A Secular Theory of Where the BoM Came From

[california boy]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

What makes you think they weren’t using them at the time just as they apparently used the brass plates and the Jews used the Torah, etc anciently once it got written down?

I guess I was just referring to the record they were making that Joseph Smith claimed to receive.  Why was that made out of gold and then really hardly used to be translated.

[california boy]

17 hours ago, webbles said:

It actually sounds like we are mostly in agreement.  You agree that Joseph had some metal plates.  That's what I'm arguing for.  I'm saying that the reaction to the Voree and Kinderhook plates show, to me, that Joseph had metal plates.  They were real enough to convince the witnesses.  The 8 witnesses weren't hoodwinked or made to "spiritually" view the plates.  They actually got to touch them and found them to be real metal plates.  That's all I'm arguing about.

I have a hard time believing that Joseph could have made them, but I definitely believe people at the time could definitely make them.  See the Kinderhook and Voree plates for an example.  It would be a lot more effort, but is definitely possible.  But that starts to go into the realm of a conspiracy of people making the Book of Mormon and every avenue I've tried with those theories end up with lots of issues.

Some of the 8 witnesses were definitely involved earlier (Hyrum, Joseph Sr, Samuel) but most of them would have been completely new to Joseph and the Book of Mormon.  The only knowledge they would have had before June 1829 is from letters from Oliver Cowdery.  It would appear that all of them were interested but they weren't friends or intimate acquaintances of Joseph.  They participated in the coming forth but I think you have the order backwards.  They were nobodies to Joseph before he selected them to be the witnesses.  He didn't do a deep evaluation of who should see it.  It almost feels like he just picked the people available.  If he and Oliver hadn't moved in with them, it would probably have been a different set of people.

I do agree that it is possible Joseph Smith or someone else could have made something out of metal because other people at the time also made metal plates.  And in all likelihood he showed something to the witnesses.  But that story really does not prove much concerning the authenticity of the Book of Mormon because it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the plates could have been created by someone at the time and not delivered by an angel.  

It is really very very difficult for the vast majority of people to believe the whole story of how the BoM came to be.  Way too many flaws in the story in general that can lead to a different conclusion even by honest men seeking answers.  If it is true, God made it pretty hard to determine its authenticity other then having just warm feelings about it.  This plan, just by the very nature of how it is set up means that God really had little intention of a large number of people embracing his gospel in mortality.  So I guess the plan all along was to do all that work, not here on earth, but after everyone dies???  It seems of little importance to God for people to find the gospel while mortal.  So maybe all of this plan is working how it is supposed to work and the church will always be this small sect working hard for a few people to believe in.  

A more substantial investigation by more credible people who could actually subject the plates to a more scientific examination may have given way more people interest in finding out its truths.  I think for most people it is a story easily dismissed.

 

[webbles]

11 hours ago, Zosimus said:

Looking closer, it wasn't ubiquitous, as in it wasn't lying around in piles in places like Palmyra. But also, if someone in Palmyra needed some tinplate, they wouldn't need to custom order it from abroad. It was produced in America from the early 1700s, with production increasing after the War of 1812. Tinplate was available for tinsmiths and tinplate goods were distributed by village-to-village peddlers:

https://hylandhouse.org/early-guilford-days/virtual-early-guilford-days-2020/tinsmithing

"A Short History of Tinsmithing: The tinsmith has been plying his trade in America since 1720. Colonial tin products were made of imported tinplate. England banned the production of tinplate in the colonies, thus restricting the amount of goods the colonists could produce. Tinplate is thin steel that has been dipped several times into molten tin. If there is rust on a piece of tinware, it is because the tinplate has worn away or a cut in the metal has exposed the steel which has rusted.

Colonial tinsmiths used tinplate, wire, sodder, and a few simple tools to produce their wares. When tinplate was finally produced in America in the early 1800’s the products of the tinsmith became more widely available. They in turn saw an increase in demand and a need to speed up production. This brought about the development of many ingenious hand powered machines which sped up production and helped the tinsmith meet the demands for his products. The goods were “brought to market” by peddlers traveling from village to village."

I've tried to find good sources for production of tinplate in the US and they always say it is in the later 1800s, not the early 1800s.  I've seen things like this statement but with no documentation.  So I'm pretty certain the US had no tinplate manufacturing.  They might have had some really small, handmade manufacturing, but the vast majority of tinplate would be imported.

I agree that tinplated stuff was available to purchase but that is not what Dan is arguing for.  He is arguing that Joseph had raw tinplates and cut them himself.  That is not a common thing you purchase.  You purchase tinplate goods, not raw tinplate.  The tinsmith in Palmyra might have some (if there is a tinsmith there) but Joseph and his family would have no need to buy tinplate.  That would be a uncommon thing and should have shown up in the documentation evidence.

[webbles]

1 minute ago, webbles said:

I've tried to find good sources for production of tinplate in the US and they always say it is in the later 1800s, not the early 1800s.  I've seen things like this statement but with no documentation.  So I'm pretty certain the US had no tinplate manufacturing.  They might have had some really small, handmade manufacturing, but the vast majority of tinplate would be imported.

I agree that tinplated stuff was available to purchase but that is not what Dan is arguing for.  He is arguing that Joseph had raw tinplates and cut them himself.  That is not a common thing you purchase.  You purchase tinplate goods, not raw tinplate.  The tinsmith in Palmyra might have some (if there is a tinsmith there) but Joseph and his family would have no need to buy tinplate.  That would be a uncommon thing and should have shown up in the documentation evidence.

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

[california boy]

2 minutes ago, webbles said:

I've tried to find good sources for production of tinplate in the US and they always say it is in the later 1800s, not the early 1800s.  I've seen things like this statement but with no documentation.  So I'm pretty certain the US had no tinplate manufacturing.  They might have had some really small, handmade manufacturing, but the vast majority of tinplate would be imported.

I agree that tinplated stuff was available to purchase but that is not what Dan is arguing for.  He is arguing that Joseph had raw tinplates and cut them himself.  That is not a common thing you purchase.  You purchase tinplate goods, not raw tinplate.  The tinsmith in Palmyra might have some (if there is a tinsmith there) but Joseph and his family would have no need to buy tinplate.  That would be a uncommon thing and should have shown up in the documentation evidence.

He did have 4 years to gather tin plates before he needed to show anyone anything.  It certainly can't be dismissed as being undoable, just difficult.

[webbles]

13 minutes ago, california boy said:

I do agree that it is possible Joseph Smith or someone else could have made something out of metal because other people at the time also made metal plates.  And in all likelihood he showed something to the witnesses.  But that story really does not prove much concerning the authenticity of the Book of Mormon because it is entirely within the realm of possibility that the plates could have been created by someone at the time and not delivered by an angel.  

100% agree.  The 8 witnesses tell us nothing about the Book of Mormon except that Joseph had metal plates that were good enough to look ancient.  The 3 witnesses (and Mary Whitmer) are the ones to authenticate the Book of Mormon since they involve the supernatural.

15 minutes ago, california boy said:

It is really very very difficult for the vast majority of people to believe the whole story of how the BoM came to be.  Way too many flaws in the story in general that can lead to a different conclusion even by honest men seeking answers.  If it is true, God made it pretty hard to determine its authenticity other then having just warm feelings about it.  This plan, just by the very nature of how it is set up means that God really had little intention of a large number of people embracing his gospel in mortality.  So I guess the plan all along was to do all that work, not here on earth, but after everyone dies???  It seems of little importance to God for people to find the gospel while mortal.  So maybe all of this plan is working how it is supposed to work and the church will always be this small sect working hard for a few people to believe in.  

A more substantial investigation by more credible people who could actually subject the plates to a more scientific examination may have given way more people interest in finding out its truths.  I think for most people it is a story easily dismissed.

Sure, people can come to different conclusions.  I doubt the plates being subjected to a more scientific examination would help.  Because we still have the problem that an angel told Joseph where they were.  Plates can't be dated.  Even if it was made of tumbaga, we would be debating on whether Joseph or someone in the area knew about that.  Even if I could definitively prove that the plates were actual ancient artifacts, the problem of "it seems of little importance to God for people to find the gospel while mortal." still exists as well.  So the reality of the plates wouldn't change your opinion since you have other reasons to disbelieve.

[webbles]

7 minutes ago, california boy said:

He did have 4 years to gather tin plates before he needed to show anyone anything.  It certainly can't be dismissed as being undoable, just difficult.

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

[teddyaware]

45 minutes ago, webbles said:

100% agree.  The 8 witnesses tell us nothing about the Book of Mormon except that Joseph had metal plates that were good enough to look ancient.  The 3 witnesses (and Mary Whitmer) are the ones to authenticate the Book of Mormon since they involve the supernatural.

Sure, people can come to different conclusions.  I doubt the plates being subjected to a more scientific examination would help.  Because we still have the problem that an angel told Joseph where they were.  Plates can't be dated.  Even if it was made of tumbaga, we would be debating on whether Joseph or someone in the area knew about that.  Even if I could definitively prove that the plates were actual ancient artifacts, the problem of "it seems of little importance to God for people to find the gospel while mortal." still exists as well.  So the reality of the plates wouldn't change your opinion since you have other reasons to disbelieve.

Exactly.  If the plates were presented to the world and put through extensive testing to determine if there’s a chance they’re authentic, very few would end up being convinced the Book of Mormon is true after the “experts” come to the conclusion that it’s 99.999% certain the plates are part of an elaborate hoax. Then the church would be exposed to a tsunami of extremely detrimental derision for trying to pull a fast one on the world. 

Edited March 17 by teddyaware

[smac97]

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

I don’t have a positive explanation for specifically what happened that is based on empirical rigor and not heavy speculation.

After 200 years, you'd think that critics would have found some sort of alternative, and coherent, and evidence-based explanation that accounts for the extant evidence.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

As I’ve explained over and over, the reason I don’t have this positive explanation is because the evidence doesn’t exist.

Not sure what you are saying here.  The text of The Book of Mormon does not exist?  The Witness statements do not exist?  The historical evidence we have regarding the credibility and character of the Witnesses does not exist?  Richard Lloyd Anderson's book does not exist?

You have agreed that there is sufficient evidence for the propositions that Whitmer and Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  Now you are saying that evidence for these conclusions does not exist?  How, then, did you reach these conclusions?

You have already stated that Joseph had a physical object.  We agree on that much.  How do you account for that object's origins?  What was it made of?  Who made it?  When?  Where?  By what means?  Using what materials?  Was the object, in your theory, a cheap and gaudy and obvious sham, or was it sophisticated and well-made?

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

And as I’ve explained over and over, the reason the evidence doesn’t exist is because the person who had the most to gain from proving his claims true is the one who made sure the evidence that would have settled the matter was not made available for independent examination.

You seem to be moving the goalposts.  The Latter-day Saints don't have the Plates either, but we do have an explanation as to the origins of The Book of Mormon.  That explanation accounts for the extant evidence.  We have provided a positive, coherent explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

I have asked you to provide an alternative explanation along these same lines.  You are unwilling or unable to articulate one.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

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I take him at his word that he had a powerful religious experience. He said he saw the plates "in a vision or in the spirit." I believe him.

Do you also "believe him" when he said these things?

• "{W}e, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record... And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things."
• “My testimony to the world is written concerning the Book of Mormon, and it is the same that I gave at first and it is the same as shall stand to my latest hour in life, linger with me in death and shine as Gospel Truth beyond the limits of life.”
• “My testimony to the Book of Mormon is true and I am admonished neither to add to nor take from my testimony already appended to the Book.”
• “Those who know me best, well know that I have adhered to that testimony.—And that no man may be misled or doubt my present views in regard to the same, I do now again affirm the truth of all my statement[s], as then made and published.”
• “I did see the angel of God, and was commanded to testify of these things, and they are true.”
• “You ask me if I saw the Angel when he brought the plates. I saw the Angel when he brought the plates, and the Angel told us that we must bear testimony to the world, as contained in my testimony written in the Book of Mormon. Doubt not—sister—the Book of Mormon is the word of God.”
• "I saw the angel as plainly as I see you; he was surrounded by the glory of God, which overshadowed us, and we heard his voice, and we saw the records of the Book of Mormon...My testimony is the same as at the beginning, as is true."
• "I saw them just as plain as I see this bed (striking his hand upon the bed beside him), and I heard the voice of the Lord as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life declaring that they (the plates) were translated by the gift and power of God."
• "How well and distinctly I remember the manner in which Elder Whitmer arose and drew himself up to his full height--a little over six feet--and said, in solemn and impressive tones: 'No sir! I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes, and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!'"

I don’t know what that means.

This is a depressingly common rhetorical gimmick used these days.  When a respondent can answer a question, but does not want to because he thinks it will weaken his argument/position, he evades answering it by claiming confusion or ignorance or lack of basic comprehension skills.

You said:

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He said he saw the plates "in a vision or in the spirit." I believe him. 

You are quoting seven words from this quote:

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• In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it “being in vision.” We read in the Scriptures, Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God, Daniel saw an angel in a vision, also in other places it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were, that filled [the woods as] at noon day, and there in a vision or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.^[72]

[72] David Whitmer, to Anthony Metcalf, 2 April 1887; printed in A[nthony] Metcalf, Ten Years before the Mast ([Malad City, Idaho]: n.p. [1888]), 73-74, italics in original; cited in Dan Vogel (editor), Early Mormon Documents (Salt Lake City, Signature Books, 1996–2003), 5 vols, 5:193.

So you understand what Whitmer meant, sufficient to allow you to understand his meaning, but only as to those seven words?

And you are simultaneously incapable of understand Whitmer's words, recorded in English, as to the rest of the statement?

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In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it “being in vision.” We read in the Scriptures, Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God, Daniel saw an angel in a vision, also in other places it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were, that filled [the woods as] at noon day, and there in a vision or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.

You are also incapable of understanding these statements?

Quote

• "{W}e, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record... And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things."
• “My testimony to the world is written concerning the Book of Mormon, and it is the same that I gave at first and it is the same as shall stand to my latest hour in life, linger with me in death and shine as Gospel Truth beyond the limits of life.”
• “My testimony to the Book of Mormon is true and I am admonished neither to add to nor take from my testimony already appended to the Book.”
• “Those who know me best, well know that I have adhered to that testimony.—And that no man may be misled or doubt my present views in regard to the same, I do now again affirm the truth of all my statement[s], as then made and published.”
• “I did see the angel of God, and was commanded to testify of these things, and they are true.”
• “You ask me if I saw the Angel when he brought the plates. I saw the Angel when he brought the plates, and the Angel told us that we must bear testimony to the world, as contained in my testimony written in the Book of Mormon. Doubt not—sister—the Book of Mormon is the word of God.”
• "I saw the angel as plainly as I see you; he was surrounded by the glory of God, which overshadowed us, and we heard his voice, and we saw the records of the Book of Mormon...My testimony is the same as at the beginning, as is true."
• "I saw them just as plain as I see this bed (striking his hand upon the bed beside him), and I heard the voice of the Lord as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life declaring that they (the plates) were translated by the gift and power of God."
• "How well and distinctly I remember the manner in which Elder Whitmer arose and drew himself up to his full height--a little over six feet--and said, in solemn and impressive tones: 'No sir! I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes, and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!'"

When Whitmer said "I saw the angel as plainly as I see you" you don't know what that means?

When Whitmer said "'I saw them {the Plates} just as plain as I see this bed' (striking his hand upon the bed beside him)," you don't know what that means?

When Whitmer said "I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes, and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!," you don't know what that means?

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

What are “the plates” he’s talking about?

The same Plates under discussion in this thread.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

The concept is ill-defined.

You said: "He said he saw the plates 'in a vision or in the spirit.' I believe him."

So "the plates" were sufficiently defined for you to make this statement when accounting for seven of Whitmer's words, but otherwise "the plates" are "ill-defined" as to anything else Whitmer has to say?

Are you sure about that?

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

For example, is he talking about the same plates the 8 witnesses saw?  Explain to me what you are claiming here.

He's talking about the Plates he saw.  The ones you were referencing when you said "I believe him."

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

Are you saying that Moroni gave some plates to Joseph,

More of the feigned ignorance/confusion stuff.

Yes.  This happened on September 22, 1827.

This is common knowledge stuff.  That you are pretending to be confused about or unaware of it does not strengthen your argument.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

Joseph had them hidden in a box or something for several years while translating,

I don't think we have a day-by-day account of where Joseph kept the Plates while they were in his possession.  A Grok summary from this article:

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• Immediately after obtaining them (September 22, 1827, near Hill Cumorah): Hidden temporarily in a hollow birch log nearby. Joseph cut a hole in the bark, placed the plates inside the cavity, replaced the bark, and concealed the spot with old materials lying nearby.
• Transport home to the Smith family farm (Palmyra/Manchester, New York): Wrapped in his linen frock and carried under his arm along the Canandaigua road and through woods to evade pursuers; he faced multiple attacks but kept them safe.
• At the Smith home (initially): Locked in a chest provided by his brother Hyrum.
• When a mob threatened a search: Removed from the chest, placed in a second box, and hidden by removing part of the hearth in the west room of the house, then relaying the hearth stones over them.
• After Samuel Lawrence and a rodsman searched the west room: Dug up, moved across the road to the cooper's shop (barrel-making shop), and hidden under the floorboards of the shop.
• Shortly after (to mislead searchers): Dug up again, removed from the box (which was reburied empty), wrapped in clothing, and concealed in a quantity of flax in the loft of the cooper's shop.
• For further protection/transport: Placed in a third box (made from an old Ontario glass-box).
• Final move to Harmony, Pennsylvania (early 1828): Nailed the plates in the glass-box, placed the box in a strong cask filled one-third with beans for concealment, and transported them early with armed escorts to avoid threats.

