Scientific proof for Ether 15:2

[Robert F. Smith]

16 hours ago, JAHS said:

Odds are it probably wasn't exactly 2 million. I would think that was an estimate. It may have only been 1,999,996. 

 

12 hours ago, TheSkepticChristian said:

even Brant Gardner says 2 million is an exaggeration.

No ancient text using round numbers is to be taken literally.  The real question is whether such huge population numbers existed somewhere in the Western Hemisphere at that time, and the answer is yes.  In Mexico and Mesoamerica such numbers certainly existed, and only there.  One city alone, Teotihuacan "City of the Gods" (that's the Aztec name; we don't know the original name) in central Mexico, had a population of around 125,000 or more.  If we take the Olmec heartland in Tabasco and Veracruz, along with neighboring Oaxaca, and central Mexico, and associated areas, there was certainly a population in the millions -- bearing in mind that the figure in Ether includes women & children.  Moreover, the overall population of the Olmec heartland drops precipitously from about 400 to 350 BC, and never recovers -- obviously the extinction of the larger Olmec culture, which then is forgotten and becomes a mystery to later cultures of the area.  Same as the Jaredites.

At the time of the Conquest of Mexico by Cortes, it is estimated that the population of Mexico and Mesoamerica was around 12 million, of whom around 11 milliion died in the next hundred years -- a demographic disaster from disease, starvation, and war.  Again, these are round number estimates, and are not to be taken literally.  But they are not exaggerations.

[Robert F. Smith]

12 hours ago, sunstoned said:

U.S. dead in all of WW2 totaled just under 418,000.  That is a mechanized country fighting other mechanized countries with tanks, bombers, napalm, machine guns, and ships.  Two million did not die in some supposed ancient war using primitive weapons. The logistics of supplying armies that large would require a massive infrastructure. There would be physical evidence of something of this magnitude.  There would oral and written records passed down.  This plus the Jadeite barge story really show that someone had a good imagination.

Actually the estimated total dead in Europe as directly caused by WW II is around 50 million.  We fielded millions of American military men and women, as did other countries.  The populations were there and the consequent death toll was enormous.  In some wars, the death rate is higher just due to blood loss and lack of modern medicine.  This was true especially of the U.S. Civil War, where we had the highest death rate per capita -- for a total of 620,000 dead, even though we had fewer combatants than in WW II.  World War I resulted in around 20 million dead.

Total worldwide dead as a direct result of WW II is estimated from about 60 million to 85 million, while the Chinese Civil War (KMT vs CPC, 1927 - 1949) amounted to about 8 million dead.  More primitive wars also had high death rates:  Shaka Zulu's conquests in South African (1816-1828) resulted in about 2 million dead; the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 73 AD resulted in over 1 million dead; the Mongol conquests of Eurasia (1206-1324 AD) resulted in from 40 million to 70 million dead; Tamerlane's conquests of Eurasia (1370-1405) resulted in from 8 million to 20 million dead; see list in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll .  These very large death rates occurred without the huge logistical infrastructure which you insist upon.

As for written records being passed down, nearly anything which might have contained any such tradition of the demise of the Jaredites (Olmec) was systematically destroyed by the Spanish Conquista.  So we depend on archeology, which tells us that there was in fact a precipitous decline in population of the Olmec at around 400-350 BC.  Archeologists can't explain why the extinction occurred.

[ksfisher]

13 hours ago, sunstoned said:

U.S. dead in all of WW2 totaled just under 418,000.  That is a mechanized country fighting other mechanized countries with tanks, bombers, napalm, machine guns, and ships.  Two million did not die in some supposed ancient war using primitive weapons. The logistics of supplying armies that large would require a massive infrastructure. There would be physical evidence of something of this magnitude.  There would oral and written records passed down.  This plus the Jadeite barge story really show that someone had a good imagination.

I would agree that the numbers are improbable.

[JAHS]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 

No ancient text using round numbers is to be taken literally.  The real question is whether such huge population numbers existed somewhere in the Western Hemisphere at that time, and the answer is yes.  In Mexico and Mesoamerica such numbers certainly existed, and only there.  One city alone, Teotihuacan "City of the Gods" (that's the Aztec name; we don't know the original name) in central Mexico, had a population of around 125,000 or more.  If we take the Olmec heartland in Tabasco and Veracruz, along with neighboring Oaxaca, and central Mexico, and associated areas, there was certainly a population in the millions -- bearing in mind that the figure in Ether includes women & children.  Moreover, the overall population of the Olmec heartland drops precipitously from about 400 to 350 BC, and never recovers -- obviously the extinction of the larger Olmec culture, which then is forgotten and becomes a mystery to later cultures of the area.  Same as the Jaredites.

