God probably won't allow us to find Nahom

[Glenn101]

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

None of us have a perfect handle on what is real and none of us can predict the future, so we make the best judgments we can. And a 499 chance out of 500 of something being authentic and not a coincidence is a very good judgment to make. Scientists and experts in a number of fields firmly base their conclusions on such probabilities all the time. Moreover, someone could easily be convicted of murder on such probabilities. It is definitely beyond reasonable doubt. Imagine the lawyer in his closing remarks: "Honorable judge and members of the jury, we are all agreed that my client only has a 1 in 500 chance of not being guilty, but Littlewood's law suggests that with all the murder trials that have happened throughout the history of the world, unfortunate coincidences of data are bound to happen in some of them." The term special pleading comes to mind.

Wanted to give you a "Like" on this but couldn't. You are too new for anyone to like you. Guess I will have to settle for a nodding acquaintance. This last point is one I tried to make with Sam in one of my posts but he feels that I have everything backwards. I think that everyone that has chimed in on the subject would agree that coincidences do happen, but barring the chance that Joseph had access to a map, (Rivers has started a thread on that) it is much more likely that the travel narrative as described in the Book of Mormon was given by someone that has traveled the route than the idea that Joseph just made up the name or changed one of the Biblical variants and inserted it as a place name in a fictional work. 

Glenn

[SamuelTheLamanite]

7 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

No it definitely does NOT. This is because the number of variant names in the Bible would increase very disproportionately to the number of potential toponym matches in the Nihm tribal region. Because of geographical constraints and the natural limitations of how many distinct place names there could be in confined region in a given period of history, the number of toponyms is far more static than the number of variants that could be derived from the 2,300 Bible names we started with.

Okay so help me understand. As far as I know in the Bible we have Naham, Nehum, Nehemiah, and Nahum. NHM allows for many words. So yes the number of variant names in the Bible increases, but so does the number of potential matches.  I was talking about the Book of Mormon, many Book of Mormon names are very similar to Biblical names. 

7 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You diverted from the issue of determining the probability of discovering Nahom to the fallback argument that even if it is very unlikely to be a coincidence, it doesn't matter because of Littlewood's law. I agree that your appeal to Littlewood's law is a tangential subject because the Book of Mormon's many such coincidences make it inapplicable. Nahom is the first archeological evidence of its type (inscriptional data corresponding to a toponym from the text). But there are many other types of archeological evidences of the Book of Mormon, and Nahom wasn't the first. 

I think is debatable. You also have to take into account that the Book of Mormon allows for many interpretations. For example, Nephite north is not true north, that is an interpretation. 

7 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

However, you aren't realizing that at the same time that you are adding prize winning gumballs, you also need to add way more non-prize winning gumballs (which is analogous to the tens of thousands of variant biblical names that DON'T show up around the Nihm tribal region)

I understand, your argument would work if we were talking about more different names with a different root. We can say the variants share the same roots, such as Naham, Nehum, Nehemiah. 

Will get back to keep replying.  

Edited October 18, 2017 by SamuelTheLamanite

[Glenn101]

33 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Okay so help me understand. As far as I know in the Bible we have Naham, Nehum, Nehemiah, and Nahum. NHM allows for many words. So yes the number of variant names in the Bible increases, but so does the number of potential matches.  I was also talking about the Book of Mormon, many Book of Mormon names are very similar to Biblical names. 

Sam, Your argument is really incoherent. The chances of finding a Biblical name as an Arabian place name is much greater than the odds you are creating because of the common histories and languages among the Biblical peoples and the people of Arabia. If Nephi had mentioned Dedan or Tayma in his travel narrative it would have caused a bit of a critical stir. Tayma is still Tayma, but Dedan was not unearthed until somewhere near the end of the 19th century. But both are along the old Frankincense trail which some LDS scholars think Lehi followed. There are many more that you could very well uncover. Some could be a coincidence, and others from historical connections. That really does not matter. It would not even be surprising to find another place name NHM somewhere else in an area where the people speak a Semitic language. The important thing about NHM is that it is the only place on the trek after leaving the area of Jerusalem that Nephi noted as already having a name and the location of the area named Nehem that has been discovered. All of those elements fit Nephi's travel narrative. It is plausible. Other things that have been discovered in the past fifty years ago have added to that list.

When the ancient city of Dedan was discovered, there was no one positing that it was a coincidence that the Bible mentions Dedan as being in Arabia. No one worried about it. Sort of ho hum, So the writer(s) in the Old Testament knew about Dedan in Arabia? No big deal. The Book of Mormon nowhere mentions Arabia by name, but the travel narrative from Jerusalem would only take one into Arabia. LDS scholars had worked that out years before Nahom was found on a map. The fertile section in the Dhofar region was discovered long after the Book of Mormon was published. Wadi Tayyib Al Is, was discovered (by LDS researchers) in the 1990's.

You may be able to find oodles of place names that match Biblical names in ancient sites in the Middle East, but any of that would be irrelevant to the narrative. The names or places must be in the right place in relation to the narrative and have existed in the right era. So, if you wish to provide evidence that Nehem in Yemen is just a coincidence you need to provide an alternative route that would fit the travel narrative. Elsewise you will find yourself lost in Imalone Wisconsin.