The experience of the Three Witnesses occurred in late June 1829 (perhaps on June 28).  Joseph was, at this time, staying with the Whitmers at their farm in Fayette, New York, having moved there from Harmony, Pennsylvania around early June 1829.  Apparently Joseph returned the Plates to Moroni rather than have them with him on this journey.  See here and also here:

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In early June 1829, the unwanted attentions of locals around Harmony necessitated Smith's move to the home of David Whitmer and his parents in Fayette, New York. Smith said that during this move the plates were transported by the angel Moroni, who put them in the garden of the Whitmer house where Smith could recover them. The translation was completed at the Whitmer home.

Per this timeline, Joseph generally had possession of the Plates during June, 1829 in Fayette, which is when the translation was completed, and also when the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses had their respective experiences.  During this time it appears that Joseph kept the Plates in a chest or box (see here).

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

and then Moroni went, retrieved the plates from the box, showed them to the 3 witnesses, and then put them back in the box?

I don't think we know the particulars.

But c'mon.  Joseph only claimed to have one artifact answering to the description of "plates."  

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

Then Joseph showed them to the eight, then Moroni came and retrieved them?

Yes.  

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

If I were allowed to speculate I’d speculate that the magical “plates" that Moroni showed are not the same “plates” that Joseph showed.

Okay.  Why would you speculate in that way?

Also, what do you mean by "magical"?  Anything significant?  Or is that just a pejorative dig?

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

He is talking about a ton of ill-defined, fantastical things. I can’t form an opinion on these claims until I know what in the heck he is talking about.

Whitmer tied his statements together.  His later statements ratified his attestation as one of the Three Witnesses.

You can form an opinion about Joseph having an object answering to the description of the Plates, but cannot do so when evaluating Whitmer's statements about the Plates?  Why?  What is the source of your confusion?

You believe Caesar was stabbed to death, right?  You have formed an opinion about that topic, even though you don't have much information about the particulars of the stabbing implements.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

If you claimed Brutus stabbed Caesar on March 15, 44 B.C. with a dagger on the senate floor in Rome, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

You do?  How many stabbing implements were there?  Was Brutus one of the ones doing the stabbing, or was he only standing nearby?  How do you know "exactly" what we're "talking about" when it comes to Suetonius' record made 165 years after the fact, but not when we're discussing David Whitmer? 

Whitmer's attestations are far more reliable.  Again, you have agreed that Whitmer and Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  Now you are backtracking in your assessment?

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

Brutus, Caesar,

David Whitmer, Martin Harris.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

daggers,

Gold Plates.  Extensively described by Joseph Smith and numerous other witnesses.  Their appearance, color, size, dimensions, weight, engravings, binding rings, sealed portion, and so on.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

the Senate floor,

Fayette, New York, near the Whitmer farm.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

March 15, 44 B.C., etc.

June 28, 1829 (or thereabouts).

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

are all well-defined things.

So are David Whitmer, Martin Harris, the Plates, the Whitmer farm, and the date.

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

In contrast, angels, plates, God, the power of God, etc., are not well-defined things.

The Angel was Moroni.  I suppose there could have been more than one angelic ministrant, but I doubt it.

The "plates" are very well-defined things.

"God" is also quite well-defined in the Latter-day Saint paradigm.

"The power of God" is, I grant you, not really well-defined. 

20 hours ago, Analytics said:

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We do not have an "independent empirical verification, just as we do not have "independent empirical verification" of the physician autopsy reported by Suetonius.  And yet you accept that report as historically accurate, even though it is only referenced in a separate document written many decades after the fact, by a gossipmonger, about the circumstances of the death of a hugely controversial politician, and based on who-knows-what documents that no longer exist for corroboration purposes.  Why is that?  Why do you accept Suetonius has a reliable historical reference?

Do you really need me to explain why historians believe Caesar was assassinated on the Senate floor in 44 B.C. but don't believe that Moroni, an ancient Central American, buried a golden book in upstate New York for Joseph Smith to find?

Dodge.

I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

You took some limited steps toward that, and I appreciate that.  But you haven't gone very far.  And you are stonewalling attempts to examine what little you have provided.

Again:

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With little evidence the best we can do is speculate or say "I don't know."

No, that's the best you are willing to do.

We can examine the evidence for the above witnesses.  We can examine their statements and compare/contrast them with each other.  We can examine the circumstances surrounding their interactions with the Plates.  We can examine the biographical information we have about these people so as to gauge their credibility and character (which we notably can't due for Suetonius, whose gossipy, non-percipient, uncorroborated, unsourced, 165-years-after-the-fact Say-So you nevertheless accept without question).

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This is honesty and epistemic humility.

Mighty selective in when and where you deploy this "honesty and epistemic humility."  It apparently keeps you from postulating about Joseph's narrative, but not from a "Space Aliens and/or Satan are 'More Likely'"-style assessment.

Suetonius presents a gossipy, non-percipient, uncorroborated, unsourced, 165-years-after-the-fact Say-So, and your response is to examine it, contextualize it, and accept its veracity as established.  I that's good, since we can only work with what we've got.  "Honesty and epistemic humility" allows us to examine historical evidence after all.

But only about Caesar, it seems.

We have David Whitmer and numerous percipient witnesses (and several second- and third-hand witnesses), who gave official and unofficial statements, both near-in-time to the events and later in their lifetimes (including when several were estranged from Joseph), whose statements have no real provenance issues, and about whom we have substantial biographical information as to their character and credibility, and your response is "we have very, very little reliable evidence of what the witnesses really saw and why they signed the witness statements," and that we have "a dearth of evidence" which precludes us from any substantive examination, so that "the best we can do is speculate or say 'I don't know,'" and that this amounts to "honesty and epistemic humility."

I think it amounts to a massive dodge and cop-out on your part.

I think you are one of the most well-versed critics of the Church.  You are lightyears ahead, in both information and intellect, of lightweights like Dehlin and Reel and anonymous online RFMers and ExMo redditors.  With some few exceptions (Sandra Tanner, Dan Vogel, maybe a few others), I think you are at or near the top of the Anti-Mormon heap.  You are the best situated to be a resource for someone to approach with a request for a positive, coherent alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon, centering on evidence about the Plates, the Witnesses and the Text, and which explanation accounts for key data points without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

And you won't do it.

Latter-day Saint scholars have brought the receipts.  They are willing to examine evidences you deny even exist, despite their historical provenance being beyond reasonable dispute.  They have published voluminous resources and made them readily available to the world.  

You are not willing to examine these same evidences, claiming that "honesty and epistemic humility" prevents you from even trying (except, it seems, for "Space Aliens" and "Satan," which you are willing to publicly declare to be "more likely" explanations).

Well, okay.  

Roger, I know this is a tough topic.  Despite what I perceive as rhetorical evasions and distractions, I appreciate your willingness to talk about this stuff.  You are operating under a set of atheistic/agnostic/naturalistic presuppositions that you have had for a very long time, that you are very comfortable with and confident in, and so on.  But those presuppositions are, I think, impeding you from bringing your otherwise substantial intellect and knowledge based to bear on the topic under discussion, specifically, to articulate a positive, coherent alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon, centering on evidence about the Plates, the Witnesses and the Text, and which explanation accounts for key data points without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

The Latter-day Saints have done this.  You have not.

At this point, I am concluding that it's not that you won't respond to my request, but that you can't.  Despite decades of study and familiarity with the Church and its doctrines/history, and despite your extensive participation on this board, and despite your formidable intellect, you are demonstrating that you cannot meaningfully engage and address the substantive evidence pertaining to the Witnesses and the Plates (and we have barely touched the text itself and evidences associated therewith).  

Again, Hugh Nibley nailed it:

Quote

“The Book of Mormon is tough; it thrives on investigation; you may kick it around like a football, as many have done, and I promise you it will wear you out long before you ever make a dent in it.”

— Hugh Nibley, 1952 (CWHN Vol. 5, p. 153)

You scoff and heap scorn on Joseph's narrative and the Latter-day Saints who, through extensive spiritual and intellectual study, have accepted it as substantively true.  And yet when you are invited to present a counter-narrative, you can't do it.  You are reduced to arguing that Space Aliens and/or Satan are "more likely" explanations, to feigning ignorance/confusion, to issuing serialized "I don't know" responses to questions about your own theory, to resorting to special pleading all over the place, to constant ducking and weaving as to the evidentiary and logical flaws in your position, and so on.

Nibley was quite right.  The Book of Mormon has worn you out.  You have nothing substantive to offer the Latter-day Saints better than what they already have as regarding the origins of The Book of Mormon.

My invitation remains open.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 17 by smac97

[champatsch]

Here is another way that the Book of Mormon is different from pseudo-archaic writings and Bunyan's usage.

Texts | Corpora                                         the more part       the more part of X     a more part   the more parts

1611 King James Bible                                                  2                                     0                      0              0
Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts)                              0                                     0                      0              0
Bunyan corpus (39 texts)                                            0                                     0                      0              0
1829 Book of Mormon                                                  0                                   21                      1               2

The reason Bunyan didn't use "more part" phraseology is because it was mainly usage of the 16c and earlier.

Also, Joseph Smith could have imitated the Bible's short form, with no post-modifying phrase, 13 times, without any loss of information. But he did not.

The Book of Mormon appears to be independently archaic because of the two rare early modern variants. The plural variant occurs from Late Middle English to Early Modern English. It can be seen in early statutes. The indefinite variant was the rarest. One plural variant is in the first edition of Holinshed's Chronicles (1577, HC), but it was changed in the second edition (1587) to the singular.

Statutory compilations of earlier English law have many examples of "more part" phraseology. Besides those, the Book of Mormon has the most occurring in a text since the early 1600s. HC might have the most. It has about 50 that are adverbial, which read "for the more part." The adverbial use occurs twice in the Book of Mormon, in 1 Nephi 9. And HC has about 110 examples of non-adverbial "the more part." Most of these, at least 90, have a post-modifying phrase, as in the Book of Mormon.

There was rare, sporadic usage of "the more part" in the 1800s, and such examples are used to explain this stand-out Book of Mormon usage naturalistically. The text's rare variants are conveniently ignored, since hardly anyone knows about them, and many other archaic outliers are ignored. Obviously, if Joseph Smith worded the "more part" phraseology of the Book of Mormon, then he did it consciously, and he happened to hit on two rare variants. Also, he consciously dictated dozens of different types of archaic outliers, involving thousands of instances. Just the "did <infinitive>" outlier alone constitutes 1,600 instances, including 16 of the rare early modern variant "did have." He had to consciously dictate non-emphatic, non-contrastive periphrastic did more than 1,500 times, over many weeks, including the rare variant "did have," which is not in the above comparison texts, but does occur in earlier English, primarily in the 1500s. Of course, modern "did have" usage, which everyone was exposed to, was emphatic or poetic or a legal use. This is different from what Joseph Smith dictated. Even Bunyan was exposed to some of this emerging, later usage, and it did not lead to him using "did have" in the rare 16c way.

[smac97]

2 hours ago, california boy said:

He did have 4 years to gather tin plates before he needed to show anyone anything.  It certainly can't be dismissed as being undoable, just difficult.

Sure.  But how did he get these purportedly tin plates to have "the appearance of gold"?  Vogel says he painted them yellow.  Are you on board with that explanation?

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Sure.  But how did he get these purportedly tin plates to have "the appearance of gold"?  Vogel says he painted them yellow.  Are you on board with that explanation?

Thanks,

-Smac

Just asked Grok this:

Quote

Dan Vogel, a researcher of early Mormon history, has proposed a secular theory that Joseph Smith created the "golden plates" using tin, or a similar inexpensive metal, which was then painted or finished to look like gold. Do an analysis of this in terms of feasibility. Could common tin in the 1820s be made to look as having "the appearance of gold"? If so, how? And given the dimensions of the Plates, would tin be comparable in terms of weight?

The response:

Quote

Yes, Dan Vogel’s secular/naturalistic theory (detailed in works like Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet and discussed in interviews/podcasts) posits that Joseph Smith fabricated a set of “golden plates” as a physical prop using inexpensive tin sheets (or tinplate, the common 1820s material of thin iron coated with tin). These would have been engraved by hand and finished to mimic gold’s appearance, allowing Joseph to “heft” and briefly display them while claiming they were ancient records. Replicas based on this theory (e.g., by Trent Told and others using 19th-century hand tools) have been made in just a couple of hours from scrap tin.

This is feasible in some respects but strained in others. Below is a breakdown focused on the two questions you asked, using witness descriptions, 1820s material realities, and physics.

1. Could Common Tin in the 1820s Be Made to Look Like Gold? (Yes—Easily and Cheaply)

Common tin (actually tinplate: thin sheets of iron with a thin tin coating, widely used for cans, roofing, and household goods) is naturally silvery-white and reflective. It does not look gold on its own. However, inexpensive 1820s finishing techniques readily gave it a convincing golden appearance, especially for a prop meant for brief or partially obscured viewing:

• Bronze-powder paint or gold-colored lacquer/varnish (the simplest and most likely method for Vogel’s theory): Bronze powder (a cheap copper-zinc alloy, available since the early 1800s) mixed with varnish, glue size, or shellac produced a metallic golden or brassy sheen. This was standard “Dutch gold” or tole-painting technique on tinware and picture frames. It was brushed on, dried quickly, and could be toned or varnished for protection. Cost: pennies per sheet. Appearance: bright metallic gold from a short distance or under candlelight. Many 19th-century decorative tin objects used exactly this.
• Imitation gold leaf or “composition leaf” (slightly more effort but still affordable): Thin brass or Dutch-metal leaf (copper-zinc imitation gold) was applied over a size adhesive. Real gold leaf was possible but far costlier; imitation versions were common by the 1820s for frames and furniture. Tin takes gilding well.
• Engraving: Tin/tinplate is soft and easy to work with simple stylus, chisel, or homemade tools—exactly as the replicas demonstrate. Characters could be “engraven” on both sides to look ancient.

Limitations for realism: Close inspection or handling in bright light would reveal it wasn’t solid gold (slight brassy undertone, possible tarnish, or paint wear). The Eight Witnesses (who handled the uncovered plates and noted “the appearance of gold” and fine workmanship) would have needed the finish to hold up under daylight scrutiny. Wrapped or quick showings (as with most accounts) make this easier. The theory works best if the prop was mostly kept hidden or displayed briefly.

2. Weight Comparison: Tin vs. the Reported “Gold” Plates

No—tin would be noticeably lighter, creating a significant feasibility gap.

Witness dimensions (consistent across Joseph Smith, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Lucy Mack Smith, etc.):

• Each plate: ≈6 inches wide × 8 inches long (some accounts 7×8 or 6×7).
• Thickness per plate: “not quite so thick as common tin” ≈0.005–0.012 inches (typical 1820s tinplate sheets were ~0.006–0.008 inches).
• Total stack: piled ≈4–6 inches thick, bound by three rings (like a book).
• Reported weight (by those who hefted it): 30–60 lbs, most commonly 40–60 lbs (Martin Harris specifically said 40–50 lbs; others including Joseph’s family echoed this).

Density/physics:

• Gold: 19.3 g/cm³.
• Pure tin: 7.3 g/cm³ (≈38% the density of gold).
• 1820s tinplate: ≈7.5–7.9 g/cm³ (iron base dominates).

Rough volume calculation (using standard scholarly estimates that account for many thin plates + small air gaps):

• If the plates were solid gold of the described size and total metal volume, they would weigh ≈200 lbs (impossible per witnesses).
• With realistic thin plates + voids, a gold or tumbaga-alloy version matches the 40–60 lb reports.
• A pure tin or tinplate version of identical dimensions/thickness would weigh only ≈38–40% as much: roughly 15–25 lbs (some replica makers report even lighter stacks).

Witnesses who physically lifted and “hefted” the plates (Joseph Smith Sr., Hyrum, Samuel, the Eight Witnesses, Josiah Stowell) consistently described them as heavy—like gold or a substantial metal record. A 20-lb tin prop would feel noticeably light for its size (like a thick book or light tool chest), not the “40–60 lb” heft reported. Joseph could have added internal weight (lead strips, sand, or thicker sheets), but that complicates the “simple tin prop” theory and risks detection.

