Ryan Dahle

I think that you keep switching back and forth between two lines of "attack" against my explanatory theory in light of EModE data. As I see it, there are basically two options: 1. My theory is flawed because the EModE data doesn't actually make it very unlikely that Joseph Smith was the author. 2. My theory is flawed because it wouldn't have predicted the specific range of EModE features beforehand. As I see it, your first line of argumentation is completely appropriate. That is the reasonable way to push back against my theory in this context. And if you are correct, then my explanation wouldn't have any significant advantage in this area. In contrast, your second line of attack seems to be fundamentally flawed. If the EModE data makes it very unlikely that Smith didn't naturalistically author the text, then my preferred authorial explanation (the text was divinely prepared and revealed to Smith) has an obvious advantage over Smith as the author. The data would logically work in my favor (when you look at each theory's ability to explain it). Moreover, this wouldn't be an example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, as you previously kept alleging. And that is the whole point of me bringing up all of these analogies. They demonstrate that if candidate A very likely couldn't produce effect X while candidate B could have produced effect X, then candidate B would be the preferred option if X is observed in the data. This would be true even if one couldn't have specifically guessed that X would occur beforehand. The alien gun would thus function as valid evidence, even if that specific item of technology could have never been guessed beforehand as something alien's would give a human. Likewise, the status of one suspect as an adult male in the murder analogy (in contrast to the infant), automatically implicates him as the murderer, even if the precise mode and method of the murder could never have been reasonably guessed beforehand. And the ability of the one son to perform a highly complex piano arrangement automatically points towards him being the one playing the piano, despite the inability of the parent to specifically guess beforehand what song he would play. So, yes, if the EModE data is NOT strong evidence that Smith could not have produced the Book of Mormon, then I totally agree with you that my theory would lack any real explanatory advantage when it comes to this set of data. In contrast, if the EModE IS strong evidence that Smith could not have produced the Book of Mormon, then my explanatory theory would have an obvious advantage, even if the specific EModE data could not have been predicted beforehand. And to be crystal clear, my theory does not posit that it would have been "impossible" for Smith to produce that language. It just argues that it seems highly implausible that he would be able to do so. And that high degree of implausibility would naturally favor a divinely revealed text, when our explanatory theories are contrasted with one another.

As pointed out before. This is just irrelevant. You keep doubling down without addressing my reasons for prioritizing capacity.

Actually, in my theory, there would be a limited capacity as well. Joseph Smith couldn't read the words of the text to his scribes if those words were in another language. So there are really only a few plausible options one might expect. It doesn't matter anyways, though, since neither theory could predict the precise style of the text. The only thing that would really count as evidence is if the text exhibited some form of English that Smith could not likely produce himself, even if he could read and understand the words.

Let me try one more analogy to help you understand. Imagine that you are a parent with two young adult sons. One of them is an accomplished pianist. The other has had a few piano lessons but never showed much interest in pursuing music. Let's say you expect both of your sons to be home for the weekend after their first month in college. You come home and hear someone in the home playing a very difficult piano piece. You abductively conclude that the pianist is almost certainly your son who plays the piano. But here is the thing, you would not be able to predict what song your son would choose to play. He knows hundreds of songs and is interested in all sorts of music and is learning new music all the time. Basically "any outcome is possible" as you put it. Now let's plug in your reasoning with a bolded modification on my part: You see why this line of reasoning is ultimately irrelevant? It really doesn't matter whether the parent could predict the particular song that would be played, or the particular style, or genre, or whatever. All that matters is that the parent knows that a very difficult song would reasonably rule out the son who had less piano training. It is the same logic with EModE. My theory doesn't have to be able to predict precisely what type of language might be used by my preferred candidate author, just like the parent doesn't have to predict which song or type of song would be played. The only crucial factor is capacity. If the parent has reason to believe one son has the capacity to play that song and the other doesn't (and if it seems very unlikely that any other person would enter into the home and play the piano) then it is obvious which son is mostly likely to be responsible for the music. This is standard abductive reasoning, and it is exactly the same logic I'm using for EModE.

Because there is a huge spectrum between non-evidence and compelling evidence. In fact, that is one of the primary benefits of Bayesian analysis, is it not? It allows us to more precisely weigh different types of data, in relation to how well certain theories can explain that data (often according to intuitive probability estimates). When you are dealing with opposing theories that involve many lines of competing evidence, it is helpful to know the degree of evidentiary significance that they hold (both internally, within one's own theory, and also as assessed in contrast to the value that others assign that evidence in competing theories). As someone who describes his own theory as fundamentally Bayesian in nature, I'm honestly quite surprised you asked that question.