At the time of the Conquest of Mexico by Cortes, it is estimated that the population of Mexico and Mesoamerica was around 12 million, of whom around 11 milliion died in the next hundred years -- a demographic disaster from disease, starvation, and war.  Again, these are round number estimates, and are not to be taken literally.  But they are not exaggerations.

"yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children." (Ether 15: 2)

Depending on how you read this it might have been a lot more than two million. Two million men and then an uncounted number of wives and children which could have doubled or tripled the total number dead. 

[Damien the Leper]

On 5/20/2016 at 0:14 PM, Bernard Gui said:

On another thread, a poster questioned whether or not science can verify Ether 15:2.

I'm open to any comments on how this could be done. I suppose it involves evidence of 2 million dead bodies from a cataclysmic battle.

Who cares?!? Speculation on such obscurity is such a waste of time.

[Brant Gardner]

4 hours ago, consiglieri said:

A large part of apologetics seems to be coming up with explanations for how the lack of evidence for the Book of Mormon does not prove it ahistorical.

As an opinion it describes an impression. I couldn't dispute that this is your opinion. However, as a possible description of reality, it cannot have been a statement based on empirical reasoning, because there is so much contrary evidence to the statement.

The task of any historian, regardless of apologetic defense of any particular position, should be rooted in sound methodologies and should not assume that any ancient text should be exempt from the basic human trends in generating those texts. That will inevitably lead to the understanding that there are things for which we might desire evidence where there is none. On the other hand, it also points out the presentism of expecting that numbers be precise in the face of historical data contradicting that expectation. The problem isn't the text, it is the interpretive framework imposed on the text.

In this particular case, I find it ironic that the suggested reason that the Book of Mormon must not be historical is that it has to be defended by real historical methods rather than assumptions.

[bcuzbcuz]

6 hours ago, Brant Gardner said:

Right. And why? First is the problem of counts and estimates in antiquity. People rarely counted that high, it would be rare to walk through a battlefield counting bodies, and the science of estimates awaited a thousand years or so to be invented. Numbers in the Book of Mormon do not "behave" like counts--particularly in the larger numbers. Combining what is known of how historical peoples used numbers, and particularly looking at the way numbers are used in the Book of Mormon, these large battle numbers should not be taken at face value.

I have lived and worked among first nations in Canada for more than fifteen years. In the culture I am most familiar with, the Carrier-Sekani culture (Dakelh in their language) the counting of large numbers arrived with the European cultures. The present day Dakelh numbers from four to ten reflect the French missionary influences. The elders in the original society talk about counting things as: one, two, three, many. They view counting hundreds and thousands of things as a total waste of time. You either have enough or not enough. For example, a person may catch one hundred fish, but because those fish are small, they don't equal anothers catch of one fish. The ultimate question is whether you have enough or not enough, regardless of the number. 

I sat in a late night get-together of elders when they laughed heartedly about how white people try to count the number of stars or calculate the numbers of grains of sand on a beach, as total folly. As I stated, they had no concept of thousands, and definitely not millions. Such counting was useless. It was considered a white mans folly, such as when building a house, European cultures cut down all the trees and then plant grass....which they have to cut and trim every week. Why not just leave the original plants and revel in their natural beauty?

Is there any evidence that Olmec or Aztec societies counted hundreds, thousands, or millions?

[James Tunney]

5 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

I don't know that the two are connected but sure, I'll bite. Missionary work should be radically changed and toned down.

If the "veracity" of the church is merely based on a subjective desire to believe, then this seems to be an argument against universal truth and puts it into the realm of a subjective decision to go to the movies or stay at home on saturday night.  Either is fine, however, it seems different when I try to persuade people that going to the movies is the one and only thing to do and if you don't, then you are somehow less.  This is why if the truth claims move from the objective to the subjective "choose to believe," stance, then it seems that missionary work should be drastically toned down.  The purpose then becomes one of forcing your subjective beliefs on the public when there are many alternative lifestyles to follow that are equally good.  To justify the sacrifice of time and money to join the church, it has to be the one and only or it should be denounced or there should be a huge disclaimer given to the unsuspecting converts. 

