webbles

I think the wording of the "steelman case" could be improved. Maybe include in the prompt for the AI to write the steelman case from the apologist point of view. Don't say it is a "steelman case". Because the way it is written, it feels like the author of the argument doesn't actually believe the argument and is just trying to make the best steelman case.

Is Isaiah (especially Deutero-Isaiah) in that list? And for the editorial complexity, does that include the complexity of how an ancient historian who lived hundreds of years apart from most of what he is writing about would actually describe things? The Limited Geography Models and the Narrow Neck and the River Sidon seem to be the same thing or have a lot of overlap.

No problem. I can see why people don't accept the Book of Mormon. But for me, believing that Joseph invented it just crosses into the impossible. Too many coincidences, lucky guesses, etc. AIs will say that as well if you keep bringing up apologetic and critical point of views. I've done it several times. A naturalistic creation of the Book of Mormon just doesn't have a simple answer, in my mind. I prefer the theories that involve others as that makes way more sense to explain the content of the Book of Mormon, but they have a lot of historical documentary issues (as in, how were they involved with no one ever mentioning it).

Lorenzo Snow's testimony is also technically heresay. I don't believe there is any record of him saying it in any public manner. We hear about it through his granddaughter and others who said they heard him say it. So, if you are discounting some of the ones brought up already, you should discount Lorenzo's as well.

I'm not sure that Alma 11 is actually about any metal at all. Yes, it says gold and silver. But that, to me, is just a translation layer. I've been trying to figure out how to determine what was introduced by the translator and what wasn't introduced by the translator. This can, unfortunately, be non-falsifiable so I've gone back and forth on it. But one of the latest ideas is to see what is the main idea that is happening and whether that is from Joseph or an ancient historian. In Alma 11, it says that "A senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold, and either for a measure of barley, and also for a measure of every kind of grain." That idea is an ancient idea; the idea that the "measure of grain" is the source of truth in the monetary system. It isn't one that Joseph would have been familiar with because a dollar (gold coin, etc) has its own intrinsic worth (the amount of silver/gold) that is independent of the commodities you buy with it. It has been that way since at least the middle ages, but even the Romans used coins without being backed by commodities. But to ancient civilizations (including in mesoamerica), the monetary system was backed by the commodities. So, if we have an ancient historian who is writing about his monetary system, it would be based off of commodities and then have some sort of denominational units that people actually carry and pass around instead of the commodity unit itself. Joseph translated those denominational units into "gold" and "silver". But kept the ancient names that he specifically spelled out to Oliver (we know that because Oliver had to correct the spelling of shilum several times and it still is incorrectly spelled in the Book of Mormon as shiblon) and he kept the denominational sizes and that it was backed by grain. And those things are more similar to an ancient monetary system than one Joseph would be accustomed to. Now, could Joseph have invented it? Sure. But it is also plausible enough to be connected to an ancient system.

Totally agree that Norsemen hacksilver isn't coin. But it is a monetary system. And Alma 11 does not talk about coinage. It talks about "different pieces of their gold, and of their silver, according to their value". A piece of hacksilver is just a piece of silver of specific weight and size, pretty similar to what Alma 11 describes. Yes, hacksilver doesn't have different names for the different sizes but I'm not trying to find a perfect example of what the Nephites used. To say that Alma 11 is "coins" is reading something into it that the text itself doesn't say.

You should ask it to now double check its work and verify its answers are actually inline with the Book of Mormon and that it isn't bringing in any assumptions. It will probably pull back from its answer as it questions itself. You can do it several times and see where it finally lands after it has second-guessed itself. See if it strengthens its answer or if it softens it.

It's not true that "every other coinage used by other civilizations had some kind of image, symbol, and/or written copy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksilver was used by Norsemen and is just weighted silver items. They would cut up anything with silver to make their coins. No markings necessary. In Mesoamerica, there is "axe-monies" - https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/57553. No inscriptions, just little axe heads that were used as currency. Also, Alma 11 specifically spell out the Nephite coinage. It talks about "different pieces of their gold, and of their silver" and their relationship to grain amounts and each other. It could easily have just been pieces of metal of different sizes and different weights.

Claude is so kind. The Book of Mormon explicitly states that the Lamanites by Mormon's days have no ancestral relationship to Laman (see 4 Nephi 1:38). It is completely a "believer" vs "non-believer" divide. Mormon grew up in that environment. To him, the Lamanites are both descendants of Laman (as per the older tradition that he would have read about) and anyone who isn't a believer. So anytime he writes about Lamanites, is he talking about "non-believers" or "descendants of Laman"? It could be one or the other or both. And then you have Nephi all the way back in 1 Nephi talking about his own vision where he talks about how his descendants will be killed by Laman's descendants. Yet, that doesn't work because 4 Nephi shows that who was killed weren't actual descendants of Nephi but those who were believers. Because of 4 Nephi (which is the plain reading of the text), we don't know if the Nephites that were killed along with Mormon were even related to Nephi since they were defined as believers, not descendants.