I assume proper Bayesian reasoning aligns with standard principles of abductive logic. In this context, capacity is obviously the most crucial factor. If there is ever a major disparity in the capacity of two candidates authors to produce a text, then uncertainty about motives and inclinations becomes irrelevant. I could point to countless examples in which humans would abductively prioritize the evidence in this manner, in a variety of analogous circumstances. This is the proper Bayesian method. You would assign the Bayes factor accordingly, based on those crucial details. What you definitely wouldn't do is pretend that capacity is essentially irrelevant and then focus instead on a detail that neither theory would have predicted in the first place. But I actually don't agree with those statements at all. You are blatantly attributing claims to me that I have not made and that don't logically follow from my own explanations. Why not just deal with my own arguments, instead of reformulating them into these logically incoherent claims and logic structures. I don't agree with this either. The EModE data says nothing about the book's antiquity. Nor does it verify any of the text's historical claims or anything like that. Why do you keep changing my argument and then telling me things like "that is your argument." This is actually admitting that my logic is sound. You just disagree with the strength of the EModE data. Which is fine. But you keep switching back and forth. Are you now admitting that your assessment of the Sharpshooter fallacy was wrong? Because if the text was in prstine EMoE that would definitely still fall under your previous Sharpshooter assessment. But now you are saying EModE would be powerful evidence of authenticity, even though nothing about my theory predicted pristine EModE. You can't have it both ways. Either the logic is sound and its success only depends on the strength of the EModE data to confidently rule out Smith's authorship, or the logic is flawed. Your arguments are too inconsistent and you hardly ever admit when you are wrong, so I just can't follow your logic anymore, especially when you constantly reframe and restate my own explanations in ways I never would.

That's interesting. I acknowledge the evidence is curated and intentionally limited in a number of ways. There is no doubt about that. As to how "deeply suspicious" that fact is, well that depends on the variety of possible reasons that a divine being might want to curate evidence. If the point is to give some substantial reason to begin to have faith, without compelling belief, then the curation transforms from deeply suspicious to quite expected. If the curated evidence isn't "deeply suspicious" based on the explanatory framework and assumptions of the opposing theory, then all of a sudden that data point becomes non-evidence. Also, the fact that evidence is intentionally limited is not the same as being categorically weak. It just means it isn't as strong as it could be. So it is a relative assessment. As for me, even with the evidence curated and limited as it is, I still find it quite extraordinary. I think that most efforts to procure this type of corroborating eye-witness testimony (Three Witnesses + Eight Witnesses + Informal Witnesses) would very likely fail. The three witnesses would have walked into the woods and nothing would have happened. And then they wouldn't have testified of the angel and plates. And then Smith's prophecy about Three Witnesses in the BofM and D&C would likely have been unfulfilled. And the whole religious movement may have never gotten off the ground. There were plenty of opportunity for problems with the Eight Witnesses as well. And there didn't have to be additional accounts from folks like Mary Whitmer and Josiah Stowell. All in all, I give Joseph Smith a very low probability of success at accomplishing this feat. Which means the evidence is actually still quite strong. It just doesn't equal conclusive proof.

It actually seems like Smac has responded to virtually everything you have had to say, often with pointed follow-up questions and commentary. I think he genuinely does want to see your counter-theory and explanations. The fact that he pushes back on your claims shouldn't be confused with a lack of "care" about what you have to say.

