Two voices in the Book of Mormon

[noel00]

Don,

I've read everything I can find of Rigdon's: letters, sermons, and revelations. Evidently, you have only had the opportunity to read a single Rigdon revelation - the one copied in the Appendix to Van Wagoner's book. That's not surprising given that the vast body of Rigdon revelatons have not as yet been published, and many were destroyed by his wife Phebe at his death.

In any case, there is a huge body of revelations in the Post collection at the U. Utah. A significant fraction of that work has been compiled, but not yet published by David Marshall. It is named Copying Book A & Book of the Revelations of Jesus Christ To The Children of Zion Through Sidney Rigdon Prophet & Seer & Revelator.

I'm willing to take up your challenge regarding textual styles of the candidate authors. Let's start at the beginning - the Preface to the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon. It deals with the lost 116 pages and reads as follows:

TO THE READER

[Daniel Peterson]

Craig

Who, by the way, is "Craig"?

Craig Criddle?

"Noel00" used to be an Australian named Noel Owen, or something like that. So I thought, anyway.

Do we now have "two voices in Noel00"?

-dcp

trying to tell the players but lacking a score card

.

[Mola Ram Suda Ram]

Who, by the way, is "Craig"?

Craig Criddle?

"Noel00" used to be an Australian named Noel Owen, or something like that. So I thought, anyway.

Do we now have "two voices in Noel00"?

-dcp

trying to tell the players but lacking a score card

.

I was getting a little confused as well. Not that I knew either of these indivduals that much.

[DonBradley]

Yes.

Unless you wish to define a spectrum of meanings for the word "evidence."

You keep raising this idea, but without presenting evidence at any level of the "spectrum" that directly responds to the issue of whether Joseph Smith was part of a conspiracy to dupe others into believing that he had revelations which the conspirators all know he did not have. You've alluded to evidence that he, personally, was a fraud, and that he was involved in what may be termed "conspiracies" toward other ends, but not presented any evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to dupe people into accepting his claimed revelations(i.e., that he had others in on this "con").

Joseph Smith, Jr. is a well regarded fellow, whose general reputation

for honesty and pure intentions will be highly rated by the vast majority

of participants in this message board. Any "evidence" of his wrong-doing

offered here for serious consideration, would necessarily have to be

evidence evaluated as being "near the top of the scale."

Any evidence for his secretly conspiring with anybody to promote a

falsehood, would have to be at the "top of the scale."

Any evidence for his secretly conspiring with anybody to falsely

promote a dishonest "religious" act, as confirming his "prophethood,"

would probably have to amount to "solid proof," in order to be

seriously considered by most participants here.

A fact which would not somehow coercively prevent you from citing even evidence of a lower quality if you actually had any. All this talk is simply a dodge to my challenge to present evidence, rather than preach on the subject of evidence.

Criddle has cited Smith's secret polygamy at Nauvoo as being an

instance in which Smith conspired with others to promote a falsehood

related to Smith's claims to be a prophet of God. This would probably

be the best example to investigate.

Then the other examples must be poor indeed, because what has been asked for--and would be directly relevant to the Spalding-Rigdon claims--is something entirely different, not evidence that is somehow "related" to Smith's prophethood, but evidence that Joseph used co-conspirators to promote his religious claims. An example of this would not be the secret practice of polygamy, but the secret use of confederates to dupe unsuspecting women into it, such as men dressed as angels with drawn swords.... If a prophet-figure secretly practices polygamy alongside other men, all performing each others' marriages and the like, it doesn't follow--even if the prophet is held to be insincere--that the other men are insincere, helped him work up the supposed revelation, and are wittingly trying to put one over on prospective polygamous wives. These are simply two different things. Thus Joseph Smith's known secret, or "conspiratorial," polygamy is not parallel to posited Spalding-Rigdon conspiracy and is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Don

[noel00]

Craig is the the "Craig Criddle" from Stanford University coauthor with Jockers of the paper on the authorship of the BOM

Noel00 is the message carrier, an ordinary middle level civil servant in Education Queensland, Australia.

Maybe in another life I was a message stick.

Enough to keep you busy Don?

[Uncle Dale]

...

