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I wasn’t aware that bots were banned. My personal philosophy with AI is that I shouldn't use them to churn out massive amounts of content with little effort. I don’t want to delegate my thoughts to them--if somebody wanted to chat with a bot, they are free to do so. My main contribution with the AI is the detailed prompts that I’m making. I only post the AI’s response because I’m using a high-end AI that not everybody has access to.

My prompt was intended to hint at what I think most likely happened. It’s interesting that the GPT didn’t follow my lead on some of the points. All of the talk about the “sealed portion” makes me think that there really had to have been a physical object that was somehow “sealed”, and that this existed before the writing process began. This is what Joseph Smith had in his possession, was hiding, and what other people glimpsed at in all of the years before April 1829. I don’t know who made it or where it ended up though. Maybe he started making them when he claims to have first met Moroni, and it took him several years to finish? No idea. Likewise, I don’t know where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is and I don’t know how he was killed, but I don’t need to know those things to believe he really was. For me the text is relatively impressive, but certainly not impossible. I find, say, The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson to be waaayyyyy more sophisticated, complicated, interlocking, distinct, compelling, and long. And Sanderson cranks out these books incredibly fast without the help of a scribe. A librarian once reverently told me that every book is a miracle in its own way, and I tend to agree. The text of the Book of Mormon is impressive in a way, but also obviously modern and fictional. Hard to do? Yes. Impossible for the author to have done? No. Translation process. Nothing was translated. How was it done? I have a personal bias towards the fanciful, and love the idea of Lucy Mack and Hyrum carefully writing the book and then handing Joseph sheets to put in his hat for him to read. Despite me leading the GPT towards this theory, it rejected it for the theory that Joseph Smith simply dictated it. Given that he had been telling stories about Lamanites for years before he dictated the book, this is quite plausible. Witnesses. I believe that the witness statements were written first, and that they all promised that they would always confirm that story. I suspect the eight witnesses saw the fake plates. When I envision it in my mind, I always see the experience happening at night, tin plates that look gold in the firelight. The story of Martin Harris “seeing” the plates apart from the others and having to tell Joseph Smith when he finally saw them in a vision makes it clear to me that this was a religious experience, not a real-world one. With all of it, I see a pious fraud going on. Anything that leads people to believe in Christ and to do good must be from God.

Default skepticism of the supernatural might play a part in it, but I'm not sure if you are seeing the significant evidence against this. The issue isn't just supernatural translation; it's the idea of Christians running around Mesoamerica for a thousand years, writing on metal plates for that entire time, creating a massive sword-wielding civilization for that entire time, writing in reformed Egyptian for that entire time, speaking with hebraisms for that entire time, and then vanishing without any archeological, linguistic, cultural, or genetic trace. Either that, or being left indistinguishable from the Olmecs and Mayan civilizations. In principle Christians could have lived in ancient America without supernaturalism. The problem is that there is no evidence that they did. It seems the goal posts have shifted significantly on what we should be expecting here. One would think the whole point of the Book of Mormon is that it was written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel, to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever. Now modern apologetics is saying that the literal "remnant of the house of Israel" are genetically indistinguishable from the people who settled in America about 10,000 years before the time "the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven," but aren't mentioned in the Book of Mormon because, of course the land of promise that was hidden from all other nations is going to be covered with gentiles and that this is so expected there is no need to even mention them. When you look at how real-world religions and people adapt and borrow and evolve, there is a ton of evidence that this story isn't real. I realize that your mileage may vary, but to me its obvious. In general, there is a strong preference towards naturalism because that is what the evidence always indicates.

