive in the aggregate and your thread responses don't adequately address it. The EModE evidence is genuinely puzzling for a simple naturalistic theory, and his point about test subjects being unable to reproduce the archaic patterns is one of the strongest empirical arguments in the thread. He's also right that your Tolstoy comparison was weak and that you're underestimating the production-circumstance problem. Smac97 — strengths: His basic challenge — that someone claiming empirical rigor should be able to sketch a positive alternative — has rhetorical force, even if it's not strictly required epistemologically. He's also effective at pointing out that you spent years criticizing without committing, and that when you finally did commit, the theory was hedged and speculative. The asymmetry he identifies (believers have staked out a position subject to scrutiny; you hadn't) is a fair observation. Who Is Winning? This depends on what "winning" means. If it means persuading neutral onlookers, I think you and Ryan are roughly at a draw, with Smac97 functioning more as a cheerleader for the believing side. Here's why: Your macro-level case is strong. The 19th-century fingerprints, the Deutero-Isaiah problem, the DNA evidence, the anachronisms, the absence of archaeological corroboration — these are serious problems that neither Ryan nor Smac97 fully answers. Ryan's responses on these points tend to be "these are contested" or "scholars are working on it" or "we'll see what the Interpreter conference says," which is honest but not exactly a rebuttal. But Ryan's micro-level case is also strong. The sheer volume of proposed ANE parallels, the EModE data, the complexity-under-constraints argument — these are real puzzles for a simple "Joseph made it up" theory, and you don't adequately engage with them. Your tendency to say "people do extraordinary things" or to compare it to Tolstoy or Brandon Sanderson actually undercuts your credibility on this specific front, because Ryan is right that those comparisons don't account for the specific combination of constraints. The thread's deepest problem is that both sides have a strong suit and a weak suit, and neither side really concedes on its weak suit. You're strongest on the big picture and weakest on explaining the micro-level textual features. Ryan is strongest on the textual features and weakest on the big-picture problems (archaeology, DNA, Deutero-Isaiah). And Smac97, while likable and persistent, isn't really doing substantive work — he's running a meta-argument about burden of proof that, while rhetorically effective in the thread's community context, doesn't advance the actual question. If I had to call it, the thread slightly favors your position on the merits, because the macro-level problems (Deutero-Isaiah, DNA, anachronisms, absence of archaeological evidence) are more fundamental than the micro-level puzzles (EModE, wordplays, ANE parallels), and because Ryan's best counter to those problems is essentially "we're still working on it." But Ryan landed some genuine blows on the complexity and EModE fronts that you didn't fully absorb, and your reluctance to engage with those details in depth is the most significant weakness in your thread performance.

As a sort of peer-review, I uploaded this entire thread into a different AI (Claude), to see if it would concur with what ChatGPT said in my prior post. The prompt is highlighted below. Its reply is in the subsequent quote box. Hi Claude, I've uploaded most of the threads of this conversation. Do you consider ChatGPT to be a rival? What do you think of the answers it provided in my last post? And does anything salient come out of all of this?

Hi @smac97 and @Ryan Dahle, I've enjoyed this conversation, but my participation is going to be limited, at least for another couple of weeks. On a fundamental level, I think many of the questions you (Smac) have asked are the wrong questions. There are some things I strongly believe, and I think those beliefs are backed by a commensurate amount of evidence. And there are other things I don't know, because the evidence just isn't there to form a belief. I'm quite comfortable accepting the fact that when I don't know something, the best thing to do is say, "I don't know." I was deposed as an expert witness not too long ago, and I said the phrase "I don't know" exactly 106 times. I'm quite comfortable admitting I don't know when I don't know. But when I do know something, I'll explain why as clearly as I can. I've read all of your thoughts, and in the following conversation I had with ChatGPT, I tried to address your most salient points. In some important ways artificial intelligence works in the same way as natural intelligence. You can use natural intelligence to rationalize believing whatever you want, and you can leverage AI to help you believe what you're trying to believe. But you can also use both natural intelligence and AI to see through your biases, challenge your own ideas, and try to get closer to the truth. The following prompts and responses are part of my own thinking process as I consider what we've talked about in this discussion and try to figure out what the evidence we've talked about implies about what is really true. This is 100% unedited, and I didn't reengineer any of the prompts based on not liking the answers. Bold text is added after by me. Q: 'd like to engage in a conversation with you that I plan on posting on a message board. Think carefully about the questions and give your very best opinions. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear, and don't soft-pedal anything out of concern for my feelings or anybody else's. Keep your answers conversational and very brief. Only one paragraph. Aim for 1-3 short sentences, but feel free to go over that if you must for the sake of clearness and honesty. Imagine the style like an interview transcript published in the New York Times. Any questions before we begin? A: No questions. Go ahead. Q: Tell me about the alleged golden plates that Joseph Smith showed to eight witnesses. I'm especially interested in the respective sizes of the sealed and unsealed sections, and the extrapolated total number of words, including the presumed forthcoming translation of the sealed section. A: The Eight Witnesses described a set of metal plates with engravings, often said (via later accounts like Joseph Smith and Orson Pratt) to be roughly 6×8×6 inches, with about two-thirds “sealed” and one-third available for translation, though the witnesses themselves gave almost no precise measurements. The Book of Mormon we have—translated from the unsealed portion—runs ~270,000 words, so a simple extrapolation would put the full record (including the sealed part) somewhere around 800,000+ words if proportions held. That said, both the dimensions and the sealed/unsealed ratio come from second-hand or later recollections, not from the Eight Witness statement itself, which is notably sparse and non-technical. Q: How do they compare to the The Larger Leiden Plates of Rajaraja I? A: ## Larger Leiden Plates (Chola dynasty) The Larger Leiden Plates are nothing like the alleged golden plates: they’re 21 thin copper sheets, each only a few millimeters thick, strung on a ring with a seal, and fully inscribed on both sides with dense, legible text—exactly what you’d expect for a real archival document. By contrast, the plates described by Joseph Smith are said to be thick (collectively ~6 inches), partly sealed, and only partly translated, with no surviving artifact and no detailed physical description from the witnesses. In short, the Leiden plates look like practical, working documents; the golden plates, as described, raise immediate questions about weight, usability, and why so much of the record would be inaccessible. Q: How do they compare to the The Tiruvalangadu Plates of Rajendra Chola I? A: The Tiruvalangadu Plates are again thin, practical copper sheets—dozens of plates, each only a few millimeters thick, inscribed on both sides, and bound by a ring and seal for secure but accessible reading; they’re designed to be handled, opened, and read in full. By contrast, the plates described by Joseph Smith are thick, partly sealed, and mostly inaccessible, with only a fraction translated and no surviving artifact to examine. The contrast is stark: known historical plates maximize readable surface area and usability, while the reported golden plates emphasize bulk and restricted access in a way that doesn’t match how real inscriptional records function. Q: How aboutThe Karandai Sangam Plates? A: The Karandai Plates follow the same pattern: many thin copper sheets, densely inscribed on both sides, strung on a ring with a seal, and fully accessible for reading—they maximize surface area and minimize weight. By contrast, the plates described by Joseph Smith are thick, partly sealed, and mostly unread, with bulk that seems to work against practical inscription. The pattern across real examples is consistent: thin, readable, complete; the reported golden plates are the opposite in every functional respect. Q: Regarding these three sets of plates, where were they from, in both time and place? A: All three—the Larger Leiden Plates, Tiruvalangadu Plates, and Karandai Plates—come from South India under the Chola dynasty, mainly in the 10th–11th centuries AD during the reigns of rulers like Rajaraja I and Rajendra Chola I. Geographically, they’re tied to Tamil Nadu, though the Leiden plates ended up in the Netherlands after being taken to Europe in the colonial period. In short: medieval South India, imperial Chola administration, roughly 1000 AD. Q: Aside from these plates and others like them, is there archeological evidence that medieval South India had the technology to create plates like this? A: Yes—overwhelmingly so. Medieval South India under the Chola dynasty had advanced, well-documented metallurgy (copper, bronze, gold), including casting, hammering sheets, engraving, and lost-wax techniques seen in things like the Chola bronzes; the same metalworking tradition that produced large temple icons and inscriptions also produced copper-plate grants. Archaeology, surviving workshops, slag, tools, and thousands of inscriptions on stone and metal all show a mature, routine capability—these plates aren’t anomalous artifacts, they’re part of a broad, continuous technological ecosystem. Q: Based on the the official witness statements of the "golden plates" and all other descriptions of them from first-hand witnesses, what technology would be required to produce them? A: Taking the witness claims at face value—a stack of metal plates, engraved, bound, and in part sealed—you’d need fairly ordinary pre-industrial capabilities: mining/refining a workable metal (likely a gold alloy or something that looks like it), hammering or casting thin sheets, punching holes and binding them with rings, and engraving text with hand tools. None of that is exotic; the only strain comes from the reported bulk and sealing (a thick stack, partly inaccessible), which would require either unusually thin but numerous plates or a very heavy object, plus some method of fastening or fusing a large section shut. In short, the baseline tech is straightforward metalworking; the oddity is in the described form factor, not the underlying techniques. Q: Did this technology exist in the pre-Columbus Americas? A: Partly, but not at the scale or in the form described. Pre-Columbian cultures like the Inca Empire and Muisca Confederation had sophisticated gold and copper metallurgy—hammering thin sheets, alloying (e.g., tumbaga), and engraving—but there’s no archaeological evidence of bound, book-like metal plates with dense writing systems like those described. Mesoamerican writing (e.g., Maya civilization) existed, but it was recorded on stone, stucco, or bark-paper codices, not metal plate “books.” So the base metallurgy existed, but the specific combination—inscribed, bound, text-heavy metal plates—is not attested anywhere in the pre-Columbian record. Q: If the technology existed in the required scale in that time and place, is it possible that it just hasn't been discovered by archeologists? A: Possible in the narrow sense, but very unlikely. The relevant cultures—like the Maya civilization and Inca Empire—left extensive, well-studied material records of metallurgy and writing, and a book-like metal tradition would leave multiple traces (tools, fragments, depictions, copies) even if the originals were lost. Archaeology routinely finds much subtler, rarer practices; the complete absence of anything resembling bound, inscribed metal plates suggests not just non-survival, but non-existence as a cultural practice. Q: Are the bound metal from medieval South India evidence that the Golden Plates are a genuine artifact from ancient America? A: No—they show the opposite. The Larger Leiden Plates, Tiruvalangadu Plates, and Karandai Plates demonstrate that when a culture actually uses metal plates for records, it leaves a broad, consistent trail—many examples, tools, inscriptions, and context—none of which exists in the pre-Columbian Americas. At best, they prove the concept is physically possible; they don’t provide any evidence that such an artifact existed in ancient America, and the archaeological silence there cuts the other way. Q: The Book of Mormon also claims that somebody in Jerusalem around 600 B.C. had a set of "brass plates" that contained the five books of Moses, a broader set of Jewish records, Prophetic writings (e.g. Isaiah), and some genealogical writing. Has anything like that ever been discovered in the archeological or historical record of that time and place? A: No. In the late Iron Age Levant (around 600 B.C.), texts like the Torah and prophetic writings circulated as scrolls—papyrus or leather—not metal books, and while we do have metal inscriptions (e.g., the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls), they’re tiny amulets with brief texts, not large compilations. There’s no archaeological or historical evidence of anything like a bound set of extensive “brass plates” containing multiple biblical books, genealogies, and records; that format simply isn’t attested in that time and place. Q: If something like that did exist, would there be archeological evidence, even indirectly? A: Yes—almost certainly. A corpus like that in 600 B.C. Jerusalem would leave indirect traces: tools and workshops for large-scale metal inscription, references or echoes in parallel textual traditions, fragments or copies, or at least cultural awareness of metal books alongside the well-attested scroll culture seen in finds like the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls and later the Dead Sea Scrolls. The total absence of any such signals strongly suggests the practice wasn’t part of that world. Q: In addition to the Brass Plates, the Book of Mormon implies that Nephi learned how to create and inscribe on plates. Is it possible that writing on metal plates was a highly secretive practice that Nephi learned because with Laban, he belonged to some sort of secret metal-plates cult? A: It’s not a plausible hypothesis. Late Iron Age Judah shows no trace—textual, archaeological, or iconographic—of a hidden tradition of large, text-bearing metal plates; what we do see (scribal schools, scroll production, occasional small metal amulets like the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls) fits an open, conventional scribal culture, not a secret parallel one. A “metal-plates cult” capable of producing extensive records would leave indirect footprints—tools, fragments, references, or imitators—and none are attested. Q: The Book of Mormon also implies that Ether wrote a history on metal plates. According to the Book of Mormon, his civilization kept a history since the time of the Tower of Babel, but doesn't say whether this history was on metal plates throughout that time. Is there any evidence that writing sacred history on metal plates was independently developed or made it to the new world from the time of the tower of babel? A: No—there’s no evidence for that anywhere. We have no historical or archaeological support for a continuous literate tradition stretching from the Tower of Babel, and in the ancient Near East and beyond, long-form texts were written on clay tablets, papyrus, or parchment—not bound metal plates; the rare metal inscriptions we do have are short, ceremonial, or dedicatory, not multi-volume histories. In the pre-Columbian