LDS Church Files Brief In Trans Supreme Court Case

[Ryan Dahle]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

If a proposed explanation requires overturning large, interlocking domains of well-confirmed physics, biology, neuroscience, and history, then its prior probability becomes extremely low. That doesn’t mean it’s logically impossible. It means it conflicts with a vast body of independently confirmed knowledge.

I don't think this is accurately describing what LDS truth claims are asserting. Latter-day Saints don't believe that miracles summarily "overturn" existing natural laws (physics, biology, neuroscience, etc.). Rather, it is widely assumed that such laws are temporarily suspended or altered by a higher power. The distinction is crucial because science itself frequently encounters circumstances or realms where its own previously understood laws suddenly don't apply. Quantum mechanics operate differently than Newtonian physics. Time near a black hole operates differently than on earth. And so forth. We now have adopted these surprising and non-intuitive discoveries into our scientific theories, but 200 hundred years ago they would have seemed ludicrous. If we think, just for a moment, about the number of times that standard "scientific" models or theories have been significantly modified--or "overturned" in your words--by new discoveries, the proposition of divine intervention seems far less egregious.

This is especially so when one considers that current science is essentially operating within a complex system of natural laws that it doesn't fully understand at their core. It doesn't understand where these laws originated or how they came to be. All we know is that they exist and that many of them seem finely tuned in a manner to permit complex life forms (or really anything interesting or complex in the universe). While I don't think the fine-tuning argument proves that God exists, it certainly opens the door to that belief. And if there were an intelligent being that was responsible for the fine-tuning of the universe, then it actually isn't that hard to imagine that such a being could conceivably intervene in human affairs for his own reasons, while also being able to mask or limit his intervention to whatever degree he prefers.

Once these foundational arguments are in place, those who are wedded to naturalism actually don't have the inductive basis to reliably predict how likely or unlikely divine intervention might be. Induction works well when our probability estimates are confined to repeated phenomena and circumstances we can directly observe or encounter. Inductive reasoning largely breaks down when we consider the plausibility of unknown entities outside of our current observational field. For instance, if you asked scientists 200 hundred years ago how likely it is that there is a quantum realm with bizarre rules underlying the realm of Newtonian physics, how would they even begin to provide a probability estimate for that hypothesis? All they could really say is that they haven't yet encountered evidence of such a realm and therefore don't believe in it. Which is a reasonable position. Skepticism of unproven facts is fairly healthy. It is what keeps us from being deceived on all sorts of levels. 

But we need to be careful that we don't rachet our default skepticism too high. The remaining unknowns about the universe are too fundamental and too pervasive to become overly dogmatic. The truth is that secular atheists/agnostics actually have no idea how likely or unlikely a being like God is. All they know is that they haven't yet found evidence to personally convince them of such a being. It could very well be that God exists, just like the quantum realm exists, and they just don't yet have the type of evidence to convince them of that reality. Which is fine. I'm pretty sympathetic to that type of agnosticism, especially when one's default skepticism is accompanied by a healthy degree of epistemic humility. 

As for me, I think I've discovered a strong enough combination of subjective evidence (through my experiencing consistent "spiritual" phenomena predicted by the gospel) and secular evidence (through my weighing the positive evidence in favor of the Restoration with the evidence against it) to warrant belief. I think a major part of the difference in approach is just how strongly different people ratchet up their default skepticism towards the supernatural. In many cases, I think the default skepticism is actually doing most of the heavy lifting for those critical of the Church. Any time the evidence, such as the combined strength of the three and eight witnesses becomes rather impressive, the rebuttal is always that such evidence doesn't really matter in the end--since the possibility that they were all either lying or delusional (even when that hypothesis is rather unlikely on its face) will ALWAYS be more convincing than the proposition that an angel revealed a lost record to a farm boy. One by one, all of the impressive lines of positive evidence can be summarily dismissed in the same way. Outside of absolute definitive proof, they will never be enough to convince someone who has ratcheted their default skepticism of the supernatural so exceedingly high. Which is fine. But I think it helps to notice how strongly that default skepticism is influencing the evaluation of the available evidence. 

[Analytics]

On 2/23/2026 at 6:52 PM, smac97 said:

I agree.  The text of The Book of Mormon needs to be accounted for.  The statements of the Witnesses needs to be accounted for.

The secular disdain baked into it also does not help.

Indeed.  And yet despite the probative value of that evidence, we're still left with accepting, or not accepting, these things on faith.

This includes, I think, our @Analytics.  In this 2021 discussion he posited, without evidence, that "Sidney Rigdon made the plates out of tin," and/or that "the angel was really an alien doing an anthropology experiment on Joseph Smith," and/or that "the devil conjured up the plates" as all being "more likely" than the explanation given by Joseph Smith, which he (Roger) said is "just not possible."  "{A}ny explanation," Roger said, "is more likely than {The Book of Mormon} being an accurate translation of an actual ancient manuscript."

Roger, the same person now espousing strict science-based empiricism when examining religious truth claims, was (is?) more willing to believe in space aliens or Satan being the source of The Book of Mormon than to attribute its origins to the explanation claimed by the Church.

I put the question to ChatGPT 5.2 Pro. The objective was two-fold: to test the validity of my thinking, and see if it could do a better job at articulating my reasoning. Having reconsidered the issue, I stand by what I said in 2021, and offer the following prompts and responses to illustrate how I see it.

Prompt
You are a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings in every world culture that has produced texts. Your expertise includes the ancient writings of Maya, Zapotec, Olmec, Aztec, Inca, Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Hittite, Phoenicia, etc. Additionally, you have deep expertise in the original manuscripts of the Hebrew bible, and know when each chapter and verse of the modern bible was most likely written. Furthermore, you have deep knowledge of science and world history and prehistory, including anthropology, sociology, history of technology, archaeometallurgy, population movements, geology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, evolutionary biology, historical migration studies, population genetics, historical biography, historical demography, and anthropological linguistics, with particular expertise in the history of the ancient middle east and the history and prehistory of the ancient Americas. You are also an expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias.

Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon. Somebody presents you with an English version of the Book of Mormon and asks you these specific questions:

1. Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex that was originally written on metal plates and compiled around the year A.D. 400, somewhere in the Americas?
2. What is the likelihood that this codex was compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America *and* is an historical record that tells a story of real people who lived over the prior 1,000 years?
3. If and only if you determine the answers to questions 1 and 2 are unlikely, address the Lloyd Christmas follow-up question, “unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?”
4. Based only on the text of the Book of Mormon, what is the most likely time and place of it being written? Finally, assume that it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin—assume that in a controlled environment, James Randi investigated how it was produced, concludes that it must have involved the supernatural and golden plates that were seen in the 1820’s and that not only were magically a part of the book’s writing, but also magically disappeared after 11 hand-picked witnesses saw them. James Randi declares these are real miracles and Joseph Smith wins the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
5. Under this new assumption that the modern production of the Book really is miraculous, please use correct Bayesian reasoning to update your beliefs in 1 and 2. Do you now believe the Book of Mormon is most likely an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? Please evaluate the relative plausibility of the following hypotheses: a- Joseph Smith wrote it by himself. b- That Joseph Smith wrote it, with the help of his brother, mother, and others, and that they put on what is essentially an elaborate magic show to make the production of the book look miraculous? c- That advanced aliens helped him write it. d- That some sort of a cosmic trixter (e.g. Q, the devil) helped him write it. e- Something else I haven’t listed. e- That it is exactly what orthodox Mormons believe: an authentic ancient codex that was written, preserved, and translated by the power of God.

Please limit your answer to 1,000 words, targeted it to a lay audience, and write it in conversational English.

ChatGPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 11m 1s >

Here’s how I’d reason if you handed me only the English text and told me it’s a translation of an ancient American record compiled around A.D. 400 on metal plates.

1) Likelihood it’s a translation of an authentic ancient codex on metal plates (compiled ~A.D. 400 in the Americas)

Very low. The strongest internal reason is the linguistic fingerprint of the English itself.

What I would expect from a genuine translation of an ancient American text (even a very free translation) is: consistent “translationese,” odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms, and only occasional overlap with early-modern English Bible phrasing unless the translator is deliberately imitating it.

What instead jumps out (from the English alone) is that the book reads like it is written in a consciously biblical, King James–style English register, and not just in a vague “biblical tone,” but with the texture of an English writer steeped in that particular Bible tradition: stock rhythms, repetitive biblical scaffolding, sermon-like expansions, and long stretches that feel like they are built out of English biblical language rather than translated into it.

A translation can be made to sound archaic on purpose, sure. But the more the English looks like it is composed in that idiom—rather than forced into it by the constraints of another language—the less it looks like a translation.

My rough probability for #1, based only on the English text: ~1 in 100,000 (0.001%) that it’s truly a translation of an authentic A.D. 400 American metal-plate codex.

(That’s not “it’s impossible.” It’s “the internal linguistic signals look overwhelmingly like early modern/modern English religious composition rather than an ancient-source translation.”)

2) Likelihood it’s both (a) compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America AND (b) a historical record of real people over the prior 1,000 years

Even lower. This stacks additional requirements on top of #1:

• not just “ancient source exists,” but

• it’s an intentionally historical narrative (not mostly allegory/prophecy), and

• it’s broadly accurate about real people and events across a millennium.

From text alone, a big tell is genre balance: authentic historical traditions usually contain lots of “incidental mundane detail” that authors don’t even realize is diagnostic—small logistical constraints, boring administrative texture, local material culture presented without rhetorical purpose, etc. This text (in English) reads much more like theological history—story primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon—than like a record whose main goal is “here’s what happened.”

That doesn’t rule out history. But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy.

My rough probability for #2: ~1 in 100,000,000 (0.000001%).

3) “Unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?”

For #1 and especially #2: no—much, much less likely than 1% on the English-text evidence alone.

• #1: more like 1 in 100,000 (give or take an order of magnitude).

• #2: more like 1 in 100 million (give or take a couple orders of magnitude).

4) Most likely time and place of composition, based only on the text

The English reads like it comes from an English-speaking, Bible-saturated Protestant culture after the King James Bible had become culturally dominant.

So: post-1611, and realistically much later than that, because the style isn’t just archaic English—it feels like a modern author performing archaic English, with heavy sermonizing and concerns that fit a churchy, revival-minded milieu.

If you forced me to pick, based only on internal texture: late 18th to early 19th century, North Atlantic English-speaking world, most plausibly the United States (because of the way “scripture-like” narrative and Protestant doctrinal speech patterns blend with a frontier/manifest “promised land” sensibility).

---

Now your “Randi proves it’s miraculous” scenario.

You’ve added a new piece of evidence:

M = the production cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred.

5) Bayesian update under proven miracles: how do #1 and #2 change, and which hypothesis best fits?

Bayes in one sentence:
Posterior odds = prior odds × how well each hypothesis predicts the evidence.

First, what M does

M absolutely crushes purely natural explanations.

So under your assumption, hypotheses (a) “Joseph alone” and (b) “Joseph + helpers stage magic” become near-zero (not because they’re logically impossible, but because you stipulated that a controlled investigation ruled them out).

What’s left are “some non-natural agency” options.

Second, what the text itself still does

Even after accepting miracles, we still have the English-text evidence T: it looks like modern English biblical composition, not a translation of an ancient American source.

So the key question becomes: Which supernatural hypothesis best predicts both M (miracles/plates) and T (the English fingerprint)?

To keep your lettering but avoid the duplicate “e,” I’ll label them:

• (c) advanced aliens

• (d) cosmic trickster

• (e) something else

• (f) orthodox Mormon claim: authentic ancient codex translated by God

My updated probabilities (given M + T)

• (a) Joseph alone: ~0%

• (b) Joseph + helpers fraud: ~0%

• (c) Aliens: low (say 1–5%)

  • They can explain “miracles” via sufficiently advanced tech, but it’s oddly specific for aliens to generate a text so saturated with a particular English biblical register unless they’re intentionally mimicking it.

• (d) Cosmic trickster: moderate (say 20–40%)

  • Explains real miracles and explains why the text could look strongly modern while claiming ancient provenance: deception is the point.

• (e) Something else (non-orthodox supernatural): highest (say 50–70%)

  • For example: a genuine miracle/revelation producing a modern religious text in biblical style, where the plates function as a sign rather than as an ordinary ancient source-document.

  • This matches T very well and can also accommodate M.

• (f) Orthodox (authentic ancient codex translation): still low (say 1–10%)

  • M helps a lot (plates + miracles are predicted), but T still pushes against a straightforward “translation from ancient American language” unless you add extra assumptions like “God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom (even where that creates the appearance of English dependence).”

Updated beliefs for #1 and #2 under M

• #1 (authentic ancient codex translation): I’d move from “1 in 100,000” up to something like a few percent at most (call it ~1–5%), because miracles make “some extraordinary backstory” real, but the English still looks like modern composition more than translation.

• #2 (ancient + historically accurate): lower still, maybe ~0.1–1%, because even if plates are ancient, “accurate millennium-spanning history” is an additional claim the textual genre feel doesn’t strongly support.

So: even after proven miracles, I would not say the orthodox claim is the most likely overall. The most likely bucket becomes “real supernatural involvement, but the English text is best explained as modern-style revelatory composition (or deception) rather than a clean translation of an A.D. 400 American codex.”

Prompt 2
Now let's (possibly) relax the assumption that the modern production of the Book of Mormon was James-Randi-level miraculous (maybe it was--that is for your to decide). Now what we have is the actual real-world evidence of how it was produced; Joseph Smith claimed he found the plates, he wrote a pair of witness statements that 11 people signed, a few other people say they incidentally saw the alleged plates, the alleged plates disappeared, Charles Anthon may or may not have certified the characters, a relatively complex book was produced relatively fast, it was produced in weird ways that seemed like a show to the scribes (e.g. hiding behind a curtin or putting face in hat), etc.

Given the entirety of the real-world evidence from the 1820's, which hypothesis is more likely: the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an actual ancient American codex that tells the 1000-year story of a a real people, or the hypothesis that in an elaborate conspiracy, Sydney Rigdon was involved much earlier than we believed, created the artifact out of tin, and helped produce the original text that Joseph Smith then dictated  "translation" process? If those are the only two options on the table, which is more likely?

~200 words max

ChatGPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 11m 1s >

If those are truly the only two options, the Rigdon‑involved conspiracy is more likely than “an accurate translation of a real ancient American codex covering 1,000 years of real history.”

Reason: the ancient-codex hypothesis has to carry a very heavy stack of extraordinary claims (ancient literate tradition on metal plates in the Americas, correct preservation, correct translation, plates then removed, witnesses’ experiences being straightforwardly veridical, etc.) while the publicly checkable physical evidence (the plates) is unavailable.

That said, the specific Rigdon version you propose is not strongly supported by the 1820s record either: the early documentary link placing Rigdon in contact with Smith before the Book of Mormon is thin, and the “Rigdon wrote it earlier” narrative depends a lot on later recollections and inference.

So I’d put it like this: Rigdon conspiracy > ancient codex, but only because the ancient-codex claim is so evidentially expensive. If I weren’t forced into just these two, I’d consider “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” more plausible than either.

[smac97]

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

Spencer, the alien/Satan comments from years ago were not positive claims about what actually happened. They were illustrations about comparative probability.

The Book of Mormon exists.  The text exists and must be accounted for.

The statements of the witnesses must be accounted for.

The Plates must be accounted for.

In your empiricist-centric worldview, space aliens and Satan are "more likely" explanations for these things than the narrative presented by Joseph Smith.  You're willing to go that far as opposed to accepting Joseph's narrative.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

Here’s the structure of the point.

If a proposed explanation requires overturning large, interlocking domains of well-confirmed physics, biology, neuroscience, and history, then its prior probability becomes extremely low.

You are only proving DCP's point.

You have no alternative explanation for things that really do need to be explained.  Your supposed rationalist position doesn't do that.  And to the extent it does, you posit that space aliens and Satan are "more likely" explanations for the Book of Mormon than Joseph's narrative and the statements of the witnesses.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

That doesn’t mean it’s logically impossible. It means it conflicts with a vast body of independently confirmed knowledge.

Once you reach that conclusion, then any alternative explanation that does not require overturning those domains — even a bizarre one — can be comparatively more plausible. Not because it is likely. Not because I affirm it. But because it does not require rewriting the rest of our understanding of reality.

Sidney Rigdon, Space Aliens or Satan as the source of The Book of Mormon: "More likely" and "{do} not require rewriting the rest of our understanding of reality."

Joseph Smith's narrative re: the source of The Book of Mormon: "Just not possible."

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

That is not “anything but that.”

It is precisely "anything but that."  I can't think of a more "anything but that" alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon than your "Space Aliens and Satan" stuff.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

It is coherence across domains of evidence.

I see.  You have "evidence" that space aliens and/or Satan are the "more likely" source of the Book of Mormon?

I'm all ears.  Please lay out this evidence.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

If someone claims a perpetual motion machine exists, I don’t need a detailed alternative engineering diagram to reject the claim. The conflict with thermodynamics is sufficient.

That's an intriguing analogy.  Here, we are not claiming that the Book of Mormon exists.  It indisputably does exist.  Same goes for the statements of the witnesses.  The existence of these things needs to be accounted for.

Your go-to "more likely" explanation is space aliens and/or Satan.  

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

Likewise, if I conclude that the Book of Mormon’s supernatural claims conflict with extremely well-supported background knowledge, then I am rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide a fully worked counter-theory of how every detail unfolded.

Not looking for a "fully worked counter-theory," at least not yet.  A plausibly coherent and evidence-based one will do.  Then we can dig down and see whether it accounts for the data, is evidence-based, and so on.

Consider these remarks by Daniel Peterson: 

Quote

Daniel C. Peterson said:

A knowledgeable academic friend who does not believe in the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon once asked me, since it seems that the plates were not actually necessary to the translation process and were sometimes not even present in the room, what purpose they served. I responded that I did not know, exactly, except for one thing: They are an indigestible lump in the throats of people like him who contend that there were no Nephites but that Joseph Smith was nonetheless an inspired prophet. If the plates really existed, somebody made them. And if no Nephites existed to make them, then either Joseph Smith, or God, or somebody else seems to have been engaged in simple fraud. The testimony of the witnesses exists, I think, to force a dichotomous choice: true or false? 