[JAHS]

Numbers do have symbolic meanings in the scriptures.
Sometimes when the scriptures say forty it means forty, but most of the time Bible scholars believe it is used as a nice round number that was symbolically assigned to give a value that represented "many" or "some". 
The number two symbolizes opposition, separation, or good versus bad. 
The number one thousand serves mainly to magnify or embellish that with which it is associated. It evokes images of "power, strength, and magnitude. Anytime it occurs, by itself or as a multiple of another number, it symbolizes greatness and vastness. It traditionally represents a "multitude" or that which is "incalculable."  (Information taken from "The Lost Language of Symbolism" by Alonzo L. Gaskill)

If one million, a multiple of a thousand, means an incalculable number and the number two means opposition; Then it is easy to see why the number 2 million was used to represent the vast number killed in the war. 

Edited May 21, 2016 by JAHS

[Bernard Gui]

2 hours ago, Valentinus said:

Who cares?!? Speculation on such obscurity is such a waste of time.

Then don't read and react. It's just that easy.

[James Tunney]

1 hour ago, Brant Gardner said:

As an opinion it describes an impression. I couldn't dispute that this is your opinion. However, as a possible description of reality, it cannot have been a statement based on empirical reasoning, because there is so much contrary evidence to the statement.

The task of any historian, regardless of apologetic defense of any particular position, should be rooted in sound methodologies and should not assume that any ancient text should be exempt from the basic human trends in generating those texts. That will inevitably lead to the understanding that there are things for which we might desire evidence where there is none. On the other hand, it also points out the presentism of expecting that numbers be precise in the face of historical data contradicting that expectation. The problem isn't the text, it is the interpretive framework imposed on the text.

In this particular case, I find it ironic that the suggested reason that the Book of Mormon must not be historical is that it has to be defended by real historical methods rather than assumptions.

I beg to differ with you Brant, the problem is with the text, not the people.  When one is required to suspend logical disbelief and engage in circular faith reasoning in order to believe in the text, there is a problem.  Maybe you can respond to Professor Jenkins and take over where Professor Hamblin failed?  You seem to be the most qualified for this endeavor.  Also, I find it highly convenient that the limited geography theory puts the action down in central america where "the evidence disappeared in the jungle" is readily available to the apologist as an excuse.  What kind of evidence should one expect?  At least show us something, anything like Professor Jenkins wanted.

[Bernard Gui]

16 minutes ago, James Tunney said:

If the "veracity" of the church is merely based on a subjective desire to believe, then this seems to be an argument against universal truth and puts it into the realm of a subjective decision to go to the movies or stay at home on saturday night.  Either is fine, however, it seems different when I try to persuade people that going to the movies is the one and only thing to do and if you don't, then you are somehow less.  This is why if the truth claims move from the objective to the subjective "choose to believe," stance, then it seems that missionary work should be drastically toned down.  The purpose then becomes one of forcing your subjective beliefs on the public when there are many alternative lifestyles to follow that are equally good.  To justify the sacrifice of time and money to join the church, it has to be the one and only or it should be denounced or there should be a huge disclaimer given to the unsuspecting converts. 

Which, of course, is a great topic for another thread. Please don't derail this one.

[mfbukowski]

45 minutes ago, James Tunney said:

If the "veracity" of the church is merely based on a subjective desire to believe, then this seems to be an argument against universal truth and puts it into the realm of a subjective decision to go to the movies or stay at home on saturday night.  Either is fine, however, it seems different when I try to persuade people that going to the movies is the one and only thing to do and if you don't, then you are somehow less.  This is why if the truth claims move from the objective to the subjective "choose to believe," stance, then it seems that missionary work should be drastically toned down.  The purpose then becomes one of forcing your subjective beliefs on the public when there are many alternative lifestyles to follow that are equally good.  To justify the sacrifice of time and money to join the church, it has to be the one and only or it should be denounced or there should be a huge disclaimer given to the unsuspecting converts. 