Overall Feasibility Assessment

• Highly feasible for fabrication and appearance: Tin was cheap and locally available (tinsmiths in Palmyra area). Painting/bronze powder or basic gilding was everyday craftwork. Engraving was straightforward. Replicas prove it could be done quickly with period tools. This fits a poor 23-year-old farmhand creating a short-term prop to convince family and early supporters while the plates stayed mostly hidden or wrapped.
• Problematic for weight and close inspection: The consistent 40–60 lb reports are hard to reconcile with plain tin (unless heavily modified). The Eight Witnesses’ detailed handling descriptions (“bright like gold,” ancient engravings on both sides) strain a painted-tin explanation under daylight scrutiny.
• Contextual fit: The theory explains why the plates were always kept covered or quickly returned to an angel, why no one outside the inner circle examined them closely, and why they “disappeared.” It requires no supernatural elements or expensive gold.

In short, Vogel’s tin theory is mechanically and materially plausible for a clever 1820s hoax aimed at close associates—it could absolutely “look like gold” with simple finishes. The main physical weakness is weight mismatch, which would have been obvious to anyone who hefted the plates expecting solid-gold density. This is why some critics of the theory prefer alternatives (e.g., actual printing plates or a weighted box) or argue Joseph never had physical plates at all.

I'm quite curious about this.  I wonder if it would be feasible to attempt a Vogel-esque sham by using only those materials and methods likely to be available to Joseph and his contemporaries.  Looks like someone already did this (maybe) :

 

Mr. Told used sheet metal (which he says would be pretty close to tin), cut them up with shears (which would have been available in the 1820s), etc.  The results:

His item "weighs about 37 pounds."

"Very difficult to scratch ... very difficult to actually do characters on it without a hammer and engraving tool."

He also thinks copper could have worked, and that would have been heavier than tin.

The "sealed portion" was probably sealed to eliminate the need to have those plates engraved.

Says that gold plates would weigh about 140 pounts.

Said he is looking for ways to make plates look "golden."

They would rust very easily.

He concludes that Joseph could have fabricated the plates.  It only took a few hours.

They do not discuss tumbaga.

This came out 5 years ago (January 2021), with no follow-up video re: engraving, making the plates look "golden," using copper, etc.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 17 by smac97

[Calm]

On 3/17/2026 at 9:50 AM, california boy said:

I guess I was just referring to the record they were making that Joseph Smith claimed to receive.  Why was that made out of gold and then really hardly used to be translated.

This is all speculation and opinion from a believer’s POV, as in the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

Besides Moroni****, I don’t see why they wouldn’t use any of the records they made themselves even if God had intended them ultimately for the future.  People are always interested in their history, where they came from (generally speaking even if there are individuals who don’t care).  As long as there were righteous groups, there were likely copies made of the more spiritual teachings to be read in religious settings or used to keep the oral traditions on track, fill in details, etc.

Tumbaga is an alloy of copper coated in gold. The gold would keep the plates from tarnishing and corroding over the centuries.  I will find the article describing how useful this process was and post it in a bit. Going off of memory here.  Hopefully accurate.
 

****my guess is Moroni likely found creating something for the future sustaining and even uplifting, giving him a sense of value and purpose. Having to live with likely almost constant sorrow, even despair due to the destruction of his family and people and the awareness that others would kill him without hesitation could not have been that great.  But this work would have been a reminder that it wasn’t the end for his brethren and better things were to come for all…and he was substantially contributing to this.

I can also see Moroni reading the plates he was carrying as well as engraving them if only to pass the time, but more likely to help him feel connected with his people as well as God.

—

For Joseph, I see four (actually five, but the board ate my answer yesterday when I responded to what was the purpose and I have forgotten one of them) possible purposes to have the plates. 

 First, originally they helped convince him of the reality of the Nephite civilization and story just as they would help convince others; he wouldn’t doubt his visions or the teachings when he had the massive reality of the plates in his hands.  That surety would be necessary in teaching others. It would also be very important imo to sustain him through the years of suffering and sacrifice and especially, rejection.

Second, the custody of the plates gave him authority.  A poor, younger man assuming spiritual authority over much older, much more respected men than himself…I think what we can see of his initial reactions, trying to get help from a religious leader, trying to find some support in a community by attending a religious class (Methodist?) shows he wasn’t inclined to assume that role, at least not wholeheartedly.  He needed to be willing to stand on his own and the plates would likely help him feel he had the right, the mission to teach, council, and even reprimand those older and wiser than himself. 

Third, the plates being a treasure were a constant temptation for selfishness, they could make life for himself and his family much easier.  Instead they added a burden, added danger even for himself and his family.  Facing this choice of putting God’s work first over mundane wants and needs throughout his early years likely helped set him up to be willing to make necessary sacrifices in the future when it was likely even harder because it would be easier, less complicated to cheat a little here and there when he and his family were better off and had the respect of others.  (Not saying he always resisted taking the easy way here.)

Fourth, it gave him training for leadership. He had to plan how to keep them safe and put those plans into effect, get others to work with him to do so, to respect his rules (not always successful).  In the future it wouldn’t be plates that he had to care for and protect, but the religious community he founded.  This task likely got him used to thinking in these terms. 

Edited March 18 by Calm

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, Calm said:

Tumbaga is an alloy of copper coated in gold. The gold would keep the plates from tarnishing and corroding over the centuries.  I will find the article describing how useful this process was and post it in a bit. Going off of memory here.  Hopefully accurate.

https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/book-of-mormon-evidence-composition-of-the-plates

The point that the thin gold layer makes it easier to engrave is a major point in its favor, imo. It still leaves a massive effort to make the plates themselves, but that could be outsourced later on once there were professionals making the product for others.  Plates would be much easier than figurines. 

Quote

While tumbaga is naturally a reddish color, its exterior was commonly made to look golden by leeching out the copper on the surface. One method of accomplishing this involved the application of “citric acid to the surface. The resulting chemical reaction eliminated copper atoms from the outer .0006 inch of the surface, leaving a microscopic layer of 23-carat gold that made the object look like it was wholly gold.”¹⁰ This process and several others were commonly used in pre-Columbian America.¹¹

On one occasion, Josiah Stowell reportedly saw a small corner of the plates when part of the frock Joseph Smith had used to cover them slipped off. Stowell said the plates “resembled a stone of a greenish caste.”¹² This otherwise inconsistent report about the color of the plates might be adequately explained if the plates were made of tumbaga. It is possible that over time some of the gold gilding on the edges of the plates had worn off and the copper underneath had begun to oxidize, which would naturally turn them a greenish color.¹³ 

Tumbaga makes sense for other reasons as well. Pure gold would be too soft, and thin plates of pure gold would not hold up well. The large quantity of copper in tumbaga makes the alloy more rigid and resilient, even in thin sheets.¹⁴ Furthermore, the thin gold surface that remains after a gilding process would have made the plates easy to engrave, while at the same time protecting them from rust and corrosion.

PS:  I am not of the opinion that the explanation for the manufacturing of the plates needs to be completely naturalistic/mundane. God is already involved with the translation, why wouldn’t he step in and help out after Nephi, Mormon, Moroni, etc did what they could to ensure the longevity of the plates similar to how he had Nephi and company build the ship they used to cross the ocean and even the tools they used to construct it, but provided them with the plans on how to do such as well as the appropriate weather to get them there. God’s miracles often seem to me to be a mix of the mundane (what man contributes) and the supernatural (what God contributes).  So corrosion while slowed down by the process might not be completely prevented, especially if they were buried the full time in dampness of the upper Northeast.  There is also the issue of distortion over time due to the weight.  I don’t see an issue with assuming God took extra steps to preserve the material by preventing corrosion and distortion just as he protected Moroni over the years and helped put Joseph with the translation, keeping the plates safe and likely other aspects (such as running with the load, though that could be more adrenaline from fear).

Edited March 17 by Calm

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

After 200 years, you'd think that critics would have found some sort of alternative, and coherent, and evidence-based explanation that accounts for the extant evidence.

The extant evidence of what? If we want to be serious about this, I believe there are three claims we are talking about.

Issue 1: Did Joseph Smith have Plates? What was the nature of these plates? Did Joseph Smith have in his possession an actual artifact consisting of “plates"? If so, what was it made of, when was it made, and who made it?

Issue 2: How was the BoM Written?: How did Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon? Was he reading off of words that magically appeared on a rock in a hat? Was he reading off of a manuscript he secretly had within his hat? Was he reciting words he had memorized? Had he worked out an outline before hand? Was he making it up as he went along?  

Issue 3: What is the Book of Mormon? Is it 19th century Bible fan fiction, or is it an accurate translation of an authentic ancient manuscript? Or is it something else? 

These are three distinct issues that need to be kept separated.

On Issue 1, I don’t have strong opinions and we don’t have very good evidence. The fact that the evidence we have was deliberately curated by the person making the extraordinary claim, and that the basket of evidence he produces deliberately excludes the artifact that would conclusively settle the matter is extraordinarily suspicious.

If a magician does a trick for James Randi in a scientifically controlled environment, if he said it was real magic, I’d take that very seriously. But if the magician refuses to do the trick for James Randi and instead hands us a document signed by eleven of his closest friends, I would consider that evidence so unimpressive I wouldn’t feel the need to explain how the alleged trick was done. 

On Issue 2, I don’t know. I’m again suspicious of the official narrative because it was so performative in nature. It was staged. In general, I don’t know how far superior books were written, and I don’t see why it is any more incumbent on me to explain the details of how the BoM was written than it is incumbent on you to explain how, exactly, the tilma was painted. I realize you haven’t spent any time thinking about the tilma. That doesn’t change the fact that like the BoM, you can tell it is man made without knowing the details of how.

 On Issue 3, the evidence is overwhelming that the BoM is 19th century fan fiction and not an accurate translation of an accurate ancient manuscript. In my opinion this is the most important issue, it is the one I’ve spent the most time thinking about, and it is the one that has the clearest answer.

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

You believe Caesar was stabbed to death, right?  You have formed an opinion about that topic, even though you don't have much information about the particulars of the stabbing implements.

You do?  How many stabbing implements were there?  Was Brutus one of the ones doing the stabbing, or was he only standing nearby?  How do you know "exactly" what we're "talking about" when it comes to Suetonius' record made 165 years after the fact, but not when we're discussing David Whitmer? 

Whitmer's attestations are far more reliable. 

Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you really saying we have far more reliable evidence of what, exactly? That the Book of Mormon really is an accurate translation of some golden plates that contain the real history of a real people that were called Nephites, Lamanites, etc.? Are you claiming that a competent historian would believe in the assassination of Abinadi by King Noah with more certitude than he’d believe in the assassination of Caesar by Brutus? 

I’d love the opportunity to tell you why the evidence for Caesar really is incredibly strong, but first I need some clarification on what, exactly, you are comparing it to.

Edited March 17 by Analytics

[smac97]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

The extant evidence of what?

Evidence pertaining to the Church's narrative about The Book of Mormon, the Plates, and the Witnesses' statements, and of alternative narratives.

Again, I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

Now you are claiming that you are confused about my request?

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

If we want to be serious about this, I believe there are three claims we are talking about.

Issue 1: Did Joseph Smith have Plates? What was the nature of these plates? Did Joseph Smith have in his possession an actual artifact consisting of “plates"?

We've already resolved this issue in a fundamental sense.  We both agree that he had a physical object answering to the (physical) descriptions left by Joseph and the various witnesses.  We differ in the origins of this object.  

I think this is actually a pretty big deal, as critics have previously theorized about mass delusion / hallucination, hypnosis, drugs, conspiracy, etc.  

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

If so, what was it made of, when was it made, and who made it?

Yes, I have been asking these questions a lot.  I already know what the Church teaches, and what apologists have advanced as contextualizations and such (e.g., tumbaga).  The Church's position is based on evidence ("data points") in the form of statements from the Witnesses about the Plates, and from historical evidence pertaining to the witnesses, and also "textual" evidences from the translated work, and also evidences associated therewith (e.g., Bountiful, the seal of Mulek, Chiasmus, Hebraisms, NHM, etc.).

I am now asking whether you have a positive (as in, something more than the Dale Morgan-esque "not that" assertions), coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

I thought I had been pretty clear about this.  But we're on the same page now.

In your view, what was the object (the "Plates") made of, when was it made, and who made it?  These are all very good questions.  Let's systematize them a bit:

• Assuming the "Plates" were a 19th-century hoax or something comparable (and not, as Joseph claimed, an ancient and authentic artifact), what were the plates made of?  We already know what the Church and apologists have to say.  What do you have to say?
• Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, when was this sham object made/fabricated?  Using what materials and resources?
• Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, who was involved in the procuring of materials and the fabrication of the object, and when?  Was it just Joseph (per Vogel), or were others involved?  If others, who were they?  What was their motive?  Why did they never publicly disclose the hoax?
• Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with the statements of the Three Witnesses, the Three Witnesses and the informal witnesses (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.)?
• Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with historical information and evidence we have regarding the character and credibility of the witnesses (both official and unofficial)?
• What evidence do you have to support your answers to the preceding paragraphs?

You and I have argued a lot over the years, and I have occasionally become uncivil.  While direct critiques of arguments are fair game, I have overstepped the bounds of civility far too often.  I am working on that, and I apologize for my past excesses.  I hope the foregoing questions are formulated in a way that allows you to respond to them in substantive ways.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Issue 2: How was the BoM Written?: How did Joseph Smith write the Book of Mormon? Was he reading off of words that magically appeared on a rock in a hat? Was he reading off of a manuscript he secretly had within his hat? Was he reciting words he had memorized? Had he worked out an outline before hand? Was he making it up as he went along?  

I am happy to explore this issue with you.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Issue 3: What is the Book of Mormon? Is it 19th century Bible fan fiction, or is it an accurate translation of an authentic ancient manuscript? Or is it something else? 

This seems to be duplicative of Issue 2.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

These are three distinct issues that need to be kept separated.

Okay.  I propose we address Issue 1 and set aside Issues 2 and 3 for another day.

I also propose that we include in Issue 1 your assessment of the Witnesses.  Joseph Smith aside, virtually everything we know about the Plates come from witnesses who were percipient witnesses of one stripe or another, or second-hand sources about percipient witnesses.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

On Issue 1, I don’t have strong opinions and we don’t have very good evidence. 

Understood.  Nevertheless, I would like to hear what alternative explanation you do have and/or hold to, regardless of whether you feel strongly about it, and understanding that you do not have "good evidence" supporting it.

I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

It looks like "heavy speculation" is going to be fairly abundant in whatever alternative explanation you have, and "empirical rigor" is going to be fairly absent.  The best i can hope for, then, is "a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process)."  

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

The fact that the evidence we have was deliberately curated by the person making the extraordinary claim, and that the basket of evidence he produces deliberately excludes the artifact that would conclusively settle the matter is extraordinarily suspicious.

Yes, you've said this a few times.  Let's first establish a baseline for the discussion.  

I am asking that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process).

At this point, I am not expecting you to refrain from "heavy speculation" (since it seems you have no choice but resort to it).

I am also not expecting anything like "empirical rigor" from your alternative explanation (since it's just going to be guesswork and speculation on your part).

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

If a magician does a trick for James Randi in a scientifically controlled environment, if he said it was real magic, I’d take that very seriously. But if the magician refuses to do the trick for James Randi and instead hands us a document signed by eleven of his closest friends, I would consider that evidence so unimpressive I wouldn’t feel the need to explain how the alleged trick was done. 

If you are unwilling to provide an alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon, just say so and we can wrap up this exercise.  But please stop being circumlocutory about it.  Just decline my request and we can move on.

Alternatively, you can address the bulleted items above.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

On Issue 2, I don’t know. I’m again suspicious of the official narrative because it was so performative in nature. It was staged. In general, I don’t know how far superior books were written, and I don’t see why it is any more incumbent on me to explain the details of how the BoM was written than it is incumbent on you to explain how, exactly, the tilma was painted. I realize you haven’t spent any time thinking about the tilma. That doesn’t change the fact that like the BoM, you can tell it is man made without knowing the details of how.

 On Issue 3, the evidence is overwhelming that the BoM is 19th century fan fiction and not an accurate translation of an accurate ancient manuscript. In my opinion this is the most important issue, it is the one I’ve spent the most time thinking about, and it is the one that has the clearest answer.

Let's save these for another day.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

You believe Caesar was stabbed to death, right?  You have formed an opinion about that topic, even though you don't have much information about the particulars of the stabbing implements.

You do?  How many stabbing implements were there?  Was Brutus one of the ones doing the stabbing, or was he only standing nearby?  How do you know "exactly" what we're "talking about" when it comes to Suetonius' record made 165 years after the fact, but not when we're discussing David Whitmer? 

Whitmer's attestations are far more reliable. 

Can you clarify what you mean here?

Yes.  I wrote this to Grok:

Quote

have been having a protracted discussion with an anti-mormon fellow who effectively rejects the statements of the witnesses of The Book of Mormon (both the "official" and unofficial ones). On the other hand, he absolutely accepts historical statements about the death of Caesar, which statements are attributed to Suetonius and other sources.

All, or nearly all, of these historical sources are late (many decades after the fact), and do not come from percipient witnesses, rely on unknown and unavailable sources (which may in turn rely on other unknown/unavailable sources), and often come from less-than-objective authors (Suetonius, for example, was something of a gossipmonger), and we have very little information on which to gauge the credibility of these sources, and we also have substantial provenance issues.