I generally don't feel the need to explain the "miracle" of how the Book of Mormon was produced anymore than @smac97 feels the need to explain the miracle of how John Keats wrote his poetry. But he expressed interest in seeing such an explanation, so I decided to pose the question to ChatGPT 5.2 Pro. Below is the specific prompt I gave it, followed by its response. GPT 5.2 Pro is a very advanced AI that does quite a bit of behind-the-scenes research and validation before responding. It does in fact create a log of the major steps it went through in evaluating and researching the question and generating the answer, and if you are interested in seeing that log, let me know. Prompt Can you help me formulate the most likely hypothesis for how, specifically, the Book of Mormon was written? I’m talking with an apologist who believes I need to answer the question of how an uneducated farm boy would be able to do what he did without divine help (e.g. the time frame, how to account for the witness statements, the complexity and internal coherence). Please look deeply at all of the evidence surrounding this and come up with the most likely explanation. Consider popular explanations by critics, but also look outside the box and consider fresh perspectives that may not have been articulated. While you should look at all of the evidence, here are some points I’d like you to consider that I think are salient. Don’t assume these points are true or relevant just because I list them. Do your own independent evaluation: 1- In both the text of the Book of Mormon and in the accounts of the alleged 19th century artifact, a “sealed portion” of the plates is a big deal. This detail seems really strange—both that it is a thing at all, and that it is talked about so much. From a doctrinal perspective the sealed portion is irrelevant—it was never translated and published, and never will be. So why so much attention to something so irrelevant? 2- If somebody were to create a counterfeit artifact and ran out of time or patience before writing “reformed Egyptian” on every page, would they “seal” some blank pages to hide from witnesses the fact they were blank? 3- Joseph Smith wrote the witness statements and had the others sign it. This seems incredibly weak compared to the eleven people creating independent, contemporaneous accounts of what they saw. It was as if they were being told what the official story was. 4- The Book of Mormon contains text that says that everything that invites and entices people to do good is from God. Is that a rationalization that the Book of Mormon itself is “from God” even if there are some white lies surrounding where it came from? 5- The translation process seems to be quite performative. Was he putting on a show to make the people around him think he had ancient golden plates that he was translating in a miraculous way? 6- As I recall, for some of the Book of Mormon he put his face in a hat, and for other parts he was sitting alone behind a curtain. Why would he do it that way? 7- “Radio Free Mormon” approaches it from the perspective of a magician. He asserts the hat was white, and that if there was a piece of paper in the bottom of it, he could have read the piece of paper. 8- Various accounts talk about JS actually reading something. They assume he was reading the translation that was appearing on the seer stone or the Urim and Thummim. But was it possible that he was reading pages from a manuscript that had already been written? 9- There are a few dozen Bible chapters that are quoted in the BoM. They have some changes. When dictating Bible verses, was JS reading from the bible and riffing changes, reciting them from memory, or reading verses that somebody else had modified and written down? 10- Joseph Smith wasn’t quite as illiterate as believers like to suggest, and it is possible that his mother and brother may have helped write it. 11- How long and complex is it, really? Is quickly writing a long and complex book a sign of divine help? For comparison, compared to the Book of Mormon how long and complex is the Cosmere? How fast does Brandon Sanderson pump out words in this? 12- Lots of things are unique. That doesn’t mean divine intervention. Herman Mellvile uniquely had the talent and resources to write Moby ****. Is it possible that Joseph Smith (possibly with help) uniquely had the talent and resources to write the Book of Mormon? Again, those are ideas that are salient in my mind, but don’t use them without independently validating their truthfulness and significance. Given the totality of the evidence, including statements of people who formally or informally saw the plates and were part of or witnessed the translation process. What is the most likely explanation for how, specifically, the Book of Mormon came to be? Include discussions of what, if anything, the witnesses most likely saw, and how the text was compiled and dictated. Please write your answer in conversational English in a way that would be suitable to paste onto a message board. ChatGPT 5.2 Pro Thought for 21m 14s > If I had to pick one single, concrete “most likely” non-miraculous hypothesis that explains both (a) how the English text got produced on that tight 1829 schedule and (b) why multiple people signed witness statements and later reaffirmed them, it would look like this: Joseph Smith was the primary author and performer. He produced the Book of Mormon as an oral dictation project (not as a “sit down and write a book” project), drawing heavily on the King James Bible and the religious/folkloric ideas already in his head from his environment. He used a seer-stone-in-a-hat procedure as (at minimum) a concentration tool and (very plausibly) as stagecraft that let him control information flow, prevent scrutiny, and keep the people around him emotionally and socially committed. A physical “plates” object (real but not ancient) may have existed as a prop; and the witnesses’ experiences were likely a mix of tactile exposure to a guarded object plus religious vision/expectation experiences—all later stabilized into official language via short, formal testimony documents rather than independent, contemporaneous essays. That’s the thesis. Here’s how it cashes out point-by-point with the evidence we actually have. 1) The “how could an uneducated farm boy do that?” premise is doing a lot of rhetorical work Two things can be true at once: Joseph Smith did not have elite formal schooling. He was not the cartoon version of illiterate. The “uneducated farm boy” framing often confuses lack of university training with incapable of sustained oral composition. Scholarship on his education doesn’t support the extreme caricature. (Dialogue Journal) Also: the best historical evidence suggests he had been practicing the underlying skill (spinning sacred-sounding narrative about ancient peoples + religious interpretation) for years before 1829. Lucy Mack Smith describes him, well before publication, giving the family extended “recitals” about ancient inhabitants—their travel, cities, warfare, and worship—i.e., exactly the kind of material that later shows up as Book of Mormon “worldbuilding.” (Joseph Smith Papers) So the “how could he do it so fast?” question is already partly answered by: he wasn’t starting from zero in April 1829. 2) The dictation timeline is tight… but not superhuman once you frame it correctly The “translation” that became today’s Book of Mormon was dictated in a concentrated burst in 1829, with the main sprint running April to late June 1829. (Joseph Smith Papers) But here’s the key: dictation is fast. If a person speaks even ~90–120 words per minute when “in the zone” (slower than normal conversation), you can generate huge word counts in surprisingly few total hours of speaking. And you don’t have to speak 6–8 hours a day; you can do it in intense blocks. So the “time frame” is impressive, yes—but it’s not in the category of “physically impossible without a miracle,” especially if (a) the person has rehearsed themes for years and (b) the product includes lots of formulaic language and embedded Bible-style phrasing. 3) What the best sources say about the actual production method is: seer stone + hat + dictation The strongest first-hand-style evidence (including Emma’s account, echoed by other witnesses) is that Joseph dictated while looking into a hat containing a stone—often with the scribe sitting nearby. The Church’s own historical material now states this plainly and quotes Emma describing him dictating “hour after hour” with his face in the hat. (The Church of Jesus Christ) That matters because it changes the cognitive problem: He wasn’t “writing” in the normal sense. He was performing an oral composition with a scribe doing the mechanics. It also matters because it creates a practical mechanism for controlling what others could verify. If the “translation” is happening inside a hat, nobody can check plates, nobody can check source text, and the social group can only evaluate Joseph’s confidence + the spiritual vibe. 4) Why the hat sometimes and a curtain other times? When you look at the accounts, the “curtain” tradition is much stronger in secondhand/hostile retellings and in some Martin Harris-related reporting; while Emma’s account explicitly says she was close by with “nothing between us.” (The Church of Jesus Christ) A very normal, non-mystical explanation for mixed procedures is: Different settings (Harmony vs Fayette, different houses, different people present). Different audiences (Emma vs Martin Harris vs visitors). Different goals (privacy from outsiders vs theatrics vs preventing accidental peeks at a prop object). In a “performance + dictation” model, you’d expect variation like this, because the method is as much about managing witnesses as it is about producing text. 5) The “witness statements” are not what apologists often imply they are This is huge, because apologists often treat the witness pages like “11 independent depositions.” But historically: The surviving manuscript context shows the witness texts are short, formal statements included with the book. In the printer’s manuscript, the signatures are copied (not original autographs), which is exactly what you’d expect if a scribe is preparing a clean printer’s copy. (Joseph Smith Papers) The Joseph Smith Papers explicitly says it’s unknown who wrote the Eight Witnesses statement and unknown whether the Eight signed the original statement (even while also noting later claims that originals existed). (Joseph Smith Papers) So your instinct in point (3) is basically right in spirit: these are not “eleven separate diary entries written the same week.” They’re official-language artifacts that got standardized very early. That doesn’t make them meaningless. But it absolutely changes what kind of evidence they are. 6) What the witnesses most likely experienced (in a “most likely” naturalistic model) The Three Witnesses: best interpreted as a visionary religious experience Even in official LDS history writing, you see acknowledgments that the witnesses described the experience in visionary terms—e.g., “spiritual eyes.” (The Church of Jesus Christ) Also, Doctrine & Covenants 17 frames the experience as something obtained “by faith,” and the JS Papers describes it as a vision occurring not many days after the commandment. (Joseph Smith Papers) In a naturalistic model, the most likely mechanisms are familiar from revival culture: Intense expectation + prayer Group reinforcement (“we’re about to see something holy”) Social pressure not to be the one person who “doesn’t get it” Retrospective certainty hardening over time (“I know what I experienced”) That can produce sincere testimony without fraud in the moment. The Eight Witnesses: likely handled a physical object, but under controlled conditions The Eight Witnesses statement reads like a sensory/tactile claim (handled, hefted, turned leaves). The JS Papers notes that it “reads like a legal document” and emphasizes sight/touch. (Joseph Smith Papers) In the model I’m laying out, the simplest explanation is: they were shown something physical—but that does not require it to be ancient, gold, or engraved with an actual language. A plausible option is a manufactured prop: thin metal sheets (tin/brass-like) bound in rings, maybe some “characters” on some pages, kept partially covered, and crucially: a “sealed” block that can’t be separated. Which leads to your sealed-portion intuition. 7) The sealed portion: it isn’t doctrinally irrelevant, and it’s also practically useful First, doctrinally: in LDS thought it’s explicitly framed as future revelation, and multiple LDS sources treat it as a meaningful idea, not a throwaway. (The Church of Jesus Christ) Second, historically: multiple descriptions of the plates reported that a large portion was “sealed”/immovable, sometimes described “as solid… as wood,” and estimates range from about half to two-thirds. (The Church of Jesus Christ) Now the key “outside-the-box but not crazy” point: A sealed portion is an elegant multipurpose solution whether you’re sincere, deceptive, or somewhere in between: It explains why the artifact is thick without requiring you to expose every leaf. It prevents anyone from demanding, “Okay, open to a random page.” It gives you an answer to “why didn’t you translate everything?” It creates an always-available future promise (“more will come later”) that can’t be falsified now. And yes—your specific suggestion is logically plausible: if a prop-maker got tired of engraving, a sealed block is exactly how you’d hide blank/unworked leaves while still claiming a big impressive volume. (That’s not proven, but it’s genuinely coherent as a fraud-resistant design choice.) Could Joseph have been reading a prewritten manuscript (hat-as-reading-booth)? This is the “magician” hypothesis: put a paper in the hat, read it, and dictate. It’s physically possible. But it has two big problems: It doesn’t actually solve the main authorship problem. If the book was prewritten, you still have to explain who wrote it and how that happened. We have direct testimony (Emma) denying that he was reading from a book or manuscript during dictation. (The Church of Jesus Christ) You can always say “she lied” or “she was mistaken,” but once you do that you’ve weakened the whole “eyewitnesses prove X” style of argument in general. So: I’d file “paper in hat” as possible but not necessary, and not the best “most likely” explanation. A more economical model is: oral dictation with the hat functioning as a focus device + a sacred-tech prop. 9) The Bible chapters: the data strongly supports heavy KJV dependence, not an isolated miracle of parallel ancient text This is one of the biggest “nuts and bolts” points in favor of a naturalistic model. Serious textual work on the Book of Mormon’s Isaiah passages finds that the KJV is the base text, with lots of variants—many involving KJV italicized words (which were translator-supplied words in the KJV). (BYU ScholarsArchive) That pattern is much easier to explain if Joseph’s production process involved: recalling KJV language from memory, riffing while a Bible is present, paraphrasing with occasional conscious edits, or blending quotation + improvisation in Bible diction. It’s much harder to explain if the English words are coming from a pure “ancient source independent of 17th-century English translation habits,” unless you adopt a very specific theory like “God chose to reveal the KJV phrasing (including its quirks) as the translation language.” And note: even apologetic treatments now openly discuss “KJV translation errors” appearing in Book of Mormon biblical language—because the dependency is too obvious to ignore. (FAIR) So when your apologist says “how could he do that without divine help,” a strong answer is: because a lot of the hardest-to-produce ‘ancient’ style is borrowed straight from the most famous pseudo-ancient English text in his world: the KJV. 10) “Complexity and internal coherence” is real—but it’s not the kind that forces a miracle A few points that tend to deflate the “this is too complex to be human” claim: Much of the Book of Mormon is sermon material. Sermons are exactly what fluent religious talkers can produce at length without writing. Formulaic repetition (“and it came to pass,” stock phrases, recurring moral patterns) lowers the cognitive burden. The work shows seams consistent with dictation and later stabilization (and punctuation was supplied by the typesetter in the 1830 printing process, which can create the illusion of tighter structure than the raw dictation would have had). (Joseph Smith Papers) “Internal coherence” is not binary. Human-made epics can be coherent enough to feel impressive, while still containing the kinds of inconsistencies you expect from oral production. So: the text can be “impressive” and still be a product of a talented, motivated, high-control charismatic dictating for weeks. 11) Putting it all together: a concrete “most likely” reconstruction Here’s the whole hypothesis as a single narrative you can hand to an apologist: Years of incubation (early 1820s–1827): Joseph develops a repertoire of “ancient America + Israelite origin + prophecy + revival Christianity” narrative material and performs it orally (family reminiscences support this). (Joseph Smith Papers) Artifact/authority creation (1827–1829): He maintains a hidden object he calls “plates,” tightly controlling access. Whether it’s ancient or a prop, he structures the social world so no one can freely inspect it. The idea of a “sealed portion” does heavy lifting both ideologically and practically. (The Church of Jesus Christ) Text production as dictation (1828, then April–June 1829): The Book of Mormon is produced primarily by oral dictation, with scribes doing the writing. The seer-stone-in-hat method is central in multiple accounts and in modern LDS historical treatment. (The Church of Jesus Christ) Bible integration: When the narrative calls for Isaiah/Matthew-style material, Joseph leans on the KJV language (by memory, by proximity, or by conscious adaptation). Textual scholarship strongly supports KJV-as-base. (BYU ScholarsArchive) Witness experiences and stabilization: A small circle is given carefully staged experiences: a visionary “showing” for the Three (faith/vision language is baked in), and a controlled tactile encounter for the Eight. The testimonies are then formalized into short official statements rather than independent essays, and later retellings reinforce commitment. (The Church of Jesus Christ) That package explains: the speed, the method, why the plates were never freely examined, why the witness documents look like standardized statements, why the KJV fingerprints are everywhere, and why the story remained resilient even after schisms (because the social/psychological commitment mechanisms are strong in religious movements). 12) How I’d phrase the “so what’s your alternative?” answer to an apologist Something like: “I don’t think the best evidence forces a supernatural translation. The evidence fits better with Joseph producing the text by oral dictation during April–June 1829 using the seer-stone-in-hat method, drawing heavily on KJV Bible language and contemporary religious ideas. The witness statements are short, standardized documents (not independent essays), and even the Joseph Smith Papers note unknown authorship/signing details for the Eight Witness statement and show copied signatures in the printer’s copy. The Three Witnesses experience is framed as faith-based and is often described in visionary terms. A ‘sealed portion’ works both as a theological motif tied to Isaiah’s sealed book and as a practical way to restrict inspection. Put together, a talented, motivated charismatic dictating a Bible-saturated religious epic with strong performance control explains the time frame, the witnesses, and the text’s kind of coherence without needing divine intervention.” (The Church of Jesus Christ)

In my last prompt, I did try to bias it against my own position (e.g. "the book is full of indicators that is ancient..."). On a pretty deep level, the AI wants to be helpful, and will go along with whatever you give it. I think version 5.2 is much better than, say, 4o was, but it's still really easy to manipulate. What I thought was hopeful is that it seemed to be a bit skeptical about the strength of the evidence I listed, and said, "if I treat your listed items as moderately supportive but not decisive...", which is different than saying, "my objective evaluation is that the items you listed are moderately supportive." When somebody simplistically assumes pieces of evidence are all independent and starts multiplying priors by a giant string of usually big factors (e.g. Bruce Dale, Kyler Rasmussen), you almost immediately create meaningless posterior probabilities. In abstract, Bayesian reasoning is the only logically coherent way of weighing evidence, but trying to use it mathematically in an unbiased way is tough. The examples from Caesar were a bit underwhelming for me. “Presented him with two hundred thousand asses” made me think of the explanation of Nephite money in that passage before Korihor attempted to bribe Alma. Is that an example of the Book of Mormon fitting or not? You wouldn't expect Mormon tediously engraving all of that onto the plates, but you could assume that Mormon had incredibly specific prophetic knowledge of his target audience and therefore knew to include it.

