Ryan Dahle

What is even a "control text"? I'm happy to admit that I'm not trained in linguistics like you, so can you please tell me what a "control text" is in linguistics? Please point me to how this term is appropriately used in lingustics so that I can best understand how you are using it. I was simply countering the argument that the claim that these phrases were absent from Joseph's environment and pointing to just how much a part of it they are. Let me try to unpack this a bit further. The idea of a "control text" isn't a sophisticated linguistic term (and I'm not a trained linguist). It is a more basic principle of logic that applies to many different domains. When testing certain hypotheses in science, we often need to establish controls or control groups (I'm guessing you are familiar with this basic concept, so I won't try to explain it further). At least when it comes to the competing theories/explanations in our discussion, the debate is about whether or not the language of the Book of Mormon was revealed to Joseph Smith or whether it reflects his own native linguistic habits (which would be expected to largely reflect the language patterns of his 19th-century environment, which would include religious language and pseudo-biblical texts and so forth from that period). In such a debate, it would obviously be very helpful to identify any texts that Smith produced which certainly reflect his own native linguistic patterns and habits. Such texts would reasonably function as a "control" group of documents, which could then be compared to the Book of Mormon and other texts which are purported by Latter-day Saints to have been produced or strongly influenced by Smith's revelatory gifts. If such control texts could be confidently identified, and if they were to contain archaic features that Skousen/Carmack believe are significant due to their absence or rarity in Smith's 19th-century environment, then they would help push back against the theory of a divinely-worded text. In other words, if Carmack were to propose that a specific textual feature in the Book of Mormon was likely produced by God (since it is absent in Smith's environment and not likely to be produced naturally by him), but then you can show the same feature was indeed produced by Smith in a secular context that has nothing to do with Smith's revelatory gift or calling, then that would obviously push back against Carmack's claim (at least when it comes to that particular textual feature). It seems, based on the context of the debate, that this is precisely the type of argument you were trying to make. You appealed to examples of a certain archaic feature in Smith's D&C revelations as evidence of what Smith could naturally produce himself: In other words, you were treating the D&C revelations as established control texts that certainly reflect Smith's native linguistic habits, rather than as revelatory documents that might reasonably reflect Smith's revelatory gifts. In the context of the debate, that is a logically invalid move. It would be like taking an example of that archaic feature from the Book of Mormon itself, then arbitrarily assuming Smith is the one who produced it rather than a divine entity, and then using that example to argue that the rest of the instances of this textual feature in the Book of Mormon were also plausibly produced by Smith. That type of debate tactic doesn't working because it is simply assuming the conclusion you want to reach, rather than supporting it with valid evidence. You basically have two primary options to rebut Carmack's claims with actual evidence: (1) One option would be to find a sufficient number of examples from other 19th-century authors to argue that this specific feature actually was being used regularly by other writers of the day (and therefore to argue that Smith's usage isn't statistically unique or impressive). (2) The other option would be to find examples of archaic usage in Smith's writings that are indisputably secular and non-revelatory in nature. For instance, let's imagine that scholars were to discover a lengthy work of fiction written by Smith's own hand in 1828. And let's say that he included a preface to the work that explains it has nothing to do with his revelations and that he is simply trying his hand as a novelist. Imagine, however, if this fictional novel were full of the very same types of archaisms that Skousen/Carmack believe are so special as seen in the Book of Mormon and some D&C revelations. That novel would function as a remarkable control text, demonstrating what type of archaic language patterns Smith was naturally capable of. Once it is proven that he could naturally produce those features, then there would be no need for Skousen/Carmack to appeal to a supernatural revelation. You could also make other non-evidence based arguments, such as simply assuming all of the archaic features of the Book of Mormon were in Smith's environment but reflected a spoken rather than written dialect. Or you could assume that Smith simply got lucky and that he produced an idiolectic form of speech that just so happened to match up with all of these archaic forms by accident. Or you could assume that all of these forms of speech were in Smith's environment but just never made it into the textual record. Or you could assume some combination of these theories. But then, of course, you would need to support these assumption-based theories with a robust set of underlying data in contexts comparable to the Book of Mormon.

Too snarky on my part. I deleted this one, for which we will probably all be grateful.

You definitely were attempting to use them as control texts, in the context of trying to push back against the uniqueness of the feature that Carmack had identified. In other words, you were saying that this feature in the Book of Mormon (for this cause that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase>") isn't very significant since we can find two examples of its usage in Smith's other revelations (specifically in the D&C). But that type of argument only works if you confidently assume, at the outset, that Smith's D&C revelations were produced using his own language patterns. In contrast, if the language of the D&C revelations were influenced by the same or a similar divine process that produced the language of the Book of Mormon, then your argument makes no sense. If you didn't view these D&C revelations as reliable control texts when attempting to push back against Carmack's claim, then why bring them up? What could they possibly prove or demonstrate? How does bringing them up help your case in any way?

