Analytics

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.

What are you talking about? Smac claimed the Book of Mormon's metal plates are plausible because writing long histories on ancient metal plates "has been done.” He tried to “prove” this by throwing a whole bunch of links at me. I looked up every example he cited. His best evidence is a 2"x2" plate with 150 words on it. I showed that a 780,000-word history book on metal plates is categorically different and totally unseen in the ancient world. Nothing comes close, and Smac's own references illustrates this. That isn't redirecting the conversation. That's reading his sources more carefully than he did. As for my supposed lack of "extensive knowledge of ancient metal epigraphy," guilty as charged. I don't have any. I didn't need it. Smac provided the links. I followed them. Determining that a 2"x2" plate containing 100 words is not evidence of a long history book written on metal plates requires nothing more than basic reading comprehension. If that's the bar for "playing offense," it's a pretty low one. When your side produces evidence, I'm going to examine it. When that examination shows the evidence doesn’t imply what you claim, I’ll point it out. Apparently you'd prefer I didn't. But examining the plausibility of the core claim isn't a redirect. It's the whole game.

Hi Smac, This post throws a lot of stuff at me. It contains about 7,000 words, perhaps a couple dozen links to other websites, and giant laundry lists of Mormon apologetics. Rather than reply to all of this, I’m going to take a deep dive into one of the most fundamental and important issues. Hopefully this will help you see why I find your point of view so unconvincing. I had said: The plates are a categorically different kind of claim, and the difference matters. Authentic ancient plates don't merely lack corroboration. They contradict what we know. The archaeological and genetic record of pre-Columbian America does not contain a thread that could be pulled to produce a thick book of golden plates containing a detailed history. Nobody in antiquity ever wrote a long history book on metal plates because doing so is hopelessly impractical. Anyone who has seen or heard of paper disintegrating over time knows that is a weakness, but metal plates isn’t the answer because making a record on that medium is too expensive and impractical to be done in the real world. It’s never been done. It couldn’t be done. You responded: If there was any evidence that anybody in antiquity ever wrote a long history book, you would have provided an example. You didn’t. You said, "we claim that a bunch of authors kept records of wildly differing lengths (Chemish wrote one verse, Alma wrote enough to cover 36 chapters), and that Mormon compiled and abridged these various documents into one consolidated record: The Gold Plates.” I know that is your claim. It’s an extraordinary claim, because something like that happening just isn’t feasible. The Book of Mormon is full of people writing histories on metal plates in exactly the same way that Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive is full of people swinging 6-foot long shardblades that cause your eyeballs to burn out if you get cut with one. It’s intrinsic to the plot, but it is totally make believe. In upstate New York in the 1820’s, people were obsessed with the Bible and using it as a definitive source for proving what God really wants. As they debated this, they discussed that we don’t have an original autograph of any of it. We didn’t have a copy of Genesis written by Moses by his own hand. We didn’t even have an autograph of Revelations written by John’s own hand. All we had were copies of copies of copies of copies of copies.... This process caused their to be ambiguities and discrepancies in the translations we have. Not only is there uncertainty that the translation was done correctly--there was uncertainty whether the manuscript that was being translated was a faithful copy of the original autograph. This was a huge religious concern in Joseph Smith’s time and place, and keeping records on metal plates is a plot device to solve it. But in the real world, there weren’t “a bunch” of authors keeping records on metal plates that were then so numerous that somebody else needed to “compile and abridge” them onto yet more metal plates. This didn’t happen, and the claim is implausible. Of course if there was evidence that such things did happen I’d adjust my views accordingly. But the evidence is that this never happened and that it couldn't happen. I’m going to call your bluff and look at the “evidence” of "long history book written on metal plates" that you provided. These are from this video that you provided: https://latterdaysaintsqa.com/metal-plates-discovered-evidences/ Example 1 Apologetic Description: So if you look at this first one here, this was the plates. King Darius of Persia, dated to 515 B.C. These were found in 1933 by a German archaeologist in a sealed stone box, if that sounds familiar to you there. Scientific Description: Gold and silver foundation tablets of