Not so

The notion of "objective truth" as some kind of mirror of "reality" has been dead for 200 years at least, but those who do not specialize in these questions do not know or understand that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

Contemporary philosophy now nearly universally agrees that "universal truth" is an illusion and what we have is essentially inter-subjective observations which taken together socially, speak of sentences upon which most of us can agree.  In other words, a whole lot of people have their subjective experience, and talk about it, and we agree with their experience unless it is private experience.  Essentially this is what science is.  Many scientists have the same experience that combining the same chemicals in the same combinations produces the same results.  Each private experience and private experience adds to the "objectivity" of chemistry.  Yet if someone suddenly did not get the same result as the others, and then others also started getting different results, a whole new theory about that reaction would have to be developed- by pooling private experiences confirmed globally

Religious experience is similar, but with different subject matter.  It is always subjective experience and all utterances about religion or morality are based on subjective, private experience.  There is no such thing as an "objective truth" that it is wrong to kill, for example, but society as a whole considers it a necessary belief for civilization to continue

Likewise, you have your understanding of the purpose of YOUR personal life, and I have mine, and we cannot debate yours vs mine, because the purpose of your life is different than the purpose of my life.

For example, solidiers might all agree that their personal purpose for their lives is to "save freedom", though the assertion cannot be shown to be objectively "true".  Ecologists may see the purpose of their lives to be to "Stop Global Warming" or "save the whales" or whatever- all based on beliefs which cannot be objectively verified.  Humanists may believe that the purpose of life is to "become the best human I can"- with of course assumptions about what "best" means etc

Similarly- and no more or less based on "objective truth" is the assertion that the purpose of life is to "fill the measure of my creation and have joy therein".

The point is that every person who has a sense of purpose in their lives has a "religion" which is not objectively verifiable, so in fact, religion is no more or less verifiable than other similar beliefs and just as "rational"

So there is absolutely no reason to assume that our view of the purpose of life is less valuable than any other.  

Of course we who hold this view find it incredibly more important than these other groups- so to us, it is of vital importance to continue missionary effort and share our view of human purpose with the rest of humanity

Quote

By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.[41] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".[42][43] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,[44] Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science[13]where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era postpositivism.[39] John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".[42]

 

Edited May 21, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Brant Gardner]

21 minutes ago, James Tunney said:

I beg to differ with you Brant, the problem is with the text, not the people.  When one is required to suspend logical disbelief and engage in circular faith reasoning in order to believe in the text, there is a problem.  Maybe you can respond to Professor Jenkins and take over where Professor Hamblin failed?  You seem to be the most qualified for this endeavor.  Also, I find it highly convenient that the limited geography theory puts the action down in central america where "the evidence disappeared in the jungle" is readily available to the apologist as an excuse.  What kind of evidence should one expect?  At least show us something, anything like Professor Jenkins wanted.

The only time I would ever use the "evidence disappeared in the jungle" excuse was if it were the reason that professional archaeologists have given. Besides, the geographic correlation I use doesn't have events in the jungle. Therefore it wouldn't do me any good. 

I don't agree that anyone is required to suspend logical disbelief. In fact, I see some very good correlations between the events described in the Book of Mormon and events that we understand from archaeology and linguistics at the same time periods and in the same places as the Book of Mormon model suggests they took place. As for showing the available evidence--it took me a book to put it together. Kofford has a preview of the chapters where I discuss the methodology behind the historical correlations.

[Brant Gardner]

1 hour ago, bcuzbcuz said:

Is there any evidence that Olmec or Aztec societies counted hundreds, thousands, or millions?

We don't have any firm knowledge of what the Olmec language was--and no texts. We can't say for them. I'm not sure about millions, but Nahuatl certainly counted in thousands. A standard military unit was 8,000. Mesoamerican languages used base 20 rather than base 10 (they counted on their fingers and toes--not just fingers!).

[mfbukowski]

33 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Which, of course, is a great topic for another thread. Please don't derail this one.

OOPS

OK bro, you got it!

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, JAHS said:

"yea, there had been slain two millions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children." (Ether 15: 2)

Depending on how you read this it might have been a lot more than two million. Two million men and then an uncounted number of wives and children which could have doubled or tripled the total number dead. 

O.K., you are quite correct.  So, we can triple that number as you suggest, for a total of around 6 million.  Still not at all inconceivable given the high population density of Mesoamerica and southern Mexico.

[carbon dioxide]

On 5/20/2016 at 0:21 PM, TheSkepticChristian said:

Yes and No. 

Apologists can find creative answers, like saying that it is an ancient exaggeration, so that means the Bible and the Book of Mormon is not falsifiable.