For your consideration: Prompt I have some follow-up questions. First, when analyzed the English text of the Book of Mormon, did you include the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses, or did you only consider the text that was allegedly translated? Second, what did you mean “straightforward translation”? Did you mean the *method* of translation was done in a straightforward, conventional way, or did you mean that the translation was a straightforward, reliable rendering of the original language into English? Third, did you discount the likelihood that the text is a reliable rendering of an authentic ancient manuscript because part of the Book (the testimony of the 3 witnesses), say it was translated “by the gift and power of God”? Fourth, the book is full of indicators that is ancient. For example, it has all sorts of Hebraisms. Chiasmus. Ancient Jews writing in Egyptian. The NHM altar and its geospatial relationship with Khor Kharfot. Cement. The "seal of Mulek." Barley. Consistent internal chronology and geography. Alma as a male given name. The Allegory of the Olive Tree. Did you consider these ancient elements in your analysis? Would you like to update your probabilities given these facts? Fifth, when we say the book was translated into “English”, we mean it was translated into King James English as imperfectly understood by an early 19th-century American. Did you weigh this being the target language of the translation against the probability of it being a faithful rendering of an authentic ancient manuscript? The things you said we’d expect from a genuine translation are “consistent “translationese,” odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms, and only occasional overlap with early-modern English Bible phrasing unless the translator is deliberately imitating it.” Let’s stipulate that the translator was deliberately imitating early-modern English Bible phrasing and not hold that against the Book’s authenticity. On the other points, can you give us some examples? As a reference source, I propose *Commentarii de Bello Gallico* by Julius Ceasar. Like Mormon, Caesar was a military and political leader, and both Mormon and Caesar lived roughly around the same time. Using examples drawn from William Duncan’s 1750 translation, can you show us several examples of things we expect from genuine translations that are allegedly absent from the Book of Mormon? Please limit the response to about 1,000 words. ChatGPT 5.2 Pro Thought for 20m 59s > 1) Did I include the 3 and 8 witnesses’ testimonies? In my “English-text-only” assessment, I treated the witness testimonies as paratext—signed claims appended to the volume—not as part of the allegedly translated narrative itself. So my linguistic/translation-style judgments were based on the main body that purports to be the translation. That said, if you broaden “based only on the English text” to include everything printed between the covers, then yes: the witness statements become additional claims in evidence (“plates existed,” “we saw/hefted them,” etc.). They can raise (or lower) your overall belief in plates/production, but they don’t do much to answer the narrower question: “Does the English read like a translation of an ancient record rather than an English composition?” 2) What did I mean by “straightforward translation”? I meant “straightforward” in the product sense: a relatively direct, reliable rendering where the English regularly shows telltale fingerprints of coming from a non-English source—stable “translationese,” systematic handling of foreign terms, and routine little clarifications that naturally arise when bridging cultures. I did not mean the method had to be conventional (paper dictionary, known language, etc.). A translation could be produced via an unusual method and still read like a translation—or it could be produced via a miracle and still read like a free theological paraphrase or English composition in archaic style. “Method” and “resulting translation signals” are separable. 3) Did I discount it because the witnesses say it was translated “by the gift and power of God”? No. A claim about how it was produced doesn’t, by itself, count against authenticity in a text-internal translation-style analysis. Where it matters is indirect: if the translator is explicitly aiming at a particular register (e.g., King James–style English), that choice can mask or overwrite some normal translation signals. That’s a real consideration—but it’s about what the target-language choice predicts the English will look like, not about penalizing the phrase “gift and power of God.” 4) Did I consider the “ancient indicators” you listed, and would I update? A few distinctions matter: A. Internal-to-the-English-text features (Hebraisms, chiasmus, Olive Tree allegory, etc.). Yes, those belong in a text-only discussion. But their diagnostic weight is usually modest, because: Hebraisms can be imported simply by writing in biblicizing English (especially KJV-like English), since the KJV itself preserves lots of Hebraic constructions. Chiasmus is real as a patterning tool, but how probative it is depends on how strict your detection criteria are. There’s apologetic literature arguing it’s meaningful, and also serious critique arguing that flexible rules can “find” extended chiasms too easily. Olive tree allegory overlaps strongly with biblical material (notably Romans 11), which reduces how uniquely “ancient American” it looks as evidence. B. External correspondences (NHM/Nahom, Khor Kharfot, barley, cement, “seal of Mulek”). Strictly speaking, these are not “based only on the English text,” because they require archaeology/epigraphy and geographic proposals outside the text. But if we’re now allowing them as additional evidence, they can move probabilities—if they’re solid matches rather than ambiguous correlations. Very briefly, why I’d still weight several of these cautiously: NHM/Nahom: the altars show consonants (NHM) in a South Arabian context; the match to “Nahom” depends on vowel reconstruction and on whether it’s a place name vs. tribal name, etc. Proponents and critics explicitly debate those points. “Seal of Mulek”: the argument depends on reading an unprovenanced stamp seal as “Malkiyahu, son of the king” and then identifying that with “Mulek.” Even the pro presentation frames it as arguable/conceivable rather than a slam dunk. And more generally, unprovenanced seals/bullae are a domain where authenticity disputes and forgery concerns are a known issue. Barley: it’s true that “barley-like” native Hordeum exists in the Americas, and archaeobotany literature discusses domesticated “little barley” (Hordeum pusillum) in the U.S. Southwest. But mapping the English word “barley” in the Book of Mormon onto specific New World taxa and Book of Mormon geographies is where the evidential strength tends to get murkier. Would I update? If I (i) accept your stipulation that KJV imitation is intentional and (ii) treat your listed items as moderately supportive but not decisive, I’d update upward some—but not to “likely.” Concretely: I’d move my odds from “extremely unlikely” to “still unlikely,” roughly in the neighborhood of well under 1% for (1), and lower still for (2), because (2) adds the extra burden of the narrative being straightforward history of real peoples over a millennium (which is a much stronger claim than “some ancient core existed”). 5) Does “KJV English as imperfectly understood by an early 19th-century American” help the case? It helps explain why the target text would sound biblically archaic without requiring that the English itself be ancient. But there’s a tradeoff: the more you lean into “the translation is intentionally filtered into familiar KJV-style idiom,” the more you’re describing something closer to a dynamic/revelatory rendering than a philologically transparent translation. That doesn’t make it false—but it reduces how much we should expect the English to preserve routine source-language fingerprints. Examples from William Duncan’s Caesar: common translation signals Using Duncan’s Caesar (as you suggested), here are several “this is what translations often look like” features—illustrated in the English itself: A) Frequent “bridging” glosses between cultures/languages Caesar/Duncan gives the reader little orientation handles like: “called in their own language Celts, in ours Gauls” This kind of “they say X / we say Y” scaffolding is extremely normal when a text is genuinely crossing languages and cultures. Why this matters for the Book of Mormon comparison: even granting KJV style, I’d still expect more systematic bridging glosses for institutions, technology, flora/fauna, and social categories across a thousand years and multiple peoples—unless the translation is intentionally smoothing nearly everything into familiar biblical categories. B) Retention of foreign technical terms, units, and “untranslated residue” Translations commonly leave some culturally specific terms in place (or translate them very literally), producing controlled “foreignness.” Duncan’s Caesar does this constantly: “presented him with two hundred thousand asses” (a Roman coin/unit, not converted into English money) detailed engineering/measures: “pits of three feet deep…,” plus “crows-feet… which the soldiers called spurs” Book of Mormon comparison point: in a “codex on plates” scenario, I’d expect more moments where the English shows either (i) persistent loanwords, (ii) consistent conversions (“their measure is… in our measure…”), or (iii) translator notes/glosses around culture-bound items. C) Ethnographic “sidebars” that feel like an author reporting a foreign society For example, Caesar’s Druids passage reads like observational ethnography: “The Druids… interpret the will of the gods.” A long authentic record (especially with wars, migrations, and diplomacy) tends to contain lots of incidental ethnographic texture of this kind—often not “preachy,” just descriptive. D) Translators often explain their editorial/translation policy Duncan explicitly tells the reader what he’s doing (names retained, geography index, etc.). That’s not “proof” of anything by itself, but it’s characteristic of real translation culture: translators worry about mapping problems and tell you how they handled them.

Okay. It looks like I just found a Latter-day Saint who does believe it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex. Or not? What am I missing here? I'm confident from the context that when the GPT said "straightforward translation" it meant to imply that it was a translation that is faithful to what was originally written on the alleged golden plates. Are you implying that when things are translated by the power of God they are no longer an accurate representation of the original text? I really don't get your point. This one is a big deal to you, so I'd like you to clarify where you're coming from before I respond.

Sure. I totally agree that this is what Latter-day Saints assume and believe in abstract. The problem is what happens when we start to compile very strong evidence that natural laws really are in direct, irreconcilable conflict with religious beliefs. Of course you can always assume that they will eventually be reconciled, but the reality is that in some areas, this assumption is getting more and more tenuous. One of the most interesting and certainly strongest beliefs like this is the belief in a "spirit" that somehow inhabits the body in a way where the spirit experiences consciousness, participates in free agency, and to some extent can continue to think, observe, and be aware of itself after death as it floats away from the physical body. Scientists have studied the brain from different angles, and they all come to the same conclusion--personality, sense of self, decisions, and observations all emerge from the brain. Change the brain with injury, disease, surgery, or medication, and all of these things change in extremely predictable ways. There just isn't anything for a "spirit" to do. Furthermore, what the spirit could actually be ceases to make sense. If you surgically split a person's brain in half and then observe them after, you see two distinct senses of self with two different personalities that both think they are the ones in control of the body. How do dualists explain this? Does the "spirit" get split when the brain gets split? Add to this physicists who say that science is now in a completely different state than it ever has been, and that we can now say that while we don't know everything, we know some things, and one of the things we know is that the idea of "spirit energy" or "spirit particles" can't exist--they are fundamentally incompatible with effective field theory. While we can easily posit that "spirits" somehow override this or interact in a more subtle way, there isn't even a well-defined hypothesis of how EQFT could be changed to allow for such a thing. All of this points to the same thing: mind emerges from brain, we don't have "spirits", and when we die that's it. This could all be wrong if you hypothesize vague supernatural influences, but the evidence for such things just isn't there. Read Sean Carroll and Michael Gazzaniga to learn about this. On some issues, that isn't really true. Both Sean Carroll and Michael Gazzaniga say that we have positive evidence that nothing else is going on. This partly depends on how you conceive of "God", right? If you agree with Lorenzo Snow that "as man now is, God once was", then the alleged fine-tuner of the universe is someone other than God, right? Modern thinkers tend to replace blanket skepticism with Bayesian reasoning. The idea is to keep in mind the sum-total of the evidence and not be skeptical for skepticism's sake. Make the best decisions with the data we have. Part of this process is keeping in mind that you need to keep the laws of physics in mind when you look at evidence. Steven Pinker said it with with flair when he said: "A failure of Bayesian reasoning among scientists themselves is a contributor to the replicability crisis that we met in chapter 4. The issue hit the fan in 2011 when the eminent social psychologist Daryl Bem published the results of nine experiments in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which claimed to show that participants successfully predicted (at a rate above chance) random events before they took place, such as which of two curtains on a computer screen hid an erotic image before the computer had selected where to place it. Not surprisingly, the effects failed to replicate, but that was a foregone conclusion given the infinitesimal prior probability that a social psychologist had disproven the laws of physics by showing some undergraduates some porn." Pinker, Steven. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (pp. 159-160). (Function). Kindle Edition.