Two is enough, and the others show that the speech pattern was used enough by Joseph to show how slight alterations while speaking can mimic the EModE. Whether "two is enough" is debatable, since (as I pointed out) they come from texts that can't logically function as a reliable control group. I seem them as essentially non-evidence. So, from my perspective, you really you have 0 examples from valid control texts. And if your argument is that those "slight" alterations were likely to be made by Joseph Smith, it would help if you could find similar alterations being made by other 19th-century authors, especially in similar frequencies. Statistically speaking, it doesn't seem like a "slight" alteration to me. You labeling it that way doesn't make it so. That might be a nice explanation if Smith's language was strictly idiolectic in nature (in the sense that it was truly unique to his own speech patterns). But that isn't what we find. Instead, we see a lot of lexis, grammar, and syntax that significantly overlaps with EModE language patterns (to a degree that would be extraordinarily unlikely if Smith was simply creating random new speech patterns). And these patterns are, of course, "outside of Joseph Smith's religious idiolect." So you would still have to explain why his supposed "idiolect" has so much nuanced overlap with archaic forms and why there are very few truly novel features in the text. The problem doesn't go away simply by assuming he was intentionally trying to produce a unique scriptural language. You actually have to explain the data. I think you are misunderstanding the nature of the debate on this point. You initially brought up Smith's usage of this particular feature (for this cause that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase>") as pushback against its uniqueness. I think you thought everyone would just go along with your smuggled-in assumption that the D&C and Smith's other revelatory or ecclesiastical documents must uniformly reflect his own wording. No one contests that D&C texts are viewed by Latter-day Saints as either revealed or divinely inspired documents. Yet the precise nature and mechanisms of those revelations has never been fully established with actual evidence, whether on linguistic or historical grounds. So, if one accepts the premise that God may have had a significant role in the production of these texts, it should be obvious why we can't just assume (without any verifying evidence) that God was never to any appreciable degree influencing the text at the level of specific language patterns. It is still very much an open question. What we really need are sufficient samples of Smith's writings or dictations that all parties would agree are strictly non-revelatory in nature (and therefore safely reflect his own strictly natural human language patterns). Using a somewhat analogous scientific example, what you are proposing would be like trying to give one group of humans a certain medication and another group a placebo pill but then realizing after the fact that there was an administration error and that you can't actually verify if the placebo pill was really a placebo pill or if some or all of the presumed placebo pills were actually the medication that you are testing for. If you can't sufficiently determine that your supposed control group actually is a valid control group, then it is essentially worthless as evidence. It maybe frustrating that we don't have many control texts from Smith's writings that might help verify your own theory (since most everything Smith produced was in some way ecclesiastical or revelatory in nature) but we have to deal with the nature of the evidence as it is, not as we wish it would be. I think you are really stretching to make this theory sound "silly" and "absurd." It isn't absurd that God might use EModE as part of the Book of Mormon language, since the Bible was itself filled with archaic forms. In other words, to some degree it was already part of the religious dialect familiar to Smith and his contemporaries. On the other hand, Skousen and Carmack have pointed out that the archaic features of the Book of Mormon seem to have been "filtered" for modern audiences. It doesn't have lexical items or grammatical forms that are incomprehensible. They are just archaic. And that makes perfect sense, that the text may be a blend of select archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative, while also being tailored in many ways for a contemporary 19th-century audience. That seems to be a common theme of God's communication style, merging the old with the new in his Restoration efforts. So nothing is really very absurd about this at a broad rhetorical level. The main oddity is just the choice to use a significant number of extrabiblical archaisms, or to sometimes take rare biblical archaisms and use them at much higher rates. In other words, why does the divine translation have this specific suite of archaic forms tailored for a modern audience? Was the choice for apologetic value, to help demonstrate the text is unique from Smith's own language patterns? Does it symbolically demonstrate that the text, although related to the Bible, isn't simply a regurgitation of biblical language? Does it have to do with the divine entity (or entities) in charge of translating the text? Does it have to do with English versions of the Book of Mormon that may already have been in use on the other side of the veil? Is it something else? You see, there are just too many potential explanations and unknown variables to test this question in any meaningful way, which I think is why Skousen eventually chose to ignore it. At the same time, however, this same limitation makes it difficult to develop a compelling case for why the text should not be this way. It is not very logical to label something like this as "silly" or "absurd" when you have no idea what is actually happening on the other side of the veil and how the text might have been prepared by God or divine beings. Your condescending characterization of this theory presupposes that, if the text were indeed produced by a divine process, you have some privileged notion of what it should be like. But that isn't an argument. It isn't based on data or evidence. It is just your own raw intuitions about currently unknown divine processes.