Roger, you are perhaps the best Anti-Mormon I have ever seen.  Others are more well-known, but I've spent many years listening to you and am convinced you are at or near the top of the heap in terms of critics who are genuinely well-read and well-informed about the Church and its history and doctrine.  And you have the formidable intellectual chops to lay out reasoning and evidence to the best of your ability.  And perhaps most important of all, you have the willingness to do these things in an adversarial construct, and a track record of actually speaking and arguing/debating with Latter-day Saints about these things. 

I cannot think of another critic or dissident who matches you as to these matters.  The exmormon.org folks stay in their enclave and actively squelch Latter-day Saint voices.  John Dehlin and Bill Reel and RFM likewise stay in their carefully-controlled and curated venues. Shallow provocateurs are legion.  Flash-in-the-pan types like Ryan McKnight and Kate Kelly barely even try any of this.  Vogel, Metcalfe, Bagley, etc. have all engaged in substantive argument as to Latter-day Saint topics that are more, well, arguable (Joseph Smith's polygamy, for example), but they seldom - if ever - do so in an adversarial construct.  Vogel's "pious fraud" theory is perhaps the best on offer, but to my recollection he has never really responded to critiques of his theory, such as:

• No, Dan, That’s Still Not History
• Truth and Method: Reflections on Dan Vogel’s Approach to the Book of Mormon  Vogel and Christensen have had back-and-forth published arguments, but this was quite a while ago.  More recently, Dan and Brian Hales have sort of had a back-and-forth, with Hales writing a brief critique of Dan's "Charisma Under Pressure" and posting it on Amazon as a reader review.  Interestingly, though, Hales' comment, though preserved in a few other places (here and here), has been removed from the reader reviews on Amazon (these reviews even include two rebuttals to Hales').
• Seer or Pious Fraud?

I say all this to express my genuine appreciation for your efforts over the years to advance the most robust Anti-Mormon arguments available, and your willingness to do so in an adversarial construct.  Whatever our disagreements have been over the years, I admire both your intellect, your putting your thoughts out there for critique, and your willingness to engage in substantive discussion and debate about your thoughts.

When all is said and done, though, you fail, and fail significantly, when you refuse to meaningfully engage the points Daniel Peterson and others have been raising for years about the Book of Mormon, particularly A) the physical reality of the Plates, B) the statements from the Three and Eight Witnesses, and C) the source/authorship of the text. 

You state above that you are "rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide" a plausible, coherent, evidence-based alternative explanation for these things.  It seems that the best you can come up with is Space Aliens and/or Satan.  Or even worse, you are not even willing to try. 

Daniel Peterson's 2016 FAIR talk remains, for me, a compelling challenge to critics of the Church as pertaining to the Book of Mormon:

The Logic Tree of Life, or, Why I Can’t Manage to Disbelieve

Some excerpts:

Quote

But one of the arguments I will make, it’s the one I’m going to outline today, just very briefly – this wasn’t what I had intended to speak about this year, but then it just seemed to me that I needed to say it. Maybe there’s one person out there. The nice thing about my saying that is you can’t falsify this. There may be somebody out there, you know, who needs this. Or maybe I’m just hallucinating. I don’t know.

But one of the arguments I would make is simply that I have been unable – and I think I have tried seriously and honestly – to construct a case or construct an explanation of the Book of Mormon other than Joseph Smith’s that really accounts for all the data. I can construct a case – and other people have – that explain elements of the Book of Mormon, say, “Well this was borrowed from such and such a book.” Or, “You know, maybe this happened and this is why the witnesses thought they saw this or that.”

I cannot claim to match the scope and breadth of DCP's reading and knowledge, but I have read quite a lot, and I have listened quite a lot.  I have spent many years trying to give critics of the Church a fair hearing.  And in all those years and despite all that effort, I have been unable to find a critic who, as DCP put it, can "construct a case or construct an explanation of the Book of Mormon other than Joseph Smith’s that really accounts for all the data."  Your "Space Aliens or Satan" thing is just the most recent iteration of the inability of critics to do this.

Quote

But it gets to be pretty complex sometimes. You need so many different explanations that it begins to look like, well – I don’t know if any of you know what these are; I mean certainly the younger generation may not – a Rube Goldberg sort of contraption where there’s just so much that’s been built into this to make the device work that it gets to be ridiculous.

You have previously asserted (as opposed to "shown" or "demonstrated") that "the evidence against the Book of Mormon" is "quite literally overwhelming."  So overwhelming, then, that you needn't even bother marshalling it when discussing the topic with someone who has, for some years now, demonstrated a fairly broad and substantial familiarity with the subject matter, and who has also spent many years listening to what critics like you have to offer by way of reasoning and evidence.

During this time I have also given the Church and its advocates a fair hearing.  Broadly speaking, what they have offered has been far more substantive and evidence-based than what you and yours have done.  Regarding alternative explanations for the Book of Mormon (which, again, you posit as having "quite literally overwhelming" evidence as to naturalistic origins), I think DCP is quite correct when he characterizes your offerings as "a Rube Goldberg sort of contraption where there’s just so much that’s been built into this to make the device work that it gets to be ridiculous."

The Latter-day Saints have brought the receipts.  You have brought "Space Aliens and Satan."  Sadly, despite your formidable intellect, you have placed yourself alongside John Weldon, an evangelical apologist who critiqued the Mosser/Owen article "Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?"  Owen then responded with some trenchant remarks to Mr. Welddon, an excerpt of which I find quoteworthy:

Quote

But I must move on to appendix 6. I find it highly revealing that Mr. Weldon makes two admissions with regard to the complaints raised by Carl Mosser and myself. He cites us to the following effect: "The authors [Ankerberg and Weldon] constantly belittle their opponents---always questioning either their intelligence or integrity." Notice Brother Weldon's admissions: "It's hardly that we constantly questioned the intelligence of all Mormons, but we did question the intelligence of Mormon leaders, apologists, writers, and scholars at points of defending Mormonism. Because we do not think it is intelligent to defend Mormonism." Also: "We did not constantly belittle our opponents, as Mosser and Owen charge, but it is true we did belittle them at places." Again, the intellectual arrogance displayed here is astounding. Since Mormonism is wrong, therefore, those who defend Mormonism are not intelligent. But once again, over 10 million perfectly intelligent people all over the world reject Mr. Weldon's premise: They don't agree that Mormonism is a false religion! And their scholars are defending their truth claims on historical grounds; whereas Brother Weldon would have us refuse to engage them on an intellectual level, and simply declare them unintelligent for defending what is assumed to be untrue.  To quote again: "Frankly, this is our view of Mormon theology and apologetics. The truth about Mormon apologetics is that its scholarship in defense of Mormonism is unimportant and of little value." Who on earth does Mr. Weldon expect to convince with a question-begging, exclusion by definition employing, and I must say, thoroughly unchristian argument like that?!

This is how I take your current posture.  You likewise "refuse to engage" Latter-day Saints "on an intellectual level" as to A) the physical reality of the Plates, B) the statements from the Three and Eight Witnesses, and C) the source/authorship of the text.  Instead, you declare that "the evidence against the Book of Mormon" is "quite literally overwhelming."

Whelp.  Okey doke.  Dan Peterson.  Bill Hamblin.  John Tvedtnes.  Don Bradley.  Stephen Smoot.  John Gee.  Kerry Muhlestein.  Brian and Laura Hales.  Matt Roper.  The list of Latter-day Saint scholars who have made meaningful contributions to substantiating the claimed origins of the Book of Mormon is quite long, and I find those cumulative efforts to be quite good.  Evidence-based.  Reasoned.  Persuasive.

In contrast, if undemonstrated assertions and "Space Aliens and Satan are 'More Likely'"-style are the best you can do, I'll leave you to it.  Meanwhile, what Owen said back in 1999 is orders of magnitude more correct than it was then: "{Latter-day Saints} are defending their truth claims on historical grounds," whereas their critics - including you - "would have us refuse to engage them on an intellectual level."

You have stated: "I am rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide a fully worked counter-theory of how every detail unfolded."  What Owen said of Weldon I find similarly applicable to you and your failure/refusal to address the foregoing issues:

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I note at the beginning of appendix 1 that Mr. Weldon writes: "The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) publishes literature in defense of Mormonism, especially the Book of Mormon ." This statement is a factual error, not in terms of what is stated, but what goes conspicuously unstated. As Carl Mosser and I have extensively documented, FARMS does far more than simply defend the Book of Mormon: They are actively engaged in "Ancient Research." They are not FMS; they are FARMS. Why is this important? Because, by ignoring FARMS involvement in the wider field of academic historical research, Mr. Weldon hides from his readers (most of whom probably have little exposure to FARMS) the fact that many of the scholars associated with this organization are respected experts in fields directly pertinent to LDS apologetic claims; fields such as Second Temple Judaism, Ancient Near Eastern literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Egyptology. By contrast, no researcher currently involved in apologetic responses to LDS scholarship has any acknowledged expertise in such areas. THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM, WHICH IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY, NO MATTER HOW LONG WE HIDE OUR HEADS IN THE SAND. How on earth can our pastors, most of whom have at best a M.Div. level seminary training, be expected to give their flocks substantive replies to the FARMS literature which is increasingly being used in LDS proselytizing activities? How can our laypeople successfully convince their Mormon friends of the superior plausibility of the truth claims of orthodox Christianity when our researchers in the apologetics community have no better arguments to offer than: FARMS scholarship is obviously wrong, because we already know Mormonism is a false religion? Put yourself in the Mormon's shoes. Would you find that to be a convincing argument?

Speaking as a "Mormon," I can answer the bolded question above: "No, I would not find that to be a convincing argument."

More from DCP:

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{T}o me one of the arguments for the Book of Mormon is simply this, that in a sense the Book of Mormon survives after all these years when it really shouldn’t.

This is the shallow product, as some believe, of a shallow con artist on the American frontier with a couple of months of education. And yet, look at it, look at it. It’s doing pretty well. It holds up quite nicely.

But I go even further. My problem is that I see problems with all the alternative explanations, and to me they’re lethal.

Yep.  That is what I think as well.  In 2026, the best alternative explanation the best and brightest of our critics have been able to formulate as to the Book of Mormon is A) that Space Aliens and Satan are a "more likely" explanation, and B) that they are not "obligated" to present any further argument or evidence or reasoning.

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Now, one way of thinking about it is the metaphor of a maze. If you’ve done a maze, mazes can be very large and complex; you might have done a simple little one in a magazine or something. One of the ways that you do them is to take your pencil or your pen and you trace different routes, and eventually you find out, woops, this one doesn’t work. You know, I can’t get to the center, to the goal this way. I have to go back, retrace my steps, and find the one that does work your way through. Now if the maze is big enough, you could conceivably be at it for a very, very long time before you find, if you ever did in this life, find the proper answer, the proper solution to the maze. You just keep taking wrong tracks. But eventually, you hit a wall, literally, in the case of one like this, you hit a hedge, you can’t go any further, and you realize you’ve taken a wrong turn. You have to go back and start over again.

My argument would be that all of the counter-explanations of the Book of Mormon that I’ve looked at – and I think I’ve looked at all of them – run into walls. You eventually run into something where, it simply can’t get you there. It can’t explain everything that needs to be explained. And so I sometimes see, well, I’ve had people tell me, “Look, I don’t owe you an explanation for the Book of Mormon. All I have to say is I don’t believe it.”

"'Look, I don’t owe you an explanation for the Book of Mormon. All I have to say is I don’t believe it.'"

Not materially distinguishable from your comments above.

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Well, of course, you know, you can make your own decision, lead your life the way you want to, but it seems to me intellectually honestly that you really should try to come up with a counter-explanation. If you think Joseph Smith wrote it, how did he do it? If you think there were no plates, what’s going on there? You need to come up with another explanation.

I think this is correct.

You have no actual obligation to do this, other than an intellectual one.

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But you need to come up with a counter-explanation, a complete, comprehensive theory, that accounts for all of the things, not just one aspect, all of the data. And that’s hard to do, and I would say so far I just don’t believe it can be done.

Again, you can explain this or that, but sometimes you have to invoke explanations that make something so complex that it gets to be ridiculous.

So "ridiculous," in fact, that I think this is why folks like you refuse to even try.

I give plaudits to Dan Vogel and Ann Taves, even though I find their alternative explanations to be underwhelming and insufficient to address, as DCP put it, "all the data."

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And again, I suggest another metaphor: The Ptolemaic model of the cosmos. Initially it seemed fairly simple. But the trouble is that it got more and more complex as people began to notice, for example, that some of the planets moved in retrograde motion from time to time. How do you explain that? There were certain curious phenomena that couldn’t be explained by the ordinary Ptolemaic system and so people kept invoking cycles, then epicycles. You know, the planet would be not just a dot going in an orbit around the earth but then there would be a center dot but the planet was orbiting that dot and going around. That would explain some things. And then it would be a little orbit going around a dot that was on a dot going around the dot going around the earth, and it got to be ridiculous.

If you look at some of the late attempts to salvage the Ptolemaic model or a modified form of the Ptolemaic model to engage in what was called then “saving the appearances,” it gets to be extraordinarily complex. The last great Ptolemaic astronomer was a truly great astronomer. You may have seen his name, Tycho Brahe. He was a Danish astronomer, the foremost, the master of all of the astronomical data of his day, right about the time of Galileo, and so he didn’t accept the Copernican model. He just kept adding epicycles.

Now if you pressed them they would tell you, “This isn’t really how it works. We don’t know how it really works. This is just a kind of a mathematical, geometric model for how it could be made to work and account for the data we’re seeing.

But he held onto it. And one of the reasons he held onto it is that actually the Copernican model didn’t account for the data fully. We look at Copernicus now and we say, “What a genius. You know, he simplified everything. He got it right.” Well if you look at his actual model, it’s concentric circles around the sun. That doesn’t work. The heliocentric model of the solar system didn’t work really until Kepler came up with elliptical orbits. That actually made it work. And then it’s elegantly simple and everything.

But Copernicus’s system was actually less adequate at representing the data that people like Tycho Brahe had gathered than that weird Copernican model that he had done. Nevertheless, people abandoned the Ptolemaic model with Copernicus because the simplicity of it appealed to them. It had just gotten so complex, it was just unbelievable that it was this complex. Now I know there are critics who say, “Those desperate Mormon apologists are constructing cycles on epicycles and so on. Well I can speak for one: That’s not how I see it. And I actually see some of the attempts to explain the Book of Mormon as being so complex and so ad hoc that they really just, they’re not satisfying. There’s a certain, in science and history and so on, there’s a certain room for aesthetics. Mathematicians talk about it a lot. That, you know, you come to a solution of a mathematical problem, and it just is beautiful. It’s elegant. It’s simple.  That’s true in physics. If you talk to really cutting-edge, theoretical physicists, they will tell you quite often that at first there may not be data there, but they just know it’s true because the mathematics is so beautiful. It’s just so good. And so they wait for the data to come along to flesh it out.

The bolded part of the last paragraph.  That.

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Well I want to suggest something like that in this case, that to me, the explanation of Joseph Smith is simple and elegant, and the alternative explanations just don’t work and they get more and more complex and it’s just too much for me, and so I’ve said sometimes that I simply don’t have the faith to disbelieve Joseph Smith’s story. I just can’t get there. I can’t do it. And I’ve tried. I’ve really tried to give it a serious look. I cannot put together hallucinatory explanations of the witnesses and stealing from Solomon Spaulding and stealing from Ethan Smith, and I’m just mentioning a few, and putting it all together. Joseph Smith, this incredibly learned young man who’s sitting there on the frontier.

Again, plaudits to Dan Vogel.  I think you refuse to commit to any alternative explanation because you do not want to end up having to defend it, likely because you anticipate your alternative explanation will fail, that you will be hoisted by your own "I'm all about the empiricism" petard.

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All right, so let’s get with this.

These are the logical options as I see them: That Joseph either had plates or he didn’t have plates. And then there are subdivisions that you can follow through to see possible ways in which each of these might be the case.

Again, I think you will refuse to even explore this outline, let alone commit to any one strand of it.  Evidence and reasoning will not sustain such an effort.

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I remember my friend Bill Hamblin once being in communication with a one-time, fairly prominent, ex-member critic of the Church and of the Book of Mormon. And he said, “Look, let’s assume for a moment that you’re right and that Joseph Smith did not have plates. Did he know that he didn’t have plates or did he think that he had the plates? In other words, was he a conscious deceiver, or was he in some sense mad?”

To which this critic responded: “I don’t have to lower myself to your simplistic little dichotomies.”

"To which this critic responded: 'I don’t have to lower myself to your simplistic little dichotomies.'"  This anecdote was shared in 2016.  Not sure how long before that the critic actually said it.

Put another way in 1945: "I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church."

Put another way in 2026: "I am rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide a fully worked counter-theory of how every detail unfolded."

The decades have not been kind to our critics.  They are not advancing in their reasoning very well.

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Well, see, I think it’s intellectually incumbent upon people like that to, come on, give us an answer to this. Otherwise it’s like guerrilla warfare. You attack and attack and attack, you always withdraw, you never defend territory. You never have to stake out your own explanation, which then will be subject to criticism and attack.

Well to me, that simple-minded little dichotomy that this person refused to give an answer to. or refused to take part in, is still a really important question. If Joseph Smith didn’t have the plates, did he know that he didn’t have plates, or did he think that he did?

OK, so let’s look a little more in detail: Joseph had no plates. This is what most critics say; there were none.

All right, the first option is that he knew that he had no plates. OK. Now, this runs into a number of issues. You have to ask first of all, Was this deliberate, was it cynical or was it pious? Was he a cynical fraud, just a con-artist, 19th century con man?

I think you run into issues right there. One of the places you run into issues is with Joseph Smith’s writings, which are now being published, the personal writings of Joseph Smith, the Joseph Smith Papers. If Joseph Smith is not sincere, then I can’t judge sincerity in another human being.