However, science can verify that there is no evidence of such battle (2 million dead) in ancient pre-classic Mesoamerica.  

What exact evidence would you find from an ancient battle several thousand years ago?  Anyway I am sure the number is not exact.  I highly doubt people went around counting the dead.  

Edited May 22, 2016 by carbon dioxide

[carbon dioxide]

I suppose if a nuclear war happened tomorrow and almost all our historical records were destroyed, in a few thousand years if anyone even mentioned WW1 or WW2 to be historical, few would believe it let alone be proven by evidence.  Most of the evidence in Europe we have of those wars is because the sites are well kept but wipe most of humanity out there and have the remaining people just war among themselves, in time most of those places will be forgotten and the sites destroyed.

[TheSkepticChristian]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

No ancient text using round numbers is to be taken literally. 

So you and I agree that there was no battle of 2 million deaths. Where is the disagreement? 

Just a question. When the scriptures say the Jesus fasted for 40 days, do you take that literally? 40 is a round number. Would any serious Historian believe that a person can fast for 40 days? 

 

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 Again, these are round number estimates, and are not to be taken literally.  But they are not exaggerations.

Right, but say it was 1,705,456, that number is still very big, and it just doesn't add up according to your fellow apologist Stephen Smoot. 

http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2016/05/why-book-of-mormons-battle-numbers-dont.html. 

A more reasonable number would be like 20 thousand at most. Do you have any evidence of an ancient war (in a small region) that caused more than 200k deaths? 

A small region because we are assuming the limited Mesoamerican model, right? 

Edited May 22, 2016 by TheSkepticChristian

[morgan.deane]

My second book, Evil Gangs and Starving Widows: Reassessing the Book of Mormon, has an entire chapter on numbers. There are several issues in play that each deserve a long response, I'll summarize each very shortly on here. 

How many people were killed? Others have pointed this out already, but if you look at chapter 14 you realize its not one giant battle but a description of the cumulative effects of the war.  In chapter 14 we see:
v 1-2 social order breaks down
v 3 civil war faction "gave battle" unto Coriantumur
v 4 more battles, travel
v 5 a long siege more deaths
v 6-10 more civil war and intrigue
v 11 two factions "give battle" across the land
v 13 another battle
v 14 army "smited"
v 16 a series of battles across the land
v 17 "many" cities overthrown and inhabitants killed
v 18-26 "swift" and "speedy" destruction across the land
v 27 more battle

So Chapter 15:2 is the result of the previous sanguine conflicts that ranged across the land. Not one single battle in front of Ramah. 

But isn't that still a ridiculous number? As a historian I have access to large amounts of historical texts. There are reports of deaths numbering in the millions from many ancient societies including China and Mesoamerica. As reported by Sorenson, the Toltecs had a war that reportedly killed almost 6 million. The Aztecs regularly fielded (and sometimes lost) armies that measured about the same size as that reported in Mormon 6. The Chinese had a single battle (at Fei River) that killed 700,000 men. They had a civil war so intense that the bleached bones of dead bodies piled up. (Compare to Ether 14:22) Thus, there is ample historical precedent for large numbers of men killed in single battles and entire wars and its not ridiculous at all to mention numbers that large. In fact, my first book, Bleached Bones and Wicked Serpents: Ancient Warfare in the BoM, shows how the Jaredite Civil War had 7 dominant features of cataclysmic civil wars from ancient history. 

What if the Book of Mormon is just wrong on these numbers, they do sound ridiculous? Starting with the first modern historian, Hans Delbruck, disputing numbers listed in ancient texts is a cottage industry among historians. For example (as others have listed already), Herodotus lists a million man Persian army that was so big, historians calculate that the front of the army would have arrived in Greece and fought the battle before the last of the army left Persia. So obviously its wrong. When you add in the unreliability of eye witnesses, who often have to eye ball enemy numbers or have unreliable or non existent access to orders of battle, scribal error, deliberate exaggeration for a variety of reasons (to amplify the scope of defeat or victory for example,) numbers used as a colloquial, and mistaking unit numbers for troop numbers (see below), there are a host of historical examples that suggest the BoM is in good historical company if it has wrong numbers. 