That's fine to have a big picture, but it helps in the Bayesian analysis to take each relevant item of data, one at a time, and then be very particular in how we describe the data and each theory's specific explanation of it. At this level of analysis, we aren't talking about a hoax. That is a broader potential implication of this and many items of evidence. Instead we are talking about a specific set of textual features and what explanation better accounts for them. That's always true--at the end of the day. But that doesn't excuse one from not carefully and accurately assessing each piece of data on its own terms. You have to assess each likelihood ratio independently. You can't let your underlying assumption or biases about other aspects of the data cloud your judgment. Every theory has strengths and weaknesses. And when pitted against each other, various theories often win some and lose some areas of the debate. When your explanatory hypothesis is comparatively weak in one area, you can't just deflect by arguing that you have a better argument in the aggregate or that we should be looking at the aggregate instead. You have to acknowledge your theory's comparative weaknesses as they come to light. I intentionally escalated the improbability just to make the point. I'm not saying Smith was categorically incapable of producing the EModE (in the way that an infant is categorically incapable of committing murder). But you seemed not to be understanding the priority of capacity, so I used an analogy that was more extreme so that you would get why it was so important. If you want to further debate the EModE data and its significance, that is fine. But that isn't how the conversation was going. You instead pivoted to try and argue that my underlying rationale was fundamentally flawed and that I was just engaged in the sharpshooting fallacy. So I had to find an analogy to disabuse that line of argument. And it seems to have worked. You just seem not to understand how language assimilation works, and the difference between passive and active vocabulary. I can guarantee you, if you sit down an average member of the Church today--even someone who has read the Book of Mormon dozens of times--and ask them to reproduce its array of archaic features in the text, they would never be able to do it. You could give them a test. Provide a phrase in simpler modern English, and then ask them to write the same phrase using archaic lexis, grammar, and syntax. Give them a chance to express the same phrase in as many ways as they can think of, that might mimic archaism. They might get a few easy things correct ("thee" and "thou" and "shall" and so forth) but they will never be able to produce many of the features (especially in all their variety), even when sitting down and specifically trying to think of them, with all the time they want, and having the specific opportunities for archaism already selected for them. And this is even after having read this text and having focused on it most of their lives. But then, after the test, once you show them the actual archaic variety and phrasing in the text, they will kick themselves for not thinking of those phrases. They would have read them dozens of times. But they just never got assimilated into their active vocabularies. In the test, they literally wouldn't have the capacity to produce most of them. I have already independently carried out some preliminary tests of this nature with test subjects. The archaism will become significantly reduced, though, if you don't have a test with all of these already identified areas of EModE laid out for them. Imagine, instead, that the test subject simply has to start dictating a story off the top of their head. It could be anything. Just a simple campfire story would do. But then you instruct them to do so in a way that, to the best of their ability, mimics the archaic dialect of the Book of Mormon. In this context, the already low level of archaism that they might have been able to implement in the test (mentioned above) will likely be much lower. This is because they don't have time to sit there and think about all the ways they might say something in an archaic style. They will be preoccupied by thinking of the ideas that they are trying to express, rather than the mode of expression itself, so they will naturally default much more often to their typical language patterns. Again, remember, this is still after they have read the Book of Mormon regularly throughout their life. All of this archaism is in their religious environment. They just haven't assimilated that archaism into their working vocabulary. And therefore they literally won't have the capacity to implement it, even when they try their very best. Just try it yourself. Start trying to tell a story in an archaic style right now. You will quickly realize that capacity to understand deep, multifaceted archaism and the capacity to produce it in a dictation are two entirely different things. If you think I am wrong and want to prove to me that you are perfectly capable of mimicking archaic speech patterns that you have been exposed to in the BofM and Bible, I would be happy to personally listen to and record your dictation efforts so that we can analyze it together. We can then send your transcript to Stan and see what he thinks. I would let you talk as long as you want, enough to get a very good sample of your own ability to produce archaism, just like Smith did. But, even then, that still doesn't account for the challenge Joseph Smith would have faced, since he implemented a lot of archaism that hasn't been attested in his environment. Ultimately, the fact that you think the ability to read and understand a variety of archaic forms automatically translates into a capacity to produce those same archaic forms (especially in a live dictation format) highlights one big reason why we disagree about the significance of the EModE data. I'm not redirecting away from likelihood. Here is how I frame the issue: It is highly improbable that authorship candidate A (Joseph Smith) was capable of producing these specific textual features. In contrast, authorship candidate B (divine beings) would be capable of producing these specific textual features. Then we have the next layer of analysis: It is unknown why candidate A (Joseph Smith), if he were capable, would have produced these specific textual features, and these specific features were not predicted by your preferred explanatory theory. It is unknown why candidate B (divine beings) would have produced these specific textual features, and these specific features were not predicted by my preferred explanatory theory. If my explanatory model is much better at explaining capacity, and if neither of our theories could have predicted these features, then it is obvious which theory has the advantage of being more likely.