This is a man who in his most personal private writings, letters to his wife, personal journal entries, they’re full of prayers. He’s praying all the time. Oh, Lord, help your servant, help me. Writing to his wife, Emma, praying, expressing prayers for her. Telling his children to be sure they say their prayers at night, this sort of thing. All the time coming across as a believer. There’s nothing, certainly there’s nothing at all in the early Joseph Smith that you could say points to someone who’s a cynical, manipulative deceiver. It’s just not there. He doesn’t let the mask fall at all. If he is one, there’s no evidence for it that I can see.

All salient observations, these.

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Now I know some people will come back and they will say what about plural marriage later on? Well that’s a difficult case. And we can argue that. I’m willing to argue that. I don’t want to do it here. That’s quite far afield. But I’m talking about the early Joseph Smith. I don’t think you see the cynical deceiver anywhere in Joseph’s character. But you certainly don’t see it in 1828. You don’t see it in 1830. This is a young man, I mean, you even have descriptions of him going out into the woods to pray, just as he says he did with the First Vision. This was a habit of his. He would go out into the woods to pray when he was concerned about something, when he was worried, when he was upset or indecisive and so on. There’s a continual pattern of this kind of thing. He is a believer. If you can see anything from the writings that are coming out, he really believes that he’s receiving revelations. He’s not a cynical con artist.

And there’s other evidence. Would a cynical con artist have put up with some of the stuff he endured?

Think of Liberty Jail. If you’ve ever been in Liberty Jail, you know how small that area was and how grim and dark it was. I had the occasion, the privilege a couple of years ago, I guess, to go back and speak in Liberty Jail. I never thought I would have that chance. It was for the anniversary of the building of the visitors center, I think. And I stood actually above the space in which Joseph Smith was confined. And what really worried me was I noticed they put the podium in such a place that I was standing on the trap door. And I just wondered, you know, if the talk goes on too long or they don’t like it, does it just open up, woosh, I’m down there with Joseph and Sidney.

But he was genuinely miserable. I think you have to understand that he came close to despair. You can imagine what it must have been like for him there. When he was writing this epistle, the famous epistle in Section 121: “O Lord, where art thou?”, I don’t think you should see that as just literary flourish or play acting. He really is feeling abandoned. This is a terrible time for him.

And it’s made all the more terrible by the fact that, well, I’ve got ahead of myself, by the fact that the saints are being driven out and he’s not able to do anything about it. Can you imagine? If you had any trace of human conscience at all, if you were lying, this would be almost impossible to endure. And he would have reached his absolute low point, but he comes through it faith intact, as does his brother Hyrum, one of the witnesses, so on and so forth.

Think of what else happened to the saints because of his claims. Can you imagine, again, if you were just making up a story and there were people literally dying for you, for this story you’re telling, gosh, you would have to be a sociopath to be able to put up with that, but there’s, again, no evidence that he was anything of the kind.

And then, of course, there’s his own ultimate martyrdom. He actually thought he was going to die at Liberty, but he did die just a few years later. And he pretty well knew that that was going to be the end result. Richard Anderson published an article years ago,[2] which didn’t get wide circulation, showing Joseph’s awareness of the fact that after about 1838-1839, that he was going to die fairly shortly, that there had been a kind of divine protection over him but he sensed that that had been, or would be shortly, removed, that his work was drawing to its end.

Now it’s easy to sit here and say, well, a con artist might go through it all to the end, but not many would. Again this argues for sincerity rather than cynicism and conscious deceit. He does actually die there and he dies faithful to his testimony. So does Hyrum Smith, and that’s striking to me. That Hyrum, the elder brother, accompanies him to Carthage Jail.

And, of course, there’s also the evidence that even if you decide that Joseph is a conscious deceiver, there are other people who are seeing thing with him. Most of his revelatory experiences are shared. After the First Vision, over and over and over again there are other people there who see things, heft things with him.

So the cynical deception thing just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t do it.

I concur.

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Here’s one of my favorite stories – that’s Mary Musselman Whitmer, who is one of the witnesses to the plates, the 12th or 13th witness, she’s been called. And her story is a remarkable one. We have at least two chains of accounts telling about her experience of having seen the plates, which she didn’t expect to do. And it was under very prosaic circumstances. Some people have told me, and I’ve mentioned this here before, oh yeah, the witnesses were just in some sort of religious ecstasy, right? They hallucinated this. She’s milking the cows.

And I didn’t grow up on a farm but my father did. And he told me that milking cows was not a mystical experience for him. In fact, I’ll just mention, my father was convinced – he grew up in a Lutheran family in North Dakota – he was convinced that he was going to hell because, he said, you couldn’t milk cows without swearing. Because just as you got the milk pail filled, the cow would stick its filthy hoof in the milk or the cow would hit you in the face with its filthy tail, he said. And he would spend time sometimes with his city cousins, and he said they’re going to heaven because they don’t have to milk cows, and I’m going to hell because I do. It’s not fair. It raises the problem of divine justice and the problem of evil in a really acute form, you know, if you’ve been raised on a farm and you have to put up with that.

She’s out there milking the cows and she’s not in a good mood because the menfolk are in there translating the Book of Mormon, and she’s having to do all the work and feed them. So she’s not feeling especially spiritual. That’s when the messenger comes and says, look, you’re having a hard time, right? It’s only fair that you get a special look at these plates so you will feel better about things. And she did. She felt considerably better.

But, again, how would Joseph Smith, the cynical deceiver, explain that?

A fair question, this.

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Then you’ve got to bring in something else. All these people are hallucinating, right? Mary Whitmer, while milking the cows, hallucinates the plates. Oh it’s possible, but good grief, it strains credulity just a little bit.

Yep.  You can't go with the "hallucinatory" theory because of evidence over here, but neither can you go with the "conscious fraud" theory because of evidence over there.

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OK, so here’s another possibility: He wasn’t a cynical fraud but he was a fraud nonetheless. He was pious fraud.

This is a little harder to deal with because the evidence for his sincerity and piety are all over the place. So, but still nevertheless, maybe he had no plates, he just somehow convinced a bunch of other people that he did. But that’s, again, really hard to trust or to take seriously, because too many other people see these things.

Now I’ve gotten lectures within the past few days on, you know, the weaknesses of eyewitness testimony. And it’s true, sometimes eyewitness testimony is weak. For example, if somebody comes to you, you open the door and the person pulls a gun on you. Later on you may not be able to remember what color his shirt was, because you’re kind of focused on the gun that’s aimed at your face.

So eyewitness testimony can be unreliable. But for things like this we have multiple people saying we saw and took considerable amount of time, in some cases, in the case of the eight, we hefted, we felt this in these plates, it seems to me you’re really, really pushing it to say, well, you know, eyewitness testimony just isn’t reliable. In fact, I offered in a discussion I had the other day, I said, look, I’m just going to come over with a sledgehammer and demolish your car. You can come out and watch. And my defense will be, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. How does he know he actually saw that? It’s notoriously unreliable. So even though I stood there for 20 minutes with a sledgehammer and pounded his car in, that doesn’t count for anything.

We take eyewitness testimony seriously all the time unless we have strong reason to reject it. My argument is, these people do have strong reason to reject it, but it’s not a good reason. They just don’t want to believe it. So these witnesses alone among witnesses who have experiences with hefty material objects and so on, they become totally unreliable, not worth taking seriously at all.

So the pious fraud thing doesn’t work. Pious he was. But the fraudulent thing – that he had no plates, and knew that he had no plates – doesn’t stand up for those reasons and others.

So, you know, you have to get in a Simpsons reference. I think my children were educated more by the Simpsons than by school. So there you have the pious fraud, or another one.

But maybe he thought he had plates. Maybe he was nuts. Maybe in some sense he was a dissociative personality, he didn’t know what was real around him and so on. Well where is the evidence for that?

Pious fraud doesn't seem to work, either.

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Joseph seems to be pretty much in touch with reality. But even so, again, you run into problems.

Suppose you say, all right, Joseph was hallucinating the plates. What about all the other people? Did he really manage to find the eight local yokels who would also hallucinate plates just in time? I mean it’s … I don’t know how you even pull this off. You’ve got the eight witnesses, you’ve got the three, you’ve got multiple other witnesses I’ve mentioned before. Some of my favorites are the people who spend time with the plates when Joseph isn’t around – Emma and his sister Katherine feeling the plates, you know, feeling the D-shaped rings that hold them together, ruffling along the edges, you know, and having the top plate scrape across the one below. Again, you can say all you want: Joseph thought he had plates, he was just mentally ill, but then you’ve got a whole bunch of other people and they seem to be densely concentrated around the area where Joseph lives – something in the water that they all imagine plates all at the same time. It’s remarkable. That’s almost a sign of divine intervention right there, that you have such luck to find so many crazy people so densely concentrated and available to him.

All right, so the alternative is: Joseph had plates. He didn’t have no plates, he had plates. And here are the possibilities as I see them:

Maybe he made them. Well, all right, yeah, he made them.

All right, now you have to come up with evidence that Joseph was able to make plates. What evidence is there that he was a metallurgist or a blacksmith or anything of the kind that he could make plates?

Again, a very fair question, and one I think you will never address.  

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Well, there is no evidence and so there was a time when people were arguing that it was actually Oliver Cowdery who had blacksmithing experience. Now if you’ve read Longfellow’s old poem[3] about the blacksmith with broad and sinewy arms, you know, his mighty massive chest and all this sort of thing, that’s not Oliver Cowdery. He was a very slight man and he died very young of something like tuberculosis. He was not a powerful, muscled guy. And there is no evidence whatsoever that he was a blacksmith.

But trying to invoke him as a blacksmith is already an admission that Joseph Smith making the plates doesn’t really work; it doesn’t really hold up.

Now there are people who have still suggested it. Dan Vogel has suggested recently or relatively recently, and a lot of people have picked up on this. There’s no evidence for it. Where do you get that much gold? Do you realize how much gold that would be? We’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gold in today’s prices. I don’t know what gold is today; I haven’t looked. But the plates are generally estimated at about 60 pounds. Even if they’re gold alloy, that’s a lot of gold. How many of you have that, you know?

More salient questions our critics never really address.

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And then it disappears, right? The family had this enormously valuable artifact and then they lost it or something? And they continued to live in poverty? It’s really rather strange.

Where did the Smiths get the money to get that much gold? There’s a line from Martin Harris that I’ve quoted before, I really enjoy it, where at one point before he’s an official witness Martin actually sits with the little wooden box that the plates were in on his lap and he was struck by how heavy it was, because it was heavier than a rock would have been or if it had been filled with dirt. You know how gold is unusually heavy, gold and lead both. And so Martin Harris’s remark afterward is that it was heavy enough that he knew it had to be either gold or lead and he knew that Joseph had not enough credit to buy so much lead. I don’t know if he meant that to be funny or not, but I think it’s funny. Because, well, if it’s not lead then obviously Joseph went out and got the cheaper stuff, gold.

But he has a material object of considerable heft and it’s difficult to explain that and it’s difficult to imagine that he made plates that would gull the yokels. You have to imagine this. Again, I go back to Jeff Lindsay, who, I think it’s Jeff Lindsay. Or maybe I’ve written on this, I can’t remember. Maybe I’m losing my mind. But the idea that you have this sort of specialty forge to the south of Palmyra where gold is coming in pound after pound after pound and Joseph and Oliver are there pounding out these plates and creating … remember there are other artifacts – the Liahona, the breastplate, the sword of Laban, all this sort of stuff. They’re absolutely first-rate metalworkers. And nobody in Palmyra notices the smoke belching out of this place and the daily deliveries of gold ore? A little strange. There were no secrets in a place like that and so it’s hard to imagine that.

So both the cynical fraud and the pious fraud sort of go out of the way there and the evidence that he made them is nil.

"The evidence that he made them is nil."  Yep.

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So what about, he received them from somebody else? Well, two possibilities: he received them from a contemporary or from a non-contemporary.

Now, years ago I had a fellow who was arguing for a thesis of an unknown conspiracy that had created the plates … the Book of Mormon, rather, not the plates; he didn’t think there were any plates. But this group had created the Book of Mormon at some time. I asked him if he could specify the time. No he couldn’t; it could have been any time within the previous three hundred years. Was there any particular place that they had done it? No he didn’t know that. I said, well, you know, of course you don’t because there’s no evidence for this. You’re just making this up. I called them the Illuminati. Because it’s the idea that there is a conspiracy out there that is so secret that there is no evidence for it at all. We don’t who they are. We don’t know when they did it. We don’t know why they did it. We don’t know how they did it, why they chose Joseph Smith, nothing. You just assume they’re out there. This is a case of being thesis-driven to the point of absurdity, that you need somebody else to do it because you know Joseph Smith didn’t do it, so some mythical person did it, or persons. How many? He didn’t know.

Anyway, it, to me, is on the level of Harvey the invisible rabbit. Although in Harvey it turned out there was one. I’m not expecting to find the Illuminati any time soon.

So there’s no evidence for contemporaries. We just don’t have any evidence for the plates coming from anybody else.

No evidence for this one, either.

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Maybe he received them from a non-contemporary.

Well I have a candidate.

What I would argue here, see, I’m just kind of going through this very rapidly, but I would argue that I put this last because I think every other avenue has been blocked off. You can’t do it. And so it leaves you with the one explanation that’s still out there.

Now I know for some people this is impossible too. But you may remember the line from Sherlock Holmes where he explained his method of deduction. Which was simply, you have to eliminate all the things that are impossible and whatever you are left with, however improbable, must be the explanation.

Now there are people out there saying, “no, no, no, you don’t get books from angels”, to quote Sterling McMurrin. He already had a predetermined dogmatic position, so it couldn’t be that way. Or, what’s his name, Morgan, Dale Morgan, who said, look, I can accept any explanation except the one the Church gives. Well, if that’s your position, then fine. This avenue is blocked off for you too. So you have to go with another. Like the Illuminati. That will do. Because that’s more probable if you’re absolutely, resolutely opposed to the idea that an angel could have delivered the book to Joseph Smith, that’s what you’re left with.

But for those who allow for what William James called “live options,” that this could be true, then it seems to me that ultimately, in a sense, people are forced, should be forced, to this conclusion.

Now, I realize there are enough ambiguities out there, I’m oversimplifying, that not everybody will get to this position. But it’s the way I get there. It’s why I can’t take those other avenues. I’ve said, I can’t not believe, because, to me, Joseph Smith’s story is easier to credit than the explanations that have been proposed to account alternatively for what he claimed.

That last paragraph really resonates with me.  We as Latter-day Saints don't have all the answers, and there are some legitimate gaps and flaws in our position.  However, the Church's explanation is, in my view, more evidence-based and plausible than any of the alternative explanations proffered in the last <200 years (including Space Aliens and Satan).

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And there are other things, I mean, I haven’t gotten into these things, but the plausibility of Lehi’s trip down the coast of Arabia and then over from Nahom to the Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea. These things strike me as remarkable. And they shouldn’t be there if Joseph Smith were the shallow fraud that many claim him to be.

We pointed this out before – the existence of the Nahom altar piece in exactly the right place dating to exactly the right time, indicating that name NHM was there.

There you have the Indian Ocean sea coast where you’ve got a place that actually looks, by the standards of Arabia, believe me, Bountiful. How many of you have been to Saudi Arabia? It makes the area around Las Vegas look like a tropical rainforest.

I’ve always loved the weather reports when I’m in Europe, you know, they will do worldwide weather reports and they announce the weather today in the Arabian Peninsula is hot and dry. Yeah.

There are new world correlations that to me are extraordinarily interesting. I’m just going to zip through these.

You have the testimony of people like Emma Smith about her husband’s incapacity to dictate or to write even a good letter.

You have the evidence that was alluded to already in this conference. I’m not going to propose William Tyndale as the ghost author or the head of the committee or anything like that, but you have this Early Modern English, which to me is striking because it just seems to me so unlikely that Joseph could have made that up. Now maybe that is evidence for the Illuminati. Heck, if you don’t know who they were or where they were or when they were, maybe they were Early Modern English speakers.

But it would be the only evidence that I know of. But, again, it’s a very difficult thing to explain naturalistically about the Book of Mormon, that it has this very curious language in it which doesn’t seem to be Joseph Smith’s hick upstate New York language. It doesn’t seem to be necessarily the language of the King James Bible. It seems to have another source. Well, again, that points to a non-contemporary source for the Book of Mormon.

You have chiasmus. We’ve heard that discussed here already and of course it’s one of the more famous bits of evidence for the Book of Mormon textually.

The positive evidences are pretty good, though still not sufficient.  I think we'll always be situated to accept or reject these things principally on faith.

Quote

I just want to say that … yeah, I have gone overtime anyway. I was trying not to. I just want to say, to me, I’ve been very, very simple here. We could discuss this for hours; we could discuss it for days. But to me the alternative explanations, which I think I’ve summarized here, they’re the only ones that are really on offer, they simply don’t work.

Now you can say, well, Joseph’s doesn’t work either, and, OK, if your dogmatic stance is there is no supernatural, there are no such books, God doesn’t deliver books to people, there is no God, well then, yeah, I understand you have a problem with this. But then I think you should have a problem with this. That’s partly what the challenge of the Book of Mormon is. That it presents you with a hard artifact.

If it were just Joseph Smith imagining that he saw God, or something like that, that would be one thing, but in the case of the Book of Mormon, you have a tangible object. In fact, in the early 19^th Century you had a very heavy tangible object – the plates – which demands an explanation. And I don’t see any good alternative explanations on display anywhere. And so if someone wanted to ask me, what are the best arguments for the Book of Mormon, I would say one of them is simply that you guys can’t come up with a good counter-explanation.

Yep.

Quote

You can’t explain it. You might be able to explain hypothetically, this or that aspect of it. But you can’t explain the whole thing, and parts of it are simply beyond your power to explain. So the standard response to the witnesses is to dismiss them. The standard response now is to say, well, they never actually saw anything. But they did and, you know, I’m repeating myself because it needs to be repeated. I’m hearing more and more often people who just say, well, they never actually claimed to touch any solid object. Oh yes they did. You’re just ignoring what they say.

Richard Bushman interestingly says in the case of early Mormonism it’s the critics not the Mormons who have to dispose of the early primary sources, the historical documents. You have to just get rid of them, because you have the witnesses saying, “Look, I held them.”