If only Carmack had looked to see how much Joseph Smith himself used the noun cause to conveys a archaic meaning of purpose in his letters and revelations. I think this is the perfect example of how Carmack's claims are often misunderstood and then prematurely dismissed. I looked through every instance in that search query (you linked to), and I only found two examples that seem to actually represent the specific type of construction (for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>") which Carmack found significant. As far as I could tell, his claim was not simply about "for this cause" when "cause" has an archaic meaning. As for the two examples, they come not from Smith's personal writings but from the D&C revelations. And that is a problem because it hasn't yet been demonstrated that the wording of the D&C is uniformly from Joseph Smith's native speech patterns. Since these are revealed texts, they cannot logically be used as a control group for Smith's personal dialect. Carmack has done some preliminary evaluation of some D&C revelations, which should lead to caution about who produced the words. I would be far more impressed if you found significant 19th-century concentrations of this usage outside of Smith's own revelations. Can you find such an example? Maybe @champatsch can provide further clarification, if he is so inclined.

Except, it hasn't been "easily refuted" by these points. 1. The fact that the Book of Mormon was "spoken and not written" does not on its own make it plausible that Smith could implement the specific suite of archaic lexis, grammar, and syntax that is increasingly being uncovered in the Book of Mormon. It is true that spoken language can differ from written language, but that doesn't, on its own, favor specific types of archaism. You would need to demonstrate why the specific types of features in the text were more likely to be spoken than written, since many of the features could actually swing in the other direction (in that they may have been historically more likely to be written than spoken). In a recent article, for example, Carmack opens up his study by stating, "It is appropriate to compare the Book of Mormon text to written texts, since it reads like a written text in various ways." So two can play at that game, and I trust his assessment of spoken-vs.-written language over yours (as he actually has a degree in this area and is highly qualified to make such assessments). The other issue is that not everyone is equally able or motivated to maintain strict boundaries in their written and spoken communications. The problem gets even more complicated when a dialect isn't just a preference for a singular pronoun or verbal pattern, but involves a whole host of nuanced syntax and grammatical forms. It is one thing, for instance, for an individual to be able to frequently use "ain't" in spoken speech but "isn't" in written speech. It is another for a whole community to use a diverse set of archaic forms of grammar and syntax in spoken language but then for all of them to consistently NOT use those same forms in written language. When you actually look at the diversity and complexity of the archaic forms in the Book of Mormon, and consider them in their entirety, your point holds little explanatory power. 2. It is true that regional dialects can sometimes retain archaic syntax. But there is a problem with applying this type of generalization to explain the dictation of the Book of Mormon. When certain dialectal features (such as retained archaisms) are prominent and consistent enough in a given region to be retained as part of the active vocabularies of its inhabitants, such residents will naturally tend to manifest those features in their communication. This, of course, would also largely include written communications, since most people are not fully aware or their own dialectal proclivities or able to consciously filter them on multiple levels simultaneously, even in contexts where written speech affords more time to be selective and deliberate in one's expressions. One might consider, for example, the archaic forms that were intentionally perpetuated by the Quakers. Yes, certain types of archaism were preserved and adapted. But it is also well-known and well-documented. In other words, if the large suite of archaic features (including extrabiblical features) in the Book of Mormon were indeed present in Smith's spoken environment, then we should also expect to find many examples of such features in the written record. It is true that features of spoken dialects can sometimes escape the textual record, but that seems to be a much more feasible outcome in instances of relatively small-scale usage in primarily non-literate communities. In Joseph Smith's environment, where we have letters, journals, court documents, newspapers, and many other forms and genres of communication, it is hard to imagine how prevalent archaic forms would uniformly escape the textual record. One also has to consider the fact that literate societies tend to have more stable dialects. The Smith's, for example, would have been influenced by normative patterns of language that they read, as well as what they heard daily. This means that language becomes more standardized over wider regions in literate societies. Thus, the default and normative assumption, based on known linguistic principles and patterns of language use and assimilation among communities, is that the archaism of the Book of Mormon very likely wasn't derived from Smith's linguistic environment. In order to push back against this normative assumption, you would really need to provide evidence for your alternative theory using truly comparable examples (where a diverse set of archaic features were heavily used enough in a largely literate community to be assimilated into the spoken language patterns of its citizens but then almost completely escaped the textual record of that same region). 3. Skousen and Carmack have already addressed the issue of the "bad grammar" hypothesis. The problem is that the Book of Mormon's instances of supposed "bad grammar" have a very fascinating tendency to align with EModE forms. The range of features and their frequency disparities in the textual databases is rather remarkable. Thus, you would have to explain why it is that, in instance after instance, the Book of Mormon's bad grammar aligns with earlier forms of speech that were used in disproportionately high rates in earlier periods of English. If you could demonstrate that the dialect of your wife's family has similarly consistent and wide-ranging affinities with EModE usage (not just a few traces of archaism), and that it often manifests a host of sophisticated variants of that usage, it would provide a much better case for your position. Yet even if you could demonstrate systematic archaism that is TRULY analogous to the Book of Mormon (which I find to be highly doubtful), you would likely still have trouble with points 1 and 2 that I raised above. We would expect that such archaism would show up in the writings of the literate contemporaries in Smith's region. 4. I don't think your claim (that ALL of the archaic BofM features identified by Skousen and Carmack have turned up in 19th century texts) is true. You should ask Carmack about that, as he keeps up better than anyone on that issue, since he is constantly checking his own claims (sometimes modifying them) and looking for later attestations. But it ultimately doesn't matter because there are so many cases in which the attestations and frequencies of 19th-century examples are so miniscule that it doesn't appreciably raise the chances that the feature was used with any degree of frequency in Smith's local environment. This is especially true in instances where the archaism is used by well-educated authors who were known to spend a lot of time in EModE texts. We might expect, for example, a different degree of archaism from a Shakespearean scholar like Richard Grant White (whom Carmack mentions in his recent Interpreter article) in comparison to Joseph Smith. So you can't just uncritically look at extraordinary outliers of 19th century usage and act like they have significant explanatory power. They don't. Nothing about your theory is simple. It requires numerous stacked assumptions that are non-normative, non-intuitive, and that are not yet supported by sufficient examples of actual language patterns to demonstrate their plausibility. Carmack has done more than anyone to compare the Book of Mormon language with contemporary pseudo-biblical texts. One can't just ignore the systematic differences he has uncovered on that front. As for Occam's razor, one actually has to deal with the linguistic data and arguments proposed by Skousen/Carmack. If they are in fact correct, and it is highly implausible that Smith dictated the Book of Mormon using his own natural ability, then that obviously strengthens the claim that he produced the text via supernatural means. Speculating about why/how God would produce the specific mixture of EModE and 19th century language seems like a second-order question. More objective assessments of Smith's capacity, based on known principles of natural language patterns and usage, would seem to be the privileged and much more testable data set in this context. Over the years, I've noticed a lot of "its a stupid argument" claims, when it comes to the research of Skousen/Carmack. But I find it quite telling that their critics rarely deal with the actual data and arguments themselves. It is almost always superficial arm-chair critiques and alterative theories that are not, themselves, supported by comparably relevant and robust sets of data. The more I hear "its a stupid argument" without serious engagement, the more confident I become that the critics simply don't understand the hard linguistic data nor the underlying linguistic principles and axioms that are guiding the interpretation of that data.