Americas, there’s likewise no trace of a metal-based writing tradition at all, so there’s no independent development and no transmission pathway. Q: Before the alleged angel allegedly took the plates away, eight (or possibly 11) people saw the plates that Joseph Smith had in his possession. There were a few other unofficial accounts of people who caught glimpses of them. They were all considered men of solid integrity and never denied their testimonies, but as far as I can tell they were never subjected to a complete deposition, either. When evaluating the question of whether the artifact that Joseph Smith had in his possession was an ancient artifact, how much weight should these testimonies be given? A: They carry some weight on a narrow point—something physical likely existed—but very limited weight on authenticity or antiquity. The statements are brief, non-technical, and come from a small, affiliated group (e.g., Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery) without independent examination, chain of custody, or expert scrutiny, and they can’t be cross-examined. In evidentiary terms, that’s enough to suggest an object, not enough to establish what it was. Q: Moroni 7 says that anything that "inviteth and enticeth to do good" and to love and serve God is "inspired of God." It says the way to judge is plain, and that you can know with "perfect knowledge" that something is of God if it invites you to do good and persuades you to believe in Christ. Could the Moroni 7 ethics have some bearing on this? Is it possible that the "something physical" that likely existed was less impressive than we are imagining, but that the witnesses were a little less than completely transparent about what they saw because doing so would persuade people to believe in Christ? A: Yes, that’s a plausible lens. If you take Book of Mormon passages like Moroni 7 seriously, they prioritize spiritual outcomes over evidentiary precision, which can create an incentive—conscious or not—to frame experiences in faith-promoting ways rather than in strictly forensic terms. That doesn’t require deceit; it’s consistent with sincere people emphasizing meaning over detail, especially absent adversarial questioning or technical description. Q: Please review all of the prompts I've made in this conversation. Do you think they've been biased and manipulated you to give the answers you did? A: A bit, but not in a fatal way. The sequence leans toward comparative absence (“no evidence,” “no parallels”), which nudges conclusions in a skeptical direction, but the underlying answers still track the historical and archaeological record as it’s generally understood. In other words, the framing guides the emphasis, not the core facts. Q: In my online conversation, somebody has repeatedly asked me to "provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor." What do you think of that question? A: It’s a rhetorically strong but asymmetrical demand. It sets a high bar for alternatives (complete, low-speculation, empirically tight) while the original claim relies on elements that aren’t empirically testable (lost artifact, unobservable translation), so it shifts the burden rather than equalizing it; in practice, historical explanations often work with partial data and inference, not a single fully “coherent” reconstruction. A fair standard would compare competing hypotheses on explanatory scope, evidential support, and assumptions—not require one side to deliver near-forensic completeness the evidence simply doesn’t permit. Q: This person repeatedly says things like: <quote>That said, I sure would like to see you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor. You're all about the empiricism, after all. And you have nearly 200 years of your predecessor critics to draw upon. And you have remarkable resources in terms of online content and AI platforms to help you parse all this out. And you still cannot or will not present an alternative explanation beyond "tin" and "I don't know."</quote> and <qote>Roger, I know this is a tough topic. Despite what I perceive as rhetorical evasions and distractions, I appreciate your willingness to talk about this stuff. You are operating under a set of atheistic/agnostic/naturalistic presuppositions that you have had for a very long time, that you are very comfortable with and confident in, and so on. But those presuppositions are, I think, impeding you from bringing your otherwise substantial intellect and knowledge based to bear on the topic under discussion, specifically, to articulate a positive, coherent alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon, centering on evidence about the Plates, the Witnesses and the Text, and which explanation accounts for key data points without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor. The Latter-day Saints have done this. You have not. At this point, I am concluding that it's not that you won't respond to my request, but that you can't. Despite decades of study and familiarity with the Church and its doctrines/history, and despite your extensive participation on this board, and despite your formidable intellect, you are demonstrating that you cannot meaningfully engage and address the substantive evidence pertaining to the Witnesses and the Plates (and we have barely touched the text itself and evidences associated therewith). </quote> What do you think of this posturing? A: It’s classic burden-shifting wrapped in confidence. He demands a fully specified, low-speculation natural