And then they say, well, they never actually claimed to touch them. Yes, Hyrum Smith says, I held them with these hands. Can he be any more clear?

Well, he didn’t really see them with his real eyes. He says, I saw them with these eyes. I don’t know what else he can say.

I remember a person on my mission who demanded to know whether there was any evidence for baptism for the dead in the Bible and so we, of course, opened up to 1 Corinthians 15:29, which he said wasn’t there. I said, “read it again.” “No, it’s not talking about baptism for the dead. It doesn’t even mention baptism for the dead.” We went over this for about five minutes. I was incredulous and finally I said, look, OK, I think were done. I mean if I can’t get you to … I mean, he read it aloud. And still wouldn’t say it mentioned anything about baptism for the dead. OK, fine, but when I run into people like that I don’t know what to do.

There are people who simply will not see. If you tell them about the witnesses, the witnesses say I saw with these eyes, I hefted with these hands, I saw them, I know what I’m talking about, then they say. well, they really didn’t claim to see them.

I have no idea what to do. Just move on to the next person.

I think what we need to do is what the Church has always done and encourage us to do: Approach the Book of Mormon with a seed of faith and hope, and see what happens.  Supplementary and secondary evidences are there, but they are not intended to replace confirmation of the Spirit via personal revelation.  

Quote

But for a person who’s open-minded, it seems to me the challenge the Book of Mormon makes is remarkable. Because it hits you right between the eyes just as, in a sense, the resurrection of Christ does. The tomb is empty, right? That would be a whole other talk. The tomb was empty. Everybody admits the tomb was empty. The Jews in Matthew admit it. The Mishnah admits it. Everybody admits it. Counter-explanation is that the disciples stole the body then hatched this amazingly brilliant plot to found a new world religion and get themselves crucified.  

But everyone admits that basic fact, that a few days after the crucifixion he wasn’t there. That’s irreducible. No one really disputes it, in antiquity or, for the most part, today, I don’t know anyone does. Even critics, even atheists, say, yeah, it was empty, probably because the body had been stolen or the body had been thrown to the dogs or something like that.

I think skepticism about an empty tomb 2,000 years ago is more understandable.  Plenty of room for evidence to have gone missing over the centuries.  The Plates, on the other hand, have lots of fairly recent and probative evidence.  They need to be accounted for.

Quote

But there are certain irreducible facts, and one of the irreducible facts is the Book of Mormon is real, that it exists, this early 19^th Century farm boy with very little education produced this amazing book, very complex book, which we’re still talking about today. And that there were people who claimed to see objects, and not just a few, a lot of them. It’s not just the 11 witnesses; it’s several more who claim to see and heft objects connected with it, objects which can have no other explanation, it seems to me, no plausible explanation other than they were delivered to Joseph in the way he said they were. And that’s really hard.

Well said.

Quote

Then I close with a comment from a good friend of mine years ago who left the church, years ago. But he said to me at one point, well, Joseph didn’t even claim necessarily to translate when the plates were there. So what’s the purpose of the plates? And I said, well, they’re an absolutely indigestible lump in the throat of people like you. That’s what they’re there for. Because you can’t explain them away. And they should give you pause. You ought to think about this and what it implies. Whatever else you may think about Mormon theology or our stance on gay marriage or the families of gays or our views of patriarchy and so on, there were plates. Where did they come from?

Per you: Space aliens and/or Satan are the "more likely" explanation.

Quote

And an image that I’ve cited many times before and I will do it again, and then close, you have the story of Madame du Deffand in France who is taken to the site of where Saint Denis or Saint Dionysius supposedly was beheaded. And then, he had insisted he didn’t want to be buried at that spot, so after his beheading he picked up his head and walked with it about a thousand meters away and put his head down where he wanted his shrine to be. And the person who’s telling her the story says, “Isn’t that a ridiculous story, can you believe he walked a thousand meters?” And her response is, “Well, I would think if you grant the first step, the distance is just details.”

Well, to me, it’s that Book of Mormon, those plates, the testimonies of the witnesses and so on, the presence of a tangible object right at the beginning, the rest is details, in a way. If you grant that, you’re stuck. Or you can refuse to grant it. But then you may still be stuck in a more serious and eternal way.

Yep.

Quote

I bear you my testimony the Book of Mormon is true, that it really is what it claims to be and the presence of that physical object in much the same way that the physical resurrection of Christ does, establishes its truth, that God actually intervened in this world, did something measurable, tangible, demonstrable and visible. We’re not left to just guess or follow Saint Thomas’s five ways to try to demonstrate that God exists. He left his fingerprint on something. He made it very clear and that is really, really important, and because of that, all that is done here at FAIR and all the work we do in the Church, all the building of temples and so on, all of this is justified, because there is a God, he cares about us, he intervenes in this world.

I bear you my testimony that’s true in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Good stuff, this.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

Rejecting an explanation is not the same thing as affirming a specific alternative.

Agreed.  

My point is that you cannot affirm a "specific alternative" without being hoisted by your own supposedly "empiricism" petard.  The closest you have come is Space Aliens and Satan.

11 hours ago, Analytics said:

The alien/Satan examples were rhetorical illustrations of that asymmetry. They were not endorsements.

Understood.  Space Aliens and Satan are the most plausible alternative explanation you can muster.

And Latter-day Saints are supposed to find this a compelling basis for setting aside Joseph's narrative?

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 25 by smac97

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Prompt
You are a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings in every world culture that has produced texts. Your expertise includes the ancient writings of Maya, Zapotec, Olmec, Aztec, Inca, Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Hittite, Phoenicia, etc. Additionally, you have deep expertise in the original manuscripts of the Hebrew bible, and know when each chapter and verse of the modern bible was most likely written. Furthermore, you have deep knowledge of science and world history and prehistory, including anthropology, sociology, history of technology, archaeometallurgy, population movements, geology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, evolutionary biology, historical migration studies, population genetics, historical biography, historical demography, and anthropological linguistics, with particular expertise in the history of the ancient middle east and the history and prehistory of the ancient Americas. You are also an expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias.

Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon. Somebody presents you with an English version of the Book of Mormon and asks you these specific questions:

1. Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex that was originally written on metal plates and compiled around the year A.D. 400, somewhere in the Americas?
2. What is the likelihood that this codex was compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America *and* is an historical record that tells a story of real people who lived over the prior 1,000 years?
3. If and only if you determine the answers to questions 1 and 2 are unlikely, address the Lloyd Christmas follow-up question, “unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?”
4. Based only on the text of the Book of Mormon, what is the most likely time and place of it being written? Finally, assume that it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin—assume that in a controlled environment, James Randi investigated how it was produced, concludes that it must have involved the supernatural and golden plates that were seen in the 1820’s and that not only were magically a part of the book’s writing, but also magically disappeared after 11 hand-picked witnesses saw them. James Randi declares these are real miracles and Joseph Smith wins the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
5. Under this new assumption that the modern production of the Book really is miraculous, please use correct Bayesian reasoning to update your beliefs in 1 and 2. Do you now believe the Book of Mormon is most likely an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? Please evaluate the relative plausibility of the following hypotheses: a- Joseph Smith wrote it by himself. b- That Joseph Smith wrote it, with the help of his brother, mother, and others, and that they put on what is essentially an elaborate magic show to make the production of the book look miraculous? c- That advanced aliens helped him write it. d- That some sort of a cosmic trixter (e.g. Q, the devil) helped him write it. e- Something else I haven’t listed. e- That it is exactly what orthodox Mormons believe: an authentic ancient codex that was written, preserved, and translated by the power of God.

Please limit your answer to 1,000 words, targeted it to a lay audience, and write it in conversational English.

I don't think this is a very helpful prompt for an LLM to say anything meaningful about the text. You are leading it too much to certain assumptions you want it to work within. My experience is that LLMs typically give "consensus" viewpoints at a general level but will then change their minds as soon as they are confronted with data that pushes against the consensus (especially because they are always semi-sycophantic). I once had a conversation with Chat-GPT in which it started off by saying the Book of Mormon was nearly impossible due to DNA concerns. But then I went through the DNA issues one by one, explained the apologetic rationale and so forth. It ended up finally giving me approximately a 15% chance that the Book of Mormon narrative could be true, in light of the limitations of DNA current evidence. I'm not saying the 15% figure is valid. I'm just saying that I could probably interact with the same LLM you used, frame the questions differently, and get a very different response.

My biggest concern is that within your framing, too many significant lines of evidence are missing (both pro and con), and the LLM hasn't considered the back and forth debates within each of those lines of evidence. 

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I put the question to ChatGPT 5.2 Pro. The objective was two-fold: to test the validity of my thinking, and see if it could do a better job at articulating my reasoning. Having reconsidered the issue, I stand by what I said in 2021, and offer the following prompts and responses to illustrate how I see it.

Prompt
You are a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings in every world culture that has produced texts. Your expertise includes the ancient writings of Maya, Zapotec, Olmec, Aztec, Inca, Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Hittite, Phoenicia, etc. Additionally, you have deep expertise in the original manuscripts of the Hebrew bible, and know when each chapter and verse of the modern bible was most likely written. Furthermore, you have deep knowledge of science and world history and prehistory, including anthropology, sociology, history of technology, archaeometallurgy, population movements, geology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, evolutionary biology, historical migration studies, population genetics, historical biography, historical demography, and anthropological linguistics, with particular expertise in the history of the ancient middle east and the history and prehistory of the ancient Americas. You are also an expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias.

Not sure what value this has.  You tell ChatGPT it is "a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings" of these various disciplines, therefore ChatGPT is actually such a polymath?  Is that what you are proposing?

You tell ChatGPT that it is an "expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias," therefore it actually is such an expert?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon.

What is the value of this assumption?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Somebody presents you with an English version of the Book of Mormon and asks you these specific questions:

1. Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex that was originally written on metal plates and compiled around the year A.D. 400, somewhere in the Americas?
2. What is the likelihood that this codex was compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America *and* is an historical record that tells a story of real people who lived over the prior 1,000 years?
3. If and only if you determine the answers to questions 1 and 2 are unlikely, address the Lloyd Christmas follow-up question, “unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?”
4. Based only on the text of the Book of Mormon, what is the most likely time and place of it being written? Finally, assume that it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin—assume that in a controlled environment, James Randi investigated how it was produced, concludes that it must have involved the supernatural and golden plates that were seen in the 1820’s and that not only were magically a part of the book’s writing, but also magically disappeared after 11 hand-picked witnesses saw them. James Randi declares these are real miracles and Joseph Smith wins the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
5. Under this new assumption that the modern production of the Book really is miraculous, please use correct Bayesian reasoning to update your beliefs in 1 and 2. Do you now believe the Book of Mormon is most likely an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? Please evaluate the relative plausibility of the following hypotheses: a- Joseph Smith wrote it by himself. b- That Joseph Smith wrote it, with the help of his brother, mother, and others, and that they put on what is essentially an elaborate magic show to make the production of the book look miraculous? c- That advanced aliens helped him write it. d- That some sort of a cosmic trixter (e.g. Q, the devil) helped him write it. e- Something else I haven’t listed. e- That it is exactly what orthodox Mormons believe: an authentic ancient codex that was written, preserved, and translated by the power of God.

Please limit your answer to 1,000 words, targeted it to a lay audience, and write it in conversational English.

How is ChatGPT situated to address these questions.  This is a glorified google search.

Also, why did you limit the inquiry to the text of the Book of Mormon?  What about the witness statements?  The Plates?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

ChatGPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 11m 1s >

Here’s how I’d reason if you handed me only the English text and told me it’s a translation of an ancient American record compiled around A.D. 400 on metal plates.

1) Likelihood it’s a translation of an authentic ancient codex on metal plates (compiled ~A.D. 400 in the Americas)

Very low. The strongest internal reason is the linguistic fingerprint of the English itself.

ChatGPT, and apparently you, posit the Book of Mormon as having been translated via normative, secular means, and not by miraculous "gift and power of God" means.  That would seem to make a pretty big difference, since neither Joseph nor any other Latter-day Saint has claimed the text to be a normative translation of "an authentic ancient codex on metal plates."

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

What I would expect from a genuine translation of an ancient American text (even a very free translation) is: consistent “translationese,” odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms, and only occasional overlap with early-modern English Bible phrasing unless the translator is deliberately imitating it.

Yes, I would expect that as well, for a normative translation.  But that's not is in play here.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

What instead jumps out (from the English alone) is that the book reads like it is written in a consciously biblical, King James–style English register, and not just in a vague “biblical tone,” but with the texture of an English writer steeped in that particular Bible tradition: stock rhythms, repetitive biblical scaffolding, sermon-like expansions, and long stretches that feel like they are built out of English biblical language rather than translated into it.

Nice passive voice going on there.  "Is written" by whom?  Where?  When?  What evidence is there of this person?  Was it Joseph Smith or someone else? 

If Joseph, how do you or ChatGPT propose he had the time and resources and knowledge and skillsets necessary to "write" it?  And how do you account for the various historical accounts of the translation process?  No re-writes, no revisions, etc.?

If someone other than Joseph, who was it?  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

A translation can be made to sound archaic on purpose, sure. But the more the English looks like it is composed in that idiom—rather than forced into it by the constraints of another language—the less it looks like a translation.

"Can be made to sound."

"It is composed."

Passive voice again.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

My rough probability for #1, based only on the English text: ~1 in 100,000 (0.001%) that it’s truly a translation of an authentic A.D. 400 American metal-plate codex.

(That’s not “it’s impossible.” It’s “the internal linguistic signals look overwhelmingly like early modern/modern English religious composition rather than an ancient-source translation.”)

GIGO comes to mind here.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

2) Likelihood it’s both (a) compiled in A.D. 400 in ancient America AND (b) a historical record of real people over the prior 1,000 years

Even lower. This stacks additional requirements on top of #1:

• not just “ancient source exists,” but

• it’s an intentionally historical narrative (not mostly allegory/prophecy), and

• it’s broadly accurate about real people and events across a millennium.

From text alone, a big tell is genre balance: authentic historical traditions usually contain lots of “incidental mundane detail” that authors don’t even realize is diagnostic—small logistical constraints, boring administrative texture, local material culture presented without rhetorical purpose, etc.

Huh.  And yet the the Church's narrative is that the Plates are a heavily-shortened deliberate abridgement, per commandments from God.  See, e.g., here:

Quote

The small plates were made for a wise purpose known only to the Lord (see 1 Nephi 9:5). Nephi describes in three separate passages the information these plates should contain. In the first, he says they should contain an account “of the ministry of my people” (1 Nephi 9:3). Later, Nephi says that the small plates were to contain “the ministry and the prophecies — the more plain and precious parts of them —” (1 Nephi 19:3), and that he made them “that the more sacred things may be kept” (1 Nephi 19:5). Finally, Nephi tells us that the Lord said, “Make other plates [the small plates]; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good in my sight for the profit of thy people” (2 Nephi 5:30).

Mormon and the other custodians of the plates (Nephi) abridged the record specifically to exclude all but the "plain and precious parts" and "more sacred things" of the history, which would understandably result in the omission (mostly) of things like "small logistical constraints, boring administrative texture, local material culture presented without rhetorical purpose, etc."

You are faulting the text for not containing things the text itself said it was omitting.

This is not a whoopsy-daisy, but is a massive flaw in your reasoning.  A Grok summary (the prompt was "Provide a summary of excerpts from The Book of Mormon which speak to the text being an abridgment, and the purposes for that abridgment.") :

Quote

 

The Book of Mormon explicitly presents itself as primarily an abridgment (a condensed summary) of much larger ancient records, compiled mainly by the prophet Mormon from the large plates of Nephi, with the small plates of Nephi inserted unabridged, and an additional abridgment of the Jaredite record (Book of Ether) by Moroni.

Several passages directly address this process and explain the reasons for abridging—practical limits of space on the plates, divine commandment and guidance by the Spirit, a deliberate focus on spiritual and prophetic content (especially testimonies of Jesus Christ), and purposes benefiting future readers (particularly the Lamanites/remnant of Israel, Jews, and Gentiles). Below is a summary of the key excerpts, grouped by source, with direct quotations and noted purposes.

Title Page (written by Mormon, sealed and finished by Moroni)

• “Wherefore, it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites… An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also…”
• Purposes: “Written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile—Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation—Written and sealed up… to come forth by the gift and power of God… Which is to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God.”

1 Nephi 1:16–17 (Nephi’s own early abridgment of his father Lehi’s record)

• “And now I, Nephi, do not make a full account of the things which my father hath written… Behold, I make an abridgment of the record of my father, upon plates which I have made with mine own hands.”
• Purpose: Nephi condenses Lehi’s visions, dreams, and prophecies to focus on his own ministry and proceedings, setting the pattern for selective recording.

Words of Mormon 1:1–11 (Mormon’s editorial explanation, inserted ~A.D. 385)

• “After I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin… I searched among the records… and I found these [small] plates… The things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of the prophecies of the coming of Christ… I chose these things, to finish my record upon them; which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people… I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord… I know not all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come.”
• Purposes: Space limitation; Spirit-directed inclusion of Christ-centered prophecies; unknown future “wise purpose” (later revealed to preserve the record when the 116 pages were lost); hope that descendants will “come to the knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ.”

3 Nephi 5:8–20 (Mormon’s explanation during Christ’s ministry era)

• “There had many things transpired… this book cannot contain even a hundredth part of what was done… I have made my record of these things according to the record of Nephi… And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be fulfilled according to their faith, should make a record of these things… Yea, a small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem, even down until the present time… I am a disciple of Jesus Christ… called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life… I know the record which I make to be a just and a true record; nevertheless there are many things which… we are not able to write.”
• Purposes: Fulfill prayers and faith of earlier prophets; divine will and expediency; focus on salvation and everlasting life through declaring Christ’s word; selective brevity while remaining true.

Ether 1:1–6 (Moroni’s abridgment of the Jaredite record, ~A.D. 400–421)

• “I, Moroni, proceed to give an account of those ancient inhabitants who were destroyed… I take mine account from the twenty and four plates which were found by the people of Limhi, which is called the Book of Ether… I give not the full account, but a part of the account… from the tower down until they were destroyed… the first part of this record… is had among the Jews—Therefore I do not write those things.”
• Purpose: Condense a vast prior record while preserving the essential history of the Jaredites for the latter-day remnant; follows divine pattern of selective inclusion.