It will need to be proprietary for now. But we do plan to publish then in the next few years.

The point of this portion of the discussion was whether or not Joseph Smith "hardly knew" the Whitmers, after living in their home for 3-4 weeks while translating the gold plates. My opinion is by the time they witness the plates, they knew enough about the importance and significance of Smith's translation project to endorse it and support it and to commit to their testimonies all their lives. Yes, it is whether Smith 'hardly knew" the Whitmers--BUT in the context of him presumably orchestrating an elaborate fraud. If he had a shoddy artifact and expected the Whitmers to go along with his claims even if they didn't believe the artifact was authentic, that would have been a huge risk. He "hardly knew" these people well enough to assume they would all just overlook a dubious artifact. Likewise, if he expected Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer to just imagine an angel and a whole set of ancient artifacts or to blatantly lie about their experience, that would also have been a huge risk. Again, Smith barely knew these people in that context, and they barely knew him. If Smith's claims were fraudulent, it would have been a huge risk to trust these people that he had just met a few weeks before. This is why I think it is inappropriate to blanketly discount the testimonies of the Whitmer clan (which is the whole point of this portion of the conversation). It is true that they weren't disinterested parties. But Smith also didn't have a lot of time to coopt them into an elaborate fraud or to trust that they would lie or embellish details to support his claims. On the other hand, if Smith knew the artifact was genuine and if he knew he really had seen an angel and that the Lord was promising a similar vision to chosen witnesses, then the short amount of time that he had known these individuals would be rather irrelevant. So, yes, I guess we agree they "they knew enough about the importance and significance of Smith's translation project to endorse it and support it and to commit to their testimonies all their lives." I assume this is because they witnessed a genuinely convincing artifact and also that Oliver and David experienced a genuinely convincing vision of the plates and the angel. You seem to think they were either deluded or pious frauds. I'll let you have the last word on this topic. We seem to be having miscommunication. I'm not sure if, as in the other discussion of the lengthy plates, you are just not following the flow of the thread or what. The reason I keep bringing this up is because the whole discussion surrounds the credibility of the witnesses, and their moral character is obviously integral to their credibility. Are they the type of people who are going to lie, embellish, and engage in elaborate fraud in this context, or not. There are only so many logical options here. They were either (1) lying, (2) delusional, or (3) telling the truth. You persist in bringing up talking points that hint that they are lying and engaged in a fraud, but then you keep backing away from that position, as if it is unsavory to talk about. For instance, you wrote: I find this type of constant innuendo, followed by an unwillingness to talk about the moral character of the witnesses, as utterly incoherent (and slightly annoying). If you don't want to talk about the moral character of the witnesses, then stop bringing up talking points that implicitly impugn their characters. Again, I'll let you have the last word, since this conversation is clearly going nowhere.