This is considered best practices in prompt engineering to give the AI some direction on what it is trying to do. To be clear, the AI is neither the judge nor the jury on this. It can help us think, brainstorm, and articulate ideas. But it isn't the judge or jury. This prompt is to intended to systematically look at the evidence and use proper Bayesian reasoning to evaluate all of the evidence. The assumption "Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon" was made to force the GPT to look only at the actual text of the book as evidence. Specifically, does the text itself support the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? It isn't a "glorified google search." GPT 5.2 Pro is the premium, highest-capacity GPT model that spends significant time and computational resources to think, analyze, double-check, reason, and articulate. For example, you can use it to articulate a complicated business problem involving unique databases and business-use requirements, and it can come up with a creative, unique-to-your unique-situation, practical solution, and code it up in the programming language of your choice. It really does "think". There is some overlap between how GPT's think and how humans think. With the differences GPT is sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it really does think, albeit in its own way. We're trying to do this systematically. Those pieces of evidence will be layered in later after we determine what the Book of Mormon most likely is. To see what it is, we need to look at the words. No, that is not something we are positing. We are simply looking at the text itself and determining if it is plausibly an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex. How it came to be is a separate issue. If you are conceding that the Book of Mormon isn't an actual translation of what was written on the alleged golden plates, then I'm glad we agree. But to be clear, are you claiming that it isn't an accurate translation, or that the "golden plates" are not an authentic ancient codex? At this point we're just looking at the text itself. Does it look ancient? Is that hypothesis plausible? Could it be historical? Is that plausible? Who wrote it is a different issue. Just trying to evaluate the plausibility of it being a translation of a real record. Focusing on this is the point. I disagree. Real people that existed 2000 years ago aren't going to write like they are 19th-century americans just because they are trying to focus on "plain and precious parts." The GPT prompt was told to look at the full text of the book, which includes these statements. These statements don't make it look ancient or authentic. You could claim that the stated purpose was for it to sound like it was written in the 1820's and that divine intervention was used so that Mormon knew how to sound like it was written in a different time, place, and culture. But if you do that, you are getting deep into making ad hoc rationalizations for why an allegedly ancient book doesn't look ancient, which brings up non-falsifiability and invisible dragons. I disagree. The text itself screams modern origin. If it had "special preservation/accuracy" that would make it look ancient, not modern. Full stop. M is your theory! You insist that the Book of Mormon existing is so unlikely and miraculous, people who don't believe it is authentic have some sort of obligation to their own intellectual integrity to explain it away. If M isn't true, who wrote it? How? What about the witness statements? All of that is evidence for M. Now you are saying there really isn't any evidence for M? If that is what you are saying, then we agree. If you want to understand my point, you need to engage with the hypothetical as written. The point is that the options aren't either "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" or "the gift and power of God." Rather, the choices are "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" (or other mundane explanations) or something miraculous (including "the gift and power of God", aliens, evil spirits, etc.). Hypothetically proving it wasn't written by natural means forces the answer to be supernatural, but doesn't necessarily mean the most likely answer is that it is an authentic translation of a real ancient document. Have you ever taken a course in formal, deductive logic? Everything we're talking about here is embedded in the assumption that "it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin." Until that assumption is closed, we aren't talking about what we really believe--we are talking about a hypothetical reality where that assumption is true. There are three ways to close the assumption: 1- if we somehow prove that assumption is true, then we are advocating for cosmic trixter and the like. 2- if introducing that assumption leads to a contradiction, then we've proven that assumption is false. Or 3- we could close the assumption with making it a conditional (i.e. if it was written by supernatural means, then "aliens" is the most likely supernatural explanation). To be clear, I am NOT advocating this is what really happened. I'm merely pointing out that if you insist that Joseph Smith could not have produced it, then given that we already know from other evidence that it isn't of ancient origin, supernatural explanations other than the orthodox ones are more likely. I didn't intentionally stack the deck this way. My intention was to evaluate the text: is it plausible that this is a basically accurate translation of something somebody really wrote a long time ago? How it was translated is a different issue. That's what the evidence indicates, sure. The GPT understands this, and you need to pay attention to the logical structure of what we're talking about--if we make absurd assumptions, then crazy things falling out of that are evidence that the assumption is wrong. The GPT understands this logic. That is why it concluded with: I'm certainly not on board with it--the "Rigdon conspiracy" thing is absolutely nuts and in all likelihood did not happen. The point is that's what's even more nuts is the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a basically accurate translation of an authentic ancient record.