What do you think would have happened if the Seminary teacher showed the same set of "plates" to eight adult men, the type who do a lot of manual labor, some of whom probably have some experience with metal objects and fabrication processes. Do you really think the teacher could trick such men into thinking it was a genuinely ancient artifact? Also, imagine if your teacher also brought up three additional student witnesses, took them into the next room, and told them that they were going to see an angel who would show them the same set of plates as the 8 other students saw. And that they were to testify, and be absolutely honest, about what they saw? The chances that the little lesson would fail at that point are spectacularly high.

First, you probably need to stop using the "fake" and "genuine" dichotomy in this context, as it is too imprecise. The specific issue we are currently debating is about a certain subset of language in the text, and which our respectively preferred candidate authors are more likely to have produced that specific data within our respective theories. Second, both theories absolutely depend on their candidate authors to be able to produce the text. It is a first order prediction that must be met. And it counts as a prediction in precisely the way that you have been describing it--as an underlying logical principle that would need to be in place prior to the assessment of the data. It is a logical requirement that obviously precedes speculation about motive. So, in this context, we first must ask: Was candidate A likely capable of producing these specific textual features? Was candidate B likely capable of producing these specific textual features? If both candidates are about equally capable of producing these textual features, then we would move on to ask: Would candidate A have been motivated or inclined to produce these specific textual features? Would candidate B have been motivated or inclined to produce these specific textual features? It should be obvious why capacity has to be a first-order assessment. If you don't have the capacity to produce a text, then assessing possible motivations or inclinations for producing it doesn't matter. For instance, there is no reason to speculate about whether an infant may likely have been motivated to commit a murder. Infants don't have the capacity to commit murder, and that fact alone immediately eliminates them as a suspect in any case. If there were ever a trial, and two individuals were presented as murder suspects, and one of them happened to be an infant and the other happened to be an adult male, it would be obvious who the preferred suspect would be when comparing the two options. You could go on and on about how we don't know precisely WHY the adult male may have committed the murder and how we might not be able to predict, beforehand, the specific manner in which the murder was committed. You could try to invoke the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. And fair enough. Those would be important follow-up questions if both suspects were equally capable of committing the murder, in the first place. But the very fact that the male has the capacity to commit murder and the infant doesn't have that capacity would still render the adult male as the obviously preferred murder suspect in this context, despite any unknowns about his motivation. Likewise you can go on and on about my theory's inability to predict why my preferred candidate author (one or more divine beings) would have specifically implemented EModE archaism into the text. That would be a very reasonable line of follow-up questioning if both candidates were equally capable of producing the text to begin with. But if your own candidate author couldn't have produced the text and mine could, then its game over at the outset. My candidate would be preferred by default, since it at least meets the first and most important criterion and yours doesn't. I just don't think you can get around this logic. Capacity has to be the first order of the underlying predictive logic, if you want to call it that.

But we have to understand that historians often have limited types of evidence to work with. And even when that evidence isn't exceptionally strong, they will tend run with the available data to provide a best working theory of what happened in the past. The truth is that many consensus viewpoints among historians are actually not based on strong or conclusive evidence. They are just based on the best explanation of the limited available evidence. I have no special knowledge about Ceasar's assassination. But I do know that your appeal to consensus may not be a valid counterpoint in this context. You would have to actually look at the evidence itself, and then compare it to the evidence available for Joseph Smith's claims.

This is remarkable. Your countertheory is admittedly non-existent. Instead, everything rests on your mere ASSUMPTION that if Smith had definitive proof he would have given it. This, of course, rests on the further assumption that if Smith was telling the truth, God would have wanted/allowed Smith to give us definitive proof. Which rests on the further assumption that if a divine being like God existed, you would have special insight as to what degree of evidence he would prefer to give to human beings about his existence and intervention in the world. In other words, in your view, essentially all of the evidence pertaining to the witnesses is irrelevant because of your assumptions about divine hiddenness. This is a truly striking admission, since it is hard to imagine what evidence you might provide to support this set of assumptions. Joseph Smith at least has witnesses and a host of other types of evidence to back up his claims about God's nature and intention. What evidence do you have that gives you special insight into how much evidence God would prefer to give human beings in various contexts?