I think it is fair enough, as far as it goes. There are obviously going to be areas of potential pushback (eastward turn sequence, questions of statistical significance as a biblical-sounding name and as a Arabian place name, the question of whether it was written as nhm or nḥm in Nephi's text, and so forth). But I'm confident that most of these types of concerns have actually been sufficiently dealt with in the literature, or that they will be soon enough. Several months ago Kolby Reddish went on Mormon Stories to try to debunk the Nahom evidence with John Dehlin, and it was clear to me that neither of them had been keeping up on the scholarship or had actually carefully read Neal's more recent papers. So, at this point, I'm pretty confident that the evidence is what apologists claim it to be. And, to be clear, I think the AI's reserved talking points are warranted. Nahom is not proof, especially not when viewed in isolation. But it is pretty remarkable evidence and shouldn't be dismissed.

Another reason is simply time. If Joseph Smith was supposed to be studying things out in his mind and then asking if they are right, that would have naturally resulted in a a much slower translation. And we also would very likely have reports from the witnesses commenting on his deliberation process. Instead, he just reads steadily from the translation devices, day after day, without any mention of him wanting to revise, adjust, or otherwise refine the text. If it he were the one clothing raw ideas in his own language, I think there would be evidence of him struggling to find the right words, both in the extant original manuscript and in the reports from the witnesses. And if he spent much time deliberating over the text, that would very likely have slowed down the translation considerably, such that it might not have been possible to dictate in the timeframe that it was produced. On another front, it is technically possible that distinct words could be revealed to Smith's mind, rather than being visually represented in the translation device, but to me that would essentially still be a revelation of words (rather than ideas). And the problems with the hybrid approach you mentioned before would still be at play (with a constant and confusing vacillation of revealed words + revealed ideas). Another problem, under Gardner's mentalese model, is simply the redundancy of having Smith mentally formulate words to express the raw ideas of the text, and then having those mentally formulated words show up on his translation device for him to then read, as if he couldn't have simply spoken them when they came to his mind. Then there is the issue of human fallibility. What would happen if he were to hesitate or deliberate in his mind about how to say the text. Would he have to just keep thinking and iterating until an "acceptable" option showed up on the translation device? Or would the text on the device shift in real time as he waffled back and forth about how to best express an idea? Depending on what solution one might assume, I think this again would result in a host of errors in the text or else much longer periods of deliberation, in which nothing would show up in the device until he mentally found a sufficient mode of expression. Yet another problem is that the text has truly remarkable intertextual control, both externally with biblical texts and internally. If Smith were responsible for the wording of the text, I think we would see far less specific and impressive intertextuality on various fronts. The list goes on, but there are a number of reasons that believers in the Book of Mormon should abandon the "revealed ideas" model of the text. The robust and multifaceted archaism is one major line of evidence pointing towards that conclusion, but there are other reasons as well.

I have a fairly lengthy article detailing this this topic that is co-authored by Neal Rappleye. We will be presenting it, in summarized form, at the Interpreter's Small Plates conference in May. Suffice it to say, I think the wordplay/literary aspect of this name is quite a bit stronger than it is sometimes given credit for. I won't spoil the article, but anyone who is interested can look forward to it in the next few months.

It might help if you specifically fed the AI some of the best and most recent research on certain topics, rather than assuming it will find them and prioritize them in the macro analysis. Here are some publications that you might give it specifically, ask it to analyze them, and then give it a chance to update or refine any of its previous arguments: Neal Rappleye, “The Nahom Convergence Reexamined: The Eastward Trail, Burial of the Dead, and the Ancient Borders of Nihm,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-Day Saint Faith and Scholarship 60 (2024): 1–86; Neal Rappleye, “The Place—or the Tribe—Called Nahom? NHM as Both a Tribal and Geographic Name in Modern and Ancient Yemen,” BYU Studies Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2023): 49–72; Neal Rappleye, “An Ishmael Buried Near Nahom,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 48 (2021): 33–48; S. Kent Brown, “Nice Try, But No Cigar: A Response to Three Patheos Posts on Nahom (1 Nephi 16:34),” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 19 (2016): 149–152; Neal Rappleye and Stephen O. Smoot, “Book of Mormon Minimalists and the NHM Inscriptions: A Response to Dan Vogel,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 8 (2014): 157–185; Warren P. Aston, “A History of NaHoM,” BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2012): 78–98; Stephen D. Ricks, “On Lehi’s Trail: Nahom, Ishmael’s Burial Place,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 1 (2011): 66–68; James Gee, “The Nahom Maps,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture 17, no. 1–2 (2008): 40–57; S. Kent Brown, “New Light: Nahom and the ‘Eastward’ Turn,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 12, no. 1 (2003): 111–112, 120;

Here is a treatment of a line of evidence (involving tombs) that gets a little bit watered down in the summary: To be clear, I'm not saying this is a home-run piece of data. But some critics have gone so far as to say there is no real relationship between this region and meaningful burial sites. To the contrary, I think it fits that context quite well.