In contrast, we have extensive and relatively recent information about the Witnesses. We know their names. We know a lot about their lives and their character, and hence their credibility. Most of the witnesses were "percipient," meaning they testified about what they themselves witnesses/experienced. And there are far fewer issues with provenance. And several of the witnesses dissociated from Joseph Smith, some very strongly so, and yet they never recanted or qualified their testimonial statements.

David Whitmer is, perhaps, the most potent witness - even more so than Joseph Smith. Complaints about Joseph's credibility are fair game, but Whitmer is a tougher nut to crack. What he said he saw was miraculous, and understandably difficult for skeptics to accept at face value. And yet he strenuously retained the verity of his witness statement for decades after he left the Church and during which time he found much fault with Joseph Smith. Critics can't really account for him. My opponent has acknowledged that there is no evidence that Whitmer was insane, or that he was not sincere, or that he was duped. But my opponent nevertheless rejects the substance of Whitmer's statement, and refuses to explain why. My riposte was that the corpus of historical evidence pertaining to the Plates is cumulatively "better" than the historical evidence pertaining to the assassination of Julius Caesar. Take the foregoing and write us a systematized exposition of my argument.

The response (substantially tweaked by me) :

Quote

A Systematized Comparison of the Historical Evidence: The Golden Plates Witnesses vs. the Assassination of Julius Caesar

The claim here is straightforward: when evaluated on standard historical criteria (timeliness, directness, source identifiability and credibility, provenance, and consistency), the cumulative body of evidence for the existence and reality of the golden plates (as attested by the official Three and Eight Witnesses plus several unofficial ones) is materially stronger and more robust than the evidence for the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC. This is not an assertion that the plates’ supernatural elements must be accepted at face value, nor that the Caesar event is mythical—only that, by the ordinary standards historians apply to ancient events, the plates’ documentary record is cumulatively superior. Selective rejection of one while uncritically accepting the other reveals inconsistent standards.

1. Timeliness and Proximity to Events

• Caesar (44 BC): All surviving detailed accounts were written decades to centuries later. The earliest substantial narratives come from Nicolaus of Damascus (~20–10 BC, but his full work is fragmentary and pro-Augustan), Plutarch (c. 100–110 AD, ~145–155 years later), Suetonius (c. 121 AD, ~165 years later), Appian (c. 150–160 AD), and Cassius Dio (c. 211–230 AD, ~255–275 years later). No contemporary eyewitness narrative survives intact; we rely on second- or third-hand transmission through lost sources.
• Golden Plates (1829): The core events occurred in June 1829. The official testimonies were published in the 1830 Book of Mormon (within months). Multiple witnesses gave sworn or published statements in the 1830s–1880s, many while still alive and able to be cross-examined. The gap is measured in months or years, not generations.  The plates have at least 11 official witnesses plus several unofficial ones (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.), producing multiple distinct lines of testimony (the visionary Three, the tactile Eight, Emma, Mary, Josiah Stowell, etc.) that overlap but are not identical.  And the "unofficial" witnesses (Emma, Mary, etc.) are much more difficult, or impossible, to characterize as having their statements "curated" by Joseph Smith.  These are independent in origin—family members, neighbors, and outsiders—and were given in different settings (woods, daylight farmyard, private homes). Historians prize multiple independent attestations; the plates have them, while Caesar’s account is essentially a single narrative tradition with variations.

Advantage: Plates.

2. Directness of Testimony (Percipient vs. Secondary)

• Caesar: No percipient (eyewitness) accounts survive. All sources compile earlier reports, rumors, or oral traditions. Details such as Caesar’s last words (“Et tu, Brute?” or the Greek equivalent), the exact number and sequence of stab wounds (23 is conventional but varies slightly), or his final posture show contradictions across authors, indicating layers of transmission and embellishment.
• Golden Plates: The Three and Eight Witnesses were percipient. They described what they personally saw and handled. David Whitmer, Oliver Cowdery, and Martin Harris saw the plates and angel together; the Eight (including Smith family members and Whitmer relatives) physically examined the uncovered plates in daylight. Additional witnesses (Emma Smith, Mary Whitmer, etc.) provided tactile or visual corroboration.  

Advantage: Plates (by a wide margin).

3. Identifiability, Character, and Credibility of the Sources

• Caesar: Authors are known, but their personal reliability is mixed. Suetonius is frequently described as a “gossipmonger” who collected scandal, rumor, and anecdote without rigorous criticism. Plutarch wrote moralistic biographies, not strict history. We know little about many of their sources or potential biases (pro- or anti-Caesar factions).
• Golden Plates: We know the full names, biographies, and character arcs of every witness. Many were ordinary farmers, not professional writers with literary agendas. Several (including some of the Whitmers and Hiram Page) later left the Church, criticized Joseph Smith harshly, and faced personal cost for their association—yet none recanted their testimony about the plates. This creates a natural credibility check absent in ancient historiography.  The witnesses were repeatedly interrogated, mocked, and sued by contemporary critics in the 1820s–1880s. Newspapers, affidavits, and court records from the period show opponents pressing them hard. None broke or altered their core claim. Ancient Roman sources faced no such contemporaneous adversarial testing; we have no record of anyone grilling Plutarch’s or Suetonius’s informants. Modern historiography values testimony that survives hostile scrutiny in real time. The plates’ record does; Caesar’s does not.  

Advantage: Plates.

4. Provenance and Chain of Transmission

• Caesar: Heavy reliance on now-lost intermediaries. Contradictions (e.g., on omens, motivations, or exact events) reflect broken provenance. Material evidence is almost nonexistent.
• Golden Plates: Direct, unbroken chain from 1829 to the present. The testimonies appear in the published Book of Mormon from the first edition onward. Multiple independent interviews, letters, and affidavits (e.g., David Whitmer’s 1878 interview with Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith, his 1887 Address to All Believers in Christ) exist in verifiable 19th-century documents.  Further, the fact that the physical object vanished exactly as the witnesses said it would (returned to the angel) explains why no modern forensic examination is possible. This matches the predicted behavior and removes the expectation of ongoing physical evidence. Your suspicion as to the absence of the plates is understandable, but difficult to square with the Witness statements, particularly David Whitmer.  

Advantage: Plates.

5. Consistency and Endurance (Non-Recantation Under Pressure)

• Caesar: No comparable test; ancient sources were not subject to lifelong cross-examination by hostile parties.
• Golden Plates: Several witnesses apostatized, faced ridicule, lawsuits, or poverty, and still reaffirmed their statements on their deathbeds or in print decades later. This is historically unusual for fabricated testimony.  Eleven named individuals (plus others) maintaining identical details across decades while several later became bitter enemies of Joseph Smith.  This is extraordinarily difficult to explain naturalistically (as we are seeing by, well, your inability to provide a naturalistic alternative explanation). Mass delusion theories fail when applied to people who continued functioning rationally in every other area of life. Ancient historians routinely blended rumor and legend without such internal consistency checks.

6. The Special Case of David Whitmer

Whitmer is the strongest single witness and the most difficult for skeptics to dismiss. He:

• Was never a close family member or financial dependent of Joseph Smith.
• Left the Church in 1838 amid bitter disputes, published sharp criticisms of Joseph, and never rejoined.
• Yet, from 1838 until his death in 1888, he repeatedly and publicly reaffirmed the plates vision in identical terms (e.g., 1878: “I saw the angel… I did see the plates”; 1887 pamphlet; final interviews: “Every word of it is true”).
• Opponents have produced no evidence of insanity, coercion, or financial motive. Even when pressed, he distinguished his criticisms of Joseph from his unchanged testimony about the plates and angel.

If Whitmer was sincere and of sound mind (as even critics generally concede), his decades-long, costly consistency under adversarial scrutiny demands explanation. Mere “he was duped” or “group hallucination” theories strain credibility when applied to a man who otherwise showed sharp skepticism toward Joseph.

7. Addressing Selective Skepticism

If we applied the same skeptical lens your opponent uses on the plates (late sources? possible bias? supernatural elements? no surviving object?) to Caesar, the assassination account would be far shakier. Yet historians accept it because it fits a broader Roman narrative. The plates’ evidence is more recent, better documented, and more directly attested—yet is rejected solely because it carries religious implications. That is special pleading. Secular historiography does not normally demand “extraordinary evidence” only when miracles are involved; it applies consistent standards.

Rejecting the plates’ witnesses while accepting Caesar’s sources applies a double standard. The plates’ evidence is more recent, more direct, better documented, from named and character-tested individuals, and internally consistent under real-world pressure. If the evidentiary bar used for the plates were applied to Caesar, the assassination account would be far more vulnerable. The cumulative weight—multiple independent percipient testimonies, non-recantation, and detailed provenance—makes the plates’ historical case stronger by the ordinary rules of secular historiography.

This is not proof of the miraculous. It is simply an observation that the documentary record for the plates is, on balance, superior to that for one of antiquity’s most famous events. Dismissing one while embracing the other requires justification beyond “I find the supernatural claim implausible.” The historical evidence itself does not support such selective rejection.

Even granting your point about the miraculous claim being hard to accept, the historical record for the plates still meets or exceeds ordinary secular standards for events we accept without hesitation. The selective rejection reveals the real issue is philosophical, not evidential.

All this is augmented by textual evidences, IMO.  And we aren't even discussing those yet.

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Are you really saying we have far more reliable evidence of what, exactly? That the Book of Mormon really is an accurate translation of some golden plates that contain the real history of a real people that were called Nephites, Lamanites, etc.?

I am saying that the historical evidence for the plates as described by the Witnesses is, by essentially every metric, cumulatively superior to the historical evidence regarding the assassination of Julius Caesar.  

I am saying that you, a self-described empiricist, are pretty inconsistent in when and how you deploy your supposed empiricist-minded proclivities.

I am saying that you take as established historical fact, without question, that Caesar was murdered in the way described by Suetonius et al.  Yet both the quality and quantity of this evidence is markedly inferior to that of the evidence pertaining to the Plates.

I am saying that the Witnesses are a very sticky wicket for persons such as yourself.  You can't account for them, and also cannot account for the Plates.  Nor can you account for the text itself.  However you account for these things, your accounting is based on presuppositions and hostile speculation, and not on the substantive evidence.  You cannot or will not engage the evidence for the Plates in the same way you engage evidence for other things (such as Caesar's assassination).  

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Are you claiming that a competent historian would believe in the assassination of Abinadi by King Noah with more certitude than he’d believe in the assassination of Caesar by Brutus?

No.

I have never argued — and I do not believe — that a competent historian would accept the internal narrative of the Book of Mormon (including the story of Abinadi’s trial and execution by King Noah) with the same or greater certitude as the assassination of Julius Caesar. Those are two different categories of evidence, and I have drawn no such comparison in this thread (though now that you bring it up, it could be an interesting exercise in exploring the rules of historiographical analysis and their limitations when discussing matters of religious faith).

My argument has been focused, more or less, on this:

“How strong is the external, documentary evidence that a set of physical plates actually existed in 1829, that they were shown to named witnesses, and that the witnesses’ descriptions of the plates (appearance of gold, ancient workmanship, engravings on both sides, ring binding, substantial weight, etc.) are substantively accurate?”

On that limited question, the cumulative external record is materially stronger than the evidence for Caesar’s assassination. We have:

• Multiple named percipient witnesses (Three + Eight + several unofficial),
• Immediate publication of their signed testimonies (1830 Book of Mormon),
• Decades of consistent reaffirmation — even by bitter apostates like David Whitmer,
• Full biographical transparency and real-time hostile cross-examination by contemporary critics,
• No recantations despite strong motive to do so.

The descriptions of the Plates’ appearance and physical characteristics are not vague or contradictory, and are instead detailed and consistent across independent witnesses.  Moreover, what makes the external evidence especially robust is the specificity and sophistication of the witnesses’ descriptions of the artifact. They did not say “Joseph showed us some shiny metal sheets” or (per Vogel) "Joseph had something hidden under a cloth, and he only let us take a quick obscured look."  Instead, they described:

• Plates with “the appearance of gold” (bright, metallic luster),
• “Fine workmanship” and “curious engravings” on both sides that looked ancient and deliberate,
• A bound volume (three D-shaped rings) roughly 6 × 8 inches, 4–6 inches thick when stacked,
• Substantial weight (40–60 lbs), and leaves that could be turned like a book.

These are not vague or easily faked details. They describe a deeply impressive and sophisticated physical object — one that would require real metallurgical skill, precise engraving tools, and careful finishing to replicate convincingly, even briefly.

A 23-year-old, barely-literate, dirt-poor farmer living in rustic 1820s western New York — with no access to professional metalworking shops, gilding materials, or advanced engraving equipment — producing a convincing sham that matched all these descriptions is extraordinarily difficult to credit. Contemporary critics who knew Joseph personally (and who desperately wanted to expose a fraud) never produced a plausible “how he did it” explanation that fits the witnesses’ consistent, detailed accounts. The sophistication of the object the witnesses described actually militates against the idea of a simple homemade tin prop by an uneducated farm boy. Whatever the ultimate source of the plates, the external evidence points to something far more impressive than a rustic hoax.

The Abinadi story (or any other internal narrative in the Book of Mormon), by contrast, is purely internal to the translated text. It has:

• No external witnesses,
• No independent corroboration outside the volume itself,
• No chain of custody or provenance beyond Joseph Smith’s translation claim.

A secular historian can therefore accept the plates as a well-attested 19th-century physical object (with accurate descriptions from named eyewitnesses) while remaining entirely agnostic — or skeptical — about the ancient historicity of the stories translated from them. The two issues are separable. Conflating them is a category error.

So to answer you directly: I am not claiming any historian should believe Abinadi’s death with more (or even equal) confidence than Caesar’s. I am only saying that the external, documentary evidence for the physical existence of the plates and the accuracy of the witnesses’ descriptions meets or exceeds ordinary secular standards applied to ancient events like Caesar’s death.

If your standard is high enough to accept Caesar on the surviving sources, consistency requires acknowledging that the plates’ external evidence is at least as good — or better — on the points I have raised. 

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

I’d love the opportunity to tell you why the evidence for Caesar really is incredibly strong, but first I need some clarification on what, exactly, you are comparing it to.

I would prefer to continue a discussion about the Plates and the Witnesses.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 18 by smac97

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

Again, I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

Now you are claiming that you are confused about my request?

The problem is that asking for an “alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon” is hopelessly vague. The existence of the some object has almost no bearing on whether or not the object is of authentic ancient origin. The witnesses were hand-picked as if they were experts, but an attorney would have a field day having them disqualified as having no independence and no expertise to determine any of the things they claim. And while I grant that what they claim is well-defined in a religious context, they are not well-defined in a real-world context. If somebody were to seriously testify in court that they saw a magic elf, I’d demand that “magic elf” be precisely defined in real world terms so that I could determine whether or not any given individual or thing was a “magic elf” or not. It’s painfully clear to me that the visionary object the 3 were shown is different than the physical object the 8 were shown. And none of this has any bearing on whether the alleged object contained authentic ancient writing, nor does it have any bearing on whether this alleged ancient writing was correctly translated. 

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

I am now asking whether you have a positive (as in, something more than the Dale Morgan-esque "not that" assertions), coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

The weakest and most problematic data points are the witness testimonies and the writing process. I can speculate on those ideas, but we don’t have the data to say anything for sure because the data that would settle the issue was deliberately withheld. Me not having a theory on these things supported with empirical rigor is Joseph Smith’s fault and isn’t evidence of authenticity. Quite the opposite. I can give you my own speculations on what I think most likely happened, but this being speculative on my part is not evidence that the religious explanation is the strongest one.

Repeating how I see this:

First Issue: were there plates? If so, what were they?

Second Issue: What was the process for writing down the words?

Third Issue: Is it an accurate translation of an authentic ancient document?

Issues 2 and 3 are totally different.

Issue 2 is about how the words came to be. Even if words magically appeared on Joseph Smith’s seer stone and all Joseph Smith did was read them does not give us any indication whatsoever that these words had anything to do with an ancient record, nor with whether or not such an ancient record was translated correctly. Even if we granted that Joseph’s words were miraculous, that just puts him in the same category as Keats, Conrad, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoevsky, Austen, or Crane. The words being amazingly written doesn’t mean Nephi really existed. 

Issue 3 is about historicity. Were the events and people depicted in the Book of Mormon real people and events? Was it really written in ancient times? This issue is totally independent of whether plates existed or whether the writing process was miraculous. 

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

In your view, what was the object (the "Plates") made of, when was it made, and who made it?  These are all very good questions.  Let's systematize them a bit...

They are great questions. There are two things to keep in mind:

First, we don’t know the answer to them because Joseph Smith chose to hide from view the evidence that would allow us to definitively answer them. Me not having non-speculative answers isn’t an indication that Joseph’s story is probable--it’s an indication that he had something to hide.

Second, we must keep in mind Joseph Smith’s ethical standard here, which I presume was shared by the witnesses. According to Joseph Smith:

For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God. (Moroni 7:16)

This seems like an awfully convenient way to rationalize being less than forthright about things like whether he literally had the real plates in his possession, or merely had a facsimile to help persuade others to believe in Christ. Does the Book of Mormon inviteth to do good? Does it persuade to believe in Christ? If so, we can know “with perfect knowledge it is from God” and is “sent forth by the power and gift of Christ.” That’s true even if the exact nature of the plates were different than what you imagine.