There are a number of significant differences that I believe render this as a false analogy. As a refresher, here is what you said: You of course are trying to evoke the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, in which someone identifies a piece of data and then, after the fact, comes up with a false or illogical explanation as to how they predicted it (or they might inflate the significance of the prediction itself). In this case, the analogy makes an illogical claim about why the text's opening phrase is "extraordinarily unlikely" to occur. Virtually every text has lengthy n-grams that are unlikely to show up precisely in other texts, especially if they involve unique terms such as a proper name. So there is actually nothing unique about having unique n-grams of this length in a text. And there is nothing unique about stories beginning with a phrase that is related to the content of the story. I'm guessing you already know this. In contrast, there actually does seem to be something highly unusual about an author using a high concentration of multifaceted archaism (in grammar, lexis, and syntax) that very likely wasn't in his linguistic environment. This constitutes actual evidence, backed up by lots of data (billions of words worth). You might dispute how strong the EMoE data is (which is a separate issue for now), but you would have to admit it is in an entirely different class of evidence. It potentially means something significant (i.e., Smith was highly unlikely to produce the BofM) whereas we both agree that the n-gram phrase at the beginning of the BofM means essentially nothing. And that different starting point changes everything because your preferred authorship theory is that Smith wrote the text. If he didn't likely have the capacity, that is a big a problem for your theory. My preferred authorship theory is that it was revealed to Smith by revelation. And since divine beings would have the capacity to produce these textual features, this theory has an obvious advantage. The precise motivations for why the candidate authors under either theory would produce this specific language can't really be guessed with any degree of confidence. It is essentially just an unknown. So, compared to the capacity disparity, the unknown and ultimately unpredictable motivations basically amount to non-evidence. Which means my translation theory has an obvious advantage on the issue that matters most: the potential capacity of the respective candidate authors to produce the text. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. If my preferred authorial candidate could likely write the words and yours almost certainly couldn't write them, then that is not anything like the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. This is because both theories, of necessity, have to predict that their candidate authors can actually produce the language of the text! That is just the underlying logic of authorship claims. It is the first and most important hurdle of prediction that needs to be addressed. And your candidate essentially fails when it comes to this logically necessary and most fundamental prediction. The fact that my theory couldn't predict precisely what specific textual features my preferred candidate author might use is essentially irrelevant, not merely because your theory wouldn't be able to predict these same features either but because the factor of motivation is inherently subordinate to the factor of capacity. So my main point is just that your analogy does not have corresponding elements to virtually any of these additional lines of reasoning and therefore is irrelevant. It's apples to oranges.

I'm not sure that clears things up, especially as it relates to your previous statement: "Furthermore, when evaluating the likelihood of seeing the totality of the evidence, you need to make that estimate before looking at the evidence, not after." Sounds like you had a very chronological meaning to begin with. I honestly have no idea what the clarification means. In a general way, it seems obvious that we all assess new data in light of principles of logic that we have already developed in our paradigms. So there has to be some prior basis of logic that we use to assess new phenomena. But that just seems pretty fundamentally self-evident to me. I'm not sure if that was your intent, but if so, I guess I agree. I think the issue isn't just that the expectation was made "after the fact." It is that the expectation is not logical on multiple levels of analysis. But, ultimately, this isn't analogous to what is being claimed about EmodE.

Here's the problem though. Anyone could posit that any potential entity or known individual could possibly have written the text. You could claim Smith created the text. Or you could claim he or someone close to him created it, perhaps in collaboration. Or you can claim it was written in the 19th century, but that the authorship simply isn't know. Or you could claim it was written in the 15th century, and then redacted by unknown individuals, and that Smith gave some final edits. And so on. Each party gets to pick its own preferred explanation for each set of data, at what ever level of specificity they think is most reasonable based on what they believe the evidence can best support. Which really means there is essentially an infinite number of possible explanations (ranging from very general to very specific) for any set of data, as well as particular items within that set. Obviously, it is impossible to assess the comparative probability of all possible explanations simultaneously in the same analysis. It is typically easiest, especially when different parties have reached different conclusions, to simply test their preferred explanations against one another, in relation to specific sets and items of data. More theories could conceivably be thrown into the mix, meaning it is mathematically possible to assess multiple theories at the same time, but I assume that could get unwieldly pretty quickly, especially when assessing very large and complex sets of data. So, while each party should certainly keep in mind that there are always more explanatory options out there (really an infinite number of them), it is technically impossible to truly "be exhaustive" in any analysis. I certainly have considered that other individuals could possibly be the author of the text. But my preferred theory is that the wording of the text almost exclusively came through Joseph Smith alone (as revealed by revelation, with perhaps minimal input from others caused by scribal errors and such). I have lots of reasons for that, only one of which involves the text's archaic features. But since we initially seemed to be only discussing a certain subset of textual features, it didn't seem relevant to start commenting on all possible factors that could be relevant for any other authorial candidates.