That's not even what we are talking about. The point of this portion of the discussion was whether the Whitmers should be viewed as unreliable witnesses, by default, because of their close association with Smith (despite the fact that he had only known most of them for a few weeks). As for other precedents for false witnesses, each instance would need to be thoroughly compared to the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Otherwise, just as in the example of the Strangite witnesses that you tried to employ earlier, similarities can easily be inflated while important differences may be ignored. It seems like that was the point of Smac's line of questioning earlier. And when he demonstrated you were misrepresenting the parallels, you all of a sudden wanted to stop talking about the witnesses and their motivations (ostensibly because of a strange aversion on your part to discuss the quality of their characters, as if that wasn't obviously relevant and ultimately unavoidable in this type of discussion). Now you seem interested, once again, in discussing their motivations for fraud. I think if you would have continued the conversation with Smac at the point where you chose to disengage, it would have been quite illuminating.

Just perusing these scorecards, I see lots of problems, both in methodology for interpreting the text and in how items are scored, and sometimes just blatant errors of fact or notable omissions. In any case, I actually don't think this is the type of data that is most significant anyways. These aren't the types of things that apologists typically use as strong lines of evidence of authenticity. I think the best way to view the archaeological/cultural data is as a decently viable defense against alleged anachronisms, not as a robust arena of positive evidence. Part of the reason for this is that a lot of these types of things would be "guessable" by someone who was inventing an ancient society. Other challenges involve uncertainties about the prevalence of items within a society, potential disparities in archaeological detection, and questions about translation flexibility. In many cases, assumptions about the text and the data could drastically alter the final scoring of items. And often those assumptions can't be proven one way or another. This leads to systemic uncertainty. That isn't to say that these scorecards are worthless. I think they are helpful in several ways. But I don't think they should be viewed as reliable final assessments of the collective data.

That's fine to question the assumptions upon which the data are built. That is always necessary and important. But that wasn't the only issues in our past conversations. You seemed to not understand the nature of much of the data and how it relates to the databases. And your theories for why the data would be missing from the databases (such as appealing to a sacred language) seem to be mostly unfounded. But, like you said, we don't need to rehash all that here. The point is simply that if you really want to steel man the arguments, you are going to have to sufficiently understand their nuances. Probably one of the best ways to test this is to find an AI platform that doesn't know anything about you and doesn't have any history of past conversations with you. Then it will be easier to control for bias, especially if one doesn't lead it in any direction. The problem is that the better versions cost money, and I'm not sure if you can just have a blank-slate discussion if you already have a profile and a history of conversations with a particular AI model. It will also help to compartmentalize the issues. You need to take them on their own terms one at a time without ever asking AI to contextualize them in the larger controversy. You also can't ever let it know which way you lean, even by implication. Only once you have addressed all of the issues in isolation, and with a strong emphasis on avoiding bias and on conforming to typical standards and principles of evidence in that domain, should these issues be used in the broader conversation of BofM authenticity (in a more Bayesian style analysis). This type of compartmentalization can help distinguish what the evidence might mean on its own terms versus what it means when filtered through a strong skeptical or apologetic lens, based on extraneous data. Another helpful tip would be to ensure you are transparent about the full conversations you are having with the AI, so that others can assess any conversation elements that might be leading to bias. You also might want to sometimes collaborate with other about prompts before sending the AI on a task to evaluate something. Those are just some general thoughts/tips, which may or may not be helpful to you.

Well, yes, if Joseph Smith actually had a very convincing artifact in his possession, such as the plates described by the witnesses, then that time would be sufficient, since he wouldn't have to worry about them expressing doubt or skepticism about its authenticity. But it is not a lot of time if he had a fairly dubious artifact that he was hoping they would affirm and corroborate, despite any suspicious features. Imagine, for instance, if the artifact only had like 5-10 plates with fairly large writing and that was made from painted modern tin. Smith might very well have been uncertain if his bogus plates would convince these folks, and he would be right to question their loyalty and trust. He wouldn't be able to assume they would just overlook suspicious activity. I think the limited time would be especially problematic for the Three Witnesses (particularly Whitmer and Cowdery). It is hard to come up with a plausible theory for how he convinced them that they saw an angel and the other artifacts or, alternatively, trusted them so quickly to be a part of his fraudulent scheme, and that they would affirm their witnesses so adamantly even after falling out with him. Typically, when people express concern about the close relationships among the witnesses, it is because people assume close relationships may result in a greater likelihood of bias that would lead to lying and other forms of deception. But, as far as I can tell, it would have been very risky for Smith to trust that the Whitmers would be positively biased towards him in that way, as if they would just go along with his deceptions. They really had just barely met him, and a few weeks isn't a long time for him to test all of their character qualities and personalities, especially if most of his time was spent translating and other necessary activities rather than socializing.