Moreover, a close reading of the text using the tools of military historians suggest that size of armies was far smaller than reported. For example, if we take the military participation ratio, it allows to reconstruct army sizes based on the population. Mormon lists his army as being about 30 to 40,000 soldiers in Mormon 1 and 2, which just happens to be about 15%, the magic number that a society can raise, of the final number listed in Mormon 6. It strains credulity to believe that the Nephites fought a decades long civil war with only one seventh of their strength, but suddenly the size of their army increased by several magnitudes after 30 years of defeat. It makes more sense that the Nephites were listing their total population. See Mormon 6:7 for example, which strongly suggests that women and children were included in the order of battle. On top of that, there are historical cases of numbers representing unit numbers. Roman Centuries and Greek Myriads and the two biggest examples. So the ten thousands listed and their unit commanders, can just as easily represent a unit designation and not a number. So these ten thousands, were composed of a unit command, who is listed, and an unknown number of soldiers (perhaps about 30,000 total considering verses like Mormon 2:25) and an unknown number of women and children that totalled around 230,000. 

Then there is the matter of finding the dead soldiers. Unlike fortifications, which leave a mark, battles are notoriously difficult to locate, and even if located evidence of battle is difficult to detect. Aztec archaeologists for example say that if they relied simply upon archaeological evidence they couldn't find evidence of their military activities. One of the most studied battles, that at Hastings, had a slew of people walk all over it. (Even the exact location is still a bit under dispute and it might be as much as two miles off.) But they couldn't find anything except a few teeth, which of course doesn't denote a battle like the treasure trove of weapons and armor they expected to find. 

To answer your question then, its entirely possible that the numbers are not correctly listed in the BoM. Not only does it place the BoM in good company, as I told Steve after his post was mocked, its not just good scholarship but actually standard practice to question numbers. If the numbers are correct, millions have been killed during during intense wars, also putting it in good historical company.  This is one of those topics where a deep reading of the text and proper historical context enhance our understanding and plausibility of the text. Thanks for the good question. 

Edited May 22, 2016 by morgan.deane

[Damien the Leper]

3 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Then don't read and react. It's just that easy.

Lol.

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

....................................................................................  

Is there any evidence that Olmec or Aztec societies counted hundreds, thousands, or millions?

unlike the paleolithic First Nations you discuss, the major Mesoamerican cultures all shared a common system of numeration, math, astronomy, and calendar which they inherited from the Olmec.  This was a very sophisticated system, with a more accurate calendar than known anywhere else on Earth.  This included very large numbers, with calculations into the future and back into the past of thousands of years.

Moreover, although we know of no biblical Hebrew word for "million," there is such an Egyptian word, and the Book of Mormon was written in Egyptian.  However, as in ancient Egypt and other ancient cultures, counting with such large numbers was always an approximation or dead reckoning -- or sheer bluster by a king who wanted to make a reputation for himself.

[carbon dioxide]

Does anyone really believe there was someone out their counting the dead?  "1,2,3,4....3435, 3436, oh wait was that 3434 or 3435?  Start over.  1, 2, 3, 4..."  I am sure the estimates were a lot like we do today at big rallies like the "million man march".  Estimates varied on that from 400,000 to over 800,000 present.  

Edited May 22, 2016 by carbon dioxide

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, TheSkepticChristian said:

So you and I agree that there was no battle of 2 million deaths. Where is the disagreement? 

I said no such thing.  There is no historical reason to doubt such a large death number, even though we are not talking about a true body count.

Just a question. When the scriptures say the Jesus fasted for 40 days, do you take that literally? 40 is a round number. Would any serious Historian believe that a person can fast for 40 days? 

Or 3 days in the wilderness, or 40 years in the wilderness, etc.  The meaning in such instances could be "a long time," or it could be meant literally.  We just don't know.

Right, but say it was 1,705,456, that number is still very big, and it just doesn't add up according to your fellow apologist Stephen Smoot. 

http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2016/05/why-book-of-mormons-battle-numbers-dont.html. 

A more reasonable number would be like 20 thousand at most. Do you have any evidence of an ancient war (in a small region) that caused more than 200k deaths? 

A small region because we are assuming the limited Mesoamerican model, right? 

As I said above, " the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 73 AD resulted in over 1 million dead," And that is in a very small region.  The scholarly assessment by Smoot is an excellent one, and his conclusion is as likely as mine.  The only way to truly fault such numbers is to insist that BofM geography places it in an area in which there was no large population (but that removes writing, math, astronomy, calendar, etc., from the equation).