I put the question to ChatGPT 5.2 Pro. The objective was two-fold: to test the validity of my thinking, and see if it could do a better job at articulating my reasoning. Having reconsidered the issue, I stand by what I said in 2021, and offer the following prompts and responses to illustrate how I see it. Prompt You are a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings in every world culture that has produced texts. Your expertise includes the ancient writings of Maya, Zapotec, Olmec, Aztec, Inca, Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Hittite, Phoenicia, etc. Additionally, you have deep expertise in the original manuscripts of the Hebrew bible, and know when each chapter and verse of the modern bible was most likely written. Furthermore, you have deep knowledge of science and world history and prehistory, including anthropology, sociology, history of technology, archaeometallurgy, population movements, geology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, evolutionary biology, historical migration studies, population genetics, historical biography, historical demography, and anthropological linguistics, with particular expertise in the history of the ancient middle east and the history and prehistory of the ancient Americas. You are also an expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias. Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon. Somebody presents you with an English version of the Book of Mormon and asks you these specific questions: Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex that was originally written on metal plates and compiled around the year A.D. 400, somewhere in the Americas? What is the likelihood that this codex was compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America *and* is an historical record that tells a story of real people who lived over the prior 1,000 years? If and only if you determine the answers to questions 1 and 2 are unlikely, address the Lloyd Christmas follow-up question, “unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?” Based only on the text of the Book of Mormon, what is the most likely time and place of it being written? Finally, assume that it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin—assume that in a controlled environment, James Randi investigated how it was produced, concludes that it must have involved the supernatural and golden plates that were seen in the 1820’s and that not only were magically a part of the book’s writing, but also magically disappeared after 11 hand-picked witnesses saw them. James Randi declares these are real miracles and Joseph Smith wins the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. Under this new assumption that the modern production of the Book really is miraculous, please use correct Bayesian reasoning to update your beliefs in 1 and 2. Do you now believe the Book of Mormon is most likely an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? Please evaluate the relative plausibility of the following hypotheses: a- Joseph Smith wrote it by himself. b- That Joseph Smith wrote it, with the help of his brother, mother, and others, and that they put on what is essentially an elaborate magic show to make the production of the book look miraculous? c- That advanced aliens helped him write it. d- That some sort of a cosmic trixter (e.g. Q, the devil) helped him write it. e- Something else I haven’t listed. e- That it is exactly what orthodox Mormons believe: an authentic ancient codex that was written, preserved, and translated by the power of God. Please limit your answer to 1,000 words, targeted it to a lay audience, and write it in conversational English. ChatGPT 5.2 Pro Thought for 11m 1s > Here’s how I’d reason if you handed me only the English text and told me it’s a translation of an ancient American record compiled around A.D. 400 on metal plates. 1) Likelihood it’s a translation of an authentic ancient codex on metal plates (compiled ~A.D. 400 in the Americas) Very low. The strongest internal reason is the linguistic fingerprint of the English itself. What I would expect from a genuine translation of an ancient American text (even a very free translation) is: consistent “translationese,” odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms, and only occasional overlap with early-modern English Bible phrasing unless the translator is deliberately imitating it. What instead jumps out (from the English alone) is that the book reads like it is written in a consciously biblical, King James–style English register, and not just in a vague “biblical tone,” but with the texture of an English writer steeped in that particular Bible tradition: stock rhythms, repetitive biblical scaffolding, sermon-like expansions, and long stretches that feel like they are built out of English biblical language rather than translated into it. A translation can be made to sound archaic on purpose, sure. But the more the English looks like it is composed in that idiom—rather than forced into it by the constraints of another language—the less it looks like a translation. My rough probability for #1, based only on the English text: ~1 in 100,000 (0.001%) that it’s truly a translation of an authentic A.D. 400 American metal-plate codex. (That’s not “it’s impossible.” It’s “the internal linguistic signals look overwhelmingly like early modern/modern English religious composition rather than an ancient-source translation.”) 2) Likelihood it’s both (a) compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America AND (b) a historical record of real people over the prior 1,000 years Even lower. This stacks additional requirements on top of #1: not just “ancient source exists,” but it’s an intentionally historical narrative (not mostly allegory/prophecy), and it’s broadly accurate about real people and events across a millennium. From text alone, a big tell is genre balance: authentic historical traditions usually contain lots of “incidental mundane detail” that authors don’t even realize is diagnostic—small logistical constraints, boring administrative texture, local material culture presented without rhetorical purpose, etc. This text (in English) reads much more like theological history—story primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon—than like a record whose main goal is “here’s what happened.” That doesn’t rule out history. But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy. My rough probability for #2: ~1 in 100,000,000 (0.000001%). 3) “Unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?” For #1 and especially #2: no—much, much less likely than 1% on the English-text evidence alone. #1: more like 1 in 100,000 (give or take an order of magnitude). #2: more like 1 in 100 million (give or take a couple orders of magnitude). 4) Most likely time and place of composition, based only on the text The English reads like it comes from an English-speaking, Bible-saturated Protestant culture after the King James Bible had become culturally dominant. So: post-1611, and realistically much later than that, because the style isn’t just archaic English—it feels like a modern author performing archaic English, with heavy sermonizing and concerns that fit a churchy, revival-minded milieu. If you forced me to pick, based only on internal texture: late 18th to early 19th century, North Atlantic English-speaking world, most plausibly the United States (because of the way “scripture-like” narrative and Protestant doctrinal speech patterns blend with a frontier/manifest “promised land” sensibility). Now your “Randi proves it’s miraculous” scenario. You’ve added a new piece of evidence: M = the production cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred. 5) Bayesian update under proven miracles: how do #1 and #2 change, and which hypothesis best fits? Bayes in one sentence: Posterior odds = prior odds × how well each hypothesis predicts the evidence. First, what M does M absolutely crushes purely natural explanations. So under your assumption, hypotheses (a) “Joseph alone” and (b) “Joseph + helpers stage magic” become near-zero (not because they’re logically impossible, but because you stipulated that a controlled investigation ruled them out). What’s left are “some non-natural agency” options. Second, what the text itself still does Even after accepting miracles, we still have the English-text evidence T: it looks like modern English biblical composition, not a translation of an ancient American source. So the key question becomes: Which supernatural hypothesis best predicts both M (miracles/plates) and T (the English fingerprint)? To keep your lettering but avoid the duplicate “e,” I’ll label them: (c) advanced aliens (d) cosmic trickster (e) something else (f) orthodox Mormon claim: authentic ancient codex translated by God My updated probabilities (given M + T) (a) Joseph alone: ~0% (b) Joseph + helpers fraud: ~0% (c) Aliens: low (say 1–5%) They can explain “miracles” via sufficiently advanced tech, but it’s oddly specific for aliens to generate a text so saturated with a particular English biblical register unless they’re intentionally mimicking it. (d) Cosmic trickster: moderate (say 20–40%) Explains real miracles and explains why the text could look strongly modern while claiming ancient provenance: deception is the point. (e) Something else (non-orthodox supernatural): highest (say 50–70%) For example: a genuine miracle/revelation producing a modern religious text in biblical style, where the plates function as a sign rather than as an ordinary ancient source-document. This matches T very well and can also accommodate M. (f) Orthodox (authentic ancient codex translation): still low (say 1–10%) M helps a lot (plates + miracles are predicted), but T still pushes against a straightforward “translation from ancient American language” unless you add extra assumptions like “God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom (even where that creates the appearance of English dependence).” Updated beliefs for #1 and #2 under M #1 (authentic ancient codex translation): I’d move from “1 in 100,000” up to something like a few percent at most (call it ~1–5%), because miracles make “some extraordinary backstory” real, but the English still looks like modern composition more than translation. #2 (ancient + historically accurate): lower still, maybe ~0.1–1%, because even if plates are ancient, “accurate millennium-spanning history” is an additional claim the textual genre feel doesn’t strongly support. So: even after proven miracles, I would not say the orthodox claim is the most likely overall. The most likely bucket becomes “real supernatural involvement, but the English text is best explained as modern-style revelatory composition (or deception) rather than a clean translation of an A.D. 400 American codex.” Prompt 2 Now let's (possibly) relax the assumption that the modern production of the Book of Mormon was James-Randi-level miraculous (maybe it was--that is for your to decide). Now what we have is the actual real-world evidence of how it was produced; Joseph Smith claimed he found the plates, he wrote a pair of witness statements that 11 people signed, a few other people say they incidentally saw the alleged plates, the alleged plates disappeared, Charles Anthon may or may not have certified the characters, a relatively complex book was produced relatively fast, it was produced in weird ways that seemed like a show to the scribes (e.g. hiding behind a curtin or putting face in hat), etc. Given the entirety of the real-world evidence from the 1820's, which hypothesis is more likely: the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an actual ancient American codex that tells the 1000-year story of a a real people, or the hypothesis that in an elaborate conspiracy, Sydney Rigdon was involved much earlier than we believed, created the artifact out of tin, and helped produce the original text that Joseph Smith then dictated "translation" process? If those are the only two options on the table, which is more likely? ~200 words max ChatGPT 5.2 Pro Thought for 11m 1s > If those are truly the only two options, the Rigdon‑involved conspiracy is more likely than “an accurate translation of a real ancient American codex covering 1,000 years of real history.” Reason: the ancient-codex hypothesis has to carry a very heavy stack of extraordinary claims (ancient literate tradition on metal plates in the Americas, correct preservation, correct translation, plates then removed, witnesses’ experiences being straightforwardly veridical, etc.) while the publicly checkable physical evidence (the plates) is unavailable. That said, the specific Rigdon version you propose is not strongly supported by the 1820s record either: the early documentary link placing Rigdon in contact with Smith before the Book of Mormon is thin, and the “Rigdon wrote it earlier” narrative depends a lot on later recollections and inference. So I’d put it like this: Rigdon conspiracy > ancient codex, but only because the ancient-codex claim is so evidentially expensive. If I weren’t forced into just these two, I’d consider “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” more plausible than either.

Spencer, the alien/Satan comments from years ago were not positive claims about what actually happened. They were illustrations about comparative probability. Here’s the structure of the point. If a proposed explanation requires overturning large, interlocking domains of well-confirmed physics, biology, neuroscience, and history, then its prior probability becomes extremely low. That doesn’t mean it’s logically impossible. It means it conflicts with a vast body of independently confirmed knowledge. Once you reach that conclusion, then any alternative explanation that does not require overturning those domains — even a bizarre one — can be comparatively more plausible. Not because it is likely. Not because I affirm it. But because it does not require rewriting the rest of our understanding of reality. That is not “anything but that.” It is coherence across domains of evidence. If someone claims a perpetual motion machine exists, I don’t need a detailed alternative engineering diagram to reject the claim. The conflict with thermodynamics is sufficient. Likewise, if I conclude that the Book of Mormon’s supernatural claims conflict with extremely well-supported background knowledge, then I am rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide a fully worked counter-theory of how every detail unfolded. Rejecting an explanation is not the same thing as affirming a specific alternative. The alien/Satan examples were rhetorical illustrations of that asymmetry. They were not endorsements.

You aren’t dealing with the structure of the argument. Imagine I said, “'John Smith' isn’t in my hotel room. I know this because I have thoroughly checked the room and the only person here is me.” If I said that, you’d respond, “You are purporting to disprove John Smith is in your room without even defining who, specifically ‘John Smith’ is! You can’t prove he isn’t in the room until you give me his birth certificate so we know who, specifically, you are claiming isn’t there." Likewise, Carroll says: "Consider a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself. That means that the X particle must interact with ordinary particles like quarks and electrons, either directly or indirectly. If it didn’t, there would be no way for it to have any effect on the world we directly see." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 181). (Function). Kindle Edition. “John Smith" has the property of being a person who isn’t me. Nothing with that property is in my room. It doesn’t need to be defined beyond that for my proof to be valid. Likewise, “spirit matter” has the property of being a particle X. It doesn’t need to be defined beyond that for Carroll’s proof to be valid. No, it certainly does not presuppose that such an interaction would be empirically observable. Rather, it presupposes that effective quantum field theory works within its domain of applicability. This has nothing to do with the arguments we’re talking about. You are imagining that Sean Carroll’s arguments are fundamentally different (and weaker) than what they are. A spoon apologist might say that there is a different force (the power of the “spoonhood”?) that can be used by people to bend spoons with their mind, and just because physicists haven’t observed it doesn't mean it isn’t there. Carroll would argue that we are extremely confident that a force such as the “spoonhood” does not exist, and would cite effective quantum field theory and experiments done in particle accelerators as proof (i.e. extremely strong evidence) that spoonhood powers don’t and can’t exist. It isn’t merely about declaring that spoons are ordinarily physical stuff. It’s about esoteric but extraordinarily robust theories that show that there can’t be unknown forces that could bend a spoon. Again, Carroll’s arguments are fundamentally different than what you are imagining. We are confident that there isn’t an unknown force that can bend a spoon. For the exact same reason, we are confident there isn’t an unknown force that can tweak the probability of a neuron firing. In both cases, we don’t have to define these alleged unknown forces to know they aren’t there. This seems like a mighty fine hair to split. A compilation of your prior declarations... A list of things where I didn’t say “therefore God cannot exist” is consistent with my claim that I never said “therefore God cannot exist.” My arguments are about things that allegedly interact with things in the everyday world. “God” doesn’t necessarily do that. It isn’t about comparing "spoon matter" and “spirit matter.” It’s about comparing hypothetical “spoon bending particles” and their associated “spoon bending forces” to “spirit matter” and “spirit forces.” We don’t have to define exactly what these imaginary “spoon bending particles” are to be confident they aren’t real. The reason we are confident they don’t exist is because we are confident there aren’t any unknown particles or forces that could have any real-world effect on spoons. Likewise, we also have the same level of confidence for the same reasons that there aren’t any unknown particles or forces that could have any real-world affect on human brains. Quoting Carroll: "If the world we see in our experiments is just a tiny part of a much bigger reality, the rest of reality must somehow act upon the world we do see; otherwise it doesn’t matter very much. And if it does act upon us, that implies a necessary alteration in the laws of physics as we understand them. Not only do we have no strong evidence in favor of such alterations; we don’t even have any good proposals for what form they could possibly take." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 221). (Function). Kindle Edition. That is equally true of the hypothetical unseen reality is spoon-bending magic forces or priesthood power. Earlier in the same post, you told me that "No, we do not know whether or not 'spirit matter' [interacts with the physical world].” Now you are saying the spirit hypothesis is that the spirit does interact with the physical world? You can’t have it both ways. Either the spirit matter hypothesis includes the claim that spirits interact with the physical world, or it does not. If it interacts, Carroll discusses it extensively in the book you haven’t read. If it doesn’t interact, it’s an invisible dragon in the garage.