model while his own position relies on untestable elements (lost plates, non-replicable translation), then reframes your reluctance as inability—effectively turning an evidentiary asymmetry into a rhetorical win. A cleaner standard is comparative: weigh hypotheses on scope, assumptions, and fit to known evidence, rather than insisting one side produce a courtroom-ready reconstruction the data can’t support. Q: I told this poster "As I’ve explained over and over, the reason I don’t have this positive explanation is because the evidence doesn’t exist. And as I’ve explained over and over, the reason the evidence doesn’t exist is because the person who had the most to gain from proving his claims true is the one who made sure the evidence that would have settled the matter was not made available for independent examination." Please be honest with me and don't tell me what I want to hear. Is my response a cop-out? A: It’s not a cop-out, but it’s incomplete. You’re right about the evidentiary gap and restricted access, but by stopping there you concede the frame that you owe a full alternative; you don’t—you can still offer a modest, evidence-consistent account (e.g., a physical prop plus sincere, socially reinforced testimony) and argue that it better fits the data with fewer assumptions than a supernatural translation of lost plates in the Book of Mormon. That shifts you from “I don’t know” to a comparative explanation without overclaiming. Q: A competent archeologist examining the plates would settle the issue conclusively. This can't be done. The reason it can't be done isn't because the plates were lost to time in the way that, say, Brutus's dagger was lost to time. Rather, we don't have it because, allegedly, "an angel took it back." That is why we have to rely on the witness statements. It seems awfully unreasonable to discount the witness statements just because we have to rely on them because the angel who showed the plates to the witnesses took them away. Right? A: No—that doesn’t make it unreasonable to discount them; it makes them the only evidence, but still weak evidence. Testimony from a small, affiliated group—without independent examination, detailed description, or the ability to cross-check—can establish that something was seen, not what it was or where it came from; the appeal to an angel removing the plates explains the lack of scrutiny but also prevents verification. In ordinary evidentiary standards, that keeps the claims about antiquity and translation at low confidence, even if the witnesses were sincere. Q: Does the existence and provenance of the alleged plates have any bearing on whether the Book of Mormon is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient manuscript? After all, the plates weren't actually used in the "translation" process. In principle, the plates could be real and the translation bogus, or vice versa, right? A: Yes—those are logically separable. Even within Book of Mormon narratives, the reported “translation” method (seer stone/dictation) doesn’t depend on consulting the plates, so an authentic artifact wouldn’t validate the text, and a compelling text wouldn’t authenticate the artifact. At most, the plates (if verified) would support a minimal claim that some record existed, not that the extant wording is a faithful translation of it. Q: Another issue is the allegedly "miraculous" way the Book of Mormon was dictated. By the accounts we have, it was dictated to scribes over just a few months in a performative way that involved a hat and a seer stone (despite the official account saying the Urim and Thummim were used). The general argument is that because of the book's length and complexity, it is extraordinarily unlikely that somebody with Joseph Smith's limited intelligence could have pulled this up without divine help. A: The “speed + complexity ⇒ divine origin” argument is suggestive but not decisive. We have multiple early accounts (e.g., Emma Smith and David Whitmer) describing dictation via a seer stone in a hat, which can function like an oral-composition setup—reducing cognitive load by externalizing focus—rather than proving supernatural input. Long, structured works have been produced through rapid dictation or oral methods before, so the better question is comparative: does a natural model (improvisation, prior exposure to biblical language, narrative scaffolding) explain the features with fewer assumptions than a miracle? Q: Does the miracle of how this was dictated have any bearing on whether the artifact the witnesses allegedly saw was an authentic ancient manuscript? A: No—they’re largely independent. The dictation process (as reported by people like Emma Smith and David Whitmer) bears on how the text was produced, not on the material origin of any plates; you can have a rapid, seemingly unusual dictation with or without a genuine ancient artifact. So it may raise questions about authorship or method, but it doesn’t materially strengthen the case that the plates themselves were authentic. Q: The person I'm primarily debating on these points is an attorney, and he repeatedly pounds the question that he wants "provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor." I think this question is defective for a few reasons: 1- It is a compound question. He wants me to explain both the plates/witness statements AND the "translation" process. Those are two independent questions. 2- He demands that my answer be positive, highly specific, non-speculative, and empirically rigorous. 