Then the other examples must be poor indeed, because what has been asked for--and would be directly relevant to the Spalding-Rigdon claims--is something entirely different, not evidence that is somehow "related" to Smith's prophethood, but evidence that Joseph used co-conspirators to promote his religious claims. An example of this would not be the secret practice of polygamy, but the secret use of confederates to dupe unsuspecting women into it, such as men dressed as angels with drawn swords.... If a prophet-figure secretly practices polygamy alongside other men, all performing each others' marriages and the like, it doesn't follow--even if the prophet is held to be insincere--that the other men are insincere, helped him work up the supposed revelation, and are wittingly trying to put one over on prospective polygamous wives. These are simply two different things. Thus Joseph Smith's known secret, or "conspiratorial," polygamy is not parallel to posited Spalding-Rigdon conspiracy and is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

...

If you are saying that Criddle has not collected enough "evidence"

to convince you of the possibility of secret conspiracies conducted

by Smith and a few of Smith's associates, then you are no doubt right.

If you are trying to say that Criddle has not collected enough such

evidence to convince himself -- then you're fighting a useless battle.

The more productive use of your time would be for you to try and

convince Criddle that his evidence is so poor/minuscule, that he

should never have convinced himself that Smith was a conspirator.

Perhaps you can eventually do that -- I wish you luck.

But, as for me, you need not waste your time asking me to produce

sub-standard "evidence," which amounts to little more than old

testimony. Not much of that sort of stuff will meet your needs,

I'm afraid.

But, since you seem to want something to evaluate, I'll submit the

possibility that Joseph Smith, Sr. and Joseph Smith, Jr. engaged

in a conspiracy to make people believe that young Joe could see

under the ground, due to supernatural (religious) powers. In that

vein, here's at least something for you to begin with:

STATE OF NEW YORK, } JOEL K. NOBLE,

BROOME COUNTY, ss. } Justice.

The people, }

vs. } Samuel ****enson,

Joseph Smith, jr. } Complainant.

The defendant was brought before me by virtue of a warrant on the 30th day of June, A. D. 1830, on a charge "that he, the said Joseph Smith, Jr., had been guilty of a breach of the peace, against the good people of the state of New York, by looking through a certain stone to find hid treasures, &c., within the Statute of Limitation.["]

To the charge, the defendant plead not guilty. At the instance of the people, Joseph A. S. Austin was by me duly sworn, and says "that he had been acquainted with Smith, the prisoner, for several years; that prisoner pretended to look in a certain glass, or stone, and said he could tell where stolen goods were, and could discover mines of gold and silver under ground; made some pretence at telling fortunes, but he, witness, never knew of prisoner

[DonBradley]

Craig,

I suppose we should both be doing other things, but, here goes...

You wrote:

> OK, Craig, certainly if one regards the Danites as a conspiracy, then he was measurably involved in a conspiracy. What I meant was more specific--that I don't see evidence that his religious claims were put over on people by a conspiracy.

>

Now you are narrowing down the **acceptable** frauds to only include those with religious claims. That's just not defensible.

??? I'm asking for evidence of the exactly the kind of thing S-R theory says happened in the case of Smith's largest and most foundational religious claim/revelation. Why would it be unreasonable to think there ought to be good evidence of such outside the S-R explanation for the Book of Mormon, IF S-R theory is true?

We have plenty of evidence that Smith was acting as a fraud and con man in his treasure hunting activities with spirit guardians and slippery treasures, which then evolved into the gold plates scam.

Let's back up. You're trying to advance S-R theory as the best explanation for the Book of Mormon over and against both the ancient-book and Smith-only views. So you have to show why S-R theory beats them both. But even a highly successful argument that Joseph Smith was a fraud would only give S-R theory an edge over one of those arguments, not the other. So, against the field of the competing hypotheses, S-R theory is relatively weak if there isn't other evidence for the kind of conspiracy to advance religious claims that S-R theory alleges.

> What I meant by this is:

> If one hypothesizes educated 19th century authors, then one has to account for the pervasiveness of the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of the uneducated in the book. But one can only well explain these facets of the text--so far as I can see--by positing that it was worded by someone with a poor education--Smith or someone like him. (On which, more below.)

>

First of all, I don't find the pervasiveness of the uneducated grammar, syntax and vocabulary to be even throughout the book, as you do.