The argument doesn't depend on a specific definition of "spirit matter". It depends on "spirit matter" broadly having these properties: It consists of something other than the electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up our physical bodies It interacts with the electrons, protons, and neutrons of our physical body in a way that might be incredibly subtle, but is still strong enough to make any difference in how we think or feel That's it. If spirit matter has those properties, then the argument is on point. If spirit matter doesn't have those properties, then the argument is irrelevant to spirit matter. So you tell me. Do we know whether or not "spirit matter" has those two properties? You want it both ways. Either "spirit matter" can subtly influence thoughts, feelings, or agency, or it can't. If it can, then it has the same basic conflicts with EQFT as spoon-bending does. If it can't, then it is irrelevant to our everyday lives. For clarity, I have never said "therefore God cannot exist" because of this. I've said that about spirits and some miracles, but not "God" in general. If you want an out that is scientifically literate, you should simply hypothesize that what makes spirit matter "fine and pure" is its ability to manipulate normal matter using fields that aren't anticipated or described by QM. There isn't any evidence of this, of course, but at least you would be proposing a theory hypothesis that isn't contradicting what we already know. You have conceded that Core Theory rules out with very high confidence spoon bending. If we accept that, then if somebody claims that a really long time ago somebody used the power of their mind to bend a spoon, then we can say with commensurately very high confidence that this didn't happen. The same reasoning applies to anything like spoon bending--walking on water, floating away in the air, etc. That is the entire argument. "To imagine that the soul pushes around the electrons and protons and neutrons in our bodies in a way that we haven’t yet detected is certainly conceivable, but it implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 212). (Function). Kindle Edition. It's not, though. Carroll addresses this directly in detail. Please read Chapter 23 (The Stuff of Which We Are Made), and Chater 26 (Body and Soul). When he says "The verdict is unambiguous," he's talking specifically about something that has a small subtle effect on normal matter that is subtle but enough to make a difference in a thought and feeling. He talks about this directly. At length. From a philosophical perspective, "impossible" is an overstatement. But that said, the choices are either that "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed", or these imagined spirit forces don't exist. While it's true that science can't literally prove anything in a deductive way, it's also true that when a theory provides robust explanations of the universe that withstand a ton of scrutiny, that is meta evidence that the theory is true. I'm certainly not going to argue with you about what you need to be true. But your view does bring to mind what Carl Sagan said: "Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?" Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (p. 171). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Let me refine the “non-material intervention” part a little bit. In this context I’m not talking about oxymoronic “immaterial matter.” What I’m talking about is proposed matter other than the “course and contaminated” matter of ordinary stuff. Sean Carroll walks through this with an example that starts as follows: "Consider a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself. That means that the X particle must interact with ordinary particles like quarks and electrons, either directly or indirectly. If it didn’t, there would be no way for it to have any effect on the world we directly see.” (p. 181). He then walks through how effective quantum field theory proves that X doesn’t exist. He doesn’t have to define “X”, he merely has to state it has the property of having "subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world.” According to quantum mechanics and over a hundred billion dollars in scientific experiments, we know that “X” doesn’t exist. Applying this to the alleged “fine and pure” matter that spirits are allegedly made of, as soon as you can say this spirit matter has "subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world”, I can confidently say it doesn’t exist. That isn’t intuitive, but that is what QM tells us. In a completely fresh GPT I asked "If you crash an electron and a positron into each other at very high speeds, what happens?” It gave a long answer with a bottom line of: I then followed with another simple prompt: "Does this tell you everything that can interact with the fields of an electron?" It answered: That is exactly my point. This isn’t intuitive, but it is what the science says; if “spirit matter” is “strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity”, then the existence of that is “already ruled out to very high precision." I agree with a lot of this, but there are some subtle points I disagree on. One of the reasons that I’ve focused on the plausibility of the existence of "a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself,” is because that claim is within the purview of science, and is a generalized form of “spirit matter." The assertion that particle X can “influence thoughts without measurable energy transfers” is an oxymoron--if it has enough energy to cause a single electron to fire in a neuron, then it has enough energy to be measurable. If it is more subtle than that, then it can’t affect thoughts. It has to be one or the other. Regarding historical events (allegedly miraculous ones or mundane ones), etc., it depends on the specific claim. On a particular historical claim there might not be data, and the best we can do is say there isn’t any evidence of that one way or the other. But if the historical claim is unlikely or implausible, we can use that implausibility to be quite confident it didn't happen. Regarding inconsistencies in application, this is never something I meant to say or imply. Spirits don’t exist. Jesus didn’t walk on water. He didn’t snap his fingers and turn water into wine. He didn’t float into the sky after the alleged resurrection. The idea of a dead person returning to life isn’t inconsistent with QM the way these other things are, but depending upon the details is inconsistent with what we know about biology. On Philosophy of science, Carroll’s claims are a lot more nuanced than you are giving him credit for. When he says "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” he chose his words very carefully. This has nothing to do with “poetic naturalism” or an assumption of physicalism. It is a direct result of QM. That is why he says we know “some” things, and that those things are enough to rule out “some” other things. This isn’t intuitive, but it is a result of QM. Regarding naturalism, that is a result of science, not a premise. Science is based methodological empiricism--it’s based on the data. Agreed. I've addressed most of these above. EQFT says that some things just can’t happen. He doesn’t merely claim that we doubt spoon bending with the mind is possible because it’s never been done in a controlled environment. He’s claiming we know that it is impossible because QFT has proven that it can’t happen. This same confidence in the implausibility of spoon bending transfers to the implausibility of certain claims about historical miracles. This applies equally to all such miraculous claims. As my GPT said without any leading questions or prompts, "But practically speaking — for interactions strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity — those are already ruled out to very high precision.” Things that aren’t strong enough to influence those things could (and probably do) exist, but they don’t have any impact on our lives. I understand how it seems this way. What you are saying is intuitive and makes sense. But the surprising claim is that according to QM, if a supernatural/miraculous claim is strong enough to have an impact on everyday reality, then it must leave fingerprints, 100% of the time. Furthermore, we know exactly how to look for and detect such fingerprints. We’ve looked for them very carefully, and they aren’t there. That is strong evidence that these imagined forces aren’t real.

In my prior post, the AI prompt was engineered to articulate my position, and was biased towards my position being true. I decided to engineer a new prompt that was neutral and evaluated the evidence. Prompt: Definition 1: Hypothesized "spirit" and "spiritual forces" refer to any hypothetical particle or force that has the following properties: a- They are not defined by or are not constrained by the standard model of physics b- They are strong enough and last long enough to interact with the electrons, quarks, and fields of our body with enough energy or vigor to trigger something that has an effect on physical system, such as triggering or affecting a thought in the physical brain Definition 2: The "spirit hypothesis" is that a spirit or spiritual forces exist and play a role in who we are as human beings. Definition 3: The "no spirit hypothesis" is the positive hypothesis that "spirit" and "spiritual forces" do not exist. Philosophical framework: We are *methodological empiricists*. While we give no special deference to truth claims because they are religious, we also don't hesitate to follow the evidence wherever it leads, including if it leads towards the support of a religious or philosophical position other than naturalism. With that background, what is the current evidentiary state of the "spirit hypothesis" and the "no spirit hypothesis"? When answering this question, please look at the implications of all available evidence from all fields of study, including the experiments that support the core theory, neuroscience, and NDE studies. Colloquially, how strong are these results? Is it going too far to say in casual conversation that we are "confident" or "know" or have "proven" anything with regards to these two hypotheses? My point here is to avoid casual readers from interpreting carefully couched language as meaning the evidence is weaker than it really is. 600 words max. Chat GPT 5.2 Pro Thought for 12m 26s> Given Definition 1, a “spirit/spiritual force” would have to be new physics (outside the Standard Model) that still couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to perturb neural activity (change firing/synapses/networks) and thereby affect thoughts. That predicts an additional matter‑coupled interaction with repeatable physical effects. **Physics / “core theory”** The Standard Model has passed stringent precision tests and global fits; overall consistency leaves limited room for extra, unscreened interactions that couple appreciably to ordinary particles. ([Particle Data Group][1]) Dedicated “fifth‑force” and equivalence‑principle searches likewise keep coming up null. For example, the MICROSCOPE satellite tested the Weak Equivalence Principle and found no violation down to ~10^-15 in the Eötvös parameter, strongly constraining many new-force models that couple to bulk matter. ([arXiv][2]) Precision orbit-tracking studies (e.g., asteroid dynamics) also bound long‑range Yukawa‑type forces. ([Nature][3]) Colloquially: physics doesn’t “prove” there is no new interaction anywhere, but it **strongly disfavors** any broad, matter‑coupled “spirit force” strong enough to be doing noticeable causal work in brains while leaving no trace in precision tests. **Neuroscience** Here the evidence is extremely strong that mental capacities depend on brain states. Lesion research shows that damage to specific circuits can selectively alter memory, language, emotion, personality, impulse control, and conscious access—evidence that those substrates are necessary for those functions. ([PMC][4]) Interventions tighten causality further: direct electrical stimulation can evoke or modulate perceptions and memory-related experiences, and modern reviews summarize systematic stimulation effects on human memory. ([PubMed][5]) General anesthesia reliably removes (and restores) consciousness by altering large‑scale brain dynamics and network connectivity. ([ScienceDirect][6]) This doesn’t logically exclude a “spirit” that merely correlates with brain activity, but it undercuts versions where spirit is the primary driver and the brain is secondary. Any interacting spirit influence would have to track neurophysiology extremely closely. **NDE evidence** Prospective cardiac‑arrest studies find that a nontrivial minority of survivors report NDEs/recalled experiences of death; a 2024 scoping review reports incidence ranging roughly from ~6% to ~39% across prospective studies. ([PMC][7]) AWARE‑II reported that among interviewed survivors, 11/28 described memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness, spanning categories from dream‑like to “transcendent.” ([PubMed][8]) But Definition 1 requires **verified** mentation/perception when the brain is unable to support it. Current NDE research is limited by low survival, uncertain timing (resuscitation vs recovery), and ICU confounds. NDE‑like episodes can also occur in syncope, with measurable EEG/network differences reported in people who had NDE‑like fainting experiences—supporting “disconnected consciousness” generated by a compromised but functioning brain. ([ScienceDirect][9]) **Other claimed anomalies** Some parapsychology meta-analyses report small statistical deviations in “anomalous perception” paradigms (e.g., Ganzfeld), but the field remains disputed and has not produced a consensus‑grade demonstration of a new force/particle interacting with the brain. ([PMC][10]) **Bottom line** * Spirit hypothesis (as defined): currently weak empirical support; no robust, independently replicated evidence of non‑Standard‑Model forces causally influencing brains. *No-spirit hypothesis (as defined): strongly supported as a practical inference, because we (i) have powerful constraints on additional matter‑coupled forces and (ii) can already explain and manipulate mental states via brain mechanisms. **Everyday language** “Proven” is too strong for both. But it is fair in casual conversation to say you’re confident that brain function is necessary for ordinary human thought and that there is presently no compelling empirical evidence for a detectable, matter‑coupled “spirit force” doing causal work in the brain. [1]: https://pdg.lbl.gov/2024/reviews/rpp2024-rev-standard-model.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "rpp2024-rev-standard-model.pdf - PDG" [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.15487?utm_source=chatgpt.com "MICROSCOPE mission: final results of the test of the Equivalence Principle" [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-024-01779-3?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Constraints on fifth forces and ultralight dark matter from ..." [4]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6712987/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Lesion studies in contemporary neuroscience - PMC" [5]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36408731/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Direct electrical brain stimulation of human memory" [6]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627324001569?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Review Anesthesia and the neurobiology of consciousness" [7]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11133272/ " Near-death experiences after cardiac arrest: a scoping review - PMC " [8]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37423492/ "AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest - PubMed" [9]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811924002568?utm_source=chatgpt.com "EEG signature of near-death-like experiences during ..." [10]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Anomalous perception in a Ganzfeld condition - A meta ... - PMC" Follow-up Prompt In the everyday language part, did you mean to say "you're *confident* that there aren't "spirit matter particles" influencing (and being influenced by) the brain? ChatGPT 5.2 Auto Yes — in everyday language, it’s reasonable to say you’re **confident there aren’t undiscovered “spirit matter” particles interacting with the brain in the way you defined**. That confidence doesn’t mean absolute logical certainty. It means that given (1) tight experimental constraints on new matter-coupled forces and (2) the detailed causal mapping between brain states and mental states, the evidence strongly favors the view that no such particles are influencing (or being influenced by) neural activity. “Confident” fits. “Proven” overstates it.