Additional Supporting References (recurring themes)

• Helaman 3:13–15 and Jacob 3:13: “A hundredth part of the proceedings… cannot be contained in this work”; many records exist, but only select portions are included.
• 3 Nephi 26:6–12: Mormon records only the “lesser part” of Jesus’ teachings because the Lord forbade writing more, “to try the faith” of future readers.

Overall Purposes Summarized from These Excerpts:

• Practical/space constraints: Repeated emphasis on being unable to include even “a hundredth part” of the full history.
• Divine direction: By commandment, “according to the will of God,” Spirit promptings, and “a wise purpose” (often unknown to the writer at the time).
• Spiritual/Christ-centered focus: Prioritize prophecies, ministry, redemption, and testimonies of Jesus over exhaustive secular details.
• Audience and salvation: Preserve for the Lamanite remnant, Jews, and Gentiles to learn covenants, great works of the Lord, and be convinced that “Jesus is the Christ”; bring people to knowledge of God and everlasting life.
• Long-term fulfillment: Answer prayers of past prophets, provide material for judgment “at the great and last day,” and support faith-testing in the latter days.

These passages collectively show the Book of Mormon as a carefully curated, Spirit-guided condensation of far more extensive records, designed not merely as history but as a divine tool for conversion and covenant remembrance in the last days. All quotes are from the official text at churchofjesuschrist.org.

 

Practical/space constraints.  Divine direction.  Primarily religious/devotional (rather than merely "historical") and centered on Jesus Christ.  Intended for a particular audience.  Long-term fulfillment.

ChatGPT does not account for the stated purposes here.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

This text (in English) reads much more like theological history—story primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon—than like a record whose main goal is “here’s what happened.”

That doesn’t rule out history. But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy.

Huh.  I actually agree with some of this.  The text does read "like theological history," a story "primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon."  Also this part: "But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy."  That is precisely the assumption that should be in play, and yet ChatGPT omits it and instead assesses the text as intended to be "a record whose main goal is 'here's what happened.'"

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

3) “Unlikely as in one-in-a-hundred?”

For #1 and especially #2: no—much, much less likely than 1% on the English-text evidence alone.

• #1: more like 1 in 100,000 (give or take an order of magnitude).

• #2: more like 1 in 100 million (give or take a couple orders of magnitude).

4) Most likely time and place of composition, based only on the text

The English reads like it comes from an English-speaking, Bible-saturated Protestant culture after the King James Bible had become culturally dominant.

Dandy.  Which members of that "English-speaking, Bible-saturated Protestant culture" wrote it?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

So: post-1611, and realistically much later than that, because the style isn’t just archaic English—it feels like a modern author performing archaic English, with heavy sermonizing and concerns that fit a churchy, revival-minded milieu.

Okay.  So who was this "modern author," and what evidence do you or ChatGPT have that he/she/they did the authoring?

If the "modern author" is Joseph Smith, what evidence do we have that he had the ability to create the text under his circumstances (limited education, limited writing ability, abbreviated dictation period, helpers not seeing any notes or materials, no revisions or re-writes, etc.)?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

If you forced me to pick, based only on internal texture: late 18th to early 19th century, North Atlantic English-speaking world, most plausibly the United States (because of the way “scripture-like” narrative and Protestant doctrinal speech patterns blend with a frontier/manifest “promised land” sensibility).

---

Now your “Randi proves it’s miraculous” scenario.

You’ve added a new piece of evidence:

M = the production cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred.

5) Bayesian update under proven miracles: how do #1 and #2 change, and which hypothesis best fits?

Bayes in one sentence:
Posterior odds = prior odds × how well each hypothesis predicts the evidence.

First, what M does

M absolutely crushes purely natural explanations.

Latter-day Saints accept, on faith, M.  You, also on faith (since M is effectively not empirically testable), reject M.

And M "absolutely crushes purely natural explanations."  Sort of makes the whole exercise rather futile, does it not?  We're back to where we started.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

So under your assumption, hypotheses (a) “Joseph alone” and (b) “Joseph + helpers stage magic” become near-zero (not because they’re logically impossible, but because you stipulated that a controlled investigation ruled them out).

Sure would like to see this "controlled investigation."

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

What’s left are “some non-natural agency” options.

Yep.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Second, what the text itself still does

Even after accepting miracles, we still have the English-text evidence T: it looks like modern English biblical composition, not a translation of an ancient American source.

What would ChatGPT propose that a "translation" arising not from Joseph Smith knowing two languages and translating into English the older one, but rather a "translation" method based entirely on "the gift and power of God"?  

ChatGPT's "T" is not really accurate, is it?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

So the key question becomes: Which supernatural hypothesis best predicts both M (miracles/plates) and T (the English fingerprint)?

To keep your lettering but avoid the duplicate “e,” I’ll label them:

• (c) advanced aliens

• (d) cosmic trickster

• (e) something else

• (f) orthodox Mormon claim: authentic ancient codex translated by God

My updated probabilities (given M + T)

I think "given M + T" doesn't work, since "T" is patently flawed.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

• (a) Joseph alone: ~0%

• (b) Joseph + helpers fraud: ~0%

So are you on board with these?  What does it say about Vogel's "Pious Fraud" theory, or Taves' "Automatic Writing" theory?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

• (c) Aliens: low (say 1–5%)

  • They can explain “miracles” via sufficiently advanced tech, but it’s oddly specific for aliens to generate a text so saturated with a particular English biblical register unless they’re intentionally mimicking it.

• (d) Cosmic trickster: moderate (say 20–40%)

  • Explains real miracles and explains why the text could look strongly modern while claiming ancient provenance: deception is the point.

Huh.  Are you on board with this?  A 30% chance that the Book of Mormon is the result of a "Cosmic trickster" (whatever that means)?

So now you are advancing a "Space Aliens" or "Satan" or "Cosmic Trickster" explanation.  Truly?

Okay, I'll bite.  Who is this "Cosmic Trickster"?  What evidence do you have for his/her/its existence?  What's the point of the trick?

And how is your advocacy for a "Cosmic Trickster" in accord with your empirical proclivities?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

• (e) Something else (non-orthodox supernatural): highest (say 50–70%)

  • For example: a genuine miracle/revelation producing a modern religious text in biblical style, where the plates function as a sign rather than as an ordinary ancient source-document.

  • This matches T very well and can also accommodate M.

Huh.  This is about the closest we get to the Church's narrative, and it's the one that ChatGPT finds the most plausible.

In some ways, the Plates were more "a sign," since Joseph translated their contents via miraculous means (and not because he knew Reformed Egyptian).

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

• (f) Orthodox (authentic ancient codex translation): still low (say 1–10%)

  • M helps a lot (plates + miracles are predicted), but T still pushes against a straightforward “translation from ancient American language” unless you add extra assumptions like “God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom (even where that creates the appearance of English dependence).”

Again, you stacked the deck by prompting ChatGPT to treat the text as a "straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"  The "translation" was not "straightforward," and was instead by "the gift and power of God."  Joseph Smith had a very limited education.  And the translation was from Reformed Egyptian, and arguably not an "ancient American language" ("Reformed Egyptian" was arguably used only in a very limited context by a very limited number of people, and it originated in the Near East, not the Americas).

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Updated beliefs for #1 and #2 under M

• #1 (authentic ancient codex translation): I’d move from “1 in 100,000” up to something like a few percent at most (call it ~1–5%), because miracles make “some extraordinary backstory” real, but the English still looks like modern composition more than translation.

• #2 (ancient + historically accurate): lower still, maybe ~0.1–1%, because even if plates are ancient, “accurate millennium-spanning history” is an additional claim the textual genre feel doesn’t strongly support.

So: even after proven miracles, I would not say the orthodox claim is the most likely overall. The most likely bucket becomes “real supernatural involvement, but the English text is best explained as modern-style revelatory composition (or deception) rather than a clean translation of an A.D. 400 American codex.”

"{T}he English text is best explained as modern-style revelatory composition {} rather than a clean translation of an A.D. 400 American codex.”  Kind of.  It can be both a "modern-style revelatory composition" and a translation from an ancient American record.

I'm open to you elaborating on the "or deception" theory.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Prompt 2
Now let's (possibly) relax the assumption that the modern production of the Book of Mormon was James-Randi-level miraculous (maybe it was--that is for your to decide). Now what we have is the actual real-world evidence of how it was produced; Joseph Smith claimed he found the plates, he wrote a pair of witness statements that 11 people signed, a few other people say they incidentally saw the alleged plates, the alleged plates disappeared, Charles Anthon may or may not have certified the characters, a relatively complex book was produced relatively fast, it was produced in weird ways that seemed like a show to the scribes (e.g. hiding behind a curtin or putting face in hat), etc.

Given the entirety of the real-world evidence from the 1820's, which hypothesis is more likely: the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an actual ancient American codex that tells the 1000-year story of a a real people, or the hypothesis that in an elaborate conspiracy, Sydney Rigdon was involved much earlier than we believed, created the artifact out of tin, and helped produce the original text that Joseph Smith then dictated  "translation" process? If those are the only two options on the table, which is more likely?

~200 words max

ChatGPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 11m 1s >

If those are truly the only two options, the Rigdon‑involved conspiracy is more likely than “an accurate translation of a real ancient American codex covering 1,000 years of real history.”

Ah, so we're back to Rigdon (and not only that, a conspiracy).  Zero evidence for this stuff, and a good amount against it:

• The Book of Mormon was fully translated by June 1829 (witnessed by multiple people in New York, including scribes Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Emma Smith) and published in March 1830.
• Rigdon first encountered the book on or about October 29–November 1, 1830, when former parishioner Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery (a Book of Mormon scribe) visited him in Mentor, Ohio, and physically handed him a copy.
• Rigdon was baptized November 8 or 14, 1830, after two weeks of intensive reading.
• He met Joseph Smith in person for the first time only in December 1830 (in New York), months after publication.

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Reason: the ancient-codex hypothesis has to carry a very heavy stack of extraordinary claims (ancient literate tradition on metal plates in the Americas, correct preservation, correct translation, plates then removed, witnesses’ experiences being straightforwardly veridical, etc.) while the publicly checkable physical evidence (the plates) is unavailable.

That said, the specific Rigdon version you propose is not strongly supported by the 1820s record either: the early documentary link placing Rigdon in contact with Smith before the Book of Mormon is thin, and the “Rigdon wrote it earlier” narrative depends a lot on later recollections and inference.

So I’d put it like this: Rigdon conspiracy > ancient codex, but only because the ancient-codex claim is so evidentially expensive. If I weren’t forced into just these two, I’d consider “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” more plausible than either.

Sure would like to see evidence of this "Rigdon conspiracy" thing.  Not even the most ardent critics (Vogel, Van Wagoner) appear to be on board with it.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

On 2/4/2026 at 7:51 AM, smac97 said:

Another:

I have, for quite a while now, expressed concerns about pediatric sex trait modification procedures, including "informed consent" (it being lacking), compromised assessments of the best interests of the child, ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care, and so on.

I feel my assessment has been grimly vindicated.  I wish we had seen this before "thousands of minors {} underwent gender-transition surgery over the past decade."  

I wonder if these "adults," and those who have cheered them on, will ever truly recognize and regret their error.

"{I}nsufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents."

Or, as I have been saying for years, "Longitudinal studies essentially absent" and "Compromised assessments of the best interests of the child" and "Massive ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care."

Back in 2024, I quoted a Tribune opinion piece by Patrick Hardy, who said:

I noted at the time:

I think much of the medical establishment has, for some years now, been materially compromised in their professional assessment of "gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents."  The ASPS is, as noted above, apparently the first professional medical organization to publicly speak against these procedures.  I anticipate that more will follow. 

The previous "consensus" favoring/justifying these procedures was, I submit, based on ideological and political and financial and other untoward considerations.  And not on "the science" or the best interests of the patient.

Thanks,

-Smac

Having gone way off topic for a while with Analytics, I return to the topic of this thread.

Just saw this:

Quote

How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed?

There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity.

I have been wondering about this for some years now.  A number of today's Golly-This-Is-The-Most-Important-Issue-In-History type things seem to be of awfully recent vintage, and of clouded origins.

Quote

The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding, and public awareness of the impending danger.

So far, this sound about right.  My regard for those portions of Academia heavily infected with sociopolitical activism is, these days, quite low.

Quote

So out of nowhere, the public is warned that the scorching planet will be inundated by rising seas in a mere decade. Or that millions of transgender youth are our next civil rights frontier, given that they suffer in silence without political advocacy, new laws, programs, and the chance for “life-saving,” powerful hormonal treatments and radical sex-reassignment surgeries. Indeed, the travel time from an outlandish idea by the faculty lounge to liberal status quo is a mere few years.

Yes, the "Minors with Gender Dysphoria need to have powerful hormones injected into their bodies and/or healthy parts surgically removed from their bodies because otherwise they'll kill themselves" line of reasoning is, in my view, a mostly post-Obergefell phenomenon.

See here: The March of Dimes Syndrome

An excerpt:

Quote

In the spring of 1979, a few weeks after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, more than 65,000 people marched on the United States Capitol chanting “No Nukes, No Nukes.” As a young reporter at the Washington Star assigned to cover this new movement, I interviewed march organizers and noticed that all of them had previously organized protests against the Vietnam War. This struck me as curious: How had they suddenly become so passionate and knowledgeable about nuclear power?

I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?

These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally.

For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished.

Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. Five years later, the Court extended civil rights protections to people’s sexual preferences.

What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society.

The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman.

So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

I think recent trends in applying trans ideology to children is part and parcel of the March of Dimes Syndrome.  The activists infest not only NGOs, but much of Academia.

Back to the first article:

Quote

Next, the media, hand-in-glove with academia, springs into action to persuade the skeptical public to “follow the science” and “trust the experts.” It castigates any doubters as cranks or “conspiracy theorists” who spread “disinformation” and “misinformation”; or as racists, nativists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes who must be silenced.

Hollywood and sports celebrities often piggyback on the frenzy, hijacking awards ceremonies and pre-game national anthems to out-virtue-signal each other, warning the public that they must adapt and change—or else!

Almost overnight—to take just one example—going to an isolated beach without a mask during the COVID pandemic, showing skepticism about the efficacy or safety of experimental mRNA COVID vaccines, or daring to believe that the Wuhan gain-of-function virology lab (in part aided and abetted by grants and support from Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health) was the source of a manufactured COVID pathogen became heresies. And the perpetrators, as always, had to be punished either legally or through social ostracism and cancel culture.

Hoo, boy.  This sure sounds familiar.

Quote

Third, liberal foundations begin funding more “research” to “prove” that partisan “experts” should not be ignored. They also fund activist groups that hit the street to gin up popular support, which often results in the required tumult and occasional violence. They embrace the theory that any disruption will so bother the public that it will support almost anything if it just makes the bedlam go away.

New victims and their oppressors are created ex nihilo.

Activists in both academia and in NGOs are working together, I think.

Quote

Yesterday’s radical new policy becomes today’s wishy-washy cop-out, as tomorrow’s once-unthinkable radical idea becomes commonplace and institutionalized. So it was that a few years ago, the public was told of a new and huge victimized group in the shadows, suffering from “gender dysphoria”—an age-old malady known to the ancients and, according to modern researchers before the millennium, affecting about one in 10,000–30,000 people.

No matter—almost overnight, transgenderism joined the gay and lesbian community to become the new LGB—T oppressed. Drag shows, once confined to enclaves in San Francisco or New York, were suddenly mainstreamed into military bases, children’s libraries, and cruise ships. Thirty percent of students on some campuses polled said that they might consider “transitioning.”

The "social contagion" aspect of this issue has become rather hard to ignore/dispute.

Quote

Abruptly, professors and students began reading emails appearing from their finger-in-the-wind administrators with strange new runes under their titles and names, identifying their “preferred pronouns”—sometimes the standard “she/her/hers” or “he/him/his,” and sometimes the unfathomable, such as “Ze/hir/hirs” or the plural “they/them.”

Ah, preferred pronouns.  

The whole article is worth a read.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Not sure what value this has.  You tell ChatGPT it is "a polymath with deep knowledge in ancient writings" of these various disciplines, therefore ChatGPT is actually such a polymath?  Is that what you are proposing?

You tell ChatGPT that it is an "expert at Bayesian reasoning and evaluating evidence without bias," therefore it actually is such an expert?

This is considered best practices in prompt engineering to give the AI some direction on what it is trying to do. 

To be clear, the AI is neither the judge nor the jury on this. It can help us think, brainstorm, and articulate ideas. But it isn't the judge or jury.

This prompt is to intended to systematically look at the evidence and use proper Bayesian reasoning to evaluate all of the evidence.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

What is the value of this assumption?

The assumption "Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon" was made to force the GPT to look only at the actual text of the book as evidence. Specifically, does the text itself support the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

How is ChatGPT situated to address these questions.  This is a glorified google search.

It isn't a "glorified google search." GPT 5.2 Pro is the premium, highest-capacity GPT model that spends significant time and computational resources to think, analyze, double-check, reason, and articulate. For example, you can use it to articulate a complicated business problem involving unique databases and business-use requirements, and it can come up with a creative, unique-to-your unique-situation, practical solution, and code it up in the programming language of your choice. It really does "think". There is some overlap between how GPT's think and how humans think. With the differences GPT is sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it really does think, albeit in its own way.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Also, why did you limit the inquiry to the text of the Book of Mormon?  What about the witness statements?  The Plates?

We're trying to do this systematically. Those pieces of evidence will be layered in later after we determine what the Book of Mormon most likely is. To see what it is, we need to look at the words.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

ChatGPT, and apparently you, posit the Book of Mormon as having been translated via normative, secular means, and not by miraculous "gift and power of God" means.

No, that is not something we are positing. We are simply looking at the text itself and determining if it is plausibly an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex. How it came to be is a separate issue.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

That would seem to make a pretty big difference, since neither Joseph nor any other Latter-day Saint has claimed the text to be a normative translation of "an authentic ancient codex on metal plates."