So what was Joseph Smith's point? Was it to be 100% honest? Or was it to persuade people to believe in Christ? Moroni 7:16 suggests there could be a conflict between those two things, which is precisely the problem.

Keeping this in mind, here are my answers:

Q: Assuming the "Plates" were a 19th-century hoax or something comparable (and not, as Joseph claimed, an ancient and authentic artifact), what were the plates made of?  We already know what the Church and apologists have to say.  What do you have to say?

Tin, probably. We don’t know because Joseph Smith didn’t allow a qualified expert to examine them.

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, when was this sham object made/fabricated?  Using what materials and resources?

My best guess is that they were slowly made over the 4+/- years between Joseph Smith announcing he was going to translate golden plates and when he actually claimed he had them in his possession. But we don’t know because Joseph Smith didn’t allow a qualified expert to examine them.

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, who was involved in the procuring of materials and the fabrication of the object, and when?  Was it just Joseph (per Vogel), or were others involved?  If others, who were they?  What was their motive?  Why did they never publicly disclose the hoax?

I don’t know. Regarding motive, I think Joseph Smith was trying to make money and persuade people to believe in Christ. 

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with the statements of the Three Witnesses, the Three Witnesses and the informal witnesses (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.)?

I find the witness statements vague, curated, and insufficient to establish ancient origins. My story of witnessing fake “plates” in Brother Brandt’s seminary class in the 85-86 school year at Hillcrest High in Midvale Utah is 100% true. All of the above is 100% consistent with what the informal witnesses said (there was something), and without a thorough deposition made by a skilled cross examiner so we could understand in exhaustive specificity what, exactly, they are claiming, it isn’t inconsistent with the testimony of the 8 witnesses, either. Whatever the three witnesses saw in their vision is a religious experience that has no bearing on the physical plates.

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with historical information and evidence we have regarding the character and credibility of the witnesses (both official and unofficial)?

I don't know exactly what they saw or why they said what they did. Perhaps they were being honest but not completely transparent, just as Brother Brandt was simultaneously telling the truth, misleading the students, and doing it all for the higher cause of bringing his students to Christ. I don't need to know exactly how it worked. You don't need to know who painted the tilma to know it is a painting.

Q: What evidence do you have to support your answers to the preceding paragraphs?

As I've said over and over, we don't have the evidence that would conclusively answer these questions because Joseph Smith chose to withhold it. The plates were never independently examined. No neutral party was permitted to handle them. They were shown to selected witnesses under controlled conditions and then conveniently disappeared from the world. My answers are speculative—but notice whose choice that was. In law, when a party controls evidence and withholds it, the adverse inference runs against them, not against the people they excluded. I am speculating because Joseph made sure that speculation is all any of us would ever be able to do.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the only evidence we have about the plates is extraordinarily questionable.

And it is also extraordinarily irrelevant. The exact nature of the plates has no bearing on whether the words Joseph Smith dictated to his scribes were translations of anything anybody in antiquity actually wrote.

 

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

I am saying that the historical evidence for the plates as described by the Witnesses is, by essentially every metric, cumulatively superior to the historical evidence regarding the assassination of Julius Caesar.  

I am saying that you, a self-described empiricist, are pretty inconsistent in when and how you deploy your supposed empiricist-minded proclivities.

I am saying that you take as established historical fact, without question, that Caesar was murdered in the way described by Suetonius et al.  Yet both the quality and quantity of this evidence is markedly inferior to that of the evidence pertaining to the Plates.

I am saying that the Witnesses are a very sticky wicket for persons such as yourself.  You can't account for them, and also cannot account for the Plates.  Nor can you account for the text itself.  However you account for these things, your accounting is based on presuppositions and hostile speculation, and not on the substantive evidence.  You cannot or will not engage the evidence for the Plates in the same way you engage evidence for other things (such as Caesar's assassination).  

Smac, I think you're conflating several things that need to stay separate.

I have already conceded Issue 1: a physical object probably existed. The eight witnesses probably saw and handled something. On that narrow question, I'll grant that the testimonial record is reasonably strong. Fine.

You're right that I accept Caesar's assassination as historical fact. But notice what kind of claim that is. Caesar's death is not a freestanding assertion--it is woven into an extraordinarily dense web of interconnected history. The political consequences, the civil wars, the rise of Augustus, the restructuring of the Roman world--all of it ramifies outward and forward in ways that interlock with countless independent lines of evidence. Caesar's assassination fits. It coheres. It isn’t merely exactly the sort of thing that happened in Roman politics requiring no mechanism beyond the ordinary. It’s the kind of thing that if it didn’t happen, nothing else we know about the Roman empire would make sense. 

The plates are a categorically different kind of claim, and the difference matters. Authentic ancient plates don't merely lack corroboration. They contradict what we know. The archaeological and genetic record of pre-Columbian America does not contain a thread that could be pulled to produce a thick book of golden plates containing a detailed history. Nobody in antiquity ever wrote a long history book on metal plates because doing so is hopelessly impractical. Anyone who has seen or heard of paper disintegrating over time knows that is a weakness, but metal plates isn’t the answer because making a record on that medium is too expensive and impractical to be done in the real world. It’s never been done. It couldn’t be done. This is a known reality that the claim has to swim against. Caesar swims with the current. The plates swim against it.

Then there is the structure of the testimony itself. You keep describing the witnesses as if their number and sincerity are what matter. But they were curated--selected by Joseph, embedded in a community with every incentive to align with his narrative, never cross-examined by anyone with an interest in falsification. And critically: the evidence that would have settled the question conclusively--independent examination of the plates by a trained expert with no stake in the outcome--was deliberately withheld. Permanently. The plates were removed from the world before anyone outside Joseph's circle could verify them. When a party controls the decisive evidence and withholds it, honest analysis does not treat that as a neutral fact. It discounts the remaining testimony accordingly. If this body of evidence, with this context, was shown to a judge, the judge would rightly throw it out. I know this fact is inconvenient for you, but it must be front and center if we want to evaluate the witness testimony honestly.

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

I have never argued — and I do not believe — that a competent historian would accept the internal narrative of the Book of Mormon (including the story of Abinadi’s trial and execution by King Noah) with the same or greater certitude as the assassination of Julius Caesar. Those are two different categories of evidence, and I have drawn no such comparison in this thread (though now that you bring it up, it could be an interesting exercise in exploring the rules of historiographical analysis and their limitations when discussing matters of religious faith).

I didn’t know that. You had said without qualification that the witness testimony should be believed. They did say that the plates contain this record "which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken.” If historians should believe the witness statements at face value like you think they should, I would think they’d believe this part of the statement, too.

Edited March 18 by Analytics

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, teddyaware said:

Exactly.  If the plates were presented to the world and put through extensive testing to determine if there’s a chance they’re authentic, very few would end up being convinced the Book of Mormon is true after the “experts” come to the conclusion that it’s 99.999% certain the plates are part of an elaborate hoax. Then the church would be exposed to a tsunami of extremely detrimental derision for trying to pull a fast one on the world. 

And the persecution narrative about how everyone will gladly deceive and lie to people in the face of evidence. I suspect this is mostly projection.

[teddyaware]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

And the persecution narrative about how everyone will gladly deceive and lie to people in the face of evidence. I suspect this is mostly projection.

I’m perfectly confident I’ve got this right… Even if the plates were shown to the world and subjected to the most extensive testing they would be dismissed as a hoax, and rather than help the world believe the Book of Mormon is true it would severely backfire with the leaders of the church accused of being fraudsters. And I’d be willing to bet you’d very likely be one of those who’d be crying fraud. To a degenerating carnal world bound and determined to ripen in iniquity, even great miracles have no effect. A perfect example to demonstrate this point is how the Nephites ended up dismissing the miracle 36 hours of continuous daylight as a hoax.

[champatsch]

Here's a follow-up to what I wrote yesterday about "did have" in the Book of Mormon.

Joseph Smith dictated sixteen instances of non-emphatic, nonbiblical “did have,” an uncommon early modern periphrasis.[1] Roger O’Connor, a pseudo-archaic author who wrote with high levels of “did <infinitive>” (more than 1,100 instances), did not employ “did have” even once, although he had many opportunities to do so.[2]

Joseph Smith also dictated archaic, non-emphatic “do have” and “doth have” once each, which rarely occurred earlier.[3]

Texts | Corpora                                                          did have                    do have                 doth have

1611 King James Bible                                                          0                                0                                0
Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts)                                       0                                0                               0
Bunyan corpus (39 texts)                                                     0                                0                               0
1829 Book of Mormon                                                         16                                1                                1
Early English Books Online                                                  12                               3                                0

He also dictated early modern variational usage of “thou didst” alternating immediately with “and did” (Alma 39:3) and “did thou” varying almost immediately with “thou didst” (Ether 12:31). This is attested early modern variation which resulted from differential syntactic influences.

Periphrastic “«do» have” and didst ~ did variation fit with the Book of Mormon’s frequent usage of various types of little-known Early Modern English.

 

---

[1] The approximately 60,000 texts of the freely available portion of the EEBO corpus have between four and twelve instances of “did have” (1496–1691), depending on strictness of interpretation. There are four simple, early examples: 1496, https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A06811, [91]; 1534, A00387, 75; 1534, A68860, [27]; 1576, A09316, 96. These are the most representative examples of the Book of Mormon’s “did have” usage.
     The latest one in EEBO is probably an emphatic instance, because of the accompanying use of indeed: “as indeed they did have it” (1691, A45242, 309). Another later example occurs in a legal context (1659, A52921, 24); such usage, often with adverbs, was persistent. One is a conjoined case, “did have and hold” (1651, A28585, 279), which can be distinguished as involving a verb compound. Five are poetic instances, influenced by meter and rhyme.

[2] Roger O’Connor’s curious history of Ireland titled Chronicles of Eri was written around 1800 and published in 1822; as indexed in WordCruncher, it has approximately 131,000 words. There are seven instances of “did eat” in his book and none of ate. The Book of Mormon has one of “did eat” and two of ate, weakening claims of biblical “did eat” influence.

[3] I have not found an example of periphrastic, non-emphatic “doth have” (Alma 32:23), but “do have” (Alma 9:23) occurs at least three times in the EEBO corpus: 1565, https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A00179, [37]; 1648, A27810, [273]; 1665, A44793, 8.

[Analytics]

17 hours ago, smac97 said:

Contemporary critics who knew Joseph personally (and who desperately wanted to expose a fraud) never produced a plausible “how he did it” explanation that fits the witnesses’ consistent, detailed accounts. The sophistication of the object the witnesses described actually militates against the idea of a simple homemade tin prop by an uneducated farm boy. Whatever the ultimate source of the plates, the external evidence points to something far more impressive than a rustic hoax.

This isn't obvious to me. The plates the three witnesses saw in a vision may have been spectacular, but that doesn't mean the ones Joseph kept hidden were impressive. My own experience in seminary proves that you can honestly describe something in a way that will make people think it is more impressive than it really is. This testimony absolutely must be discounted significantly because of how it was curated and how the person who had the most to gain refused to allow them to be examined by anyone independent or qualified.

My implication is that Joseph Smith led a conspiracy where he was less than 100% forthright about these details, and was able to manipulate others to support him in this dishonesty. This is a bold claim and it raises a serious question. Did Joseph Smith have flexible ethics so that he would be willing to deceive others if it were for a good cause? And did he have the ability to get others to go along with his conspiracy?

What it brings to mind is something Joseph Smith said. A little over a week before the Nauvoo Expositor printed its first and last edition, Joseph Smith told the Saints he could conclusively prove that Emma was his only wife and that he wasn't involved in polygamy. He told the Saints:

"For the last three years I have a record of all my acts and proceedings, for I have kept several good, faithful, and efficient clerks in constant employ: they have accompanied me everywhere, and carefully kept my history, and they have written down what I have done, where I have been, and what I have said; therefore my enemies cannot charge me with any day, time, or place, but what I have written testimony to prove my actions; and my enemies cannot prove anything against me....What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one."

What I find fascinating about this is that none of this is an outright lie. He did have several clerks that made a record of everything he said and did over the last three years of his life, and this can serve as an alibi that he never taught the doctrines in what is now known as D&C 132 and never engaged in polygamy. He didn't specifically deny having more than 30 wives (we don't know, because he had made sure the Church didn't record these "marriages"). If we applied normal evidentiary standards under the presumption that Joseph Smith, the other top leaders of the time, and his "several good, faithful, and efficient clerks," and the women he "married" were all honest, there would be overwhelming conclusive proof that Joseph Smith had one and only one wife, and was guilty neither of adultry, spiritual wivery, polygamy, or secretly being sealed to other women behind his wife's back--however you want to put it.

Of coursewhile we don't know the specifics of who he "married", but we do know that it happened dozens of times. And this is in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Latter-day Saints will rationalize his behavior. They'll say he was deceiving the Saints and his wife for their own good. But this brings back the ethics Joseph Smith wrote in Moroni 7, and how he said this stuff should be judged. Does the Book of Mormon "inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ"? If so, we can know with 100% perfect knowledge it is "from God." A misleading statement by eight witnesses doesn't change this.

Since we know Joseph Smith was able to lead a giant conspiracy about polygamy, why is it crazy to suspect he led a conspiracy about the exact nature of the plates he had hidden under a cloth that he refusled to let be independently examined?

 

Edited March 18 by Analytics

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

Texts | Corpora                                                          did have                    do have                 doth have

1611 King James Bible                                                          0                                0                                0
Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts)                                       0                                0                               0
Bunyan corpus (39 texts)                                                     0                                0                               0
1829 Book of Mormon                                                         16                                1                                1
Early English Books Online                                                  12                               3                                0

I'm trying to follow the logic here and I'm genuinely confused about what you're arguing.

Your table shows the Book of Mormon has 16 instances of "did have" while all of Early English Books Online together have 12. If I'm reading this correctly, a single 19th-century dictated text uses this supposedly rare Early Modern English construction 33% more than the entire surviving corpus of actual Early Modern English writing. Doesn't that make the Book of Mormon an outlier on the high end and that Joseph used this feature more than genuine EModE authors did? How does that authenticate anything? If anything, it looks like overcorrection.

Second, the 12 instances in EEBO represents written Early Modern English. But language doesn't spread through writing, it spreads through speech. If "did have" appeared in the spoken English of that era with any regularity, it would have descended to later speakers through oral transmission, not through the 12 people who happened to write it down. The paucity of written examples doesn't tell us how frequently it appeared in speech. So when you say Joseph Smith used a "rare" construction, you're really saying it rarely appeared in books, which is a much weaker claim than saying it was rare in the language itself.

I'm genuinely asking: are you arguing the Book of Mormon uses these features at the right frequency, or just that it uses them at all? Because your own table suggests it uses them more than the period it's supposedly reflecting.

[Calm]

9 hours ago, teddyaware said:

I’m perfectly confident I’ve got this right… Even if the plates were shown to the world and subjected to the most extensive testing they would be dismissed as a hoax, and rather than help the world believe the Book of Mormon is true it would severely backfire with the leaders of the church accused of being fraudsters. And I’d be willing to bet you’d very likely be one of those who’d be crying fraud. To a degenerating carnal world bound and determined to ripen in iniquity, even great miracles have no effect. A perfect example to demonstrate this point is how the Nephites ended up dismissing the miracle 36 hours of continuous daylight as a hoax.

I think you are missing the fact the world also loves a miracle.  According to AI, the Our Lady of Guadalupe site draws around 20 million visitors a year.  Even the out of the way supposed location of Noah’s Ark, the Durupınar formation, draws a decent flow of visitors apparently.

The money to be made publishing this, hitting the talk shows, etc would likely to be quite substantial.  Novelty is what attracts attention and often funding.

Experts who don’t want to commit to the spiritual side of the narrative wouldn’t have to lie about the age or authenticity anymore for the plates than they do for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Physical artifacts don’t prove spiritual experience.  The plates would be a curiosity which could make someone’s career. 

Even if the plates could be shown to be translated correctly by Joseph (perhaps they could use the Isaiah sections to decode them), that doesn’t prove one way or the other the spiritual aspects. It would be easy enough to speculate the plates were found and translated quite sometime ago by someone with access to the original language and Joseph somehow found both and used the prior translation to prove himself a prophet.  The story is already in use with minor differences.  Easy enough to speculate the plan could have been to show the plates once there was enough interest drummed up for maximum impact, but they and the translation were stolen and destroyed by someone who didn’t realize what they were.

Authentic plates don’t prove that an angel gave the plates to Joseph anymore than finding the cave Jesus was buried in or the tablets Moses wrote on would prove Jesus was resurrected or Moses saw God. 

Edited March 18 by Calm

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, teddyaware said:

I’m perfectly confident I’ve got this right… Even if the plates were shown to the world and subjected to the most extensive testing they would be dismissed as a hoax, and rather than help the world believe the Book of Mormon is true it would severely backfire with the leaders of the church accused of being fraudsters. And I’d be willing to bet you’d very likely be one of those who’d be crying fraud. To a degenerating carnal world bound and determined to ripen in iniquity, even great miracles have no effect. A perfect example to demonstrate this point is how the Nephites ended up dismissing the miracle 36 hours of continuous daylight as a hoax.