I thought I’d recruit ChatGPT 5.2 Pro to help me articulate my position. The following deliberately looks outside of Sean Carroll’s esoteric arguments from physics that arrive at the same conclusion from a totally different angle. Prompt Please choose 4 examples of evidence that physical "spirits" that interface with the body are not real. Part of this theory expands to the theory that the proper way to interpret NDEs is that they are the process of a stressed-out brain that may be dying and not an account of the spirit literally leaving the body at death. Don't choose Sean Carroll's arguments from physics. Do choose Michael Gazzaniga's as one of the four. Make your selection based on how independent, intuitive, genuinely strong, and interesting the arguments are. For each argument, write a short paragraph that explains to a lay audience why this is formidable evidence that there isn't a "ghost in the machine" that interfaces with the spirit brain. Finally, write a conclusion paragraph that briefly mentions other areas of science that corroborate with this, and the implication of how this multi-faceted, interlaced body of evidence all points to a consistent, well-defined theory that naturalism is true and that naturalism precludes the possibility of a physical "spirit" inhabiting our bodies. Be sure to emphasize that "naturalism" doesn't preclude a spirits in principle--there being no spirits is a result of the science, not a premise. Keep the entire post written in a conversational style using prose. 600 words max. Response Thought for 8m 59s> Here are four lines of evidence—chosen for being pretty independent of one another, intuitive once you see them, and hard to square with a literal “ghost in the machine” that interfaces with a physical spirit body. **1) Gazzaniga’s split-brain work: one skull, two semi-independent minds.** In some patients with severe epilepsy, surgeons have cut the corpus callosum, the main bridge between the hemispheres. Afterward, the two halves of the brain can behave like partially separate agents: one hand can select an object the person can’t verbally name; one hemisphere can follow an instruction the other seems unaware of. Gazzaniga also emphasized the “interpreter” role of the left hemisphere—our tendency to generate a coherent story about “why I did that” even when the real cause is hidden from conscious access. If there were a single, unified spirit self steering the body through one interface, you’d expect the unity of agency and awareness to remain intact even when brain wiring is cut. Instead, the unity fractures in exactly the way the neural wiring predicts. **2) Focal brain injury and disease: specific parts break, specific parts of “you” disappear.** Strokes, tumors, traumatic injuries, and neurodegenerative diseases don’t just make people generally “less conscious.” They can selectively remove a capacity that feels deeply personal: speech (aphasia), forming new memories (hippocampal damage), recognizing faces (prosopagnosia), inhibiting impulses and maintaining personality stability (frontal lobe damage), or even the sense that one side of space exists (hemispatial neglect). What makes this formidable is the *specificity*: damage a particular circuit and you lose a particular mental function, while many other aspects of the self remain. A spirit-body theory that stores “a significant chunk” of memories, agency, and identity has to explain why physical damage to tissue reliably deletes or distorts those very things in fine-grained, repeatable ways. The simplest explanation is the obvious one: those functions are implemented in the brain. **3) Anesthesia and psychoactive drugs: chemistry turns consciousness down and back up on schedule.** General anesthesia can reliably switch off conscious experience, and when the drugs wear off, consciousness returns—often within minutes—without needing to “reconnect” anything metaphysical. The same is true, in a graded way, for sedatives, stimulants, antidepressants, psychedelics, and antipsychotics: tweak neurotransmitter systems and you predictably tweak attention, mood, perception, self-modeling, and thought. If a physical spirit system is the main seat of consciousness and agency, it’s puzzling that tiny molecules binding to receptors in the brain can so consistently reshape the contents and clarity of the mind. This isn’t a vague correlation; it’s causal control with dose–response curves and repeatable mechanisms. **4) Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences: the brain can manufacture “leaving the body” when stressed or perturbed.** NDEs are often vivid and meaningful, but many of their core features line up with what stressed brains do: low oxygen, high carbon dioxide, sleep-like (REM) intrusions, seizure-like activity, and powerful neurochemistry can all produce bright lights, tunnels, life-review feelings, and the sense of presence. Importantly, “out-of-body” sensations can also be induced without dying—by disturbing the brain’s body-mapping systems (e.g., through experimental illusions that shift where you feel located, and in some cases direct stimulation in relevant regions). That matters because it offers a grounded alternative: you don’t need a spirit literally exiting the body to get the *experience* of departure; you need a brain whose self-location and self-model are temporarily destabilized. Taken together, these aren’t four versions of the same argument—they’re four different windows on the same picture. And they’re reinforced by many other areas: cognitive neuroscience, neurology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, anesthesiology, brain stimulation research, developmental psychology, behavioral genetics, and computational modeling of perception and decision-making. The upshot is a convergent, interlaced theory in which mental life is what brains do. That conclusion isn’t smuggled in as a premise: methodological naturalism is just the commitment to follow testable causes wherever they lead. If a physical “spirit” interfacing with the body were part of the causal story, it would earn its place by improving predictions and surviving cross-checks. What we find instead is that the brain-centered story keeps winning—cleanly, mechanistically, and across many independent lines of evidence.

Correct. Specifically, I’ve been trying to stay focused on the proposition that we have “spirits” made out of “spirit matter", because this hypothesis isn’t a one-off event that only happens on rare, non-repeatable occasions. Rather, this “spirit matter” hypothesis entails something that happens continuously in every living human in an extremely well-studied organ of our bodies. This is within the purview of science. A few points. First, this conversation began with the premise that “evidence” is something real. If one wants to evoke philosophy and the supernatural, one can wave their hand and cause evidence to disappear, as does the young-earth creationist who says that the dinosaurs all died in the flood. So I assume we’re working under the general framework that we won't wave our hands and appeal to divine intervention (or demonic intervention) to wave away evidence that is inconvenient for this or that belief. Second, I hope you acknowledge that above I said, "when I use the word prove, I’m writing in what Steven Pinker calls classic style: ordinary language that relies on reasonable reader charity rather than endless hedging. In that register, prove means “meets an extremely high evidential burden—something like beyond a reasonable doubt—given what we currently know.” It does not mean metaphysical certainty or logical impossibility." I hope you are trying to understand my point and not be an “offender for a word” and claim the Lloyd Christmas defense (so you admit you were exaggerating and there really is a chance I’m right!) Third, this all began when I correctly pointed out that there are libraries of material that constitute formidable evidence that your religious beliefs aren’t really true, and that apologists ignore this evidence. I brought up Sean Carroll’s arguments against the plausibility of “spirits" as one example from this library. You are free to scoff at my summaries of his arguments, but when you do so, you sound just as scientifically literate as the young-earth creationist who dismisses the fossil record by glibly declaring that the devil put the bones there to confuse us. At any given time I’m more likely to be be reading a Lee Child or Michael Connelly novel than a book about science, but I’ve happened to read the following books about science and coincidentally noticed that they approach the plausibility of there being “a ghost in the machine” from different scientific disciplines, and all come to the conclusion that no, given the evidence that really isn’t plausible. While Sean Carroll using quantum field theory to show that even physics shows that the plausibility of “spirit matter” being real is vanishingly unlikely, the same conclusion has been independently reached in neuroscience and neuroanatomy, neurology, neuropsychology (including split-brain and lesion studies), cognitive science, computational neuroscience, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, anesthesiology, endocrinology and neuromodulation research, developmental psychology, behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, and molecular/cellular biology. There being a ghost in the machine is a very intuitive belief; nobody gets confused about the premise of Freaky Friday. But when you carefully study physics and the brain, you realize this just isn’t plausible. If you want to understand this, here are books that I’ve happened to read that make the point from different angles: The Big Picture by Sean Carroll The Consciousness Instinct by Michael Gazzaniga How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker Who’s in Charge by Michael Gazzaniga Life on the Edge by Johnjoe McFadden et. al. Those are just the books I’ve happened to read. There are dozens more that I could list that corroborate the point. This isn’t anti-religion apologetics stuff. It is mainstream science stuff. The Gazzaniga books are fascinating in terms of what we know about the brain, consciousness, and sense of self from split-brain research. And none of these books even address some of the obvious questions about why, if there is a ghost in the machine, does the ghost lose its ability to see if our physical eyes go blind, or why the ghost in the machine goes dark and doesn’t have an OBE when we have anesthesia for a surgery. If you want to understand my position, take a deep dive into science without compartmentalizing your brain.

Personally, I’d prefer a quote of me saying or implying what he is accusing me of saying or implying.

I understand how you might think this, but your reasoning is flawed. If you’d like to understand why, please read The Big Picture.

On whose part? You can believe whatever you want, happily or otherwise. Quantum field theory offers formidable evidence against the plausibility of such claims. I have never thought, much less argued, that “Carroll only has application to Latter-day Saint truth claims.” I have no idea how you got that into your head. Regardless, I’m not going to play the part of this straw man you want to fight. If you want to understand how physics shows that such things are implausible, please read The Big Picture by Sean Carroll.