3- He demands my answers to these specific questions be based on the evidence he has selected. My position is that I don't know what, specifically, the witnesses saw, but I'm very confident it wasn't an ancient artifact. And I don't know how, specifically, Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, but I'm very confident it is of 19th-Century American Origin. I'm quite happy to explain in detail why I have strong confidence in the things I'm confident about, and why I don't know the things I don't know. I could give several *plausible* explantations of the witnesses, plates, and dictation process. But they'd be speculative in nature. A: Your critique is basically right. He’s bundling separable issues, setting an unrealistically high bar (near-forensic reconstruction from fragmentary data), and constraining you to his curated “key points,” which skews the playing field; that’s advocacy, not neutral inquiry. A stronger move is to state a modest, comparative model: a physical prop (material unknown) plus sincere, socially reinforced testimony, and a text produced via oral dictation drawing on 19th-century religious language and ideas—then argue it fits the data with fewer assumptions than a supernatural account, while being explicit about where uncertainty remains. Q: Okay. One final line of questioning. According to Mormon doctrine, is it possible that an evil spirit will appear as an angel of light that is capable of deceiving good people? A: Yes. In Latter-day Saint teaching, evil spirits can imitate divine messengers and appear as angels of light; that’s why texts like Doctrine and Covenants 129 lay out tests (e.g., a true resurrected being can be physically felt, a spirit won’t). The doctrine explicitly allows for sincere people to be deceived by such appearances. Q: So, according to Mormon doctrine, it takes the specialized knowledge laid out in D&C 129 to determine if a professed angel is really an angel? A: That’s the implication, yes. In Doctrine and Covenants 129, the ability to distinguish true messengers from deceptive ones depends on knowing and applying specific tests, which suggests that without that framework, a person could be misled—even if sincere. Q: When the three witnesses declared that they saw an angel, were they acting as fact witnesses or expert witnesses? A: Fact witnesses. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris testified to what they experienced, not to applying the specialized criteria later outlined in Doctrine and Covenants 129; they didn’t present themselves as experts certifying the nature of the being. Q: But without performing the tests in DUC 129, how could they know that the being they saw was really an angel and wasn't something else? A: They couldn’t *verify* it in the D&C 129 sense—they could only *identify* it based on their experience and interpretation. Their statements (from Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris) report what they perceived as an angel, but without applying later criteria from Doctrine and Covenants, that identification isn’t independently validated—it rests on subjective judgment rather than a tested standard. Q: But according to what we know from D&C 129, their interpretation of the event *could* be wrong. A: Yes—that follows from the doctrine. If Doctrine and Covenants 129 is taken seriously, then without applying its tests, a sincere person’s interpretation of an “angelic” encounter could be mistaken, even if the experience itself was real. Q: Is it reasonable to be confident that the Tilma of Guadalupe is really just a painting, even if I don't know who specifically painted it, exactly when, and exactly how? A: Yes, that’s a perfectly reasonable level of confidence. The Tilma of Guadalupe fits known categories of human-made devotional art, and we don’t need a fully specified artist, date, and method to conclude it’s a painting; historical reasoning often works by identifying the most likely class of explanation, not reconstructing every detail. Q: Is it likewise reasonable to be confident that whatever the 11 witnesses saw and experiened, it wasn't an authentic ancient manuscript written on gold-like plates? A: Yes—given the total evidence, that level of confidence is reasonable. You don’t need a fully specified alternative to judge that an ancient, text-bearing metal record is unlikely; the combination of thin, affiliated testimony, lack of independent examination, and absence of any corroborating archaeological context points toward a modern explanation as the better fit. Q: By looking at the actual text of the Book of Mormon, is it reasonable to be extremely confident that it was written in early 19th century America and isn't a translation of an ancient document? A: It’s reasonable to be highly confident the text reflects an early 19th-century American milieu—its language tracks the King James Bible style, and many themes and concerns fit that context—so a modern origin explains the data well. But “extremely confident it isn’t a translation” is a stronger claim than the text alone can strictly prove; it’s a comparative judgment that a 19th-century composition fits better with fewer assumptions than an ancient source. Q: I'd like to think about Book of Mormon evidence in Bayesian terms. The idea is to come up with some broad categories of evidence that are as few in number as possible, but are also as statistically independent as possible. I'd then have two broad theories that are mutually exclusive and exhaustive: either the