Moroni had access to 24 plates that were compiled by Ether thousands of years after the crossing of the ocean. Moroni might have considered it a primary source but who knows what Ether wrote in it and how accurate it was.

If the Book of Mormon is real, then we have enormous amounts of information of what a 400 AD ancient historian believes about his people's history. And if you look at other 400 AD historians (like Romans), you'll notice that what they describe doesn't match archeology. So if the Book of Mormon is real, we have to figure out what is Mormon's understanding of things vs what is really historical.

Funny, I had a similar conversation a few weeks ago. It gave those same reasons. If you ask it to look more closely at its reasons, it starts to see that it is looking at the Book of Mormon in the most superficial reading. You don't have to point it anywhere, just something like "Can you make sure?" For instance, this line is blatantly wrong.

The "historical evidence" that Strang fabricated his plates actually speculation and conjecture. There is no actual evidence. Chauncy Loomis said he heard Samuel Graham say that he helped fabricate. He also said he heard Samuel Bacon say that he found pieces of the plates in Strang's ceiling. This is 3rd hand information at best. And it is written in 1888 in a RLDS publication who are actively trying to sow doubts about Strang's claims. This is equivalent to the stories that are told about Joseph fabricating the plates.

Going to NYC when he is not an adult? Where does he have the money for the trip? Why do we have no evidence that he made that trip? The trips to Pennsylvania were either as a job or as an adult with his wife going to stay with his in-laws. A bit different from a shopping trip to NYC. Can you tell that it is gold leafed if you touch it? He didn't just fake it to the eye. The men got to actually touch and feel the plates. And he would have had to gild the plates after the engraving or else the tinplates would have shown through. And I think that would add quite a bit of work. And isn't gilding fairly fragile? It is really thin layer and so I believe it is fairly easy to scratch off. The plates are being moved around quite a bit, that would probably make the gild rub off and show the underlying metals.

Which makes it really crazy that Joseph would trust his hoax with them after knowing them for only a few weeks.

If we are talking about all 11 witnesses, Oliver Cowdery joined the Methodists for a little bit and Martin Harris was briefly involved with Shakerism.

I think the Voree Plates and the Book of the Law actually is really good evidence against the idea that it was a 'cheap hoax'. Strang didn't do a 'cheap hoax'. I find the Voree Plates to be an impressive set. If they aren't ancient, I see no problem with people thinking they are ancient. The engravings are well done and it looks the part. We don't know what the Book of the Law plates actually looked like (similar to the Golden Plates), but I don't have any problems with the witnesses examining them and believing they are ancient. Neither of the 2 sets of plates were slapped together or a 'cheap hoax'. The 8 witnesses of the Book of Mormon don't tell us anything about whether the plates are ancient in origin, just like the witnesses of the Voree Plates and Book of the Law Plates. They only tell us that Joseph had plates and that they weren't a 'cheap hoax'. But if we compare the 3 sets, it shows that the Golden Plates would have been a much harder creation. This is why Dan Vogel and others argue that the witnesses didn't actually see the plates. They recognize that creating a set of plates that would convince the 8 witnesses, similar too what Strang did, is difficult for two main reasons. The first is that Strang used brass while Joseph used something gold-like. Strang's witnesses recognized the brass (the Voree plates were identified as brass by several people and the Book of the Law comes from the Brass Plates). The 8 witnesses didn't recognize the metal that Joseph used. If Joseph's plates had been called tin or brass, then the fabrication method is simplified immensely. The witnesses called it gold (which would be impossible by weight and cost alone) or having the appearance of gold. The second is the quantity. Voree Plates was 4 very small plates. The Book of the Law Plates is 18 larger plates. The Golden Plates were most likely more than 50 of similar size plates. It is possible that all 3 are hoaxes. But the amount of work to create each hoax is a lot different. We know the Kinderhook plates were a hoax and they are slightly bigger than the Voree plates and had a little more plates, so we know that the Voree plates could be faked easily. The Book of the Law Plates and Golden Plates were bigger and with more quantity so they would be harder to fake and we would have to figure out how they got the material and time to fake them. But I definitely think that they show that the plates (all 4 sets) were not "cheap hoaxes".