Darius I from Persepolis, dated to ~515 B.C. and excavated in 1933: two thin plates (one gold, one silver), each about ~5.5 inches square and under ~0.04 inches thick, with a short trilingual royal inscription totaling roughly ~100–150 words. The text is a formal foundation inscription—a declaration of Darius’s rule and the extent of his empire, placed ceremonially in the building’s foundation. The plates were hammered and engraved, generally flat but not perfectly planar, with straight, carefully cut but not perfectly uniform edges. Material: gold and silver. Provenance: deposited in a sealed stone foundation box at Persepolis, discovered during excavations in 1933. Example 2 Apologetic Description: This is ancient golden plates found in modern-day Bulgaria, in the 1950s. These were dated at 600 B.C. I really liked these because they showed an example of a bound by metal plates with the metal rings, which again sounds familiar. Scientific Description: Gold plates from Panagyurishte gold plates (often called the “Thracian gold book”), reportedly found in the 1950s in Bulgaria and commonly dated (with some dispute) to ~600 B.C.: a set of six small gold sheets, each about ~2–2.5 inches tall and ~1.5–2 inches wide, containing very short engraved text and figures totaling roughly ~100–200 words (or word-equivalents). The content appears to be ritual/religious in nature, combining symbolic imagery with brief inscriptions. The plates are thin, hammered gold, generally flat with slight waviness, and have rounded, somewhat irregular edges rather than perfectly uniform cuts; they are bound together by small metal rings through punched holes. Material: gold. Provenance: said to have been found in southern Bulgaria and later donated to the National History Museum in Sofia; exact find circumstances are not well documented. Example 3 Apologetic Description: gold plates of Pyrgi, modern-day Italy, town of Santa Severa, found in 1964, and these were dated to 500 B.C. Scientific Description: Gold tablets of Pyrgi Tablets from Pyrgi (near Santa Severa), discovered in 1964 and dated to ~500 B.C.: three thin gold sheets, each about ~7.5–8 inches tall and ~3–4 inches wide, with short inscriptions totaling roughly ~200–300 words. The content is dedicatory in nature, combining Etruscan and Phoenician text celebrating a temple dedication and offerings. The plates are hammered gold, generally flat but slightly irregular, with straight edges that are not perfectly uniform, and punched holes along one side for mounting rather than binding. Material: gold. Provenance: excavated from a sanctuary context at Pyrgi in 1964. Example 4 Apologetic Description: If you look at here, this was actually a find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. A copper scroll found in Qumran by an archaeologist in 1952. It’s a Hebrew text been inscribed on two rolls of copper and dates to between 50 and 100 A.D. Scientific Description: Copper Scroll from Qumran, discovered in 1952 and dated to ~50–100 A.D.: originally one thin copper sheet (~8 feet long × ~12 inches wide, ~0.04 inches thick), later cut into two rolls, containing a text of roughly ~3,000–4,000 words (64 entries). The content is essentially a list of hidden treasures, with locations and quantities described in a code-like format, rather than narrative or poetic text. The sheet was hammered copper and then inscribed, not perfectly flat due to rolling and corrosion, with irregular edges where it was cut open. Material: copper with a small amount of tin. Provenance: found in Cave 3 at Qumran in the Judean Desert. Example 5 Apologetic Description: The most compelling consists of actual specimens found when an early date is positively indicated. Over a dozen of these significantly precede 900 A.D. The earliest piece so far notably dates back to around the first century B.C. It’s a bit of copper sheeting found on top of an altar in the valley of Mexico Scientific Description: Copper sheet from Valley of Mexico, dated to ~1st century B.C.: a thin sheet of hammered copper, roughly ~10–12 inches long × ~6–8 inches wide and under ~0.05 inches thick, bearing short inscriptions totaling perhaps ~50–100 words. The content is ritual or dedicatory in nature, likely recording offerings or ceremonial instructions. The sheet is not perfectly flat, showing slight waviness from hammering, with edges roughly cut and somewhat irregular, typical of early metalworking. Material: copper. Provenance: found atop an altar in the Valley of Mexico; excavation details indicate a pre-Columbian ceremonial context. Video’s Conclusion After showing these five examples, the author quotes Hugh Nibley as saying, "It will not be long before men forget that in Joseph’s day, the prophet was mocked and derided for his description of the plates more than anything else.” (1952) My Analysis It’s now been 75 years, and Nibley is still wrong. As we learn more and more about the ancient world, the more confident we get that the Book of Mormon just isn’t plausible. The Golden Plates are said to be a set of plates 6-8 inches wide by 8-10 inches tall, and were stacked