Woops. Haha. I thought you were another board member who goes by a similar sounding alias (someone who definitely would have known a lot about this topic). My bad, and my apologies.

Well, yes and no. They certainly don't bring up these issues when they publish in secular venues. And some of these scholars are gun-shy about being apologetic in any of their publications. But there are also quite a few who have published very prolifically in apologetic contexts. I'm not sure what the ratio is, but there are definitely examples that fit your description of avoiding the debate.

"{A}ll of this data" have been publicly available for quite a while, some for many decades. Anyone "outside of the LDS scholarly domain" has had ample opportunity to do "peer review." This has happened a bit, but not much. I think this is mostly attributable to indifference and/or studied avoidance. It must also be recognized that there is very little secular peer-reviewed material that is overtly critical of LDS truth claims. So, to be fair, critics of the church are essentially in the same boat that apologists are in. They try to leverage secular scholarship to their advantage, just as believers do. But the secular scholars themselves are generally not interested in the debate, and they do not frame their research specifically as a critique of LDS claims. It is one thing to say, for example, that much of the data of the Book of Mormon is not directly corroborated by secular research in Mesoamerican studies. That is absolutely true and fair. But it is quite another thing altogether to say that secular Mesoamerican scholarship itself argues that the Book of Mormon is highly implausible, or to imply that there is a secular scholarly consensus about this point. That just isn't so. Most secular scholars have never mentioned the BofM in their research, and are likely not familiar enough with it or its claims to provide an informed critique. They have certainly never conducted the type of macro-Bayesian analysis that Analytics is so fond of (and which I also think has utility when carried out responsibly) in connection to all relevant claims and data. They rarely engage in hypotheticals relevant to BofM claims, such as assessing the possibility of small incursions of ANE colonies into the Americas and so forth. They often admit there is still so much we don't know, and leave the door open to new discoveries. Thus, for critics to claim that there is some kind of scholarly consensus against the Book of Mormon would be sort of like LDS apologists claiming there is a scholarly consensus in favor of the BofM's ANE literature features. It just isn't so. Most scholars involved in ANE studies don't have any idea that their research is relevant to LDS truth claims. Instead, we are the ones leveraging their material and making the connections. It is the same with critics. They are, by and large, the ones interpreting secular scholarship in connection to LDS truth claims (rather than the secular scholars themselves). So I just think the issue of peer review is ultimately irrelevant in these contexts, except in the narrow sense that LDS scholars do have systems of peer-review in some of their publishing outlets, in which legitimate scholars with both secular training and familiarity with LDS research are called upon to review each other's works. It has limitations, I know. But it is better than nothing. And I think we have actually done much better in this regard than the critics. They have mostly turned to social media platforms and rarely have other critics with relevant scholarly training who help critique and review their critical material of the Church. Thus, ironically, I think the believers actually have somewhat of an advantage in this area, as we are by and large more "scholarly" in our approach to many faith-relevant topics than the critics are. And, to be quite honest, we generally just have more qualified scholars (often with more relevant secular training) in our camp than they do on most topics. That isn't true for every topic or subtopic, but I can almost guarantee that we would win the day in the macro-analysis. This is especially so if you look at individuals who have both secular scholarly training and are also deeply familiar with LDS research topics. We unquestionably have an advantage on that front.

At the same time, many Latter-day Saint scholars have published regularly in secular peer-reviewed venues, and many of them have degrees in higher education from secular universities. It's actually sort of funny. When I look at those who are actually engaged in many of the apologetic debates, those with the most secular knowledge plus awareness of LDS claims and theology tend to be Latter-day Saints. Whenever you see outside academics trying to engage with LDS scholars, you will often find that their expertise in their secular field often doesn't prepare them well to engage with LDS truth claims. Just watch the interview with Robert Ritner on Mormon Stories. He had no idea what most of the apologetic claims and arguments were. He constantly needed RFM to help explain things to him, even really basic stuff. Which means that he was essentially not dealing with LDS scholarly claims directly. For the most part, he was getting a filtered, reductive, anti-Mormon caricature of the claims and then responding to those. A very similar thing happened with Michael Coe. Their non-interview materials were more responsible, but they still never really fully engaged with apologetic arguments. Very rarely will you find an outside scholar who is both an expert in their field and also able to successfully interact with and critique LDS scholarly material in a way that responsibly deals with apologetic claims and evidence. What this tells me is that there is no objective arbitrators in this arena. The nature of the religious claims means virtually anyone and everyone has some skin in the game. It is enough for me that many LDS believers also happen to be legitimate scholars, and that much support for LDS truth claims is built on top of responsible scholarship in a variety of fields.