Doesn't seem that difficult to me. New York City definitely had tin plate roofing. It is one of the largest cities at the time. Palmya, on the other hand, probably had no tinplate roofing. But tinplate was also available to tinsmiths who worked with it and then sold the finished products. But Joseph isn't a tinsmith. So how would he get it? He could have purchased it from the tinsmith in town (or who ever was visiting if there wasn't a local tinsmith) but he would have had to do that before he started talking about the plates as that should have linked together pretty quickly. And that puts him into a much younger age. If you were given tinplates with either the gilding or paint and you got to touch it. Would you recognize that it was painted or gilded? Doesn't it feel different? Wouldn't the 8 witnesses, who have touched tinplate all their life (since a lot of the utensils, cutlery, etc was tinplate) not recognize that it is tinplate with paint or gilding? The plates weren't visually fooling. They also have to fool for tactile touch with men who know a decent amount of metal. I'm pretty sure I could detect a painted surface pretty easily.

No, it isn't a rhetorical question. I agree that they can't determine whether an alleged ancient artifact really was ancient. But these men would probably recognize a simple forgery. They know their metals. They felt, touched, hefted, inspected the plates. If Joseph made something out of tinplate, wouldn't they have been able to realize that? Tinplate has a different feel, sound, texture, etc. These men have probably touched tinplate most of their lives. Yet, they did not believe the plates were tinplate. So, if they are telling the truth, then it can't be made out of tinplate. I'm not asking for the witnesses to be expert witnesses in ancient artifacts. But I would consider them expert witnesses in metals that they've worked with. And none of them said that the metal in the plates was normal to them. With Voree and Kinderhook, it was said to be normal metal. The Law of the Lord (from Strang) was specifically explained to be from the Brass plates. But the golden plates are called "with the appearance of gold" or "not quite as think as common tin" (this phrase really hurts the idea of it being tinplate). The witnesses seem to be reaching for a way to describe this unknown metal to them.

I would expect ChatGPT to consider that image to be modern. Because it is modern. Even if you made it with tinplate in the 1820s, you couldn't get it that uniform. So the image was pulling the AI in a specific direction. This is a really bad answer. Dan Vogel even points out the issue with this. There is going to be voids between the plates. You can't lay them down with no gaps, especially if you are doing 1820s cutting. So there wouldn't be 475 plates and it wouldn't be near as heavy. In fact, Dan's test with tinplates and 6 inch tall stack ended up being under 40 lbs, which was lighter than what the witnesses said. He overcomes that difficulty by saying it is hard to estimate weight and so they were just over estimating. And would any of the witnesses recognize this? The other 2 known plate discoveries (Voree and Kinderhook) were recognized as a specific material. Why didn't the 8 ever say, "yeah, they were made out of brass" or "it was tinplate with a gold varnish"? Almost all of the 8 witnesses were older than Joseph with a lot more experience with metals. Why not ask ChatGPT what it thinks about a 21 year old making plates out of common material that could fool several older men (including ones he only met 3 weeks before) that it ancient, had a golden appearance, and was not a common metal.

In the fictional universe, there is a total of 6 sets of plates. The Brass Plates, Neph's large plates, Nephi's small plates, Zeniff's plates, Ether's gold plates, and Mormon's/Moroni's Golden Plates. I would not say "everybody wrote on metal plates" when the vast majority of those in the Book of Mormon never appear to have written on metal plates. The small plates does record several people writing on plates, though most are pretty limited in what they write, but pretty much everything from Mosiah until Mormon, there is no mention of writing or even creating metal plates. Mormon does mention pulling things of the large plates from time to time so there is some writing, but he also references other records so how much the final Book of Mormon is abridged from writings on metal plates is unknown.

I believe you are quoting the testimony from the Voree plates, not the Book of the Law. The testimony from the Book of the Law is: No angels involved.

Technically, he had more than 4 years. If it is a hoax, why start only 4 years ago? But tinplates is not something you buy unless you are a tinsmith or doing roofing. Sure it is doable for him to do it, but it is less probable. Then we have to add that the 8 witnesses did see the plates (I find Dan's argument that it was covered in cloth and was a visionary experience really weak). So it didn't look like tin to them. They know what tinplate is.

100% agree. The 8 witnesses tell us nothing about the Book of Mormon except that Joseph had metal plates that were good enough to look ancient. The 3 witnesses (and Mary Whitmer) are the ones to authenticate the Book of Mormon since they involve the supernatural. Sure, people can come to different conclusions. I doubt the plates being subjected to a more scientific examination would help. Because we still have the problem that an angel told Joseph where they were. Plates can't be dated. Even if it was made of tumbaga, we would be debating on whether Joseph or someone in the area knew about that. Even if I could definitively prove that the plates were actual ancient artifacts, the problem of "it seems of little importance to God for people to find the gospel while mortal." still exists as well. So the reality of the plates wouldn't change your opinion since you have other reasons to disbelieve.

Another problem that Dan's theory has is that he points to tinplates because of the green coloring that Stowelll saw. Yes, the document about roofing says that they sometimes paint the tinplate green, but that is after installation. You don't buy pre-painted tinplates. So the theory would have Joseph buying raw tinplates, painting them green, and then declaring them to be gold. Since he is already painting them, why not paint them yellow to match his story better.