about 6 inches thick. The plates were allegedly uniform in size, and had no obvious gaps when stacked. Of this 6-inch stack of plates, 4 inches were “sealed”, and 2 inches could be flipped through. When translated into English, the unsealed section is about 268,000 words. Assuming the sealed portion is written with the same efficiency as the unsealed portion, the Book of Mormon plus the forthcoming Volume 2: The Sealed Portion, is a total of about 780,000 words. When trying to prove the plausibility of a 60-pound bound history book written on metal plates that is 780,000 words long, the very best evidence the apologists can come up with include 6 tiny sheets, about 2 inches by 2 inches, that contains about 150 words. So remember. In the Book of Mormon’s fictional universe, everybody wrote on metal plates. These writings were so extensive they needed to be abridged down to a mere 780,000 words! The fact that these examples are the best you can come up with proves my point: making such objects is extraordinarily difficult and impractical. Consider how much work it actually took to create this: That illustrates how impractical and implausible it would be for somebody with pre-industrial technology to create this: To say nothing about the massive amount of work creating even more plates, of which this is a mere abridgment(!). I uploaded this image to ChatGPT and had this conversation. Q: Good morning. I'd like to ask you a series of questions. Be very openminded about this, but keep your answers grounded in reality. Be willing to think outside the box, but be frank about what we know. Sound good? A: Sounds good. Go ahead. Q: What do you see in this image? A: A stack of thin, rectangular metal plates, uniform in size and thickness, bound together by three large rings. It’s styled to look like a compact metal “book,” with smooth, flat surfaces and clean edges, resting outdoors among leaves. Q: Is it plausible that this is a real-world artifact that was created anywhere in the Americas, any time before Columbus? A: Highly unlikely. Pre-Columbian American metallurgy didn’t produce large numbers of thin, uniform, flat sheets with that kind of precision or binding system. The object shown looks much more like something made with later metalworking techniques. Q: But we know the Mayans, for example, had words for metal and did metal working. Is it possible that at some point an ancient advanced civilization had the technology needed to make this? A: They did work metals—gold, copper, some alloys—but mostly by hammering and casting small objects, not producing stacks of thin, uniform sheets. There’s no archaeological evidence anywhere in the pre-Columbian Americas of sheet-metal fabrication at that scale or precision. An unknown advanced civilization is always logically possible, but in practice it would leave a broad footprint—tools, workshops, waste, related artifacts—and we don’t see that. Q: Why would such a civilization be expected to leave such a footprint? A: Because technologies don’t exist in isolation—they require infrastructure. You’d expect mines, smelting sites, tools, failed pieces, and a progression of simpler artifacts leading up to something like this. Those traces tend to survive even when finished objects don’t, and across the Americas we see consistent patterns of metallurgy that don’t include this level of sheet production. Q: Is it possible that a very small civilization existed among the Olmec's or Mayans that had this technology and used it to create books like this over a thousand years, but since it was so small relative to the other people, they didn't leave an archeological trace of these artifacts of rhe infrastructure that would be needed to create it? A: Possible in a bare logical sense, but extremely implausible. Even a small group sustaining that technology for centuries would leave consistent traces—tools, debris, intermediate forms—and we don’t see any hint of that. Archaeology routinely picks up much subtler, smaller-scale activities than this, and the metallurgical record in the Americas is pretty well mapped in that regard. Q: If. somebody had an artifact like this in upstate New York in the 1820's, where did it most likely come from? A: Most likely from contemporary 18th–19th century metalworking—either locally made or using imported rolled sheet metal (tinplate, copper, or brass) from Europe or early American mills. By the 1820s, uniform sheet metal and ring-binding were well within ordinary technology, especially for things like bookbinding hardware, containers, or decorative objects. Q: You would need roller sheet metal to create this? What's that? A: Rolled sheet metal is made by passing heated metal between heavy rollers to flatten it into thin, uniform sheets. It produces consistent thickness and smooth surfaces—exactly the kind of material this object appears to use. That process (rolling mills) became widespread in Europe in the 1700s and in the U.S. by the early 1800s. Q: Were sheets made from rolled metal avaiable for purchase in upstate New York in the 1820's? If so, what kinds of metal were available? A: Yes—by