Then let's try an experiment upon the word.

Pick a page from the 1830 Book of Mormon (or, better, original or printer's manuscript) that you believe lacks these signs of poor education. If the text, posted here, demonstrates a different and significantly better grammar and syntax than the rest of the book (e.g., straightforward sentences, educated grammar) and a wider vocabulary, I'll concede that these elements are not so pervasive as I thought. Oh--and no fair using the biblical quotations! =)

Secondly, I don't believe you can only explain them with someone with a poor education.

Well, all I can say is that you have more faith than I do!

Third, there's good evidence that Rigdon and Spalding were both far less competent as writers than you depict them.

But I don't depict them as flawless or as well-educated writers by present-day standards. I depict them only as much more educated than Smith, and as above the level of "in them days," 160+-word sentence fragments (as in King Benjamin's sermon), and the Book of Mormon's 3000-odd-word-level vocabulary. But I'm open to documentation that such things were characteristic of them.

My point with the examples of Smith dictation was just to show that there are other alternative explanations - you do not have the ONLY possible explanation.

No, maybe just the only good and non-ad hoc explanation, particularly judging from the quality of the alternatives offered, which is all I claimed to have.

> I suppose you're saying that if Campbell, who knew Rigdon well, was able to find this believable, then it must be more believable than I would think. But I think the logic of the case is against authorship by someone of Rigdon's education, regardless of what Campbell came to believe.

>

I completely disagree with you there. Campbell was completely familiar with Rigdon and Rigdon's preaching style and he was also fully aware of the grammar, syntax errors, etc. of the Book of Mormon, yet he came to believe that Rigdon was the author.

Or, lacking documentation of a good match, it could be simply that Campbell overlooked this, which would not excuse others in doing the same. We have the texts to examine. If Campbell says things that don't match those, it's just another case of "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

> BTW, have you done comparative vocabulary studies of the BoM, Spalding, Rigdon, and Cowdery?

>

We've done unique word studies for them. And the basic patterns throughout the text are consistent with the frequent word usage patterns.

[DonBradley]

But, as for me, you need not waste your time asking me to produce

sub-standard "evidence," which amounts to little more than old

testimony. Not much of that sort of stuff will meet your needs,

I'm afraid.

Dale,

I've begged you for even "sub-standard" evidence. That you won't (can't) provide it is no reflection on me, however much you'd like to spin it so for the reading audience.

Don

[Uncle Dale]

Dale,

I've begged you for even "sub-standard" evidence. That you won't (can't) provide it

is no reflection on me, however much you'd like to spin it so for the reading audience.

Don

Tell me again precisely what it is that you want reproduced here -- public records,

court testimony -- Smith's own words -- contemporary news accounts -- What ???

Here are the possibilities:

1. Evidence that Smith once told a lie.

2. Evidence that Smith once told a lie regarding his religious program.

3. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to tell a lie.

4. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to promote a lie

that both he and his co-conspirators knew meant he was not a prophet.

5. Evidence that Smith ever cooperated with others to promote a lie

that the Book of Mormon was true, when all the conspirators knew otherwise.

Pick a number.

UD

[selek]

Tell me again precisely what it is that you want reproduced here -- public records,

court testimony -- Smith's own words -- contemporary news accounts -- What ???

Here are the possibilities:

1. Evidence that Smith once told a lie.

2. Evidence that Smith once told a lie regarding his religious program.

3. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to tell a lie.

4. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to promote a lie

that both he and his co-conspirators knew meant he was not a prophet.

5. Evidence that Smith ever cooperated with others to promote a lie

that the Book of Mormon was true, when all the conspirators knew otherwise.

Pick a number.

UD

I'm not Don, but I'd like to see something conclusive and definitive for #'s 4 & 5.

[DonBradley]

Craig,

Hey, let me begin with a clarification...

Don,

The more I think about your response you gave to my examples of Smith conspiracies, the more I feel that you have pulled a "bait-and-switch" on me. I gave three examples of conspiracies involving Smith: the plural marriage conspiracy, banking conspiracy and the Danite conspiracy. You focused on the Danite conspiracy, then attempted to limit the scope of allowable conspiracies: "I don't see evidence that his religious claims were put over on people by a conspiracy". You ignored the other two examples that I gave. Why? Are you claiming that plural marriage did not involve collaboration and religious deception?