I admire your effort. But I think there are going to be some hurdles with this approach. And the main problem is just time. You see, I have been systematically building a case for the Book of Mormon (and other Restoration texts) for over ten years now--identifying, categorizing, systematizing, and evaluating various types of evidence supporting the text's authenticity. I already have a very elaborate list of major categories and sub-categories that I have identified, along with supporting publications (the document is over 100 pages in length, with just sources listed and no annotations or commentary). Some major categories have literally hundreds of underlying publications (books, articles, and other media), often which fit into various subcategories. So it would take a lot of time to work through what all is there, and to understand the nuances well enough to "steel man" the apologetic argument. Just take our recent conversations about EModE, for example. Over and over again, you admitted that you aren't an expert in this area. And, not to be rude, but it is clear you don't really understand much of the data or the claims being made about it. Which means that you don't seem to be in a particularly good position to "steel man" that particular type of argument. It is fairly technical and nuanced, and in order to responsibly engage with that line of data, you would need to actually read much of the research. You would also have to understand the underlying assumptions that are often guiding that research. I assume that a similar limitation is going to be present in lots of other categories. Which I think will have a significant impact in the aggregate on your final conclusions. That isn't to say that I myself have a perfect understanding of all these topics either. I certainly don't. But I think I have unique insight into the depth and breadth of the data that would need to be sifted through, as well as some of the technical hurdles to understanding it. And my general feeling over the years is that critics of the Church tend to not approach the positive data very systematically or comprehensively before reaching very confident conclusions about its evidentiary value. It's not something that you can just formulate a quick list about and then start whack-a-moling all the evidence. That being said, I applaud you for your efforts on this front and I don't think the discussion will be fruitless. This is just more of a cautionary warning about the challenge of attempting to address such a large topic in a fair and comprehensive way, even with the aid of AI (which tends to cater to our biases and will generally rely on consensus positions as a starting point).

You seem to be missing the point, though. The reason for emphasizing the familiar relationship between Smith and the witnesses would be to suggest some type of joint deception of collusion (under the assumption that people who are intimately familiar with one another are more likely to trust each other in the case of fraud). Your more "nuanced" view doesn't really make a difference at the end of the day. Smith only knew most of these people for a few weeks before they were invited to be witnesses.

First of all, I thought you weren't interested in discussing the veracity of the statements of the witnesses. Have you changed your mind? Second of all, if you imagine that Joseph Smith was orchestrating a con job in which these individuals were colluding with him, then yes, he hardly knew most of them (when assessing the relationship in that type of context). Oliver Cowdery showed up at the door and almost immediately began translating. It's not like Smith knew these people for years and had time to vet them and anticipate how they would respond to different circumstances. Imagine trying to orchestrate a fraud and get so many people who you effectively just barely met to go along with a bogus translation of a bogus artifact. They hadn't established deep connections with Smith. They weren't his childhood buddies. They weren't his family. Their interest seems to have been entirely centered on their very newly developed and raw belief in his revelatory claims. He would have no way to be confident that the Three Witnesses (two of whom he just recently met) would affirm his story about the angel and other artifacts, especially if he were just relying on the power of suggestion or emotion elevation or whatever to induce their visionary experience. Likewise, if the plates weren't very impressive to look at, he couldn't have known how the Eight Witnesses (at least those from the Whitmer clan) would have responded. And he almost certainly wouldn't have known how their testimonies would fare throughout their lives. So, yes, when assessing Smith's associates on the basis of potential fraud or collusion, he really did barely know these people. His assumed con job was an extraordinary risk that seems very unlikely to have succeeded.