the 1820s, rolled sheet metal was available in upstate New York, mostly via import and some early domestic production. Common types were tinplate (iron sheets coated in tin), sheet iron, copper sheets, and brass; tinplate was especially widespread because it was used for everyday goods like containers, lanterns, and roofing. Q: What were the size of tinplate sheets that were available to purchase then? A: They were fairly standardized. The most common was the “box tin” plate, roughly 14 × 20 inches per sheet (sometimes a bit larger, like ~20 × 28 inches for double sizes). Thickness was thin but uniform, and sheets were sold in boxes containing many plates, ready for tinsmiths to cut and shape. Q: So, if you took a standard sheet of roller tin and cut it into four equally-sized rectangles, how big would each rectangle be, in inches? A: If you start with a standard 14 × 20 inch tinplate sheet and divide it into four equal rectangles, each piece would be about 7 × 10 inches. Q: Would somebody living in upstate New York be able to cut tinplate in this way? A: Yes. A tinsmith—or even a reasonably skilled tradesman—could cut tinplate cleanly using hand shears, which were standard tools at the time. Cutting a 14×20 sheet into four uniform 7×10 pieces would be straightforward, especially with basic measuring and marking tools. Q: How many standard sheets would be needed to create a stack 7x10 plates 6 inches tall? A: Using the common 14 × 20 inch sheet size, cutting each sheet into four 7 × 10 inch plates means you get 4 plates per sheet. Historical references describe a standard “base box” as 112 sheets of 14 × 20, and one common rule of thumb was about 112 lb per box, which works out to roughly 1 lb per sheet. ([GovInfo][1]) If a 14 × 20 tinplate sheet weighs about 1 lb, its thickness comes out to about 0.012–0.013 inch for iron/steel with tin coating. A stack 6 inches tall would therefore need about 6 / 0.0126 ≈ 475 plates. Since each original sheet yields 4 plates, that is about 119 standard sheets. This is an estimate, but the right order of magnitude is roughly 120 sheets. [1]: "Letter Circular 24: standard thickness of sheet metal" Q: How much would 120 sheets weigh? A: About 120 pounds. A standard sheet was roughly 1 pound, so 120 sheets → ~120 pounds total. Q: So a stack of 7x10 tin sheets 6 inches tall would be 120 pounds? That sounds heavy. A: Yes—roughly that order of magnitude, and it is heavy. A 6-inch stack of thin iron-based sheets adds up quickly; even if you tweak assumptions, you’re still likely in the 80–120 pound range, not something light or easy to handle. Q: What if the artifact only weighed 60 pounds? A: Then the plates would have to be thinner, fewer in number, or made from a less dense metal. A 60-pound stack that size is still plausible with tinplate, but you’d be looking at something like half as many plates or noticeably thinner sheets compared to the earlier estimate. Q: Using 1820's technology that was avaiable in upstate New York in the 1820's, was there a way to color timplate so that it had the appearance of gold? A: Yes. Tinsmiths in that period commonly used brass (which is naturally gold-colored) or applied gold-colored varnishes/lacquers over tinplate to give it a golden appearance. There were also techniques like gilding (thin gold leaf or wash), though that was more expensive. Q: How much would 60 pounds worth of tinplate cost in that time and place? A: A reasonable ballpark is about $7. One period source quoted tin at $13 per box in December 1822, and a standard box of tinplate was about 100–112 pounds, so 60 pounds would come out to roughly $7–$8, before freight or local markup. ([HSEAD][1]) So yes: not cheap, but also not some impossibly expensive material in upstate New York in the 1820s. ([HSEAD][1])[1]: "American Painted Tinware" Q: How long would a day laborer need to work to save up $8? A: Roughly 1–2 weeks of wages. A day laborer in the 1820s might earn about $0.75 to $1.00 per day, so saving $8—assuming little to no expenses—would take around 8–12 working days. Q: How hard would it be to put engravings on plates such as these? A: Not especially hard for a trained hand. Tinplate is thin and relatively soft, so a tinsmith or engraver could incise lines using burins, punches, or even simple chisels; the real challenge is time and consistency, not technical feasibility. Q: Imagine somebody in the 1820's that didn't have any education, experience, or specialized knowledge of archeology. Imagine this non-expert saw this artifact and said that the artifact "had the appearance of gold", and that it had engravings that "had the appearance of ancient work." Would this be considered strong evidence that the artifact really was of ancient origins? A: No—that would be very weak evidence. Those are subjective impressions from a non-expert, and both “gold-like” appearance and “ancient-looking” engravings can be easily produced with contemporary materials and techniques. Q: Now imagine somebody who could potentially gain fame and fortune by convincing others that this artifact was a genuine, but for whatever reason, only