Craig, the context of my initial comment about conspiracy was plainly that of S-R theory, and therefore that of conspiracies to palm off supposed revelations on the unsuspecting. I did not have in mind other types of secretive group behavior. I'm fully aware that Joseph Smith was involved with the Danites, plural marriage, and a problematic "bank" and wouldn't have attempted to deny this.

As soon as these other types of secretive group behavior were raised as counterexamples, I clarified what I meant.

But suppose, completely contrary to fact, that I did attempt a bait and switch, would this obviate the argument that I'm making that if Joseph Smith's behavior in his biggest and foundational revelation was conspiratorial, we ought to be able to document other conspiratorial behavior to promote alleged revelations? No. That argument stands, or falls, on its own. So, with me conceding that Joseph Smith was involved in secretive group behavior, "conspiracy," regarding having lots of wives, the Danites, the Kirtland Bank debacle, and probably more, let's please discuss the argument I am making.

Below are some more of my thoughts on this issue (written for an upcoming essay):

Thank you for posting part of this essay. I think, as you recognize, that the believability of a large and enduring conspiracy is one of the chief reasons people don't accept S-R theory. So, a fuller discussion on the issue needs to be had, and I'm sure your essay will contribute to that.

Don

[Uncle Dale]

I'm not Don, but I'd like to see something conclusive and definitive for #'s 4 & 5.

Yes, I understand how such source material would be

more important than just our examining whether or not

President Smith once asked his family to lie for him,

while he was evading arrest by the authorities in Ohio

or Illinois. Most of us might be willing to give him a

"pass" for falsehoods to enemies, for self-survival, etc.

A rather benign "conspiracy," that.

As for points 4 and 5 -- my working assumption for the

last 30 or 40 years has been that Smith's closest early

associates truly believed him to be prophet, whether they

lied for him or not. Thus, if he asked his followers to

keep polygamy a secret, I do not fault them for following

what they believed to be apostolic instruction.

So, since I have never envisioned Smith's followers

disbelieving his prophethood, I have never bothered to

look for such evidence.

The more important question (I think) is whether or not

Smith truly and consistently believed himself to be a

prophet (no matter if he lied about religion or not).

I've never encountered any evidence that Smith did not

believe that he had supernatural powers -- although 3

or 4 of his early associates claimed that he disavowed

having/using such powers.

Perhaps if we gathered together all the scraps of testimony

on this subject, we might come up with an argument that

Smith had, a few times, disavowed his divine powers. I doubt

that such a pile of evidence would convince many of us that

he was either a prophet or a pretended prophet.

But, perhaps I'm wrong about that.

UD

.

[DonBradley]

Craig,

Spalding's 178-word sentence is hilarious and I will concede absolutely that Rigdon's style is like that of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's revelations in its tendency to connect ideas in long chains.

I don't think, though, that this bespeaks a lack of education. Although lengthy, Rigdon's sentences are fairly coherent and grammatical, which is more than can be said for much of the Book of Mormon text, page after page.

When it comes to this element of Sidny Rigdon's style you demonstrate here (which I believe is substantially the same one I recently posted about on MDB, from that BYU M.A. thesis that looked at sentence-length), I think it would be believable that someone like Rigdon could have written the Book of Mormon and early revelations. What I don't see in Rigdon's writings, or Spalding's, or Cowdery's are the signs of lower-class/poor education that can be found on page after page of the Book of Mormon. And this, I think, is an enormous challenge for, or strike against, Spalding-Rigdon theory as an explanation for the Book of Mormon text. Smith as author or translator might, just by chance, share a similar style of idea-chaining and sentence length with Rigdon, but why on earth would Rigdon share Smith's lower-class uneducated grammar, syntax, and vocabulary--and only during the writing of the Book of Mormon?!

I think, as asserted and argued above, that only an ad hoc expansion on S-R theory can account for this, and even then probably not very plausibly or well.

Cheers,

Don

[selek]

Yes, I understand how such source material would be

more important than just our examining whether or not

President Smith once asked his family to lie for him,

while he was evading arrest by the authorities in Ohio

or Illinois. Most of us might be willing to give him a

"pass" for falsehoods to enemies, for self-survival, etc.