There would be some who would think it doesn’t prove it correct. Just that the plates exist. if they could be translated it would be proof that it was written but no necessarily that it was true.

Facts actually matter to a lot of people.

And no, confronted with that level of evidence I would put a lot of my doubts aside. I only started seriously doubting when I hit a snag that made me doubt the experiences that gave me a spiritual conviction and realized that similar accounts of religious conviction being granted come to people of any faith that expects those kinds of experiences so I went digging for more objective evidence and found it flimsy for Christianity in general and not much better for my own faith. I am still looking for something to convince me.

And no, I don’t believe I can choose to believe anyways. That is not how rationality works. That is why I said it is often projection.

And we have basically no evidence for the 36 hours of continuous daylight that was somehow localized to one part of the world. Reminds me of this:

 

[smac97]

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Again, I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

Now you are claiming that you are confused about my request?

The problem is that asking for an “alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon” is hopelessly vague.

Huh.

Well, let's see if we can clear things up. 

First, let's tackle The Book of Mormon.  That is, the book that purports to be a "translation" by Joseph Smith, Jr. of an ancient record which was contained on an ancient metal artifact answering generally to, and generally named, the "Gold Plates."  Some Encyclopedia of Mormonism articles which are relevant here:

• Gold Plates
• Book of Mormon Plates and Records
• Book of Mormon Translation By Joseph Smith
• Book of Mormon Witnesses
• Plates, Metal
• Book of Mormon
• Book of Mormon Authorship
• Book of Mormon Chronology

Here's a nice graphical summary of the purported contents of the Gold Plates:

I think this is a bit of a silly exercise, as I'm reasonably confident you are already well familiar with this stuff.  Nevertheless, you are (belatedly) complaining that my inquiry ("I have asked that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor") is "hopelessly vague," so this "Book of Mormon 101"-style exercise is apparently necessary.

Another very useful resource is "Joseph Smith - History."  While the provenance of this text is not in reasonable dispute (nobody seriously denies that this is an accurate recitation of the claims of Joseph Smith), most of the substantive factual elements within JS-H as pertaining to miraculous events and persons are disputed by critics such as yourself.

Question #1: Do you dispute the foregoing (bolded) statement?

The Church has helpfully augmented its published version of The Book of Mormon with an "Introduction."  Let's review it a bit.

Quote

Introduction

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible.

I think this is a fair and accurate statement about what Latter-day Saints believe about The Book of Mormon.  The Bible is indeed "comparable" to The Book of Mormon in that it purports to contain both historical information and theological/religious content.  Also, the Bible purports to be a compilation of texts written by various authors, as does The Book of Mormon.  Also, the historicity of some/much of The Bible is contested.  Effectively 100% of the historicity of The Book of Mormon is contested.

Question #2: Do you dispute the foregoing (bolded) statement?

Quote

It is a record of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

This is a contested statement, as there are people, such as you, who categorically reject the origins of the text of The Book of Mormon as explained and espoused by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Joseph Smith spent much of his life claiming to have received the Gold Plates by an angelic ministrant (a resurrected Nephite named Moroni), and that he (Joseph) then translated The Book of Mormon "by the gift and power of God."  The Latter-day Saints do not claim to know or understand the particulars of this translation process. We do, however, believe that that the Gold Plates contained the ancient text of what we now call "The Book of Mormon," with the writing being in a unique form called "Reformed Egyptian."  The Latter-day Saints believe that following the completion of the "translation" in 1829, Moroni instructed Joseph to return the Plates to him, which Joseph did.  The Plates are therefore not available for empirical scrutiny (metallurgical, linguistic, forensic, etc.).

Quote

The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C. and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.

The crowning event recorded in the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ among the Nephites soon after His resurrection. It puts forth the doctrines of the gospel, outlines the plan of salvation, and tells men what they must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the life to come.

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the Hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In due course the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated them by the gift and power of God. The record is now published in many languages as a new and additional witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God and that all who will come unto Him and obey the laws and ordinances of His gospel may be saved.

Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

In addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord provided for eleven others to see the gold plates for themselves and to be special witnesses of the truth and divinity of the Book of Mormon. Their written testimonies are included herewith as “The Testimony of Three Witnesses” and “The Testimony of Eight Witnesses.”

We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10:3–5.)

Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah.

Critics reject most of the foregoing.  In their view, there was no line of ancient "prophets" in the ancient Americas answering to the text (Lehi down through Moroni), nor that there any "Nephites" and "Lamanites" existed, nor that "Jesus Christ" descended from heaven and visited the inhabitants of the Americas, nor that there was any large compilation of prophetic records pertaining to these matters, nor that there was a "Mormon" who abridged these records on "Gold Plates," nor that Mormon then gave these Plates to his son, Moroni, who carried them about for years before burying them in a drumlin hill in New York State (near Manchester), nor that in the 1800s Moroni, now a resurrected angel, visited Joseph Smith, Jr. and gave him information about the buried plates, eventually letting Joseph take possession of them and "translate" them into English, nor that Joseph thereafter returned the Plates to Moroni.  Critics such as yourself do not believe any of this, and instead believe the text to have been written in the 19th century, either by Joseph Smith or another or a group of others, and that Joseph, whether through delusion or ill motive or both, fabricated both the text and the story of its origins.

Question #3: Do you dispute the foregoing (bolded) statement?

Now let's take a look at the Title Page to The Book of Mormon, which Latter-day Saints believe to be "a literal translation, taken from the very last leaf, on the left hand side of the collection or book of plates."

Quote

The Book of Mormon

An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi

 

Encyclopedia of Mormonism article about Mormon.  Not an "official" source, but as a Latter-day Saint I can tell you that this is quite an accurate summary of what Latter-day Saints believe about Mormon.

I assume you affirmatively reject the foregoing as being factual.  I am quite okay with that.  

Wikipedia article about the "Plates of Nephi."  Also not an official source, but nevertheless quite useful.  An excerpt:

Quote

According to the Book of Mormon, the plates of Nephi, consisting of the large plates of Nephi and the small plates of Nephi, are a portion of the collection of inscribed metal plates which make up the record of the Nephites. This record was later abridged by Mormon and inscribed onto gold plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon after an angel revealed to him the location where the plates were buried on a hill called Cumorah near the town of Palmyra, New York.

Palaeographic study of the plates is not possible; according to Joseph Smith the plates were returned to an angel named Moroni, and are no longer in human possession.

Per The Book of Mormon, the Plates of Nephi were comprised of the "Small" plates and the "Large" plates:

Quote

The first six books of the Book of Mormon, from First Nephi to Omni are said to be a translation of the small plates of Nephi.
...
The books within the Book of Mormon from The Words of Mormon to Fourth Nephi, are taken from Mormon's abridgment of the large plates. 

The "Large" plates are also claimed by the Latter-day Saints to have contained the "Book of Lehi," the translation of which was lost.  Nevertheless, most of the text of the The Book of Mormon is purported to be a translation of the Plates of Nephi.  The last three "books" (segments of The Book of Mormon") - Mormon, Ether, and Moroni - are purported to be sourced from other records.

Quote

Wherefore, it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites—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, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed—To come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof—Sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by way of the Gentile—The interpretation thereof by the gift of God.

An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also, which is a record of the people of Jared, who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, when they were building a tower to get to heaven—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, manifesting himself unto all nations—And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.

Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun.

Again, critics such as yourself don't believe any of this is historical or factual, and that it was instead made up by Joseph Smith and/or his contemporaries.

Question #4:  You have previously - and belatedly - claimed that Question 4, posed many times now, "is hopelessly vague."  The foregoing lays out foundational and contextualizing information about what the Latter-day Saints have to say about The Book of Mormon in terms of its origins and contents.  This is far from comprehensive, but it provides ample clarification on what you are now claiming to be "vague." 

Now that I have laid out the basic underpinnings of and explanations about The Book of Mormon as espoused by the the Latter-day Saints, both as to its origins and content, and operating under the assumption that you categorically or overwhelmingly reject these claimed underpinnings/explanations, I ask that you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The existence of the some object has almost no bearing on whether or not the object is of authentic ancient origin.

Ah.  There's a bit of a pivot here.  You are setting aside the physical reality of the Plates as irrelevant ("has almost no bearing") to the question of the origin and content of The Book of Mormon.

Many (most?) of the Latter-day Saints believe the Plates to be very important.  See, e.g., these comments by Daniel C. Peterson:

Quote

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? 

And also here:

Quote

Joseph Smith’s critics have come up with many explanations for the origins Book of Mormon, but they are convoluted.

Peterson said, “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.

I agree with DCP.  I think the Plates, both their physical reality and their claimed origins, are extremely important.  The truth claims of the Church essentially stand or fall on The Book of Mormon, which claims to be a translation of an ancient record contained in the Plates.

Quote

“If you think Joseph Smith wrote it, how did he do it? If you think there were no plates, what’s going on? You need to come up with another explanation.”

Peterson said, “I see problems with all the alternative explanations, and to me they’re lethal.”

I agree with DCP here as well.  Our critics have had nearly 200 years to formulate a plausible counter-explanation, but have failed to do so.  I found it particularly intriguing when you, a self-described "Bayesian methodological empiricist," offered to answer questions from me about these matters.

Quote

Petersen says, “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. 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.”

“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.

I have been trying to explore similar issues with you.

Quote

Peterson continued:

“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 [Bill] 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.’”

This is where we end up with critics.  Pretty much all the time.  They offer some broad counter-theory, but then refuse to defend it when it is scrutinized in any substantive sense.  This thread is a good example of this phenomenon.

Quote

Peterson said, however, that this is a fair question that demands an answer to all those critics who claim Joseph Smith did not have plates.

If Joseph knew that he had no plates and acted as if he did, you run into a number of issues immediately. You have to ask, said Peterson, “Was he a cynical fraud, just a con-artist, a 19th century con man?”

Yet all of Joseph Smith’s writings are being published in the Joseph Smith Papers and Peterson said, “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.”

“This is a young man…[who] 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.

I think DCP makes an important point here. 

Question #5:  You have previously stipulated that David Whitmer and Martin Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  Do you extend any of these assessments to Joseph Smith, Jr.?  If so, which ones?  If not, how do you respond to DCP's assessment above (based largely on Joseph's personal writings)?  Upon what evidence do you base your assessment of Joseph Smith?

Quote

“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… 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 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.

“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? 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.

“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.

“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.”

Question #6:  How do you account for Joseph's behavior as described above?  What evidence do you rely on for your assessment?

Quote

Then, of course, there is the idea that Joseph Smith was crazy-that he thought he had plates, but he really didn’t. Peterson said, “Suppose you say…Joseph was hallucinating the plates. What about all the other people? Did he really manage to find eight local yokels who would also hallucinate plates just in time?…I don’t know how you [would] 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, 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.”

“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.’

“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.”

This speaks to the importance of the Plates and the Witness statements (official and unofficial) about the Plates.

Quote

So the alternative, said Peterson, is that Joseph had plates, but where did he get them? There is the possibility that he made them, but what evidence is there that he had that capacity? “What evidence is there that he was a metallurgist or a blacksmith or anything of the kind that he could make plates?”

Others suggest that Oliver Cowdery made them, but the same questions arise. There is no evidence that he had these capacities.

Another question said Peterson is, “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. The plates are generally estimated at about 60 pounds. Even if they’re gold alloy, that’s a lot of gold.

“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…”

Was there, in fact, some kind of forge near Palmyra belching smoke where Joseph or Oliver where fashioning of pound after pound of gold into plates and nobody noticed? Hardly.

“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.”

Question #7:  Do you dispute DCP's statement here (that "the evidence that he {Joseph} made them {the Plates} is nil")?  If so, what evidence do you have that Joseph (and/or his contemporaries) fabricated the Plates?

Quote

If Joseph Smith had the plates and he didn’t make them—where did he get them? Peterson said the choices are from a contemporary or a non-contemporary. Try as they have, critics have not been able to come up with a contemporary that holds any water.

Question #8:  Do you dispute DCP's statement here (that "critics have not been able to come up with a contemporary {who could be plausibly alleged to have fabricated the Plates})?  If so, what "contemporary" do you have in mind, and what evidence do you have in support of your position?

Quote

But Peterson says, he has a candidate for a non-contemporary.

Peterson said, “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…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.” But what is it?

“Now I realize,” concluded Peterson, “that I’m oversimplifying and 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 alternative explanations that have been proposed to account for what he claimed.”

Question #9:  Do you dispute DCP's statement here (that "Joseph Smith’s story {about the origins of The Book of Mormon} is easier to credit than the alternative explanations that have been proposed to account for what he claimed")?  If so, what "alternative explanation" do you have in mind, and what evidence do you have in support of your position?

I get that you are now claiming that the Plates are effectively irrelevant ("The existence of the some object has almost no bearing on whether or not the object is of authentic ancient origin.").  However, for the time being let's go with your "What if we were in a lawsuit" hypothetical.  Let's say that you are an interested person to the lawsuit, and that you are being deposed about your perspective on The Book of Mormon.  Let's also say that you are represented by an attorney at the deposition.  The attorney could, either during or after the deposition, interpose an objection about the relevance of questions about the Plates and the Witnesses.  Nevertheless, the deponent (you) would still be obligated to answer such questions in a deposition.  Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states (emphases added) :

Quote

Scope in General. Unless otherwise limited by court order, the scope of discovery is as follows: Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit. Information within this scope of discovery need not be admissible in evidence to be discoverable.

Put another way, a request for information in a lawsuit is allowed if it is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of relevant, admissible, evidence. Something is "relevant" if it tends to prove or disprove something that one of the sides in the lawsuit needs to prove to win their case.

If the hypothetical lawsuit is about the purported origins of The Book of Mormon, your apparent objection to inquiries about the Plates would either be overruled as premature or improper, or it would be deferred to a later date after the deposition.  Either way, your objection would not excuse you from answering questions about the Plates and the Witnesses.  So let's just go with that.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The witnesses were hand-picked as if they were experts, but an attorney would have a field day having them disqualified as having no independence and no expertise to determine any of the things they claim.

Again, if we are using your "lawsuit" framework, your point here would go to the probative weight of the Witnesses' statements, not their admissibility.  And the Witnesses were percipient "fact" witnesses, not experts, so they do not need to have or demonstrate any particular "expertise" to offer testimony.

As for "independence," I'm not sure what you mean.  David Whitmer's statements after he left the Church were not "independent"?  How do you figure that?  Same goes for several other witnesses.

I'm happy to discuss the Witnesses' credibility, but your crowing about "field day having them disqualified" is quite premature and unfounded.  We aren't in court, and if we were their statements would still come in because they qualify as fact witnesses. 

FRE 601 states: "Every person is competent to be a witness unless these rules provide otherwise."  You have already agreed that there is sufficient evidence for the propositions that Whitmer and Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  I have not seen you advance any theory or evidence that any of the other witnesses can be materially differentiated from these assessments (feel free to lay out your argument/evidence, if you have any).  In other words, the Witnesses would be presumptively "competent" to testify.

FRE 602 states: "A witness may testify to a matter only if evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter. Evidence to prove personal knowledge may consist of the witness’s own testimony."  If you have evidence disputing that the Witnesses did not have "personal knowledge of the matter(s)" to which they attested, feel free to present it.  I think there is ample evidence that would allow their statements in (though, to be frank, the utility of your "what if we were in court" hypothetical is really quite limited).

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

And while I grant that what they claim is well-defined in a religious context, they are not well-defined in a real-world context.

Your tendency to dress up your personal conclusory opinion as evidentiary analysis does not help advance the discussion.  You can't just assert stuff like this, you need to demonstrate it. 