allowed eight close friends and family members to view it. So now, there are a total of eight non-experts attesting that this artifact "has the apperance of gold" and "has the apperance of ancient work." Would eight non-experts attesting to this increase the likelihood that it is of ancient origins? A: It increases confidence that something physical existed, but not that it was ancient. If all eight are non-experts, using subjective language, and are socially connected to the promoter, their agreement is not independent or technically probative—so it adds little to the claim of ancient origin. Q: Is that true even if they are all really honest and upstanding men? A: Yes. Honesty matters for whether they’re reporting sincerely, but it doesn’t improve their ability to correctly identify materials, age, or manufacturing methods—so the evidentiary value on “ancient origin” remains weak. Q: Let's assume that we can take the joint statement of these eight people at face value. There really is an artifact. It is a set of metal plates. It has the appearance of gold. 33% of the plates aren't sealed, and have engravings on them. We don't know if the other 67% have engravings or not because they are sealed. It has, according to the non-experts, "the appearance of ancient workmanship." What is the most likely explanation for this? Is it that somebody in the 19th century somehow made it? Or is it more likley that somebody in ancient times made it? How confident can we be about that? A: The most likely explanation is that it was made in the 19th century. Everything described—thin plates, ring binding, gold-like appearance, engraved surfaces—fits comfortably within known 18th–19th century materials and techniques, and does not match what we see in the archaeological record of the ancient Americas. Confidence is high on that comparison: not absolute, but strongly weighted toward a modern (for that time) origin rather than an ancient one. Q: Let's talk about the psychology of this. Is it possible that this joint statement is somehow misleading in some respects, and that the artifact isn't really as impressive as one might assume? A: Yes—that’s very plausible. Group testimony can unintentionally amplify impressions, smooth over uncertainty, and use vague language that sounds stronger than it is, especially when observers share expectations or trust the same source. So the artifact could be real but less remarkable, less uniform, or less “ancient-looking” than the statement suggests. Q: Given the totality of the evidence, what's the most likely explanation of the nature and provenance of what the eight witnesses saw? A: Most likely, they saw a real, physical set of plates made with 19th-century materials—something like cut tinplate or similar metal, possibly treated to look more valuable. Their testimony is best read as sincere but non-technical: it supports the existence of an object, not its antiquity. Given what we know about metallurgy, manufacturing, and the social context, confidence is high that the provenance was contemporary rather than ancient. Q: Can you really have a high level of confidence that this alleged artifact's provenance is modern without being able to prove with exacting specificity who created it, when, and how? A: Yes. In many cases, confidence comes from fit with known patterns, not from identifying the exact maker—everything described aligns with 19th-century capabilities and conflicts with what we see from ancient American metallurgy. You don’t need to name the craftsman to judge which scenario better matches the evidence; the asymmetry in fit is enough to drive high confidence.

I'm trying to follow the logic here and I'm genuinely confused about what you're arguing. Your table shows the Book of Mormon has 16 instances of "did have" while all of Early English Books Online together have 12. If I'm reading this correctly, a single 19th-century dictated text uses this supposedly rare Early Modern English construction 33% more than the entire surviving corpus of actual Early Modern English writing. Doesn't that make the Book of Mormon an outlier on the high end and that Joseph used this feature more than genuine EModE authors did? How does that authenticate anything? If anything, it looks like overcorrection. Second, the 12 instances in EEBO represents written Early Modern English. But language doesn't spread through writing, it spreads through speech. If "did have" appeared in the spoken English of that era with any regularity, it would have descended to later speakers through oral transmission, not through the 12 people who happened to write it down. The paucity of written examples doesn't tell us how frequently it appeared in speech. So when you say Joseph Smith used a "rare" construction, you're really saying it rarely appeared in books, which is a much weaker claim than saying it was rare in the language itself. I'm genuinely asking: are you arguing the Book of Mormon uses these features at the right frequency, or just that it uses them at all? Because your own table suggests it uses them more than the period it's supposedly reflecting.