A rather benign "conspiracy," that.

As for points 4 and 5 -- my working assumption for the

last 30 or 40 years has been that Smith's closest early

associates truly believed him to be prophet, whether they

lied for him or not. Thus, if he asked his followers to

keep polygamy a secret, I do not fault them for following

what they believed to be apostolic instruction.

So, since I have never envisioned Smith's followers

disbelieving his prophethood, I have never bothered to

look for such evidence.

The more important question (I think) is whether or not

Smith truly and consistently believed himself to be a

prophet (no matter if he lied about religion or not).

I've never encountered any evidence that Smith did not

believe that he had supernatural powers -- although 3

or 4 of his early associates claimed that he disavowed

having/using such powers.

Perhaps if we gathered together all the scraps of testimony

on this subject, we might come up with an argument that

Smith had, a few times, disavowed his divine powers. I doubt

that such a pile of evidence would convince many of us that

he was either a prophet or a pretended prophet.

But, perhaps I'm wrong about that.

UD

.

Hmmm....you offered the evidence, now you're disavowing even the possibility of it- and trying to cover that retreat with a bunch of handwavium-113, innuendo, and a bit of character assassination.

Does that mean you CAN'T produce real, genuine, examinable, and falsifiable evidence to back up your claims?

[DonBradley]

Tell me again precisely what it is that you want reproduced here -- public records,

court testimony -- Smith's own words -- contemporary news accounts -- What ???

I didn't specify any such thing. I left it up to you what would constitute evidence, and you the one unable to identify any worth posting.

Here are the possibilities:

1. Evidence that Smith once told a lie.

2. Evidence that Smith once told a lie regarding his religious program.

3. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to tell a lie.

4. Evidence that Smith once cooperated with others to promote a lie

that both he and his co-conspirators knew meant he was not a prophet.

5. Evidence that Smith ever cooperated with others to promote a lie

that the Book of Mormon was true, when all the conspirators knew otherwise.

Pick a number.

I have repeated about half a dozen times exactly what I'm looking for, and it is you who insist on playing a game by pretending that I have not. What I have requested does not fit your numbers but is spelled out in the requests themselves.

I have asked (repeatedly) for evidence that Joseph Smith employed "co-conspirators" in passing off to others as revelations to him things they jointly knew were not revelations to him. You claim to believe, or at least not deny, that Joseph Smith thought he was a revelator. Yet you claim in the case of the Book of Mormon that he received the bulk of the text (at least) from others as part of a conspiracy of pious fraud. All I'm asking for, and all I've asked for from you throughout this thread, is evidence of parallel conspiratorial deceptions by Smith in promoting religious claims, i.e., revelatory claims.

So, please, the question's been asked enough times, get work thinking of another way to dodge it.

Don

[LinuxGal]

All I'm asking for, and all I've asked for from you throughout this thread, is evidence of parallel conspiratorial deceptions by Smith in promoting religious claims, i.e., revelatory claims.

We don't have the golden plates to verify JS's claim to have translated them, but he in his capacity as a seer also translated the Book of Abraham and the original source papyri were discovered in 1966 and examined by Egyptologists. In the time between when he translated them and today (1858 to be exact), people who are not seers learned to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and they do not agree with JS's translation. So it is reasonable to question the accuracy of JS's translation of the plates, if he used the same method.

[selek]

We don't have the golden plates to verify JS's claim to have translated them, but he in his capacity as a seer also translated the Book of Abraham and the original source papyri were discovered in 1966 and examined by Egyptologists.

Incorrect. A small portion of the papyri from the original set was recovered. It has not been demonstrated that the papyri recovered were, in fact, those Joseph translated to produce the BoA.

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers appear to be an attempt to "reverse engineer" the translation process using part of the surviving papyri (with disastrous results)- but scholars disagree on methodology and even upon what portions of the papyri the texts refer to.

Worst case, the KEP- with their bad results cannot be demonstrated to be "the same method" which Joseph used to translate the BoA.

In the time between when he translated them and today (1858 to be exact), people who are not seers learned to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and they do not agree with JS's translation.