If you are conceding that the Book of Mormon isn't an actual translation of what was written on the alleged golden plates, then I'm glad we agree. But to be clear, are you claiming that it isn't an accurate translation, or that the "golden plates" are not an authentic ancient codex?

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Nice passive voice going on there.  "Is written" by whom?  Where?  When?  What evidence is there of this person?  Was it Joseph Smith or someone else? 

At this point we're just looking at the text itself. Does it look ancient? Is that hypothesis plausible? Could it be historical? Is that plausible? Who wrote it is a different issue.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

If Joseph, how do you or ChatGPT propose he had the time and resources and knowledge and skillsets necessary to "write" it?  And how do you account for the various historical accounts of the translation process?  No re-writes, no revisions, etc.?

If someone other than Joseph, who was it?  

Just trying to evaluate the plausibility of it being a translation of a real record. Focusing on this is the point.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Huh.  And yet the the Church's narrative is that the Plates are a heavily-shortened deliberate abridgement, per commandments from God.  See, e.g., here:

Mormon and the other custodians of the plates (Nephi) abridged the record specifically to exclude all but the "plain and precious parts" and "more sacred things" of the history, which would understandably result in the omission (mostly) of things like "small logistical constraints, boring administrative texture, local material culture presented without rhetorical purpose, etc."

You are faulting the text for not containing things the text itself said it was omitting.

This is not a whoopsy-daisy, but is a massive flaw in your reasoning.  A Grok summary (the prompt was "Provide a summary of excerpts from The Book of Mormon which speak to the text being an abridgment, and the purposes for that abridgment.") :

I disagree. Real people that existed 2000 years ago aren't going to write like they are 19th-century americans just because they are trying to focus on "plain and precious parts." The GPT prompt was told to look at the full text of the book, which includes these statements. These statements don't make it look ancient or authentic. 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

ChatGPT does not account for the stated purposes here.

You could claim that the stated purpose was for it to sound like it was written in the 1820's and that divine intervention was used so that Mormon knew how to sound like it was written in a different time, place, and culture. But if you do that, you are getting deep into making ad hoc rationalizations for why an allegedly ancient book doesn't look ancient, which brings up non-falsifiability and invisible dragons.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Huh.  I actually agree with some of this.  The text does read "like theological history," a story "primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon."  Also this part: "But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy."  That is precisely the assumption that should be in play, and yet ChatGPT omits it and instead assesses the text as intended to be "a record whose main goal is 'here's what happened.'"

I disagree. The text itself screams modern origin. If it had "special preservation/accuracy" that would make it look ancient, not modern.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Latter-day Saints accept, on faith, M.  You, also on faith (since M is effectively not empirically testable), reject M.

Full stop. M is your theory! You insist that the Book of Mormon existing is so unlikely and miraculous, people who don't believe it is authentic have some sort of obligation to their own intellectual integrity to explain it away. If M isn't true, who wrote it? How? What about the witness statements? All of that is evidence for M. Now you are saying there really isn't any evidence for M? If that is what you are saying, then we agree.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

And M "absolutely crushes purely natural explanations."  Sort of makes the whole exercise rather futile, does it not?  We're back to where we started.

If you want to understand my point, you need to engage with the hypothetical as written.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Sure would like to see this "controlled investigation."

Yep.

What would ChatGPT propose that a "translation" arising not from Joseph Smith knowing two languages and translating into English the older one, but rather a "translation" method based entirely on "the gift and power of God"?  

The point is that the options aren't either "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" or "the gift and power of God." Rather, the choices are "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" (or other mundane explanations) or something miraculous (including "the gift and power of God", aliens, evil spirits, etc.). 

Hypothetically proving it wasn't written by natural means forces the answer to be supernatural, but doesn't necessarily mean the most likely answer is that it is an authentic translation of a real ancient document.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

ChatGPT's "T" is not really accurate, is it?

I think "given M + T" doesn't work, since "T" is patently flawed.

So are you on board with these?  What does it say about Vogel's "Pious Fraud" theory, or Taves' "Automatic Writing" theory?

Huh.  Are you on board with this?  A 30% chance that the Book of Mormon is the result of a "Cosmic trickster" (whatever that means)?

So now you are advancing a "Space Aliens" or "Satan" or "Cosmic Trickster" explanation.  Truly?

Okay, I'll bite.  Who is this "Cosmic Trickster"?  What evidence do you have for his/her/its existence?  What's the point of the trick?

And how is your advocacy for a "Cosmic Trickster" in accord with your empirical proclivities?

Have you ever taken a course in formal, deductive logic? Everything we're talking about here is embedded in the assumption that "it is conclusively proven that there is literally no way this English manuscript could be of natural origin." Until that assumption is closed, we aren't talking about what we really believe--we are talking about a hypothetical reality where that assumption is true. There are three ways to close the assumption: 1- if we somehow prove that assumption is true, then we are advocating for cosmic trixter and the like. 2- if introducing that assumption leads to a contradiction, then we've proven that assumption is false. Or 3- we could close the assumption with making it a conditional (i.e. if it was written by supernatural means, then "aliens" is the most likely supernatural explanation). 

To be clear, I am NOT advocating this is what really happened. I'm merely pointing out that if you insist that Joseph Smith could not have produced it, then given that we already know from other evidence that it isn't of ancient origin, supernatural explanations other than the orthodox ones are more likely.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Again, you stacked the deck by prompting ChatGPT to treat the text as a "straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"  The "translation" was not "straightforward," and was instead by "the gift and power of God." 

I didn't intentionally stack the deck this way. My intention was to evaluate the text: is it plausible that this is a basically accurate translation of something somebody really wrote a long time ago? How it was translated is a different issue.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Ah, so we're back to Rigdon (and not only that, a conspiracy).  Zero evidence for this stuff, and a good amount against it:

• The Book of Mormon was fully translated by June 1829 (witnessed by multiple people in New York, including scribes Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Emma Smith) and published in March 1830.
• Rigdon first encountered the book on or about October 29–November 1, 1830, when former parishioner Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery (a Book of Mormon scribe) visited him in Mentor, Ohio, and physically handed him a copy.
• Rigdon was baptized November 8 or 14, 1830, after two weeks of intensive reading.
• He met Joseph Smith in person for the first time only in December 1830 (in New York), months after publication.

That's what the evidence indicates, sure. The GPT understands this, and you need to pay attention to the logical structure of what we're talking about--if we make absurd assumptions, then crazy things falling out of that are evidence that the assumption is wrong. The GPT understands this logic. That is why it concluded with:

Quote

So I’d put it like this: Rigdon conspiracy > ancient codex, but only because the ancient-codex claim is so evidentially expensive. If I weren’t forced into just these two, I’d consider “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” more plausible than either.

 

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Sure would like to see evidence of this "Rigdon conspiracy" thing.  Not even the most ardent critics (Vogel, Van Wagoner) appear to be on board with it.

I'm certainly not on board with it--the "Rigdon conspiracy" thing is absolutely nuts and in all likelihood did not happen. The point is that's what's even more nuts is the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a basically accurate translation of an authentic ancient record. 

Edited February 25 by Analytics

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

This is considered best practices in prompt engineering to give the AI some direction on what it is trying to do. 

To be clear, the AI is neither the judge nor the jury on this. It can help us think, brainstorm, and articulate ideas. But it isn't the judge or jury.

Huh.  Not sure how ChatGPT pronouncements requiring "polymath"-style knowledge is helpful where ChatGPT is not actually a polymath.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

This prompt is to intended to systematically look at the evidence and use proper Bayesian reasoning to evaluate all of the evidence.

What actual "evidence" did ChatGPT look at, I wonder.  I suspect not much, or heavily curated/slanted, and lots of omitted stuff.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

The assumption "Assume that you’ve never seen or heard of the Book of Mormon" was made to force the GPT to look only at the actual text of the book as evidence.

Including the Statements of the Witnesses?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Specifically, does the text itself support the hypothesis that it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex? 

A "by the gift and power of God" translation?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

It isn't a "glorified google search."

I think it is.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

GPT 5.2 Pro is the premium, highest-capacity GPT model that spends significant time

11 minutes.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

and computational resources to think, analyze, double-check, reason, and articulate.

Think about what?  Analyze what?  Double-check what?

I like AI platforms in their sphere, but what data did it review in that 11 minutes?  We don't know. 

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

For example, you can use it to articulate a complicated business problem involving unique databases and business-use requirements, and it can come up with a creative, unique-to-your unique-situation, practical solution, and code it up in the programming language of your choice. It really does "think". There is some overlap between how GPT's think and how humans think. With the differences GPT is sometimes better, sometimes worse. But it really does think, albeit in its own way.

Using what data?  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Also, why did you limit the inquiry to the text of the Book of Mormon?  What about the witness statements?  The Plates?  

We're trying to do this systematically.  Those pieces of evidence will be layered in later after we determine what the Book of Mormon most likely is. To see what it is, we need to look at the words.

Okay.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

ChatGPT, and apparently you, posit the Book of Mormon as having been translated via normative, secular means, and not by miraculous "gift and power of God" means.

No, that is not something we are positing.

I think we positing exactly that.  It's evident in your prompt ("Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex...").  Surely you are not suggesting that ChatGPT was construing "translation" in a "by the gift and power of God" kind of way?

It's even more evident in ChatGPT's response, which speaks of "'translationese,' odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms," and so on.  Later, ChatGPT also states that "T still pushes against a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language' unless you add extra assumptions like 'God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom...'"  No Latter-day Saint has posited that the Book of Mormon is "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

We are simply looking at the text itself

For 11 minutes.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

and determining if it is plausibly an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex. How it came to be is a separate issue.

So for ChatGPT, "plausibly" includes a potential "by the gift and power of God"-style translation method?  

I really doubt that.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

That would seem to make a pretty big difference, since neither Joseph nor any other Latter-day Saint has claimed the text to be a normative translation of "an authentic ancient codex on metal plates."

If you are conceding that the Book of Mormon isn't an actual translation of what was written on the alleged golden plates, then I'm glad we agree.

No, that is not a concession at all—there's an important distinction being missed here.

Me: "{N}either Joseph nor any other Latter-day Saint has claimed the text to be a normative translation of 'an authentic ancient codex on metal plates.'"

You: "If you are conceding that the Book of Mormon isn't an actual translation of what was written on the alleged golden plates..."

I believe the Book of Mormon is an actual, faithful translation of the ancient record engraved on the golden plates. Joseph Smith and the eyewitnesses (including his scribes) consistently described it that way: he translated the plates' content "by the gift and power of God," using divine instruments prepared for that purpose.

When I said it is not a "normative" translation, I simply meant it wasn't done in the ordinary human way—through linguistic scholarship or expertise—which would have been impossible for an unlearned farm boy facing an unknown ancient language ("Reformed Egyptian"). The process was miraculous and revelatory, as the Church's own accounts affirm: the text came by divine revelation from the authentic ancient source, not from Joseph's own knowledge or imagination.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Nice passive voice going on there.  "Is written" by whom?  Where?  When?  What evidence is there of this person?  Was it Joseph Smith or someone else? 

At this point we're just looking at the text itself.

We're looking at explanations for the text's origins.  I admit I am partial to one such explanation.  Your position is an "anything but that" demurral that proffers no alternative explanation.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Does it look ancient?

Oh my, yes.  There are all sorts of indicia of antiquity about the text.  Hebraisms.  Chiasmus.  Ancient Jews writing in Egyptian.  The NHM altar and its geospatial relationship with Khor Kharfot.  Cement.  The "seal of Mulek."  Barley.  Consistent internal chronology and geography.  Alma as a male given name.  The Allegory of the Olive Tree.  Lots of stuff.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Is that hypothesis plausible?  Could it be historical? Is that plausible?

What does "plausible" mean to ChatGPT?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Who wrote it is a different issue.

Well, it's a strongly associated issue.  The Latter-day Saints have an answer and explanation.  You don't.  And you won't proffer one, I think, because it will be hugely speculative and devoid of competent and substantive evidence, and you don't want to be hoisted by your own "I'm all about the empiricism" petard.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Just trying to evaluate the plausibility of it being a translation of a real record. Focusing on this is the point.

"Plausibility."

"Translation."

What presuppositions does ChatGPT have about these things?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I disagree. Real people that existed 2000 years ago aren't going to write like they are 19th-century americans just because they are trying to focus on "plain and precious parts."

Texas Sharpshooter fallacy here.

Joseph Smith and his contemporaries went about spouting "And it came to pass"?  Hebraisms?  Chiastic poetry?  Detailed descriptions of ancient near east olive cultivation techniques?  Accurately describing geospatial relationships of places in the Arabian peninsula?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

The GPT prompt was told to look at the full text of the book, which includes these statements. These statements don't make it look ancient or authentic. 

I think your reliance on ChatGPT is misplaced.

Sure would like to see a reasoned and evidence-based explanation for what, in your view, an "ancient or authentic" text translated "by the gift and power of God" should look like.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

You could claim that the stated purpose was for it to sound like it was written in the 1820's and that divine intervention was used so that Mormon knew how to sound like it was written in a different time, place, and culture. But if you do that, you are getting deep into making ad hoc rationalizations for why an allegedly ancient book doesn't look ancient, which brings up non-falsifiability and invisible dragons.

"{D}oesn't look ancient."  What would "look ancient" when we are speaking of a translation of an ancient text, written in Reformed Egyptian, buried, and then re-discovered and translated in the early 19th century by a farmboy "by the gift and power of God"?  What other data points exist in history for us to point to and say "Here's what a by-the-gift-and-power-of-God translation of an ancient text actually looks like"?

All sorts of things are "non-falsifiable."  No real problem there.  We walk by faith, not by sight as to all sorts of things.

Ryan and I have both previously addressed your "invisible dragons" thing.  Again, we have the text of the Book of Mormon.  We have the witness statements, the plates.  These things are not "invisible," and they need to be accounted for.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Huh.  I actually agree with some of this.  The text does read "like theological history," a story "primarily serving prophecy, exhortation, doctrine, and sermon."  Also this part: "But it’s the wrong vibe for “reliably historical for 1,000 years” unless we already assume special preservation/accuracy."  That is precisely the assumption that should be in play, and yet ChatGPT omits it and instead assesses the text as intended to be "a record whose main goal is 'here's what happened.'"

I disagree. The text itself screams modern origin.

Funny, then, that you cited ChatGPT's language above.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

If it had "special preservation/accuracy" that would make it look ancient, not modern.

I have no idea what you think such a text would/should "look" like.  All you offer, regarding the Book of Mormon, is "not that."

Well, have at it.  You can proceed with your "Space Aliens" and "Satan" are "more likely" sources reasoning, as far as that goes.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Latter-day Saints accept, on faith, M.  You, also on faith (since M is effectively not empirically testable), reject M.

Full stop. M is your theory!

More or less: "M = the production cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred."

Yes, I can go along with that.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

You insist that the Book of Mormon existing is so unlikely and miraculous, people who don't believe it is authentic have some sort of obligation to their own intellectual integrity to explain it away.

No.  I think people should read the Book of Mormon with an open heart and mind, with a seed of faith, and see what happens.

Here we are discussing competing explanations for the origins of the text.  My explanation is clear and has been published to the world for nearly 200 years.  You, in 2026, are saying that a "more likely" explanation for the text is Space Aliens and Satan.

I would, of course, like to see a non-frivolous explanation proffered, hence my prior acknowledgment and respect paid to Vogel and Taves.  I admire that they had the intellectual candor and integrity and stamina and willingness to formulate a theory congruent with their worldview.  Despite various opportunities, you have failed/refused to do so.  That is certainly your prerogative, but that whole "petard" thing just keeps coming back to me as to why are you failing/refusing to do so.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

If M isn't true, who wrote it? How? What about the witness statements? All of that is evidence for M.  Now you are saying there really isn't any evidence for M? If that is what you are saying, then we agree.

I guess we need clarification here.

"M = the production cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred."

I think M is true.  The production of the English text was not by "natural" means, and instead came about "by the gift and power of God."

I think M is true.  There were actual and authentic "golden plates" which Joseph discovered and had in his custody and showed to the Witnesses.  The plates were "genuinely involved."

I think M is true.  "Miracles occurred."  The First Vision.  Moroni's visits.  Joseph being shown the location of the plates.  His digging them up.  His translating them "by the gift and power of God."  His showing them to others.  His returning them to Moroni.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

And M "absolutely crushes purely natural explanations."  Sort of makes the whole exercise rather futile, does it not?  We're back to where we started.

If you want to understand my point, you need to engage with the hypothetical as written.

I did.  Per ChatGPT, "M" (the presupposition that "the production {of the text} cannot be natural; golden plates were genuinely involved; miracles occurred") "absolutely crushes purely natural explanations" such as those offered by Vogel or Taves.

I can't say M crushes your "natural explanation" because, well, you have never provided one that you are willing to articulate and defend (except for the "Space Aliens" and "Satan" stuff, about which I concur with ChatGPT re: being "crushed" by M).

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

What would ChatGPT propose that a "translation" arising not from Joseph Smith knowing two languages and translating into English the older one, but rather a "translation" method based entirely on "the gift and power of God"?  

The point is that the options aren't either "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" or "the gift and power of God." Rather, the choices are "Joseph Smith knowing two languages" (or other mundane explanations) or something miraculous (including "the gift and power of God", aliens, evil spirits, etc.). 

Right.  And since we know that Joseph Smith did not know Reformed Egyptian, that leaves the "something miraculous" choice?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Hypothetically proving it wasn't written by natural means forces the answer to be supernatural, but doesn't necessarily mean the most likely answer is that it is an authentic translation of a real ancient document.

Sure.  Space Aliens.  Satan.  The alternative explanations are endless.

Any of them based on evidence and sound reasoning?  Nope.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

To be clear, I am NOT advocating this is what really happened. I'm merely pointing out that if you insist that Joseph Smith could not have produced it, then given that we already know from other evidence that it isn't of ancient origin, supernatural explanations other than the orthodox ones are more likely.

We "know" this, do we?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Again, you stacked the deck by prompting ChatGPT to treat the text as a "straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"  The "translation" was not "straightforward," and was instead by "the gift and power of God." 

I didn't intentionally stack the deck this way.