I think the issue is that when you have multiple witnesses come forward and testify of a significant fact, that automatically meets a certain threshold of evidence, which then will usually shift the burden on the other party or theory to impeach the witnesses or disprove their claims. Smith claimed he got gold plates from an angel. That is a truly remarkable claim. But then witnesses came forward and corroborated his claims, about both the angel and the plates. If this were a court case or a historical issue that had nothing to do with religion, the claims from the witnesses would likely have a fairly high evidentiary value, as their experience was immediate and sustained. It wasn't a passing glance at Loch Ness or Big Foot from a hundred meters away. The angel was right there flipping over the plates one by one. Likewise, for the eight witnesses, the plates were literally in their hands so they could feel, heft, and examine them. No analogy will be perfect here, but you can imagine a murder trial in which three people were directly present when a murder took place and saw the whole thing with no real possibility for visual error. If they consistently and uniformly testified of the crucial details of the event, that would be enormously significant evidence at the trial. Likewise, if you had multiple people that could identify the murder weapon and tie it to the alleged murderer, that would also be significant. As soon as such testimonial evidence is established in a case, it seems that there would then be a burden on the other party to explain that same data. If the witnesses were lying, there would need to be good reason to doubt their testimonies. If they were merely mistaken, there would need to be some explanation for why they could have reasonably been mistaken, and so on. If there was collusion and fraud, it would need to be demonstrated, not simply assumed. The same is true of history in general. Immediate sources are privileged over secondary or tertiary sources. Sources closer to the event a privileged over later ones. And so on. In the story of the Restoration, we have an assembly of privileged sources that generally would outrank competing sources, at least when you look at standard historiographical criteria for evaluating sources. In other words, if this were a non-religious context that didn't involve miraculous claims, I think believers would generally have a decently sized evidentiary advantage. The defense attorney in a court setting can't simply say things like "people sometimes hallucinate" or "this was emotion elevation" or "some people take drugs" when dealing with the witnesses to a murder. You would have to provide a much stronger, more precise line of evidence showing that the witnesses were indeed mentally compromised at the time of the observed event. And so forth. Moreover, you can't just sit back on your laurels and argue that there simply isn't enough data or evidence available to support a counter theory. That would never work when confronting such strong testimonial data. So, what I think is really happening here is that the normal burden to establish a compelling counter-explanation is simply viewed as unnecessary by those who have a very high a priori skepticism of Joseph Smith's religious claims. They admittedly don't have a good or detailed counter-explanation. But to them, that is okay. They don't feel they need one. Because they already have a very high confidence that farmers don't get plates from angels. So they will take any moderately limiting factors (such as the fact that the witnesses were related and all had a vested interest in Smith's claims, or that the evidence was "curated" to some extent) and use that to outright dismiss the whole thing. Maneuvers like that typically wouldn't work in secular contexts. You would have to have a much stronger, more detailed and thorough explanation for why the witnesses were lying or colluding in fraud or mistaken. But if you already have a very strong a priori skepticism, it will do the trick just fine. Even the slightest reason to doubt the testimonies of the witnesses will be viewed as sufficient to reject them. And I suppose that makes sense to me, on a certain level. We all have to prioritize what lines of evidence are most appealing to us. But I think it needs to be admitted that this is what is happening. Believers actually have the upper hand when you view this evidence on its own terms, without the a priori skepticism and other lines of evidence tipping the scales. We have remarkable supporting testimonial data. We have the better and more immediate sources. And we have the most parsimonious explanation. It's just that this line of evidence, as significant as it may be, isn't enough to overcome the other reasons that people have to reject Smith's claims. As for the comparison with finding parallels in ancient texts and cultures and so forth, I actually think the better analog is finding parallels with modern 19th century sources. It seems to me that there isn't a lot of symmetry with that type of evidence (ancient vs modern textual features) and the testimonial data from the witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

Oh, it is definitely about a monetary system. It just doesn't involve coins. But you have to realize that virtually any type of advanced civilization is likely going to have some type of system for trading goods that goes beyond simple bartering. Here is a series of articles I have written on this topic over the years: https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-pre-columbian-measures https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-near-eastern-weights-and-measures https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/law-of-eshnunna https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-elegant-monetary-system https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-complex-monetary-system https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-market-systems https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-attestation-of-shilum https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-wordplay-on-zeezrom https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-wordplay-on-antion Some of these are summarizing the research of others. Some of these are my own original research. My conclusion is that this monetary system is decently complex and consistent (especially when we consider that Joseph Smith dictated its contents). It is fairly elegant and has utility. It has parallels with ANE precedents as well as systems of weights and measures in the New World. And it has various forms of linguistic support. Once you look at all these lines of evidence together, the authenticity of this systems seems much more plausible, imo.

Not to be rude, but have you really not looked at the apologetic response to this issue? The heading was not original to the text. Headings like this one were inserted by a scripture committee in the mid-20th century as a supplemental help to the scriptures. Within the LDS theological framework, this type of heading is not canonized doctrine. Even if it were, it falls VERY far down the line of revelatory details that are core, crucial, or binding on the Saints. The Book of Mormon itself opens the possibility for errors. Thus, the idea that a scripture committee in modern times could misunderstand/misinterpret the text really isn't very surprising or significant in the landscape of competing claims about the Book of Mormon's authenticity. This argument relies purely on unwarranted assumptions of infallibility on the part of the Church and its leaders/committees. As soon as that assumption is abandoned or significantly modified, the issue goes away. As for how one might title the chapter, just look at the modification that was made to the current text: No mention of coinage there.

Deleted

I just love that you seem to be conceding that this really isn't about the DNA anymore but about the interpretation of the text. It is no longer about hard science proving the Book of Mormon wrong, but just that you don't think the text means what we think it means. It doesn't matter that we have a number of valid reasons and historical precedents for our interpretation. It doesn't matter that the apologetic interpretation began to shift in this direction many years before the DNA controversy began. It doesn't matter that there is internal textual evidence that explicitly states the limited scope and aims of the text and that prove that social groups are highly collapsible and that some groups are intentionally sidelined. Somehow, you just know better what the text means. I think it would be great if all critics of the Church modeled your much weaker line of argumentation on this topic.