webbles

It doesn't mention what language it is. But doubtful it is reformed Egyptian as that is first mentioned by Moroni which is over 1000 years. And he says (in the next verse) that he also knows how to write Hebrew (or reformed Hebrew, technically). 1 Nephi 1:2 says that Nephi makes a record "in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." So it is possible that the Brass Plates were in Egyptian of some sort, but it wouldn't be the reformed Egyptian that Moroni is talking about.

The shift in 3 Nephi is odd but what does it even mean? Would that mean there are 2 translators? One for before 3 Nephi and one after 3 Nephi? How would that shift even happen? Does it mean that the second translator is an older EModE translator and the first translator is a later EModE translator?

The country statistics have been released and https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2026/04/country-by-country-membership.html has a breakdown. Some things of note: 44 countries had a growth rate of at least 10%. That breaks the previous record of 27 countries back in 2014. USA, for the first time, had a negative growth rate. It had a net decline of 186 members.

As far as I know, that isn't tracked.

I kind of think that we need to have a chance for both sides to reply to each other. Because this statement from the critic side is used by evaluator for some of the weight for H2 but it is more related to "Editorial complexity (Mormon/Moroni)" (though technically this is Nephi and his editing). The critic is bringing in areas that the proponent hasn't yet made its argument. I don't know if the proponent will know it needs to discuss this aspect when it gets around to that later phase. Nor do I think the evaluator will be able to see how the later argument actually weakens the critical argument in this earlier phase. This is also one of the reasons why keeping a running total is problematic. The argument against this statement is that Nephi, decades later, has no reason to care about talking about the locals. That fits what an ancient narrator would have done. The locals aren't impactful to his story, so don't mention them. It isn't a structural problem but something an ancient narrator would actually do and there are plenty of examples from ancient narrators doing that.

There was an moon race. If the US had faked the landing, the USSR would have been able to figure that out and announced it to the world. And China, which is currently trying to get to the moon, would probably love to point out that the US hasn't yet landed on it. These 2 countries would have no reason to keep it quiet. And if you look at the space movies in the 60s and 70s and 80s, none of them look like the moon landing. The gravity, the way the people walk, the way lighting works, etc. If Hollywood can't duplicate what was done, then that is a really good sign that the moon landing is real. If you want to watch a good video that goes into all the evidence, checkout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMHLvoWZfqQ. It is over 2 hours long. He delves into a ton of things that are usually used as evidence against the moon landing.

Why are you shocked? It was an active topic of research at the time and McBride was specifically trying to figure out how to make the aversion therapy fit with BYU and similar cultures better. If aversion therapy actually worked (at that time, it was believed to work based off of multiple research going back decades), why wouldn't a "temple recommend holder" want to research whether clothed pictures was just as good as nude pictures. For psychologists of the day who did practice aversion therapy and for participants who seeked out aversion therapy (whether coerced, forced, or of their own free will), they would be using nude photographs. Some probably disliked needing to use nude photographs so if the study had come out in the positive direction, it would have made things better for those. I'm not sure there were nude images of adolescents. The quote is "composed of nude, semi -nude and clothed adolescent and adult males in various poses". That doesn't mean that the adolescents were nude. It means that there were pictures of adolescents, but they could have been clothed or semi-nude. It could mean they were nude, but I would find that unlikely.

I don't think a constraint ledger is a good idea. Because the order of evidence will affect this, as you already pointed out. I was thinking you were just going to do an evaluation of each evidence independently.

No, the experiment was trying to determine if the behavioral modification mechanisms (including electric aversion) can work with clothed pictures vs nude pictures. The usage of nude pictures was the norm but it doesn't work for certain cultures (such as BYU). If clothed pictures worked just as well as nude pictures, then for the cultures that have issues with nudity, they could use clothed pictures. It wasn't trying to determine if they are turned on by clothed vs nude pictures, only if the behavioral change had the same response to clothed vs nude pictures. It turns out that the response was not the same with regards to nude male pictures. But interestingly, clothed female pictures did have a different response. But the experiment also noted that the men who were randomly assigned to the clothed female pictures also had a stronger reaction to women vs the men in the nude female pictures so that probably was a factor.

https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/2026/04/2025-statisical-report-analysis.html has an analysis on it. Some things of note: This breaks the all-time record for most convert baptisms. Previous record was in 1990 (!) with 330,877 baptisms. The baptism per missionary has been increasing in a trend since 2022 (3.4 in 2022, 3.71 in 2023, 4.2 in 2024, 4.9 in 2025). It is the highest since 2011 (which was 5.1). About 60% of the stakes were created outside of the US which is impressive since the requirements for a new stake were raised for non-US stakes. Children of record is low compared to historical rates. pre-2018, it was usually >100,000. And even back in the 80s and 90s, there was >100,000 with only 4-5 million members.

Some of the explanations are similar and still fit (Lack of Historical and Geographical Knowledge, Too long and sophisticated). But the "ignorant transcriber" and 'too poor and busy' don't fit because after Chatterton's death, people looked into his story and were able to find that he had a decent amount of schooling and read a lot. One of his first poems (in his name, sent to his sister) has obvious connections to other authors and he is known to have read at least 70 books while at the charity school. So Bryant was either misinformed or this information came after him. With Smith, we've been searching for anything to show that Smith was well read. The only evidence is his reading the Bible. No one has brought up him reading books. And the "unknowable dialects" isn't similar either. Rowley's poems have been scrutinized and it shows that Chatterton was guessing at what an archaic structure would look like. It is definitely Chatterton's language with archaism laced through it vs an archaic language with Chatterton's language layered on top. He definitely worked on injecting archaism into it and did an impressive job but the writing is definitely within his reach based on the books that he has read. But Carmack argues that the Book of Mormon has archaic structure that doesn't match the KJV and wasn't something that Joseph would have access to. And also that it is much more structurally laced through the text. And the "witnesses" aren't really the same. We know that Chatterton had access to ancient parchments. His father had a collection and had even give them to his wife for use around the house.

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.