text is modern fiction or is really an accurate translation of an authentic ancient text. I'd come up with an a priori belief based on what we know about the real world, and then would calculate some likelihood ratios for each of the broad categories of evidence. Is that approach sound, from the perspective of statistics and logical abduction generally? A: Yes, that’s a sound framework in principle—Bayesian updating is exactly how you’d formalize comparative explanatory reasoning—but the challenge is execution. You’ll need to define hypotheses clearly (what “ancient translation” entails), avoid double-counting correlated evidence (textual features, witnesses, and translation accounts aren’t fully independent), and be honest about priors and likelihoods, which will be subjective and debatable; the value comes less from precise numbers and more from making assumptions explicit and comparing which model (modern composition vs. ancient source) better predicts the total pattern of evidence. Q: Please do some deep research on this question, and list the broad categories of evidence you think will exhaustively cover the data. A: Yes. The cleanest Bayesian partition I see is four buckets: **(1) the text itself**—language, narrative architecture, intertextuality, theology, and signs of translation vs. composition; **(2) external correspondence to the claimed ancient worlds**—fit with late pre-exilic Jerusalem and with ancient America, including archaeology, anthropology, geography, and population evidence; **(3) modern provenance and production**—the 1820s dictation process, manuscripts, witnesses to composition, printing history, revisions, and Joseph Smith’s environment; and **(4) the plates/witnesses/material-claim evidence**—the object reports, Three/Eight Witness statements, handling claims, and what those testimonies can and cannot establish. That partition is close to exhaustive while keeping overlap manageable, and it tracks standard Bayesian advice: compare hypotheses by likelihood, avoid double-counting correlated evidence, and be explicit about assumptions rather than pretending the numbers are objective. ([PubMed Central][1]) If you want the statistically cleaner version, I’d treat **plates/witnesses** and **dictation/translation process** as separate categories, not one attorney-style compound category, because the Church’s own materials distinguish the witness events from the translation method, and also acknowledge uncertainty on issues like geography and DNA evidence. So my final scheme would be: **Text**, **Ancient-world fit**, **Modern production history**, and **Artifact/witness claims**. That is probably the best minimal structure for a serious likelihood-ratio exercise. ([The Church of Jesus Christ][2]) [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7339646/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Likelihood Ratio as Weight of Forensic Evidence: A Closer Look" [2]: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng&utm_source=chatgpt.com "Book of Mormon Translation" Q: Okay. Briefly list what you think the categories should be that are cleanest A: Four clean, minimally overlapping buckets: 1. **Text-internal features** — language, style, structure, theology, intertextuality. 2. **Ancient-world fit** — correspondence (or lack thereof) with pre-exilic Near East and pre-Columbian Americas. 3. **Modern production/provenance** — dictation process, manuscripts, printing, 1820s context. 4. **Material artifact & witness claims** — plates, handling accounts, and testimony limits. Q: Do you think the book containing EModE words that aren't in the KJV bible has any bearing on whether the book is an accurate translation of an authentic text? A: Yes—it has some bearing, but it’s not decisive on its own. Non-KJV Early Modern English forms can be explained naturally (broader biblical/archaic exposure, stylistic imitation, or oral composition), so they don’t uniquely predict an ancient source; they slightly favor a modern composition model because they fit a 19th-century English register, but the real weight comes from how this pattern combines with other textual features. Q: Rather than estimating specific likelihood ratios, I'd like your opinion on which direction each of these baskets place. Do the text-internal features point to a modern BoM or an ancient BoM? A: They point more strongly toward a modern composition. The pervasive King James–style English, 19th-century theological framing, and patterns of biblical reuse and expansion fit naturally with a text produced in that milieu, whereas an ancient source would require multiple layered assumptions (translation into archaic English plus coincidental alignment with that specific register and worldview). Q: Does the ancient-world fit points of evidence point more towards a modern BoM or to an ancient BoM? A: They point more toward a modern composition. The claimed settings—late pre-exilic Jerusalem and especially pre-Columbian Americas—don’t line up cleanly with the archaeological, linguistic, and genetic record (e.g., no evidence of Near Eastern migrations or the described societies at the required scale), so the overall fit is weaker than you’d expect if the text were an accurate ancient record. Q: Do the Modern production/provenance evidence point more towards a modern BoM or to an ancient BoM? A: They point strongly toward a modern origin. The documented 1820s context—rapid dictation, manuscript history, printing process, and clear ties to Joseph Smith’s