For example, let's look at David Whitmer.  You have agreed that there is sufficient evidence for the propositions that both David Whitmer and Martin Harris were A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  Having made these concessions, I ask that you review the following compilation of Whitmer's statements about the Plates and his experience relating thereto:

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Later in life, after outliving Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris, David was frequently questioned about his experience both in person and by letter. Thanks to these enquiries, about a dozen letters containing firsthand statements about his experience survive, in addition to over 70 reports from those who interviewed him.^[6] Most of the firsthand statements either express a simple reaffirmation of his testimony as published in the Book of Mormon, or matter-of-factly state that he saw an angel with the plates. Coming from his own pen (or that of his scribes, as he dictated to them), these surviving letters allow David to speak for himself about his experience:

• “My testimony to the world is written concerning the Book of Mormon, and it is the same that I gave at first and it is the same as shall stand to my latest hour in life, linger with me in death and shine as Gospel Truth beyond the limits of life.”^[7]
• “As you read my testimony given many years ago, so it stands as my own existence; the same as when I gave it, and so shall stand throughout the cycles of eternity.”^[8]
• “As concerning the Book of Mormon and its contents, and my views for which you inquire, I can say the Book and its contents are true. And my testimony in connection with the Book is also true.”^[9]
• “My testimony to the Book of Mormon is true and I am admonished neither to add to nor take from my testimony already appended to the Book.”^[10]
• “Those who know me best, well know that I have adhered to that testimony.—And that no man may be misled or doubt my present views in regard to the same, I do now again affirm the truth of all my statement[s], as then made and published.”^[11]
• “My testimony as published in connection with the Book of Mormon is true—And why Should men ask to know more in regard to all the particulars connected with that all Overshadowing truth—If they will not believe the three and 8 witnesses would they believe though one Should arise from the dead, and testify to its truth again.”^[12]
• “I have … emphatically testified as written in the Book of Mormon.”^[13]
• “I did see the angel of God, and was commanded to testify of these things, and they are true.”^[14]
• “You ask me if I saw the Angel when he brought the plates. I saw the Angel when he brought the plates, and the Angel told us that we must bear testimony to the world, as contained in my testimony written in the Book of Mormon. Doubt not—sister—the Book of Mormon is the word of God.”^[15]
• “I did see the Angel as it is recorded in my testimony in the Book of Mormon. The Book is true.”^[16]
• “In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: … A bright light enveloped us where we were, that filled at noon day, and there in a vision or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon.”^[17]
• “In June, 1829, the Lord called Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and myself as the three witnesses, to behold the vision of the Angel, as recorded in the fore part of the Book of Mormon, and to bear testimony to the world that the Book of Mormon is true.”^[18]

Other direct correspondences from David clearly express belief in the Book of Mormon without specifically mentioning his testimony of the angel and the plates. For example, in a letter to Oliver Cowdery in 1847, David speaks of building up the church of Christ anew, “according to the laws contained in the bible [and] book of Mormon.”^[19]

In addition to these simple but clear reaffirmations of his testimony, various interviews reported by both believers and non-believers in the Book of Mormon elaborate more on David’s experience with the angel and the plates. However, he often felt misrepresented by these reports, and occasionally made an effort to correct them.^[20] As such, these interviews, despite often reporting what David said in the first-person, are best treated as second-hand accounts and should be given due caution. Nonetheless, taken collectively these accounts are broadly consistent and testify to David’s lifetime commitment to bear witness of the Book of Mormon.

In addition to these numerous sources from David’s twilight years, various accounts show that he actively bore his testimony in the years immediately following the experience. For example, in 1831 William E. McLellin recorded hearing David bear “testimony to having seen an Holy Angel who had made known the truth of this record to him.”^[21] John Green remembered hearing David affirm his testimony at gunpoint in 1833.^[22] Luman Shurtliff and Thomas Marsh also remember hearing David testify in the 1830s.^[23]

One thing that is clear throughout all of these accounts is that David was emphatic that what he saw was real. On one occasion, he struck the side of a bed to emphasize that he saw the angel and the plates as clearly and surely as his interviewers could see the bed he was sitting on while speaking with them.^[24] On other occasions, people questioned whether his experience was possibly a hallucination, or some kind of delusion, to which he would emphatically reply it was no delusion.^[25]

When one person claimed that David had admitted that he saw and heard “nothing,” but merely felt “impressions” of an angel’s presence and heavenly voice,^[26] David personally wrote to correct the record.^[27] He candidly acknowledged that there were spiritual elements to the experience, but also insisted that he really did see an angel with his “natural eyes.”^[28] For instance, in reply to one skeptic, he wrote:

In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time.^[29]

Despite having so frequently been questioned about his testimony, sometimes by hostile and skeptical enquirers, toward the end of his life—“standing as it were, in the very sunset of life”—David could honestly proclaim: “That I have never at any time, denied that testimony or any part thereof, which has so long since been published with that book as one of the three witnesses.”^[30] Frustrated by the many rumors and misrepresentations circulated about his testimony, in the final years of his life he determined to speak for himself once and for all. “I will say once more to all mankind, that I have never at any time denied that testimony or any part thereof.”^[31] According to several witnesses, he again bore one last testimony of the Book of Mormon just before dying less than a year later.^[32]

Question #10: Given that you have agreed that Whitmer was A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped," and given the foregoing compilation of Whitmer's statements, the provenance of which is not in reasonable dispute, how do you square these things - particularly the bolded portions of the statements in the compilation - with your assertion that Whitmer's statements are "not well-defined in a real-world context"?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

It’s painfully clear to me that the visionary object the 3 were shown is different than the physical object the 8 were shown.

Question #11: Please explain this "painfully clear" thing.  Please also marshal evidence in support of it.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The weakest and most problematic data points are the witness testimonies and the writing process.

Question #12: How do you reconcile your rejection of the Book of Mormon Witnesses as "weak" and "problematic" "data points" with your acceptance of the historical evidence about the assassination of Caesar?  How is it that you accept the latter but not the former?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

I can speculate on those ideas, but we don’t have the data to say anything for sure because the data that would settle the issue was deliberately withheld.

That's simply not so.  We do not have the stabbing implements purportedly used to kill Caesar, but you accept historical evidence about that anyway.  

Moreover, "Data" is plural.  We do not have the Plates, but we do have other evidence, such as the various Witness statements and textual evidences.

Question #13: Are you arguing that the Witness statements do not constitute "evidence" or "data" regarding the origins of The Book of Mormon?  If so, please lay out your reasoning.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Me not having a theory on these things supported with empirical rigor is Joseph Smith’s fault and isn’t evidence of authenticity.

"Me not having a theory on these things."

Question #14: How is it you not only have a "theory," you accept as fact the assassination of Caesar despite not having "empirical" grounds to do so (no stabbing implements, no percipient witness statements, etc.), but you then turn around and declare you are incapable of formulating a theory for the Plates, including the Witness statements and historical evidence about the character and credibility of those people?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

I am now asking whether you have a positive (as in, something more than the Dale Morgan-esque "not that" assertions), coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

Quite the opposite. I can give you my own speculations on what I think most likely happened, but this being speculative on my part is not evidence that the religious explanation is the strongest one.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Quite the opposite."  I would prefer evidence-based assessment over speculation and guesswork.  You seem to be acknowledging that you cannot or will not provide the former.

Question #15: Assuming that the Church's "explanation" as to the Plates and the Witnesses is not "the strongest one," what alternative explanation do you have that, in your view, is "the strongest one"?  Please be specific, including the evidentiary analysis you use to reach this conclusion.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

First, we don’t know the answer to them because Joseph Smith chose to hide from view the evidence that would allow us to definitively answer them.

Well, no.  And this is ultimately irrelevant.

By your reasoning "we don't know the answer" to Caesar's death because we don't have the stabbing implements used to kill him, nor chain of custody and established provenance, nor percipient witness statements (and associated chain of custody and provenance authenticators).

We have some evidence about Caesar's death, but it's not very good in terms of historiographic quality.  And yet you accept it anyway.

We have lots of evidence from and about the Witnesses, and it is very good in terms of historiographic quality.  And yet you reject it while simultaneously accepting as established fact the far-less-evidenced circumstances of Caesars's death.  

If you, being the intelligent and informed person that you are, can reach a conclusion about Caesar despite evidentiary shortcomings, you should be able to do the same as to the Plates and the Witnesses.  That you cannot, or will not, do so is quite interesting to me.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Me not having non-speculative answers isn’t an indication that Joseph’s story is probable--it’s an indication that he had something to hide.

That Joseph Smith deliberately showed the Plates to eleven other people, many of whom he hardly knew, is an indication that Joseph's story is probable, and it's an indication that he was willing to do quite a bit more to provide evidence to others than a "Just take my word for it"-style explanation.

Again, you have agreed that there is sufficient evidence for the propositions that Whitmer and Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."   And these men adhered to their statements throughout their lives.  This is particularly noteworthy in the case of David Whitmer, who had all sorts of incentives and opportunities and decades to recant or modify or qualify his testimony.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Keeping this in mind, here are my answers:

Q: Assuming the "Plates" were a 19th-century hoax or something comparable (and not, as Joseph claimed, an ancient and authentic artifact), what were the plates made of?  We already know what the Church and apologists have to say.  What do you have to say?

Tin, probably. 

Question #16: Can you elaborate any further?  Do you have any evidence to support it?  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, when was this sham object made/fabricated?  Using what materials and resources?

My best guess is that they were slowly made over the 4+/- years between Joseph Smith announcing he was going to translate golden plates and when he actually claimed he had them in his possession. 

Question #17: Can you elaborate any further?  Do you have any evidence to support it?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, who was involved in the procuring of materials and the fabrication of the object, and when?  Was it just Joseph (per Vogel), or were others involved?  If others, who were they?  What was their motive?  Why did they never publicly disclose the hoax?

I don’t know. Regarding motive, I think Joseph Smith was trying to make money and persuade people to believe in Christ. 

I won't ask you to elaborate, since "I don't know" is fairly comprehensive.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with the statements of the Three Witnesses, the Three Witnesses and the informal witnesses (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.)?

I find the witness statements vague, curated, and insufficient to establish ancient origins.

That's not my question, though.  I am not asking you to further your "not that" explanations.  I am, instead, looking for a positive counter-theory. 

Your alternative explanation is, so far, pretty anemic (the Plates were "probably" made of "tin," and "I don't know" as to any other details about the Plates).  Nevertheless, how do you account for the the statements of the Three Witnesses, the Three Witnesses and the informal witnesses (Emma, Mary Whitmer, etc.)?  This is particularly relevant given that you have previously agreed that David Whitmer and Martin Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."

Let's focus, for the time being, on Whitmer.  I look forward to you response to Question #10: Given that you have agreed that Whitmer was A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped," and given the foregoing compilation of Whitmer's statements, the provenance of which is not in reasonable dispute, how do you square these things - particularly the bolded portions of the statements in the compilation - with your assertion that Whitmer's statements are "not well-defined in a real-world context"?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

My story of witnessing fake “plates” in Brother Brandt’s seminary class in the 85-86 school year at Hillcrest High in Midvale Utah is 100% true.

Except that you have demurred on the details.  You did not tell us whether you accurately described to the class what you saw.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Q: Proceeding on the same foregoing assumption, how do you square your alternative explanation with historical information and evidence we have regarding the character and credibility of the witnesses (both official and unofficial)?

I don't know exactly what they saw or why they said what they did.

That doesn't answer the question.  You are not explaining here how you square your alternative explanation with historical information and evidence we have regarding the character and credibility of the witnesses (both official and unofficial).  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Perhaps they were being honest but not completely transparent,

Question #18: Let's go with this as pertaining to David Whitmer.  Given that you have agreed that Whitmer was A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped," and given the foregoing compilation of Whitmer's statements, what was it you think he was "not completely transparent" about?  Please be specific.  Also lay out whatever evidence you have to challenge the veracity and competency of Whitmer's statements.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Q: What evidence do you have to support your answers to the preceding paragraphs?

As I've said over and over, we don't have the evidence that would conclusively

I've never asked for "conclusive" evidence, just evidence.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

answer these questions because Joseph Smith chose to withhold it.

All competent, first-hand evidence about Caesar's death has been lost due to the passage of time (stabbing implements, percipient witness reports, provenance confirmation, etc.).  Or perhaps some actors deliberately destroyed such evidence.  Or perhaps both explanations are in play.  In any event, the result is the same: primary evidence is missing.  What we have instead are "evidence" in the form of historical and quasi-historical references which are all from late (by decades/centuries) sources, with substantial provenance and credibility issues, based either on mere hearsay/tradition or unstated/unavailable other sources, or some combination of both.  Nevertheless, you treat these sources (Suetonius, etc.) as "evidence" and accept their cumulative information as substantially accurate in a limited sense: Caesar.  Stabbed to death.  Floor of Senate.  Ides of March.

There are aspects of these late reports I suspect you do not necessarily accept as factually accurate:

• Nicolaus was biased because of his political leanings (pro-Augustan (pro-Octavian/Caesar's heir)). 
• Suetonius was gossipy and anecdotal, with a taste for the sensational and moralistic. 
• Plutarch was sympathetic to Brutus and the republican cause (tyrannicide as noble), while critiquing Caesar's hubris. 
• Appian wrote for political purposes (structured narrative to show how republican excesses led to monarchy).  
• Cassius Dio depicted the assassins as envious or power-hungry; frames the assassination as a tragic but flawed act that led to worse chaos (civil wars). Heavy on speeches and moral/political commentary.

So common patterns of bias/inaccuracy pertain to political, moral/religious, and literary/gossipy affectations, with none of them really striving for impartiality/neutrality in their descriptions of the death of Caesar.  Everyone had a bone to pick, but you accept these very late sources as being effectively accurate on the basics.  You are willing to reach that conclusion despite the various evidentiary deficiencies I have pointed to time and again.

I think you can do the same with the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, but you don't want to.

Some competent, first-hand evidence about the Plates has been lost, namely, the Plates themselves.  You attribute this to "because Joseph Smith chose to withhold it."  The Latter-day Saints attribute this to God (Moroni retrieved the plates).  In any event, the result is sort of the same as above: primary evidence is missing.  But not all evidence.  If you are entitled to rely on the purported writings of Nicolaus and Suetonius and such as "evidence," then you can also rely on the "evidence" we have been discussing relative to the Plates:

• The Testimony of the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses is evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The statements of the "unofficial" witnesses are evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The subsequent affirmations by the various witnesses (particularly David Whitmer) is evidence.
• Textual elements are evidence.

You are speaking as if we are operating in the absence of any evidence.  That doesn't work.  You can argue that the extant evidence is insufficient, but you can't credibly say it is absent.  And once you do that, you are free to "answer these questions" much in the same way you answer questions about the death of Caesar: by examining extant evidence.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The plates were never independently examined.

Question #19: The stabbing implements used to kill Caesar were also "never independently examined."  At least, we have no extant evidence of such.  And yet based on late sources (Nicolaus, etc.), you have accepted that such implements existed and were used to kill Caesar.  How do you square that acceptance with your apparent requirement that the Plates be "independently examined"?

Also, I think the Plates were independently examined.  The Witnesses were each shown the Plates and reached their own, never-recanted conclusions.  This includes folks like David Whitmer, who was about as "independent" from Joseph Smith as anyone, for decades on end.  Same goes for Emma and Mary Whitmer, whose interaction with the Plates was not coordinated or planned by Joseph Smith.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

No neutral party was permitted to handle them.

The sources about Caesar's death were not "neutral," either, yet you accept their late statements as accurate anyway.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

They were shown to selected witnesses under controlled conditions

Many of which witnesses later dissociated from Joseph and yet never recanted, and instead reaffirmed, their statements about the Plates.

Emma's interaction with the Plates was not "under controlled conditions."  Joseph did not "control" Mary Whitmer's interaction with the Plates either.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

and then conveniently disappeared from the world.

You could also speculate that the absence of first-hand information about Caesar's death is also "convenient."  Plenty of people had axes to grind, both for and against Caesar.  And yet you don't disparage the late sources about Caesar's death on the grounds that the first-hand sources "conveniently disappeared from the world."

Moreover, returning the Plates to Moroni makes perfect sense in the Latter-day Saint paradigm.  It's a feature, not a bug.  We are supposed to accept the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ on faith, not on metallurgical analysis.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

My answers are speculative—but notice whose choice that was.

Yours. 

• The Testimony of the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses is evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The statements of the "unofficial" witnesses are evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The subsequent affirmations by the various witnesses (particularly David Whitmer) is evidence.
• Textual elements are evidence.

You are speaking as if we are operating in the absence of any evidence.  That's just not so.  You can base your assessment of the Plates on the extant evidence pertaining thereto, as you do with your assessment of the death of Caesar and associated "evidence."

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

In law, when a party controls evidence and withholds it,

That's a bad thing.  But that's not what happened here.

Joseph did not "withhold" evidence.  He explained where it went.

Moreover, he went out of his way to procure other evidence, namely, the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

the adverse inference runs against them, not against the people they excluded.

Your spoliation analogy doesn't hold.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

I am speculating because Joseph made sure that speculation is all any of us would ever be able to do.

That is simply not so.  We have evidence we can evaluate:

• The Testimony of the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses is evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The statements of the "unofficial" witnesses are evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The subsequent affirmations by the various witnesses (particularly David Whitmer) is evidence.
• Textual elements are evidence.

Joseph went out of his way to facilitate these things.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the only evidence we have about the plates is extraordinarily questionable.

That goes to the sufficiency of the evidence, and I'm not asking you about that.  I am, instead, asking that you lay out a positive, coherent alternative explanation for the Book of Mormon, centering on evidence about the Plates, the Witnesses and the Text, and which explanation accounts for key data points without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

And you are not doing it.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

And it is also extraordinarily irrelevant.

The Plates and the Witnesses are very relevant.  As relevant as Nicolaus and Suetonius are to the information we have about the death of Caesar.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The exact nature of the plates has no bearing on whether the words Joseph Smith dictated to his scribes were translations of anything anybody in antiquity actually wrote.

That's just not so. 

If the "nature of the plates" is as Joseph described them, then the object he had was not an artifact of his own making.  

If the object was not a hoax, then it was one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history, on par with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rosetta Stone, King Tut's Tomb, etc.

If the object was not a hoax, then its origins must be accounted for.  Joseph Smith did that accounting.  What alternative explanation do critics have?  Hard to say, since the one in this thread is effectively stonewalling any inquiry along those lines.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

I am saying that the historical evidence for the plates as described by the Witnesses is, by essentially every metric, cumulatively superior to the historical evidence regarding the assassination of Julius Caesar.  