Which is irrelevent until we determine that the surviving papyri are the ones Joseph translated.

So it is reasonable to question the accuracy of JS's translation of the plates, if he used the same method.

If it were proven that Joseph's translation of the BoA were incorrect, you would be correct.

Feel free to prove that anytime now.

[LinuxGal]

Which is irrelevent until we determine that the surviving papyri are the ones Joseph translated.

Even the FAIR wiki (I presume that's a LDS friendly site) says, "That Joseph was involved to some degree in the project is clear. His handwriting appears on two of the documents, and there are references to the project in his journals."

You are on your way to derailing a very good thread. Take it elsewhere.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Noel00 writes:

Several of Ben's suggestions are in line with our own self criticism, and we are have a strategy (that Ben has not considered) to deal with the possibility that the actual authors may not be among those we considered. Having said that said, we have now tested the most likely candidate authors assuming that a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation for the Book of Mormon exists. Below I've summarized chronologically the allegations of authorship, as best I can document them. To me, it's actually astonishing how quickly people began to put the puzzle pieces together when you consider that the Book of Mormon was published in March of 1830.

I think it would surprise Craig to know what I have considered in regard to this issue. Perhaps he would enlighten us as to his strategy. I am certainly interested in seeing it.

Having said that, I think that the next statement is completely irrelevant - and probably isn't accurate at all. It might be said that he has tested the most likely candidates given a certain set of assumptions (even given the issue of naturalistic origins). What I see here isn't an attempt to fix the inherent problems with the methodology, but rather an argument that is designed to bolster the claim that the results are accurate because the real author must be in the list of potential authors. Personally, not only do I not agree with this premise, I believe that it can be demonstrated that these authors are not at all similar to the author of the Book of Mormon. I would be much more inclined to listen to Craig if he could produce some way of explaining the statistical gap that exists between the sample texts of the Book of Mormon and his authors - not in comparison to other authors, but as a noteworthy statistic in and of itself. What does Craig think would be the maximum gap you could have and still argue that there is a chance of authorship?

So for example, I might be willing to see Rigdon as a potential author for a few (less than a half dozen) chapters of the Book of Mormon. But certainly no more than that. And this is based on the data which Craig has presented so far. Beyond that, Rigdon may appear more like the author of the Book of Mormon than some of the other potential authors - but this doesn't mean that Rigdon is all that similar to the Book of Mormon.

Ben McGuire

[selek]

Even the FAIR wiki (I presume that's a LDS friendly site) says, "That Joseph was involved to some degree in the project is clear. His handwriting appears on two of the documents, and there are references to the project in his journals."

Even if.

Remember, in the KEP, the principals were attempting to learn to translate on their own.

The earlier BoA and BoM translations were done through divine intervention rather than "manually" or purely "mechanical" translation.

That's two different methods.

Even if the KEP is wrong (and it's widely acknowledged to that the KEP does not match the surviving fragments), it means only that Joseph could not translate on his own.

It says nothing about whether or not he could translate with God's help.

It is also irrelevant to the topic at hand- namely the theory that Joseph was not the author, but plagiarized Rigdon, Spaulding, and others.

[mfbukowski]

Even the FAIR wiki (I presume that's a LDS friendly site) says, "That Joseph was involved to some degree in the project is clear. His handwriting appears on two of the documents, and there are references to the project in his journals."

You are on your way to derailing a very good thread. Take it elsewhere.

Arguments against the BOA are complex, but they do not apply to arguments against the BOM- they are 2 very different situations. You should read Ostler's expanded translation theory about the BOM if you want to sound credible in arguing against the BOM. I think most of us probably accept some variation of that theory also with the BOA- at least I do.

But as has been pointed out, that argument has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

[Glenn101]

We don't have the golden plates to verify JS's claim to have translated them, but he in his capacity as a seer also translated the Book of Abraham and the original source papyri were discovered in 1966 and examined by Egyptologists. In the time between when he translated them and today (1858 to be exact), people who are not seers learned to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and they do not agree with JS's translation. So it is reasonable to question the accuracy of JS's translation of the plates, if he used the same method.

We also do not have the papyrus from which Joseph translated the Book of Abraham.