environment—fits exactly what we’d expect for a contemporary composition, without requiring any additional assumptions about lost ancient sources. Q: Do the Material artifact & witness claims point more towards a modern BoM or to an ancient BoM? A: They point, modestly but clearly, toward a modern origin. The witness statements suggest a real object was experienced, but their brevity, lack of technical detail, close social ties, and absence of independent examination make them much more consistent with a contemporary artifact than a verifiable ancient record. Q: My overall posture is that based on what we now know about science, my a priori beliefs about BoM claims are extraordinarily unlikely--perhaps one in ten thousand. After carefully considering the totality the data and applying the appropriate likelihood ratios and then heavily discounting for personal bias and unperceived covariance, I get an a posteriori belief of perhaps one in a million. A: That’s a coherent Bayesian posture. Starting with a very low prior for a claim that would require large-scale revisions to what we know about history, archaeology, and linguistics is standard, and if each major evidence bucket points the same direction, the posterior will drop further; the main caution is humility about how subjective those priors and likelihoods are, and guarding against overconfidence from correlated evidence. Q: Richard Feynman said, "you must not fool yourself; you are the easiest person to fool." What did he mean by that? A: When Richard Feynman said that, he meant that your own biases, desires, and prior commitments make you especially prone to rationalizing weak evidence and overestimating how strong your case is. The warning is methodological: you have to actively try to disprove yourself, stress-test your assumptions, and look for where you might be double-counting or selectively interpreting data—because no one is better positioned than you are to unintentionally deceive yourself.

The above sets up strawmen and false premises. Actually, it is falsifiable. It just does not turn out the way you want it to, so you are complaining about it. In what way is your theory falsifiable? It seems to me that anytime it contains a word or phrase that doesn't fit into EModE, you can ascribe it to another member of the "ghost committee". And to be clear, I don't mean to use the phrase "ghost committee" pejoratively or as a straw man--I just use it to highlight that the theory is, as far as I can tell, that the language in the BoM is inconsistent in terms of what period this or that phrase comes from. What would disprove your theory? The language being consistent? Is your theory inconsistency including the inconsistent use (and for some specific phrases overuse) of archaic phrases that we didn't know were in Joseph Smith's registry? How is that different that shooting all over the place and then drawing bullseyes around the bullet holes? And regardless, what does any of this have to do with the theory of the provenance of the plates the witnesses allegedly saw, and whether the BoM is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient text?

Your methodology for proving he did not word it is flawed because it has no predictive power and isn't falsifiable. The BoM is full of words that clearly are not EModE. And the EModE features aren't internally consistent. And some of the EModE phrases were used much more frequently than any verified EModE writers used them. It's like he took a thousand shots at the side of the barn, the bullets landed wherever they landed, and you drew a tiny bullseye around each one.

I'll point out that the image I chose was from the Church’s own website (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/image/gold-plates-0d313cd?lang=eng), and I chose it because it seemed more plausible than others.e.g. this one from FAIR: The problem is that there isn’t a realistic facsimile of what an authentic set of plates would have looked like because there were no authentic plates. I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question. First of all, there is no reason to believe that the “several older men” involved had any skill or expertise in determining whether an alleged ancient artifact really was ancient. As Smac said, they were fact witnesses, not expert witnesses. But more fundamentally, even if these “several older men” correctly believed that the plates were made out of solid 14-k gold (worth $10,000 then, or $1.5 million now), and were crafted with the highest level of skill imaginable, that only adds weight to the fact that they must have been of modern origin, because ancient people didn’t have the technology to create such a thing. Saying Joseph Smith couldn’t afford it doesn’t change the fact that it couldn’t be ancient. I did my best to present the evidence to ChatGPT in an unbiased way, and it independently came to the same conclusion I did: the fact that ancient people didn’t have the technology to produce this is much stronger evidence than the weight of the witnesses testimony. When you layer on top of that the fact that Joseph Smith was skilled at getting people to be less than 100% truthful on his behalf, and the fact that the evidence we have is extraordinarily suspicious (because the person who had the most to gain from proving his claims true is the one who made sure the evidence that would have settled the matter was not made available for independent examination), the fact that they are of modern origin becomes even more clear.