Nevertheless, you stacked the deck.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

My intention was to evaluate the text: is it plausible that this is a basically accurate translation of something somebody really wrote a long time ago? How it was translated is a different issue.

"Plausible" means what to ChatGPT?

How does ChatGPT go about empirically evaluating the "plausibility" of God and angels, Plates and seerstones, etc.?

You have previously tried to pound one round peg (Carroll() into a square hole (theological arguments about the existence of God), and now trying to do the same by bolstering your opinion with deck-stacking prompts given to an AI platform.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Ah, so we're back to Rigdon (and not only that, a conspiracy).  Zero evidence for this stuff, and a good amount against it:

• The Book of Mormon was fully translated by June 1829 (witnessed by multiple people in New York, including scribes Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Emma Smith) and published in March 1830.
• Rigdon first encountered the book on or about October 29–November 1, 1830, when former parishioner Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery (a Book of Mormon scribe) visited him in Mentor, Ohio, and physically handed him a copy.
• Rigdon was baptized November 8 or 14, 1830, after two weeks of intensive reading.
• He met Joseph Smith in person for the first time only in December 1830 (in New York), months after publication.

That's what the evidence indicates, sure.

Okay.  So what contrary evidence exists to rebut the above?  Where is it, where did it come from, how do we know ChatGPT relied on it, etc.?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

The GPT understands this,

It does?  How do we know?

Ryan and me and anyone else who has worked with AI/LLMs know just how wishy-washy they can be in their algorithmic pronouncements.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

and you need to pay attention to the logical structure of what we're talking about--if we make absurd assumptions, then crazy things falling out of that are evidence that the assumption is wrong. The GPT understands this logic.

What makes an assumption "absurd"?

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

That is why it concluded with:

Quote

So I’d put it like this: Rigdon conspiracy > ancient codex, but only because the ancient-codex claim is so evidentially expensive. If I weren’t forced into just these two, I’d consider “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” more plausible than either.

Got it.  Sure would like to see evidence and reasoning for this “Smith + small circle, no Rigdon” thing.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I'm certainly not on board with it--the "Rigdon conspiracy" thing is absolutely nuts and in all likelihood did not happen.

And yet you are presenting it here as an alternative explanation for the text of the Book of Mormon, presumably along side Space Aliens, Satan, or, as Dale Morgan put it 80+ years ago, "{all} explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church."

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

The point is that's what's even more nuts is the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a basically accurate translation of an authentic ancient record. 

See my above comments re: similarities between you and John Weldon.

Sidney Rigdon, Space Aliens or Satan as the source of The Book of Mormon: "More likely."

Joseph Smith's narrative re: the source of The Book of Mormon: "Just not possible" and "nuts."

This is, for you, empirical reasoning?

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 25 by smac97

[Calm]

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Rather, it is widely assumed that such laws are temporarily suspended or altered by a higher power.

Or used in ways we don’t understand by someone much more knowledgeable about them.

added:  for more clarity, an example….a rocket heading for space does not suspend the law of gravity nor alters it in anyway, those building and launching it work carefully (if they want it to work safely) within the known laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.

Edited February 26 by Calm

[Analytics]

5 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I don't think this is accurately describing what LDS truth claims are asserting. Latter-day Saints don't believe that miracles summarily "overturn" existing natural laws (physics, biology, neuroscience, etc.). Rather, it is widely assumed that such laws are temporarily suspended or altered by a higher power.

Sure. I totally agree that this is what Latter-day Saints assume and believe in abstract. The problem is what happens when we start to compile very strong evidence that natural laws really are in direct, irreconcilable conflict with religious beliefs. Of course you can always assume that they will eventually be reconciled, but the reality is that in some areas, this assumption is getting more and more tenuous.

One of the most interesting and certainly strongest beliefs like this is the belief in a "spirit" that somehow inhabits the body in a way where the spirit experiences consciousness, participates in free agency, and to some extent can continue to think, observe, and be aware of itself after death as it floats away from the physical body.

Scientists have studied the brain from different angles, and they all come to the same conclusion--personality, sense of self, decisions, and observations all emerge from the brain. Change the brain with injury, disease, surgery, or medication, and all of these things change in extremely predictable ways. There just isn't anything for a "spirit" to do. Furthermore, what the spirit could actually be ceases to make sense. If you surgically split a person's brain in half and then observe them after, you see two distinct senses of self with two different personalities that both think they are the ones in control of the body. How do dualists explain this? Does the "spirit" get split when the brain gets split?

Add to this physicists who say that science is now in a completely different state than it ever has been, and that we can now say that while we don't know everything, we know some things, and one of the things we know is that the idea of "spirit energy" or "spirit particles" can't exist--they are fundamentally incompatible with effective field theory. While we can easily posit that "spirits" somehow override this or interact in a more subtle way, there isn't even a well-defined hypothesis of how EQFT could be changed to allow for such a thing. 

All of this points to the same thing: mind emerges from brain, we don't have "spirits", and when we die that's it. This could all be wrong if you hypothesize vague supernatural influences, but the evidence for such things just isn't there. Read Sean Carroll and Michael Gazzaniga to learn about this. 

5 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

All they could really say is that they haven't yet encountered evidence of such a realm and therefore don't believe in it.

On some issues, that isn't really true. Both Sean Carroll and Michael Gazzaniga say that we have positive evidence that nothing else is going on.

5 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

While I don't think the fine-tuning argument proves that God exists, it certainly opens the door to that belief. And if there were an intelligent being that was responsible for the fine-tuning of the universe, then it actually isn't that hard to imagine that such a being could conceivably intervene in human affairs for his own reasons, while also being able to mask or limit his intervention to whatever degree he prefers.

This partly depends on how you conceive of "God", right? If you agree with Lorenzo Snow that "as man now is, God once was", then the alleged fine-tuner of the universe is someone other than God, right? 

5 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But we need to be careful that we don't rachet our default skepticism too high....Outside of absolute definitive proof, they will never be enough to convince someone who has ratcheted their default skepticism of the supernatural so exceedingly high. Which is fine. But I think it helps to notice how strongly that default skepticism is influencing the evaluation of the available evidence. 

Modern thinkers tend to replace blanket skepticism with Bayesian reasoning. The idea is to keep in mind the sum-total of the evidence and not be skeptical for skepticism's sake. Make the best decisions with the data we have. Part of this process is keeping in mind that you need to keep the laws of physics in mind when you look at evidence. Steven Pinker said it with with flair when he said:

"A failure of Bayesian reasoning among scientists themselves is a contributor to the replicability crisis that we met in chapter 4. The issue hit the fan in 2011 when the eminent social psychologist Daryl Bem published the results of nine experiments in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which claimed to show that participants successfully predicted (at a rate above chance) random events before they took place, such as which of two curtains on a computer screen hid an erotic image before the computer had selected where to place it. Not surprisingly, the effects failed to replicate, but that was a foregone conclusion given the infinitesimal prior probability that a social psychologist had disproven the laws of physics by showing some undergraduates some porn."

Pinker, Steven. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (pp. 159-160). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Quote

The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential threat requires immediate government intervention, novel legislation, ample funding, and public awareness of the impending danger.

So far, this sound about right.  My regard for those portions of Academia heavily infected with sociopolitical activism is, these days, quite low.

This sounds like a fairy tale to me knowing professors of all stripes myself.

[smac97]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

This sounds like a fairy tale to me knowing professors of all stripes myself.

Seems like perhaps a sampling error, perhaps.

I think it's hard to dispute that modern American academia is heavily ideologically skewed.  See, e.g., here:

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Scientists have studied the brain from different angles, and they all come to the same conclusion--personality, sense of self, decisions, and observations all emerge from the brain.

Are you suggesting there are no scientist who study the brain or psychology that accept or even strongly believe there is something more that could be labeled spirit or soul?  Not just a minority, but none?

[Calm]

1 minute ago, smac97 said:

think it's hard to dispute that modern American academia is heavily ideologically skewed.

That’s not the same thing as was being claimed that you quoted.

[smac97]

25 minutes ago, Calm said:

That’s not the same thing as was being claimed that you quoted.

Newly-minted kooky stuff comes from somewhere. 

I'm not asking where fairies came from.  I'm addressing real-world ideologies and sentiments.  The widespread "Minors with Gender Dysphoria need to have powerful hormones injected into their bodies and/or healthy parts surgically removed from their bodies because otherwise they'll kill themselves" thing came from somewhere.  I think these things have their origins in radical activism, both in academia, NGOs, political groups, and so on.

From the "March of Dimes Syndrome" article:

Quote

In the spring of 1979, a few weeks after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, more than 65,000 people marched on the United States Capitol chanting “No Nukes, No Nukes.” As a young reporter at the Washington Star assigned to cover this new movement, I interviewed march organizers and noticed that all of them had previously organized protests against the Vietnam War. This struck me as curious: How had they suddenly become so passionate and knowledgeable about nuclear power?

I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?

These supposed crises are all examples of the March of Dimes syndrome, named after the organization founded in the 1930s to combat polio. The March helped fund the vaccines that eventually ended the polio epidemics—but not the organization, which, after polio’s eradication, changed its mission to preventing birth defects. Its leaders kept their group going by finding a new cause, just as antiwar activists did after achieving their goal of ending the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident offered new fund-raising opportunities and a new platform for veterans of the antiwar movement such as Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, who both addressed the crowd at that first antinuke rally.

For career activists, success is a threat. They can never declare mission accomplished.

Consider the current cultural conflicts over gender and sex. As the gay rights movement achieved its initial goals from the 1970s, overturning antisodomy laws and destigmatizing homosexuality, the movement expanded to include so many new causes that it required an acronym, LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and more). Its leaders declared a new cause, same-sex marriage, which vanished after the Supreme Court legalized it nationally in 2015. Five years later, the Court extended civil rights protections to people’s sexual preferences.

What were activists to do? Gays could marry in every state, and the whole LGBTQIA+ alphabet was a protected class—what more could groups like the Human Rights Campaign or the National LGBTQ Task Force possibly demand from the government? What would get the attention of crusading journalists? An antigay hate crime would generate a brief publicity and fund-raising burst, but even progressive journalists struggled to sustain the groups’ narrative that America was a homophobic society.

The laws against homosexuality had been toppled. The culture that produced those laws has been overthrown, too. Most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The Pride flag flies at corporate headquarters, churches, schools, city halls, and the White House. Uttering once-common antigay slurs is now career suicide. Gay characters, long taboo in television scripts, are now practically obligatory. Gays once felt overwhelming social pressure to stay in the closet, but now many young adults are reluctant to admit to being heterosexuals, as reflected in the surge of young women classifying themselves as bisexual despite never having had sex with a woman.

So activists have moved the goalposts once again. It is no longer enough for conservative Christians to tolerate same-sex marriage—now they must be legally required to bake cakes and design web pages for the weddings. It is no longer enough to protect gay students from harassment—now these students must have access in elementary school libraries to how-to manuals for **** sex. Public schools must encourage prepubescent students to explore the many possible gender identities without their parents’ knowledge. Biological males self-identifying as females must be allowed to compete against females in sports. These new causes have been wildly unpopular, arousing opposition from homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, and have led to a decline in public support for the gay rights movement. But however much the backlash has hurt the original cause, the controversies keep activists in business.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 25 by smac97

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

No Latter-day Saint has posited that the Book of Mormon is "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"

Okay.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I believe the Book of Mormon is an actual, faithful translation of the ancient record engraved on the golden plates.

It looks like I just found a Latter-day Saint who does believe it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex.

Or not?

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

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Scientists have studied the brain from different angles, and they all come to the same conclusion--personality, sense of self, decisions, and observations all emerge from the brain. Change the brain with injury, disease, surgery, or medication, and all of these things change in extremely predictable ways. There just isn't anything for a "spirit" to do. Furthermore, what the spirit could actually be ceases to make sense. If you surgically split a person's brain in half and then observe them after, you see two distinct senses of self with two different personalities that both think they are the ones in control of the body. How do dualists explain this? Does the "spirit" get split when the brain gets split?

Add to this physicists who say that science is now in a completely different state than it ever has been, and that we can now say that while we don't know everything, we know some things, and one of the things we know is that the idea of "spirit energy" or "spirit particles" can't exist--they are fundamentally incompatible with effective field theory. While we can easily posit that "spirits" somehow override this or interact in a more subtle way, there isn't even a well-defined hypothesis of how EQFT could be changed to allow for such a thing. 

All of this points to the same thing: mind emerges from brain, we don't have "spirits", and when we die that's it. This could all be wrong if you hypothesize vague supernatural influences, but the evidence for such things just isn't there.

If one is open to the possibility that spirits are interfacing with the brain on an emergent level, it does no good to look at absences of evidence (i.e., missing spirit matter or spiritual forces) in underlying processes. The spirit could easily be interfacing or utilizing or relying on those very same biological processes. I actually find it interesting that this is what consciousness itself often feels like. It is like we are in the drivers seat of a very complex machine. We don't control everything that is brought to our attention. We don't control all of the underlying processes. Our awareness rests at an emergent level on top of it all, only directing some general activities and final decision-making processes. If we actually don't know specifically how most decisions are made on that emergent level--especially complex or morally complicated decisions--then it seems obviously premature to rule out something like spirits interfacing with our bodies. 

To be clear, I'm not saying there is scientific reason to believe in spirits. Nor do I think there is, or really needs to be, a scientific theory to specifically explain how they interface with biological systems. The evidence supporting most religious systems lies elsewhere. All the religious adherent needs in this sphere is a lack of strong evidence disproving their religious assumptions. And that actually seems to be the case. Consciousness is still a poorly understood phenomenon. It seems like all neuro scientists and philosophers essentially agree on that fact. So there just really isn't much of a disconfirming case here. 

If something like the Libet experiments and the later iterations of them actually demonstrated that all human decisions are made unconsciously, that would seem to be a much bigger threat to religious belief. But, as far as I can tell, that body of research has proven inconclusive, and the popular narratives around it have been premature and ultimately misleading. 

Edited February 26 by Ryan Dahle

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Quote

No Latter-day Saint has posited that the Book of Mormon is "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"

Okay.

Emphasis on the "straightforward."  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

It looks like I just found a Latter-day Saint who does believe it is an accurate translation of an authentic ancient codex.

I do believe it is "an accurate translation."  What I do not believe is that the translation was by "normative, secular means" (my phrase) or "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language'" (ChatGPT's phrase).  Instead, the translation was "by the gift and power of God."  I already said this:

Quote

Quote

• (f) Orthodox (authentic ancient codex translation): still low (say 1–10%)

  • M helps a lot (plates + miracles are predicted), but T still pushes against a straightforward “translation from ancient American language” unless you add extra assumptions like “God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom (even where that creates the appearance of English dependence).”

Again, you stacked the deck by prompting ChatGPT to treat the text as a "straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"  The "translation" was not "straightforward," and was instead by "the gift and power of God."  Joseph Smith had a very limited education.  And the translation was from Reformed Egyptian, and arguably not an "ancient American language" ("Reformed Egyptian" was arguably used only in a very limited context by a very limited number of people, and it originated in the Near East, not the Americas).

In my view, the translation was both "by the gift and power of God" and "accurate."  You seem to be suggesting that I must choose between the two, or that I have previously done so.  That's not correct.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

What am I missing here?

I am saying that the translation was "by the gift and power of God" and that it was "accurate."

You seem to be saying that if I find the translation "accurate" it could not have also been by miraculous means ("by the gift and power of God"), or that "accurate" is synonymous with "straightforward" in the sense used by ChatGPT.  That makes no sense to me.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I'm confident from the context that when the GPT said "straightforward translation" it meant to imply that it was a translation that is faithful to what was originally written on the alleged golden plates.

I'm confident in the other direction.  Again:

Quote

I think we positing exactly that.  It's evident in your prompt ("Based only upon the English text, what is the likelihood that this is a translation of an authentic ancient codex...").  Surely you are not suggesting that ChatGPT was construing "translation" in a "by the gift and power of God" kind of way?

It's even more evident in ChatGPT's response, which speaks of "'translationese,' odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms," and so on.  Later, ChatGPT also states that "T still pushes against a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language' unless you add extra assumptions like 'God chose to render it in heavy KJV idiom...'"  No Latter-day Saint has posited that the Book of Mormon is "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language.'"

When ChatGPT speaks of "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language,'" I think that indicates an assumption of, well, a "straightforward" method of translation.  But Joseph never never claimed to know Reformed Egyptian, and he used a stone in a hat, and said the translation occurred by "the gift and power of God."  This means of translation is not reasonably characterized, by ChatGPT or you or anyone else, as "straightforward."  I guess you are construing "straightforward" in another sense.

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Are you implying that when things are translated by the power of God they are no longer an accurate representation of the original text?

No.  

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I really don't get your point. This one is a big deal to you, so I'd like you to clarify where you're coming from before I respond.

See above.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 26 by smac97

[Analytics]

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

When ChatGPT speaks of "a straightforward 'translation from ancient American language,'" I think that indicates an assumption of, well, a "straightforward" method of translation. 

For your consideration:

Prompt
I have some follow-up questions.

First, when analyzed the English text of the Book of Mormon, did you include the testimonies of the 3 and 8 witnesses, or did you only consider the text that was allegedly translated?

Second, what did you mean “straightforward translation”? Did you mean the *method* of translation was done in a straightforward, conventional way, or did you mean that the translation was a straightforward, reliable rendering of the original language into English?

Third, did you discount the likelihood that the text is a reliable rendering of an authentic ancient manuscript because part of the Book (the testimony of the 3 witnesses), say it was translated “by the gift and power of God”?

Fourth, the book is full of indicators that is ancient. For example,  it has all sorts of Hebraisms.  Chiasmus.  Ancient Jews writing in Egyptian.  The NHM altar and its geospatial relationship with Khor Kharfot.  Cement.  The "seal of Mulek."  Barley.  Consistent internal chronology and geography.  Alma as a male given name.  The Allegory of the Olive Tree. Did you consider these ancient elements in your analysis? Would you like to update your probabilities given these facts?

Fifth, when we say the book was translated into “English”, we mean it was translated into  King James English as imperfectly understood by an early 19th-century American. Did you weigh this being the target language of the translation against the probability of it being a faithful rendering of an authentic ancient manuscript?