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They were? How do you know? And how do you account for D&C 17:1? It is also interesting that Oliver Cowdery essentially showed up at Smith's door because of independent personal revelation and interest. Smith barely knew him for a few months when Oliver witnessed the plates and the angel. The same is true for David Whitmer, and all of the Whitmers who testified of seeing the plates. Only Martin Harris knew Smith for longer. But he also was quite skeptical in many ways, and struggled to believe. Essentially, it was a HUGE risk for Smith to produce the Book of Mormon and then predict that others would have a very specific divine revelation about the plates and other artifacts, before that revelation occurred. He still barely knew most of these people. And everything could have fallen apart if the initial witnesses didn't have the precise type of "hallucination" (or whatever someone wants to call it) to convince them of Smith's claims. Critics aren't dealing with this fact. Imagine if you are Oliver, David, and Martin. You are sincere. You really think Smith is a prophet, based on some of his previous claims and his dictation of the Book of Mormon. You walk into the woods. And then nothing happens. No promised revelation. You try to get yourself to have the vision. You open yourself up to that idea. But there is no angel clothed in glory. No plates. No other artifacts. It seems to me that if Smith was lying or deluded to begin with, that is BY FAR the most likely outcome. He would have never found witnesses to corroborate such audacious claims. I personally can't think of anyone I know that I could trick into believing they saw an angel and plates in the woods, when indeed they saw nothing. Not a single person, much less three. It would be an extraordinarily unlikely result.

Yes. Vogel's theory accounts for a very small portion of the data, and doesn't deal with most potential counter-arguments. It is also mainly a historical explanation and doesn't really deal with most lines of positive evidence in the text, pointing away from Smith's authorship.

I'm not saying the text is a ray gun. It wasn't an analogy meant to illustrate certain principles of evidence, not an example of evidence equivalent to the BofM. They have very different types of evidentiary strengths. I'm guessing you haven't been paying attention to lots of the evidence accumulated about the text. But the bigger problem is that as soon as your theory relies on the possibility of Smith learning everything from his environment, the theory becomes inconsistent with the historical evidence pertaining to Smith's education and poverty, as well as the nature of the translation. You can't reasonably have Smith widely reading and accessing all sorts of arcane information from rare or expensive books and then remembering those details well enough to synthesize them in a complex text like the Book of Mormon. Not only can this not explain all of the data (because lots of features, contrary to your claim, weren't known in 1829), but it just is not plausible based on the historical data about Smith's life and circumstances. There would also be another problem. If Smith was widely having conversations with people and reading from esoteric books and thinking about such things, his family and acquaintances would likely have noticed. I don't think anyone in 1829 could likely have written the text. But I think it would help naturalistic theories considerably if the text was written by a scholar or someone with a lot of literary experience and success. It would also help considerably if they weren't required to dictate the text in a fast-paced translation without revisions. Even if you strip away all those hurdles, I still think there are some archaic features of the text that very likely couldn't have been imitated. But, again, the historical evidence would strongly militate against another author.

Very different degrees of literary experience and scholarly study, when they each respectively used their archaism, based on the available historical evidence. I haven't looked at his writings and life close enough to say. Lot's of creative people feel inspired to some degree. Hard to say what he means specifically by that, based on his statements. But it doesn't really matter to me, in the context of this discussion. LDS theology can accommodate other people having spiritual gifts and interreacting with spiritual entities, whether divine or demonic. Inasmuch as people claim to have received a text by revelation, it can't be used as evidence of what others can do naturally, until that claim is either verified or disputed. You have to look for examples of texts which are undisputedly naturalistic in origin as a control for what other individuals could do naturalistically. Yet even if Very did implement this feature via naturalistic means, as Hawthorne did, it wouldn't all of a sudden make it likely that Smith implemented this archaic feature and all of the others. All it does is make the naturalistic theory slightly more plausible. What you would really need to do, in order to turn the tide, is demonstrate that most all of the archaism was present in fairly appreciable degrees in texts close to 1829. Stan has already been accounting for rare instances of preservation across the board for many examples. So this is nothing new.