I am saying that you, a self-described empiricist, are pretty inconsistent in when and how you deploy your supposed empiricist-minded proclivities.

I am saying that you take as established historical fact, without question, that Caesar was murdered in the way described by Suetonius et al.  Yet both the quality and quantity of this evidence is markedly inferior to that of the evidence pertaining to the Plates.

I am saying that the Witnesses are a very sticky wicket for persons such as yourself.  You can't account for them, and also cannot account for the Plates.  Nor can you account for the text itself.  However you account for these things, your accounting is based on presuppositions and hostile speculation, and not on the substantive evidence.  You cannot or will not engage the evidence for the Plates in the same way you engage evidence for other things (such as Caesar's assassination).  

Smac, I think you're conflating several things that need to stay separate.

Not really.  I think discussing the Plates and the Witnesses is a very worthwhile endeavor.  We can discuss textual evidences later.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

I have already conceded Issue 1: a physical object probably existed.

Right.  But you cannot or will not present a theory as to what that object was, who made it, when, of what materials, for what purpose, etc.

The Latter-day Saints have presented their explanation.  I am asking critics, with the benefit of nearly 200 years of hindsight, particularly the self-declared "empiricist" in this thread, to present a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The eight witnesses probably saw and handled something. On that narrow question, I'll grant that the testimonial record is reasonably strong. Fine.

Okay.  Now the next narrow question.  How did they describe that "something," and do you find their descriptions reliable and accurate?  If not, why not?

In particular, what do you have to say about David Whitmer?  He didn't just say he "saw something."  Here is what he did say:

Quote

• "In regards to my testimony to the visitation of the angel, who declared to us three witnesses that the Book of Mormon is true, I have this to say: Of course we were in the spirit when we had the view, for no man can behold the face of an angel, except in a spiritual view, but we were in the body also, and everything was as natural to us, as it is at any time. Martin Harris, you say, called it 'being in vision.' We read in the Scriptures, Cornelius saw, in a vision, an angel of God, Daniel saw an angel in a vision, also in other places it states they saw an angel in the spirit. A bright light enveloped us where we were, that filled [the woods as] at noon day, and there in a vision or in the spirit, we saw and heard just as it is stated in my testimony in the Book of Mormon."
• “My testimony to the world is written concerning the Book of Mormon, and it is the same that I gave at first and it is the same as shall stand to my latest hour in life, linger with me in death and shine as Gospel Truth beyond the limits of life.”
• “My testimony to the Book of Mormon is true and I am admonished neither to add to nor take from my testimony already appended to the Book.”
• “Those who know me best, well know that I have adhered to that testimony.—And that no man may be misled or doubt my present views in regard to the same, I do now again affirm the truth of all my statement[s], as then made and published.”
• “I did see the angel of God, and was commanded to testify of these things, and they are true.”
• “You ask me if I saw the Angel when he brought the plates. I saw the Angel when he brought the plates, and the Angel told us that we must bear testimony to the world, as contained in my testimony written in the Book of Mormon. Doubt not—sister—the Book of Mormon is the word of God.”
• "I saw the angel as plainly as I see you; he was surrounded by the glory of God, which overshadowed us, and we heard his voice, and we saw the records of the Book of Mormon...My testimony is the same as at the beginning, as is true."
• "I saw them just as plain as I see this bed (striking his hand upon the bed beside him), and I heard the voice of the Lord as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life declaring that they (the plates) were translated by the gift and power of God."
• "How well and distinctly I remember the manner in which Elder Whitmer arose and drew himself up to his full height--a little over six feet--and said, in solemn and impressive tones: 'No sir! I was not under any hallucination, nor was I deceived! I saw with these eyes, and I heard with these ears! I know whereof I speak!'"

You have previously agreed that Whitmer and Martin Harris were both A) not "insane" and B) "sincere," and C) not "duped."  And I surmise that you would also postulate that they were D) largely factually inaccurate in their official statement (there was no angel, no voice from heaven).

Question #21: Given that Whitmer said a lot more than "I saw something," and given that you agree that Whitmer was sane and sincere and not tricked ("duped"), how do you account for his statements above?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

You're right that I accept Caesar's assassination as historical fact.

As do I.  And probably for the same reasons.  We have sufficient, albeit deeply flawed, historiographical evidence and information available to allow for a reasonable inference that Caesar was stabbed to death on the floor of the Roman Senate on the Ides of March.  History seldom gives us pristine and overwhelming and unequivocal evidence.  It's often flawed in one way or another.  We work with what we've got.

We also have sufficient, and markedly superior, historiographical evidence and information available to allow for a reasonable inference that the Eight Witnesses saw something they described as follows:

Quote

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith, Jun., the translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen. And we lie not, God bearing witness of it.

And the Three Witnesses:

Quote

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.

If you have evidence of multiple sets of plates (one set for the Three Witnesses, another for the Eight Witnesses), please feel free to share it.  I think critics are hard-pressed enough with the burden of rationalizing the notion that Joseph had the means to produce one set.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

But notice what kind of claim that is.

One steeped in ancient Roman politics.

Religion and politics are both powerful influences in our lives.  We can let our religious and/or our political ideologies and biases affect how we see the world and interpret things.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Caesar's death is not a freestanding assertion--it is woven into an extraordinarily dense web of interconnected history.

So is The Book of Mormon.  Lehi came from Jerusalem.  So did Mulek.  The Jaredites came from the Tower of Babel.  If that's not "an extraordinarily dense web of interconnected history," I don't know what is.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The political consequences, the civil wars, the rise of Augustus, the restructuring of the Roman world--all of it ramifies outward and forward in ways that interlock with countless independent lines of evidence.

Evidence of what?  Caesar's death?  How do you figure that?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Caesar's assassination fits.  It coheres.

So does Joseph's narrative about the Plates.  

So do the various statements from the Witnesses about the Plates.

So do the various historical evidences we have about the Witnesses' character and credibility.

This stuff coheres to each other really well.

What does not "fit," what does not "cohere" is the critics' various alternative explanations.

Were there actual plates, or not?

Were the plates a cheap-looking sham, or a highly-sophisticated prop?

Were the Witnesses telling the truth or lying?

Were the Witnesses percipient or drugged?

Were the Witnesses percipient or hypnotized?

Were the Witnesses percipient or in a religious frenzy?

And on and on.

Critics have had 200 years to formulate a coherent alternative narrative about The Book of Mormon.  I find it increasingly interesting that not only have they manifestly failed to do so, the best and brightest of them - you - are effectively quitting the field without even trying. 

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The plates are a categorically different kind of claim, and the difference matters.

I agree, but I think we differ as to the degree of that difference mattering.

For that matter, the whole "what if we were in a trial" thing has been largely a waste of time because it posits a venue for examining evidence about a topic that has no business examining either the topic nor the evidence.  The difference matters.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Authentic ancient plates don't merely lack corroboration.

What "corroboration" do we have for the death of Caesar?

Meanwhile, we do have corroboration about the Plates:

• The Testimony of the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses is evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The statements of the "unofficial" witnesses are evidence, as is the historical information about the character and credibility of these people.
• The subsequent affirmations by the various witnesses (particularly David Whitmer) is evidence.
• Textual elements are evidence.

You find this corroboration insufficient, and that's fine.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

They contradict what we know.

They are increasingly corroborated by what we know.

• Ancient records engraved on gold-looking metal plates bound by rings and concealed under the earth in a stone box
• “Land of Jerusalem”
• Old World Steel in the Book of Mormon
• Cement in the New World
• Paanch[i] and Pahor[an] as names derived from ancient Egyptian
• Alma as an authentic ancient Semitic male name.
• Etymology of "Jershon"
• Etymology of "Shilum"
• Etymology of "Sheum"
• Etymology of "Nahom"
• Nahom (location in the Arabian Peninsula)
• Bountiful (relative to Nahom in the Arabian Peninsula)
• Barley in the Book of Mormon
• Chiasmus
• Hebraisms
• Colphons
• Wordprint Studies
• Internal geospatial consistency
• Internal chronological consistency
• Seal of Mulek
• Complex warfare patterns, fortifications, and military tactics (e.g., earthworks, ditches matching some Mesoamerican sites)

And the list keeps growing.

See also here (from Matthew Roper) :

Quote

The purpose of that presentation was to present our initial findings on a project exploring how well the Book of Mormon has fared in terms of science and archeological discovery.

After presenting our initial findings (some of you may have even seen a chart like this);

...

And so if we take these and we put them on a chart, I’ll go back a little bit, we put them on a chart that looks something like this.

...

So we had these criticisms that were raised. And now we’re in the second time period, this is what we have. Okay. You can see the chart now. It’s a little bit of change there, you can see. Again the red—let me go back. So 150 Book of Mormon anachronisms at that point.

...

Two hundred and five Book of Mormon anachronisms have been raised since the Book of Mormon was published as mentioned by critics, plus 55 since 1965. So since I was born, and it’s all my fault, there’s 55 additional criticisms there.

Now we take our list, remember these are all the criticisms that we have here. And we have a chart with all these zeros on it here, if you took them—but again what we want to look at is what’s changed? So this is what we do. So plus 55 criticisms, so we’ve got 205 here. So how does that look as of 2019 in terms of unconfirmed, confirmed, and trending?

As Daniel Peterson put it: "It’s amazing what Joseph Smith was able to pick up on the western frontier.”

It is indeed.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The archaeological and genetic record of pre-Columbian America does not contain a thread that could be pulled to produce a thick book of golden plates containing a detailed history.

Happy to discuss these another time. For now, I'd like to stick with trying to discern whether critics can, after nearly 200 years, present a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

In particular, I'd like to keep trying to understand your assessment of the Witnesses and the Plates.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Nobody in antiquity ever wrote a long history book on metal plates because doing so is hopelessly impractical.

You can credibly claim this never happened?  Are you sure about that?

Moreover, the Nephite recordkeepers acknowledge that their writing system was difficult/impractical.  They did it anyway for a particular purpose.

In any event, the Latter-day Saints don't claim that one person "wrote a long history book."  Rather, we claim that a bunch of authors kept records of wildly differing lengths (Chemish wrote one verse, Alma wrote enough to cover 36 chapters), and that Mormon compiled and abridged these various documents into one consolidated record: The Gold Plates.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Anyone who has seen or heard of paper disintegrating over time knows that is a weakness, but metal plates isn’t the answer because making a record on that medium is too expensive and impractical to be done in the real world.

And yet we have quite a few examples of record-keeping on metal plates or scrolls.  

• Examples of Ancient Gold or Metal Plates
• Book of Mormon Evidence: Egyptian Metal Plates
• Sacred Writing on Metal Plates in the Ancient Mediterranean
• Metal Plates Discovered – Evidences

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

It’s never been done. It couldn’t be done.

It has been done.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

This is a known reality that the claim has to swim against.

And so we do.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Caesar swims with the current.  The plates swim against it.

It seems like you are appealing to some sort of argumentum ad populum fallacy, of the "Because most people believe it, it must be so" variety.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Then there is the structure of the testimony itself.

And not just that, but also the character and credibility of the Witnesses.  And their subsequent circumstances and incentives to recant (though none did).  

David Whitmer sure seems to be worth some scrutiny on your part.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

You keep describing the witnesses as if their number and sincerity are what matter.

Not just their number and sincerity.  We also need to look at their character and credibility.

Question #20: Also, weren't you just a few pages ago claiming that the narrative about Caesar's death is validated/corroborated because multiple sources talk about it?  How does that reasoning not apply to the Witnesses?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

But they were curated--selected by Joseph,

Not all of them.  Emma's interaction with the Plates was not "curated" by Joseph, nor was Mary Whitmer's.  I have raised this point numerous times, and you have never addressed it.

Further, several of the Witnesses, despite being "curated," thereafter dissociated with and condemned Joseph, and yet still retained their testimonial declarations.  That, in my view, heavily counterbalances your "curated by Joseph" line of reasoning (which I find meritorious to some extent).  And I have brought this up a lot, and you have never addressed it.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

embedded in a community with every incentive to align with his narrative,

Everyone in that community had every incentive to align with Joseph Smith's narrative?

Are you sure you want to go with that?  Most people in Joseph's community had only scoffs and scorns for his "narrative."  And quite a few of the Witnesses fell out with Joseph, and were persecuted and otherwise heavily incentivized to recant their alignment with Joseph's narrative.  And yet they did not.  You have yet to meaningfully address this issue.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

never cross-examined by anyone with an interest in falsification.

That's demonstrably false.  Several of the witnesses were "cross-examined" about their statements, most notably David Whitmer.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

And critically: the evidence that would have settled the question conclusively--independent examination of the plates by a trained expert with no stake in the outcome--was deliberately withheld. Permanently.

We are also bereft of "independent examination ... by a trained expert" of the death of Caesar, and yet you accept that anyway.

You keep saying this as if it is an anomaly that is incongruent with Joseph's narrative.  It isn't.

God wants us to "walk by faith, not by sight."  Christians have no "independent examination ... by a trained expert" of the miracles of Jesus Christ, and they don't expect to.  That's not part of the paradigm.  It's supposed to not be part of the paradigm.

In any event, most things cannot be "settled ... conclusively" via "independent examination ... by a trained expert."  Your insistence of that for the Plates and the Witnesses and The Book of Mormon is special pleading.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The plates were removed from the world before anyone outside Joseph's circle could verify them.

So was the resurrected Jesus Christ.

And the stabbing implements used to kill Caesar have never been verified, yet you accept their existence based on uneven and inferior historiographical evidence anyway.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

When a party controls the decisive evidence and withholds it,

Joseph did not "withhold" the Plates.  He returned them to Moroni.  And you have zero evidence that he did so for spoliation purposes.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

honest analysis does not treat that as a neutral fact.

In a legal setting, sure.  In a historiographical setting, what your saying here is impractical.  Whether by design or happenstance, most "decisive evidence" of important events of yesteryear are lost without having been independently examined by trained experts.

Your ongoing attribution of perfidious intent onto Joseph is understandable, but it doesn't jibe with his extensive efforts to show the Plates to the Three Witnesses, to the Eight Witnesses, giving the translation to Martin Harris, letting Martin Harris take transcribed characters to Charles Anthon, and so on.  If Joseph had intended to take a "You'll just have to take my word for it, and mine alone"-style approach to the Plates, he would not have done these things.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

It discounts the remaining testimony accordingly.

I don't think so.  But I'm okay with differing with you on that.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

If this body of evidence, with this context, was shown to a judge, the judge would rightly throw it out.

Indeed he would, but not for the reason you imply.  She (see how egalitarian I am? ) would "rightly throw it out summarily, without any examination of the evidence one way or another, on Ecclesiastical Abstention grounds.  We have seen a real-world demonstration of this in the Gaddy lawsuit.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

I know this fact is inconvenient for you,

It's not remotely inconvenient for me.  I think it's becoming somewhat embarrassing for you to stick with this line of reasoning, as it exposes just how unfamiliar you are with the American legal system.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

but it must be front and center if we want to evaluate the witness testimony honestly.

Nope.  Judges don't adjudicate religious disputes, so "what if we were in court"-style hypotheticals have very little value.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

Quote

Are you claiming that a competent historian would believe in the assassination of Abinadi by King Noah with more certitude than he’d believe in the assassination of Caesar by Brutus?

No.

I have never argued — and I do not believe — that a competent historian would accept the internal narrative of the Book of Mormon (including the story of Abinadi’s trial and execution by King Noah) with the same or greater certitude as the assassination of Julius Caesar. Those are two different categories of evidence, and I have drawn no such comparison in this thread (though now that you bring it up, it could be an interesting exercise in exploring the rules of historiographical analysis and their limitations when discussing matters of religious faith).

I didn’t know that.

Um, then why did you impute it onto me?

I take historians as they are situated.  Just as I take judges for how they are situated.

Neither is situated to evaluate, in a polemical/apologetic context, the points we have been discussing about the Plates and the Witnesses.  That is not the role they play in society.

As it is, though, there are a lot of scientists and lawyers and judges and scholars of various stripes who excel in their respective disciplines and also accept The Book of Mormon for what it claims to be.  

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

You had said without qualification that the witness testimony should be believed.

I have?  Where?

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

They did say that the plates contain this record "which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken.”

Yes.  And on what basis did they say that?  They hadn't the skill to read the text, nor did they affirm this because it was what Joseph told them.  Rather...

Quote

{W}e, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen.

Now, you are free to believe or not believe them.  I understand why you would not.

That said, I sure would like to see you provide a positive, coherent alternative explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

You're all about the empiricism, after all.  And you have nearly 200 years of your predecessor critics to draw upon.  And you have remarkable resources in terms of online content and AI platforms to help you parse all this out.  And you still cannot or will not present an alternative explanation beyond "tin" and "I don't know."

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

If historians should believe the witness statements at face value like you think they should, I would think they’d believe this part of the statement, too.

Historians qua historians?  No.

But people who are historians and are also interested in examining the religious and philosophical teachings of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and who are willing to read The Book of Mormon, ponder its message, pray about it, and seek guidance from God about it?  Yes, I think they can and should also review the statements of the Witnesses as part of the truth-finding process.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 18 by smac97