The things you said we’d expect from a genuine translation are “consistent “translationese,” odd but stable syntax, culturally grounded idioms, and only occasional overlap with early-modern English Bible phrasing unless the translator is deliberately imitating it.”

Let’s stipulate that the translator was deliberately imitating early-modern English Bible phrasing and not hold that against the Book’s authenticity.

On the other points, can you give us some examples? As a reference source, I propose *Commentarii de Bello Gallico* by Julius Ceasar. Like Mormon, Caesar was a military and political leader, and both Mormon and Caesar lived roughly around the same time. Using examples drawn from William Duncan’s 1750 translation, can you show us several examples of things we expect from genuine translations that are allegedly absent from the Book of Mormon?

Please limit the response to about 1,000 words.

ChatGPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 20m 59s >

1) Did I include the 3 and 8 witnesses’ testimonies?

In my “English-text-only” assessment, I treated the witness testimonies as paratext—signed claims appended to the volume—not as part of the allegedly translated narrative itself. So my linguistic/translation-style judgments were based on the main body that purports to be the translation.

That said, if you broaden “based only on the English text” to include everything printed between the covers, then yes: the witness statements become additional claims in evidence (“plates existed,” “we saw/hefted them,” etc.). They can raise (or lower) your overall belief in plates/production, but they don’t do much to answer the narrower question: “Does the English read like a translation of an ancient record rather than an English composition?”

2) What did I mean by “straightforward translation”?

I meant “straightforward” in the product sense: a relatively direct, reliable rendering where the English regularly shows telltale fingerprints of coming from a non-English source—stable “translationese,” systematic handling of foreign terms, and routine little clarifications that naturally arise when bridging cultures.

I did not mean the method had to be conventional (paper dictionary, known language, etc.). A translation could be produced via an unusual method and still read like a translation—or it could be produced via a miracle and still read like a free theological paraphrase or English composition in archaic style. “Method” and “resulting translation signals” are separable.

3) Did I discount it because the witnesses say it was translated “by the gift and power of God”?

No. A claim about how it was produced doesn’t, by itself, count against authenticity in a text-internal translation-style analysis.

Where it matters is indirect: if the translator is explicitly aiming at a particular register (e.g., King James–style English), that choice can mask or overwrite some normal translation signals. That’s a real consideration—but it’s about what the target-language choice predicts the English will look like, not about penalizing the phrase “gift and power of God.”

4) Did I consider the “ancient indicators” you listed, and would I update?

A few distinctions matter:

A. Internal-to-the-English-text features (Hebraisms, chiasmus, Olive Tree allegory, etc.).
Yes, those belong in a text-only discussion. But their diagnostic weight is usually modest, because:

• Hebraisms can be imported simply by writing in biblicizing English (especially KJV-like English), since the KJV itself preserves lots of Hebraic constructions.

• Chiasmus is real as a patterning tool, but how probative it is depends on how strict your detection criteria are. There’s apologetic literature arguing it’s meaningful, and also serious critique arguing that flexible rules can “find” extended chiasms too easily.

• Olive tree allegory overlaps strongly with biblical material (notably Romans 11), which reduces how uniquely “ancient American” it looks as evidence.

B. External correspondences (NHM/Nahom, Khor Kharfot, barley, cement, “seal of Mulek”).
Strictly speaking, these are not “based only on the English text,” because they require archaeology/epigraphy and geographic proposals outside the text. But if we’re now allowing them as additional evidence, they can move probabilities—if they’re solid matches rather than ambiguous correlations.

Very briefly, why I’d still weight several of these cautiously:

• NHM/Nahom: the altars show consonants (NHM) in a South Arabian context; the match to “Nahom” depends on vowel reconstruction and on whether it’s a place name vs. tribal name, etc. Proponents and critics explicitly debate those points.

• “Seal of Mulek”: the argument depends on reading an unprovenanced stamp seal as “Malkiyahu, son of the king” and then identifying that with “Mulek.” Even the pro presentation frames it as arguable/conceivable rather than a slam dunk. And more generally, unprovenanced seals/bullae are a domain where authenticity disputes and forgery concerns are a known issue.

• Barley: it’s true that “barley-like” native Hordeum exists in the Americas, and archaeobotany literature discusses domesticated “little barley” (Hordeum pusillum) in the U.S. Southwest. But mapping the English word “barley” in the Book of Mormon onto specific New World taxa and Book of Mormon geographies is where the evidential strength tends to get murkier.

Would I update?
If I (i) accept your stipulation that KJV imitation is intentional and (ii) treat your listed items as moderately supportive but not decisive, I’d update upward some—but not to “likely.” Concretely: I’d move my odds from “extremely unlikely” to “still unlikely,” roughly in the neighborhood of well under 1% for (1), and lower still for (2), because (2) adds the extra burden of the narrative being straightforward history of real peoples over a millennium (which is a much stronger claim than “some ancient core existed”).

5) Does “KJV English as imperfectly understood by an early 19th-century American” help the case?

It helps explain why the target text would sound biblically archaic without requiring that the English itself be ancient.

But there’s a tradeoff: the more you lean into “the translation is intentionally filtered into familiar KJV-style idiom,” the more you’re describing something closer to a dynamic/revelatory rendering than a philologically transparent translation. That doesn’t make it false—but it reduces how much we should expect the English to preserve routine source-language fingerprints.

---

Examples from William Duncan’s Caesar: common translation signals

Using Duncan’s Caesar (as you suggested), here are several “this is what translations often look like” features—illustrated in the English itself:

A) Frequent “bridging” glosses between cultures/languages

Caesar/Duncan gives the reader little orientation handles like:

• “called in their own language Celts, in ours Gauls”
  This kind of “they say X / we say Y” scaffolding is extremely normal when a text is genuinely crossing languages and cultures.

Why this matters for the Book of Mormon comparison: even granting KJV style, I’d still expect more systematic bridging glosses for institutions, technology, flora/fauna, and social categories across a thousand years and multiple peoples—unless the translation is intentionally smoothing nearly everything into familiar biblical categories.

B) Retention of foreign technical terms, units, and “untranslated residue”

Translations commonly leave some culturally specific terms in place (or translate them very literally), producing controlled “foreignness.” Duncan’s Caesar does this constantly:

• “presented him with two hundred thousand asses” (a Roman coin/unit, not converted into English money)

• detailed engineering/measures: “pits of three feet deep…,” plus “crows-feet… which the soldiers called spurs”

Book of Mormon comparison point: in a “codex on plates” scenario, I’d expect more moments where the English shows either (i) persistent loanwords, (ii) consistent conversions (“their measure is… in our measure…”), or (iii) translator notes/glosses around culture-bound items.

C) Ethnographic “sidebars” that feel like an author reporting a foreign society

For example, Caesar’s Druids passage reads like observational ethnography:

• “The Druids… interpret the will of the gods.”

A long authentic record (especially with wars, migrations, and diplomacy) tends to contain lots of incidental ethnographic texture of this kind—often not “preachy,” just descriptive.

D) Translators often explain their editorial/translation policy

Duncan explicitly tells the reader what he’s doing (names retained, geography index, etc.).
That’s not “proof” of anything by itself, but it’s characteristic of real translation culture: translators worry about mapping problems and tell you how they handled them.

Edited February 26 by Analytics

[Ryan Dahle]

25 minutes ago, Analytics said:

A. Internal-to-the-English-text features (Hebraisms, chiasmus, Olive Tree allegory, etc.).
Yes, those belong in a text-only discussion. But their diagnostic weight is usually modest, because:

• Hebraisms can be imported simply by writing in biblicizing English (especially KJV-like English), since the KJV itself preserves lots of Hebraic constructions.

• Chiasmus is real as a patterning tool, but how probative it is depends on how strict your detection criteria are. There’s apologetic literature arguing it’s meaningful, and also serious critique arguing that flexible rules can “find” extended chiasms too easily.

• Olive tree allegory overlaps strongly with biblical material (notably Romans 11), which reduces how uniquely “ancient American” it looks as evidence.

This is rather interesting. I wonder what would happen if I started feeding you a lot more data to input into the assessment. For instance, many Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon show up in the Bible as well, and therefore don't count as strongly. That is a valid critique. But that isn't the case for ALL Hebraisms. And there are many other features of ancient Near Eastern texts to consider. I had a similar discussion with an LLM a while back. I marshalled all of the evidence of this nature that I knew of (which is a ton), including all the wordplay data I'm familiar with. Once it had more data in hand, and once I addressed some of the holes it its logic, it conceded that the Book of Mormon looked very much like its author had a deep background in Hebrew and Egyptian languages. And it, of course, conceded that Joseph Smith wasn't a viable candidate on that front in 1829, based on his known history. 

Edited February 26 by Ryan Dahle

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Ryan Dahle said:

This is rather interesting. I wonder what would happen if I started feeding you a lot more data to input into the assessment. For instance, many Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon show up in the Bible as well, and therefore don't count as strongly. That is a valid critique. But that isn't the case for ALL Hebraisms. And there are many other features of ancient Near Eastern texts to consider. I had a similar discussion with an LLM a while back. I marshalled all of the evidence of this nature that I knew of (which is a ton), including all the wordplay data I'm familiar with. Once it had more data in hand, and once I addressed some of the holes it its logic, it conceded that the Book of Mormon looked very much like its author had a deep background in Hebrew and Egyptian languages. And it, of course, conceded that Joseph Smith wasn't a viable candidate on that front in 1829, based on his known history. 

In my last prompt, I did try to bias it against my own position (e.g. "the book is full of indicators that is ancient..."). On a pretty deep level, the AI wants to be helpful, and will go along with whatever you give it. I think version 5.2 is much better than, say, 4o was, but it's still really easy to manipulate. What I thought was hopeful is that it seemed to be a bit skeptical about the strength of the evidence I listed, and said, "if I treat your listed items as moderately supportive but not decisive...", which is different than saying, "my objective evaluation is that the items you listed are moderately supportive."

When somebody simplistically assumes pieces of evidence are all independent and starts multiplying priors by a giant string of usually big factors (e.g. Bruce Dale, Kyler Rasmussen), you almost immediately create meaningless posterior probabilities. In abstract, Bayesian reasoning is the only logically coherent way of weighing evidence, but trying to use it mathematically in an unbiased way is tough.

The examples from Caesar were a bit underwhelming for me. “Presented him with two hundred thousand asses” made me think of the explanation of Nephite money in that passage before Korihor attempted  to bribe Alma. Is that an example of the Book of Mormon fitting or not? You wouldn't expect Mormon tediously engraving all of that onto the plates, but you could assume that Mormon had incredibly specific prophetic knowledge of his target audience and therefore knew to include it.

 

Edited February 26 by Analytics

[Ryan Dahle]

10 minutes ago, Analytics said:

In my last prompt, I did try to bias it against my own position (e.g. "the book is full of indicators that is ancient..."). On a pretty deep level, the AI wants to be helpful, and will go along with whatever you give it. I think version 5.2 is much better than, say, 4o was, but it's still really easy to manipulate. What I thought was hopeful is that it seemed to be a bit skeptical about the strength of the evidence I listed, and said, "if I treat your listed items as moderately supportive but not decisive...", which is different than saying, "my objective evaluation is that the items you listed are moderately supportive."

When somebody simplistically assumes pieces of evidence are all independent and starts multiplying priors by a giant string of usually big factors (e.g. Bruce Dale, Kyler Rasmussen), you almost immediately create meaningless posterior probabilities. In abstract, Bayesian reasoning is the only logically coherent way of weighing evidence, but trying to use it mathematically in an unbiased way is tough.

Agreed. I think the most useful part of the Bayesian approach is that it helps more clearly establish and compare subjective probability estimates within complex sets of data. In other words, it helps those with differing final conclusions better see where and why they disagree on the particulars. But the actually final statistical outcomes are essentially unreliable. 

[Calm]

17 hours ago, Analytics said:

You wouldn't expect Mormon tediously engraving all of that onto the plates,

I would if he was an over explainer like I am.  I can so see me cursing myself for starting with including some not particularly important detail because once started I would have to do a thorough job even if I had changed my mind about whether it should be included or not.

(I assume he wrote it out on something temporary first, but my school essays were just as long when they were handwritten as typed, so that might not be enough to give him pause…plus maybe stuff occurred to him he wanted to add mid process)

You guys should be so grateful for the delete function.  😛

Edited February 27 by Calm

[smac97]

On 2/16/2026 at 11:12 AM, smac97 said:

And the hit parade continues, this time Down Under: Cairns Clinic Scandal: Urgent Call to Halt Child Transition

Hmm.  I had not heard about this story.

Good grief.

Thanks,

-Smac

A study from Finland: 

Mental health worsened after gender transitions for youth, major new study finds

Quote

Adolescents struggling with gender dysphoria who sought gender transition medical treatment were found to have worse mental health symptoms in the long term compared to their peers, contradicting the belief that so-called “gender-affirming care” significantly improves outcomes.

Youth patients with gender dysphoria who were referred to gender medicine clinics in Finland were upward of three times as likely to need psychiatric treatment following their referral compared to patients without a history of gender transition counseling or interventions. 

It will be interesting to see how (or if) this study holds up under scrutiny.

That second paragraph is troubling.

Quote

A new study published this week in the journal Acta Paediatrica analyzed 1996-2019 data on mental health services for children and young adults in Finland’s education system, tracking patients with gender dysphoria, referred to Gender Identity Services, for transition treatment. Researchers were able to collect this long-term data for each patient due to the country’s socialized medicine system and comprehensive mental health screening in schools.

Longitudinal data has been largely absent from evaluations of having minors undergo "gender-affirming" medical treatments.  

Quote

The authors found that adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria “showed significantly higher psychiatric morbidity” before being referred to gender clinics than their peers, which continued even after being referred to gender transition clinics. They argue that their findings indicate gender dysphoria “may be secondary to other mental health challenges.” 

“This underscores the need to thoroughly assess and appropriately treat mental disorders among those seeking [gender reassignment] before and after undergoing irreversible medical treatments,” the authors wrote. “Psychiatric needs must be adequately met.”

"{A}dolescents suffering from gender dysphoria 'showed significantly higher psychiatric morbidity' before being referred to gender clinics than their peers, which continued even after being referred to gender transition clinics."

"{F}indings indicate gender dysphoria 'may be secondary to other mental health challenges.'"  

I have previously listed my concerns about potential issues pertaining to "gender-affirming care" for minors:

• Comorbidities. 
• Informed consent. 
• Compromised assessments of the best interests of the child. 
• Irreversibility. 
• Sterilization. 
• Electively removing healthy body parts of minors. 
• Longitudinal studies essentially absent. 
• Lifelong medical regimens. 
• Ideological/sociopolitical influences/pressures on medical care. 
• Social contagion risks. 
• Risk of financial devastation for the individual (and burden on society).

Longitudinal data and comorbidities are both being addressed in this article.

Quote

The findings of the report challenge guidelines promoted by some U.S. professional medical groups that children with gender dysphoria do not need significant mental health counseling before receiving life-altering interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mastectomies, or genital reconstructions.

"{G}uidelines promoted by some U.S. professional medical groups that children with gender dysphoria do not need significant mental health counseling before receiving life-altering interventions."

Has that been the case?  Is this an accurate statement and characterization of these medical groups?

Quote

Adolescent patients in the U.S. who have undergone medical gender transition and their families often say that their medical professionals told them such interventions would be necessary to prevent suicide or other adverse mental health outcomes. 

But the data to support such clinical practices has come under increasing scrutiny from the medical community and public policy experts. 

I have struggled to identify any other medical regimen or procedure that is medically authorized in response to the patient's threat to commit suicide.   

Quote

Both the U.S. and the United Kingdom have published comprehensive systematic reviews of the scientific literature used to support gender medicine guidelines, concluding that the methodology and data support transition procedures.

The Finnish study is unique because of the size and scope of the dataset. Even among high-quality studies, collecting more than 25 years of data on a nationally representative sample of about 2,100 patients referred for gender identity services provided a unique opportunity to capture long-term findings that few other studies offer.

I am glad that longitudinal data is coming out.  I look forward to it being scrutinized by those with the skillsets to do it.

Quote

The authors found that adolescents referred to gender clinics had significantly higher rates of requiring further psychiatric treatment than the control groups, both before and two years after referral.

Nearly 46% of adolescents with gender dysphoria had obtained psychiatric treatment before being referred to a gender clinic. Two years later, that rate increased to nearly 62%.

The need for further psychiatric treatment increased significantly during follow-up for patients who underwent medicalized gender transition, rising from roughly 10% to 61% for male-to-female transitioners and from 22% to 55% for female-to-male transitioners.

"The need for further psychiatric treatment increased significantly during follow-up for patients who underwent medicalized gender transition, rising from roughly 10% to 61% for male-to-female transitioners and from 22% to 55% for female-to-male transitioners."

Wow.  Those are astonishing numbers.

Quote

After adjusting for prior treatment, girls with gender dysphoria were three times as likely to need additional psychiatric treatment in the future compared to their peers, regardless of whether they underwent medical sex reassignment. Boys with gender dysphoria, with or without medicalization, were five times as likely to need future psychiatric care compared to their peers.

Dr. Kurt Miceli, a psychiatrist and the Chief Medical Officer for the medical ethics organization Do No Harm, told the Washington Examiner that he believes the study challenges the argument that gender transition medicine is the necessary first-line treatment.

“In reality, what we’re seeing is that there’s an even greater need for individuals who have undergone these medical interventions for psychiatric services,” Miceli said. “That really should help alarm us and make sure that we were providing those psychiatric services initially.”

Miceli and Do No Harm advocate against gender transition medical treatments for minors, instead supporting a holistic approach that first and foremost treats underlying mental health concerns for gender dysphoric youth.

Miceli says the data from the Finnish study is consistent with data from other studies and systematic reviews that indicate children with gender dysphoria suffer from a range of comorbidities, including mental health concerns like anxiety and depression. 

“As a psychiatrist, it certainly screams of the need to really make sure that we are providing good quality psychiatric care,” Miceli said.

Do No Harm is clearly activist, so I would prefer to see more clinical assessments.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

-Smac