This isn't obvious to me. The plates the three witnesses saw in a vision may have been spectacular, but that doesn't mean the ones Joseph kept hidden were impressive. My own experience in seminary proves that you can honestly describe something in a way that will make people think it is more impressive than it really is. This testimony absolutely must be discounted significantly because of how it was curated and how the person who had the most to gain refused to allow them to be examined by anyone independent or qualified. My implication is that Joseph Smith led a conspiracy where he was less than 100% forthright about these details, and was able to manipulate others to support him in this dishonesty. This is a bold claim and it raises a serious question. Did Joseph Smith have flexible ethics so that he would be willing to deceive others if it were for a good cause? And did he have the ability to get others to go along with his conspiracy? What it brings to mind is something Joseph Smith said. A little over a week before the Nauvoo Expositor printed its first and last edition, Joseph Smith told the Saints he could conclusively prove that Emma was his only wife and that he wasn't involved in polygamy. He told the Saints: "For the last three years I have a record of all my acts and proceedings, for I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employ: they have accompanied me everywhere, and carefully kept my history, and they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said; therefore my enemies cannot charge me with any day, time, or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions; and my enemies cannot prove anything against me....What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one." What I find fascinating about this is that none of this is an outright lie. He did have several clerks that made a record of everything he said and did over the last three years of his life, and this can serve as an alibi that he never taught the doctrines in what is now known as D&C 132 and never engaged in polygamy. He didn't specifically deny having more than 30 wives (we don't know, because he had made sure the Church didn't record these "marriages"). If we applied normal evidentiary standards under the presumption that Joseph Smith, the other top leaders of the time, and his "several good, faithful, and efficient clerks," and the women he "married" were all honest, there would be overwhelming conclusive proof that Joseph Smith had one and only one wife, and was guilty neither of adultry, spiritual wivery, polygamy, or secretly being sealed to other women behind his wife's back--however you want to put it. Of coursewhile we don't know the specifics of who he "married", but we do know that it happened dozens of times. And this is in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Latter-day Saints will rationalize his behavior. They'll say he was deceiving the Saints and his wife for their own good. But this brings back the ethics Joseph Smith wrote in Moroni 7, and how he said this stuff should be judged. Does the Book of Mormon "inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ"? If so, we can know with 100% perfect knowledge it is "from God." A misleading statement by eight witnesses doesn't change this. Since we know Joseph Smith was able to lead a giant conspiracy about polygamy, why is it crazy to suspect he led a conspiracy about the exact nature of the plates he had hidden under a cloth that he refusled to let be independently examined?

The problem is that asking for an “alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon” is hopelessly vague. The existence of the some object has almost no bearing on whether or not the object is of authentic ancient origin. The witnesses were hand-picked as if they were experts, but an attorney would have a field day having them disqualified as having no independence and no expertise to determine any of the things they claim. And while I grant that what they claim is well-defined in a religious context, they are not well-defined in a real-world context. If somebody were to seriously testify in court that they saw a magic elf, I’d demand that “magic elf” be precisely defined in real world terms so that I could determine whether or not any given individual or thing was a “magic elf” or not. It’s painfully clear to me that the visionary object the 3 were shown is different than the physical object the 8 were shown. And none of this has any bearing on whether the alleged object contained authentic ancient writing, nor does it have any bearing on whether this alleged ancient writing was correctly translated. The weakest and most problematic data points are the witness testimonies and the writing process. I can speculate on those ideas, but we don’t have the data to say anything for sure because the data that would settle the issue was deliberately withheld. Me not having a theory on these things supported with empirical rigor is Joseph Smith’s fault and isn’t evidence of authenticity. Quite the opposite. I can give you my own speculations on what I think most likely happened, but this being speculative on my part is not evidence that the religious explanation is the strongest one. Repeating how I see this: First Issue: were there plates? If so, what were they? Second Issue: What was the process for writing down the words? Third Issue: Is it an accurate translation of an authentic ancient document? Issues 2 and 3 are totally different. Issue 2 is about how the words came to be. Even if words magically appeared on Joseph Smith’s seer stone and all Joseph Smith did was read them does not give us any indication whatsoever that these words had anything to do with an ancient record, nor with whether or not such an ancient record was translated correctly. Even if we granted that Joseph’s words were miraculous, that just puts him in the same category as