Glenn

[Bruce Schaalje]

Craig,

I don't see how you can go on claiming that your paper with Jockers and Witten shows that Rigdon had anything to do with the Book of Mormon. If anything, your data show the exact opposite.

Attached is a principal components plot of your data (downloaded from your supplementary website, B = Barlow, C = Cowdery, I = Isaiah, L = Longfellow, M = Malachi, P = Pratt, R = Rigdon, S = Spaulding, U = Book of Mormon) based on relative frequencies of the 110 words in your 7-author study. As you can see, the only Book of Mormon chapters that are anywhere near the Rigdon texts are the BOM Isaiah chapters (since they are also close to the Isaiah/Malachi texts).

From Wikipedia, here's a nice description of Principal Components: "If a multivariate dataset is visualised as a set of coordinates in a high-dimensional data space (1 axis per variable), PCA supplies the user with a lower-dimensional picture, a "shadow" of this object when viewed from its (in some sense) most informative viewpoint."

It's clear from this plot why you got your results; the Rigdon texts are closer to many of the Book of Mormon chapters than the other authors. But the salient point is that they are not close at all. None of the non-Isaiah BOM texts fall anywhere near the Rigdon cloud.

Your classification method (NSC) was never intended to estimate (nor does it provide) relative contributions from the various candidate classes (or authors in this case). It was developed to classify unknown individuals to one of the candidate classes, assuming that it is known that the individual actually does belong to one of the classes in the study. In any other application, NSC produces nonsense. The posterior probabilities of membership are not relative contributions.

Another point (not obvious in this plot) is that the Rigdon texts that are closest to the BOM chapters are the Rigdon revelations from 1864 and later. The earlier Rigdon writings are distinct from the later writings, and are the ones most distant from the BOM chapters.

[selek]

Having said that said, we have now tested the most likely candidate authors assuming that a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) explanation for the Book of Mormon exists.

In other words, your methodology- and therefore your study- remains fatally biased. You have arbitrarily ruled out the possibility that the book is what it claims to be.

You're looking for the most likely "author", but are deliberately limiting your set to exclude a very real and likely candidate.

That's a classic- and in this case, deliberate- example of what programmers used to call GI/GO- "Garbage In, Garbage Out".

How can you expect meaningful results when you arbitrarily exclude possible authors?

This would be no different than "analyzing" the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and deliberately excluding Thomas Jefferson, Gouverneur Morris, and John Adams.

To me, it's actually astonishing how quickly people began to put the puzzle pieces together when you consider that the Book of Mormon was published in March of 1830.

Funny....that's the first time I've ever seen "casting about for stones to throw" described as "putting the pieces together".

Critics have been attempting to discredit the Book of Mormon for almost two hundred years now- and have yet to come up with anything solid, definitive, and incontrovertible.

The Spaulding-Rigdon theory is fatally flawed, and has taken too many hits to be seriously considered as valid. It has been recast several times in order to try and make things fit, but the methodology is becoming increasingly sloppy and the proponents increasingly desperate.

Manufactured studies that begin with biases and end with sloppy methodology will yield biased and sloppy results.

Unless and until these studies are conducted in an impartial, scientifically verifiable, and replicable fashion, they remain an exercise in fantasy, not science.

[Uncle Dale]

...

evidence to back up your claims?

My "claims" are that I suspect Smith was capable of

working secretly with Sidney Rigdon to produce part

of the text of the Book of Mormon, c. 1826-27.

Thus, I suspect that he is indeed a candidate for

investigation for having done such a thing.

I do not understand what evidence I must produce,

in order to hold open a suspicion. ??? I suspect that

my wife will give me a surprise birthday party

this year -- but I have no evidence to back up that

suspicion. Why should I have to produce it?

Why should my own, private theories require my presenting

any evidence to the world?

There are hundreds of pieces of alleged "evidence" that

have been presented against Smith over the decades --

none of that came from me. I was not the originator.

The day that I say: "Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon

wrote the Book of Mormon," is the day that folks can

start demanding new evidence from me -- previously

undisclosed or unavailable sources that we have not

already looked at dozens of times.

I'll let you know if I ever reach that point in my

investigations -- until then, I'll make use of whatever

working hypotheses enable me to carry on my research.

OK?

UD