Yes I have. I've consistently said that everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science. The key is the interaction. I’ve been very consistent on this. On a few occasions I’ve tried to limit the conversation to discussing one specific example: what your church teaches about spirits. I did this because it is relevant, important, and directly addressed in detail in Sean Carroll’s book. (Carroll talks about “spirits” more generally than the specific LDS conception, but the LDS conception fits in the bullseye of what Carroll discusses, especially with the idea of “spirit matter”, something Carroll says must exist for a spirit to interface with a body). Let's take a giant step back and put this into perspective. This all started when somebody repeatedly posted on Sic Et Non that there is “no evidence at all to support the claims of theism.” Peterson disagreed with this, of course, and said, "To say that there is no evidence at all, however, is merely hyperbolic rhetoric. It’s not true. There’s evidence for all kinds of things. Very often, in fact, there’s contradictory evidence. The daily “rising” and “setting” of the sun, for example, was long reasonably thought to be evidence for a geocentric cosmos." You summarized Peterson’s post on this topic, added some of your own thoughts, and asked others for thoughts. I accepted your invitation to share my thoughts, and said, "The way I see it, there is no evidence "at all" for the Book of Mormon in the same way that there is no evidence "at all" for the earth being flat. In a sense there is a some evidence of a flat earth, just as there is some evidence of a geocentric universe. The problem with this is that a heliocentric solar system in an expanding universe has a lot more evidence. But it isn't just that there is more evidence for this other theory--it's that the other theory is part of an interconnected understanding of the universe across multiple disciplines. Given a comprehensive understanding of everything we know and why, the proposition of the earth being flat raises so many more problems than it answers, the evidence in favor of the earth being flat isn't really evidence at all." The conversation followed as we would have expected, and I said, “[Apologists] have little pieces of evidence that they promote while there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that they ignore and put 'on the shelf.'” To which you responded, "That is singularly and patently untrue. Scholars have amassed substantial amounts of evidence in support of the claims of the Church. These scholars have likewise regularly responded to contrary evidences (rather than, as you falsely put it, "ignore and put {them} 'on the shelf'”)." I disagreed and as examples to illustrate my point, presented what quantum field theory implies about the plausibility of spirits and the supernatural in general. You responded by throwing all sorts of responses at the wall. Without understanding anything about this body of evidence, you declared "And no, there is nothing "utterly incompatible" in view.” And assured me that physics is "blinkered, finite, flawed, incomplete,” not even aware that serious physicists are claiming "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known.” You claim this all has no bearing on your Church’s truth claims, and declared that his views are “blinkered” (unlike yours?). When I quoted Carroll as saying, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known” you responded by mocking him, "Wow. And as a scientist, he has demonstrated that, has he? It's an objective fact? Not open for discussion or debate or disagreement?” I did my best to explain the reality of the state of science in these matters, and you accused me of exercising an “appeal to ridicule.” I quoted from one of America’s top scientists who thinks Carroll is correctly representing the science and you accused me of making an “appeal to authority.” And based on this array of “responses” to some subtle ideas you are completely disinterested in, you’ve declared yourself the victor and announced that I’ve "substantially exaggerated and mischaracterized" Carroll and/or science in general. You’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to understand Carroll’s arguments. You see the world differently, and don’t see the need to understand how he sees the world, much less understand why he sees it that way. That is your prerogative. But the fact remains that according to a preeminent physicist, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” and that these completely known laws of physics provide formidable evidence against supernatural beliefs, including your own. And the fact remains that serious LDS scholars who are qualified to opine on the details of these arguments choose not to do so. And that is my point. You disagree with Carroll. That’s fine, but your opinions on this are completely irrelevant. You haven’t studied the physics. You haven’t even tried to understand this on a lay level. You haven’t even tried to understand my summaries of the arguments. Show me Latter-day Saints with PhDs in physics and are qualified to evaluate the implications of quantum field theory on whether “spirits” are plausible. Until then, my original point stands: there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that apologists ignore and put 'on the shelf,’ and this is one little example.

I've consistently said that everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science. The key is the interaction. I’ve been very consistent on this. The big driver of the confusion here is specifically whether spirit-body dualism is inherently non-falsifiable as you seem to believe, or whether it actually is falsifiable and within the purview of science, as Carroll believes. Nearly 400 years ago, Descartes addressed these issues by speculating that the pineal gland in the brain was the specific organ of the physical body that was able to interface with non-physical spirits. We now know that this is debunked--the penal gland produces melatonin and isn’t a special receptor of non-physical signals from a spirit. As the centuries have ticked by the theory of mind-body dualism continues to be falsifiable, because we can examine from multiple angles the plausibility of something outside of the brain impacting how we think, feel, and make decisions. Again, it all has to do with interactions. Are we talking about fire-breathing dragons that are invisible, incorporeal, float in the air, don’t produce heat, don’t leave footprints, and don’t interact in any way with anything in the real world? Or are we talking about about spirits that inhabit our bodies and interact with them and that receive communication from other spiritual entities? Are we talking about power to walk on water, or are we talking about the powers that are indistinguishable from placebo responses? Chapter 26 of Big Picture is entitled "Body and Soul”, and in this chapter he goes into detail about why the existence of spirits is within the purview of science. He says, "The Core Theory of contemporary physics describes the atoms and forces that constitute our brains and bodies in exquisite detail, in terms of a rigid and unforgiving set of formal equations that leaves no wiggle room for intervention by nonmaterial influences. The way we talk about immaterial souls, meanwhile, has not risen to that level of sophistication. To imagine that the soul pushes around the electrons and protons and neutrons in our bodies in a way that we haven’t yet detected is certainly conceivable, but it implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed." (p. 212). One is free to believe we have a spirit pulling the strings, but this belief "implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed.” A couple of points. First, the word “prove” means different things depending on the context. Philosophically, we can argue that nothing can be proven, and all science can do is create hypotheses than are either consistent or inconsistent with the evidence. From this ultimate philosophical perspective, nothing is nor can be proven. Colloquially, we might say we know things, or say that something is proven, as an informal way of saying that a proposition has so much corroborating evidence that we are extremely confident it is true. While there might really be a one-in-a-million chance that Mary Swanson could end up living happily ever after with Lloyd Christmas, it’s okay to say that we “know” that won’t happen. It’s just a matter of what words you choose and whether the listener is making a good-faith effort to understand what the other person is saying.

One final point. Carroll argued that we “know" some things, and what we know is enough to "rule out" some other things. The “other things” it rules out don’t include “God” or “spirits” in an undefined sense. But it does rule out a spirit interfacing with the human body. Refuting this claim with a call for epistemic humility reminded me of when I was in high school. A friend told me another student had “proven” Einstein wrong and shown that faster-than-light travel was possible. Curious, I asked for the proof. He said, “Simple. If a spaceship accelerates, it goes faster every second. Keep accelerating long enough and eventually it exceeds the speed of light. It’s obvious.” I was underwhelmed. At the time I didn’t understand Einstein’s argument for relativity, but I was confident that he was aware of Newtonian acceleration and had built his theory precisely to address such intuitions. So here’s the question: who needed the lesson in epistemic humility—the physicist whose theory had survived extraordinary scrutiny, or the student who dismissed it without engaging the structure of the argument? Humility cuts both ways.

You are misunderstanding him. Sean Carroll argues that “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 178-179). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Are you sure? There are stories in the Bible of God manifesting Himself to skeptics. E.g. Elijah, doubting Thomas. Are you really telling me that if God the Father in His body of Flesh and Bones appeared to a team of scientists and offered to let them examine Him as thoroughly as they want, they would end up saying, “sorry. We just don’t have the tools to prove or disprove whether You exist or not.”? While it’s true that science can’t prove the existence or non-existence of, say, the alleged invisible, incorporeal, undetectable, unfalsifiable, ad hoc dragon that Carl Sagan says lives in his garage, as soon as there are claims that this dragon interfaces with the particles and forces of everyday reality, it enters the realm of science. That is why I said I was criticizing narrow, "specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain." The argument is much stronger than the mere “absence of detectable spirt forces.” The argument is that if “spirits” (whatever they are) exist and interface with our brains, then our extraordinarily well-confirmed low-energy quantum field theory is fundamentally wrong and would need substantial revision. While scientific humility requires admitting that any theory could in principle be revised, low-energy quantum field theory is arguably the most exhaustively tested and empirically vindicated framework in all of physics, confirmed to astonishing precision across an enormous range of phenomena. In the same colloquial sense that we say gravity is “proven,” modern physics has “proven” (i.e. "gives us extremely strong reason to believe”) there are no undiscovered forces capable of mediating reliable spirit–brain interaction in the everyday world, regardless of what hypothesized “spirits” actually are. In the words of Dr. Carroll, “I’m not claiming that we know everything, or anywhere close to it. I’m claiming that we know some things, and that those things are enough to rule out some other things—including bending spoons with the power of your mind. The reason we can say that with confidence relies heavily on the specific form that the laws of physics take. Modern physics not only tells us that certain things are true; it comes with a built-in way of delineating the limits of that knowledge—where our theories cease to be reliable.” (p. 155) The claim that spirits interact with a physical brain is an empirical claim. The claim that there is somehow a “ghost in the machine” is a claim of a spirit producing reliable, information-bearing effects in the particles and fields of the human brain. This is a claim about physical processes. Any such process would fall under the constraints of our extraordinarily well-confirmed low-energy physics, which tightly limits the existence of additional forces capable of mediating such effects. My argument does not depend on a specific metaphysical definition of “spirit.” It applies to any hypothesized entity that interacts with ordinary matter (e.g. brains) with enough force to affect them in the realm of our ordinary experiences (i.e. strong enough to stimulate a change in the brain strong enough to fire a neuron). Carroll’s analysis is general: any additional particle or force that is relevant to the everyday world is tightly constrained by our extraordinarily well-confirmed low-energy physics. The point isn’t to merely advocate for naturalism. The point is to explain how strong the theory of Quantum Mechanics actually is, and what it implies about the possibility of unknown forces, particles, or even virtual particles that could interact with the human brain. Neither Sean Carroll nor I are arguing that "science has disproved spirits/God.” As you quoted me at the top of your post, "I am not claiming that physics “disproves God” in some abstract or unfalsifiable sense. I’m addressing a narrower target: specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain—revelation arriving in the mind and heart, the Holy Ghost “dwelling” in a person, spiritual promptings conveying information, and so on."