Keats, Conrad, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoevsky, Austen, or Crane. The words being amazingly written doesn’t mean Nephi really existed. Issue 3 is about historicity. Were the events and people depicted in the Book of Mormon real people and events? Was it really written in ancient times? This issue is totally independent of whether plates existed or whether the writing process was miraculous. They are great questions. There are two things to keep in mind: First, we don’t know the answer to them because Joseph Smith chose to hide from view the evidence that would allow us to definitively answer them. Me not having non-speculative answers isn’t an indication that Joseph’s story is probable--it’s an indication that he had something to hide. Second, we must keep in mind Joseph Smith’s ethical standard here, which I presume was shared by the witnesses. According to Joseph Smith: For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. (Moroni 7:16) This seems like an awfully convenient way to rationalize being less than forthright about things like whether he literally had the real plates in his possession, or merely had a facsimile to help persuade others to believe in Christ. Does the Book of Mormon inviteth to do good? Does it persuade to believe in Christ? If so, we can know “with perfect knowledge it is from God” and is “sent forth by the power and gift of Christ.” That’s true even if the exact nature of the plates were different than what you imagine. So what was Joseph Smith's point? Was it to be 100% honest? Or was it to persuade people to believe in Christ? Moroni 7:16 suggests there could be a conflict between those two things, which is precisely the problem. Keeping this in mind, here are my answers: Q: Assuming the "Plates" were a 19th-century hoax or something comparable (and not, as Joseph claimed, an ancient and authentic artifact), what were the plates made of? We already know what the Church and apologists have to say. What do you have to say? Tin, probably. We don’t know because Joseph Smith didn’t allow a qualified expert to examine them. Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, when was this sham object made/fabricated? Using what materials and resources? My best guess is that they were slowly made over the 4+/- years between Joseph Smith announcing he was going to translate golden plates and when he actually claimed he had them in his possession. But we don’t know because Joseph Smith didn’t allow a qualified expert to examine them. Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, who was involved in the procuring of materials and the fabrication of the object, and when? Was it just Joseph (per Vogel), or were others involved? If others, who were they? What was their motive? Why did they never publicly disclose the hoax? I don’t know. Regarding motive, I think Joseph Smith was trying to make money and persuade people to believe in Christ. Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with the statements of the Three Witnesses, the Three Witnesses and the informal witnesses (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.)? I find the witness statements vague, curated, and insufficient to establish ancient origins. My story of witnessing fake “plates” in Brother Brandt’s seminary class in the 85-86 school year at Hillcrest High in Midvale Utah is 100% true. All of the above is 100% consistent with what the informal witnesses said (there was something), and without a thorough deposition made by a skilled cross examiner so we could understand in exhaustive specificity what, exactly, they are claiming, it isn’t inconsistent with the testimony of the 8 witnesses, either. Whatever the three witnesses saw in their vision is a religious experience that has no bearing on the physical plates. Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with historical information and evidence we have regarding the character and credibility of the witnesses (both official and unofficial)? I don't know exactly what they saw or why they said what they did. Perhaps they were being honest but not completely transparent, just as Brother Brandt was simultaneously telling the truth, misleading the students, and doing it all for the higher cause of bringing his students to Christ. I don't need to know exactly how it worked. You don't need to know who painted the tilma to know it is a painting. Q: What evidence do you have to support your answers to the preceding paragraphs? As I've said over and over, we don't have the evidence that would conclusively answer these questions because Joseph Smith chose to withhold it. The plates were never independently examined. No neutral party was permitted to handle them. They were shown to selected witnesses under controlled conditions and then conveniently disappeared from the world. My answers are speculative—but notice whose choice that was. In law, when a party controls evidence and withholds it, the adverse inference runs against them, not against the people they excluded. I am speculating because Joseph made sure that speculation is all any of us would ever be able to do. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the only evidence we have about the plates is extraordinarily questionable. And it is also extraordinarily irrelevant. The exact nature of the plates has no bearing on whether the words Joseph Smith dictated to his scribes were translations of anything anybody in antiquity actually wrote. Smac, I think you're conflating several things that need to stay separate. I have already conceded Issue 1: a physical object probably existed. The eight witnesses probably saw and handled something. On that narrow question, I'll grant that the testimonial record is reasonably strong. Fine. You're right that I accept Caesar's assassination as historical fact. But notice what kind of claim that is. Caesar's death is not a freestanding assertion--it is woven into an extraordinarily dense web of interconnected history. The political consequences, the civil wars, the rise of Augustus, the restructuring of the Roman world--all of it ramifies outward and forward in ways that interlock with countless independent lines of evidence. Caesar's assassination fits. It coheres. It isn’t merely exactly the sort of thing that happened in Roman politics requiring no mechanism beyond the ordinary. It’s the kind of thing that if it didn’t happen, nothing else we know about the Roman empire would make sense. The plates are a categorically different kind of claim, and the difference matters. Authentic ancient plates don't merely lack corroboration. They contradict what we know. The archaeological and genetic record of pre-Columbian America does not contain a thread that could be pulled to produce a thick book of golden plates containing a detailed history. Nobody in antiquity ever wrote a long history book on metal plates because doing so is hopelessly impractical. Anyone who has seen or heard of paper disintegrating over time knows that is a weakness, but metal plates isn’t the answer because making a record on that medium is too expensive and impractical to be done in the real world. It’s never been done. It couldn’t be done. This is a known reality that the claim has to swim against. Caesar swims with the current. The plates swim against it. Then there is the structure of the testimony itself. You keep describing the witnesses as if their number and sincerity are what matter. But they were curated--selected by Joseph, embedded in a community with every incentive to align with his narrative, never cross-examined by anyone with an interest in falsification. And critically: the evidence that would have settled the question conclusively--independent examination of the plates by a trained expert with no stake in the outcome--was deliberately withheld. Permanently. The plates were removed from the world before anyone outside Joseph's circle could verify them. When a party controls the decisive evidence and withholds it, honest analysis does not treat that as a neutral fact. It discounts the remaining testimony accordingly. If this body of evidence, with this context, was shown to a judge, the judge would rightly throw it out. I know this fact is inconvenient for you, but it must be front and center if we want to evaluate the witness testimony honestly. I didn’t know that. You had said without qualification that the witness testimony should be believed. They did say that the plates contain this record "which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken.” If historians should believe the witness statements at face value like you think they should, I would think they’d believe this part of the statement, too.

The extant evidence of what? If we want to be serious about this, I believe there are three claims we are talking about. Issue 1: Did Joseph Smith have Plates? What was the nature of these plates? Did Joseph Smith have in his possession an actual artifact consisting of “plates"? If so, what was it made of, when was it made, and who made it? Issue 2: How was the BoM Written?: How did Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon? Was he reading off of words that magically appeared on a rock in a hat? Was he reading off of a manuscript he secretly had within his hat? Was he reciting words he had memorized? Had he worked out an outline before hand? Was he making it up as he went along? Issue 3: What is the Book of Mormon? Is it 19th century Bible fan fiction, or is it an accurate translation of an authentic ancient manuscript? Or is it something else? These are three distinct issues that need to be kept separated. On Issue 1, I don’t have strong opinions and we don’t have very good evidence. The fact that the evidence we have was deliberately curated by the person making the extraordinary claim, and that the basket of evidence he produces deliberately excludes the artifact that would conclusively settle the matter is extraordinarily suspicious. If a magician does a trick for James Randi in a scientifically controlled environment, if he said it was real magic, I’d take that very seriously. But if the magician refuses to do the trick for James Randi and instead hands us a document signed by eleven of his closest friends, I would consider that evidence so unimpressive I wouldn’t feel the need to explain how the alleged trick was done. On Issue 2, I don’t know. I’m again suspicious of the official narrative because it was so performative in nature. It was staged. In general, I don’t know how far superior books were written, and I don’t see why it is any more incumbent on me to explain the details of how the BoM was written than it is incumbent on you to explain how, exactly, the tilma was painted. I realize you haven’t spent any time thinking about the tilma. That doesn’t change the fact that like the BoM, you can tell it is man made without knowing the details of how. On Issue 3, the evidence is overwhelming that the BoM is 19th century fan fiction and not an accurate translation of an accurate ancient manuscript. In my opinion this is the most important issue, it is the one I’ve spent the most time thinking about, and it is the one that has the clearest answer. Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you really saying we have far more reliable evidence of what, exactly? That the Book of Mormon really is an accurate translation of some golden plates that contain the real history of a real people that were called Nephites, Lamanites, etc.? Are you claiming that a competent historian would believe in the assassination of Abinadi by King Noah with more certitude than he’d believe in the assassination of Caesar by Brutus? I’d love the opportunity to tell you why the evidence for Caesar really is incredibly strong, but first I need some clarification on what, exactly, you are comparing it to.