Glenn

[SamuelTheLamanite]

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

However, you aren't realizing that at the same time that you are adding prize winning gumballs, you also need to add way more non-prize winning gumballs (which is analogous to the tens of thousands of variant biblical names that DON'T show up around the Nihm tribal region). Imagine that for every prize winning gumball you add, you also need to add 5,000 (just a made up figure) non-prize winning gumballs. Whereas your odds were originally 1 in 500, now they are 5 in 20,500 (or 1 in 4,100). By analogy, chances of finding a consonant match in the Nihm tribal region are simply not improved in any significant way by considering variants of Bible names. 

I am not sure how the number of variants is relevant to what I am saying about Book of Mormon names. Many Book of Mormon names are very similar to Biblical names, so all I am saying is that it should be more than 42%.  I am not talking about the list of Biblical names increasing, what I am talking about is how many Book of Mormon names are similar to Biblical names.  It is easy to make a list of similar names, you can make up for example Obraham, but Obraham is pretty close to Abraham. You can make thousands of similar names to the Bible, it is easy, but in the end we only end up with the roots. 

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If you slightly alter the original scenario so that the non-LDS archeologists already knew that their hypothetical text in question was authentically ancient, then this type of data point would be highly reliable. I have no doubt that with such odds, every credible archeologist in the field would conclude that they had indeed found a match with the inscription. By analogy, Latter-day Saints who already know that the Book of Mormon is authentically ancient, and who assume for good reason that Nephi's first-person account was reliably accurate, would have overwhelming reason (499 in 500) to believe that this wasn't merely a coincidence. 

Interesting, but an archaeologist wrote, " relationships that are only coincidences occur all the time" 

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

This is what I was trying to explain earlier to you and to Robert Smith. Your starting assumptions will likely affect how you interpret the data. I'm simply outlining the logical interpretations of proposed data, based on different starting assumptions held by Mormon and non-Mormon individuals. 

True, I agree it is possible NHM is Nahom, I am only arguing that is can be a coincidence, but no one knows. Coincidence is a reasonable interpretation because I see no nearly impossible odds. 

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

None of us have a perfect handle on what is real and none of us can predict the future, so we make the best judgments we can. 

Except for the scientific method. A good theory makes predictions. One of the reasons why the scientific method is superior to ancient history. 

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Now imagine that you have a conversation with the non-LDS archeologist who had concluded that there was a 499 in 500 chance of an inscriptional match with a text which he knew to be ancient. And you say to him, "Well there are thousands of ancient texts that have literally millions of toponyms. Littlewood's law says that we should expect coincidences from time to time." Do you honestly think that would make the archeologist feel less confident that he or she had found a real match? Littlewood's law simply has very little effect on how most people reach conclusions about what is most likely to be true on a case by case basis. 

Littlewood's law is just one of the many laws. Cinepro recommended a good book here. I mean most of the time a 99% probability would be correct, but not always, especially if you have big numbers. Archaeology has significant limits and problems, much of it is just guess work.  According to Robert NHM can mean stonemason and may not be a toponym after all. 

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

 "Honorable judge and members of the jury, we are all agreed that my client only has a 1 in 500 chance of not being guilty,

In court 1 in 500 is scary because that would send many innocent people to jail. Why? because every year there are thousands of court trials. 1 in 500 looks like a certainty from an individual perspective, but everything changes when you have numbers, possible interpretations, and many aspects. The Book of Mormon can be read in many ways, it can be interpreted in many ways, and the book itself makes  a lot of claims.  Add that too the many thousands of religious books making a lot of claims, is it not reasonable to conclude that same are going to have lucky hits? 

 

Edited October 18, 2017 by SamuelTheLamanite

[SamuelTheLamanite]

19 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Given enough claims, there are bound to be hits. I'm not sure this necessarily means that one can just dismiss all hits, though.

Thank you! Especially if you see it in the perspective of many religious book and many inscription rocks that match Biblical names. 

Sure, I am not dismissing all hits, I point out it is possible Nahom = NHM is not a coincidence 

17 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

You are correct. The horse does go before the cart. Finally something we can agree on.  But I expect that you meant the cart before the horse. But that is an inapt analogy. It does not fit the circumstances at all. The location of Nahom was predicted by Hugh Nibley years before it was found. I have already told you that and given you a reference. I am going to quote the pertinent section from "Lehi in the Desert."

"After traveling a vast distance in a south-southeasterly direction (1 Nephi 16:13, 33), the party struck off almost
due eastward through the worst desert of all, where they “did wade through much affiction,” to emerge in a state
of almost complete exhaustion into a totally unexpected paradise by the sea. There is such a paradise in the Qara
Mountains on the southern coast of Arabia. To reach it by moving “nearly eastward” (1 Nephi 17:1) from the Red
Sea coast, one would have to turn east on the nineteenth parallel. In The Improvement Era for September 1950 the
present writer published a map in which his main concern was to make Lehi reach the sea in the forested sector of
the Hadhramaut, and no other consideration dictated his sketching of the map. He foolishly overlooked the fact
that Dr. John A. Widtsoe had published in the Era some months previously what purports to be a “Revelation to
Joseph the Seer,” in which it is stated that Lehi’s party “traveled nearly a south, southeast direction until they came
to the nineteenth degree of north latitude; then nearly east to the sea of Arabia.” By an interesting coincidence,
the route shown in the author’s map turned east exactly at the nineteenth parallel. This correlation of data from
two totally different sources is a strong indication that both are correct. The only other possible route would have
been down the western shore of the Red Sea from Necho’s canal, and on such a course one cannot turn eastward
until passing the tenth parallel, and then it is not the Arabian Sea that one finds but the Indian Ocean. Along with
this, certain other rigorous conditions must be fulilled which can only be met on the south coast of Arabia.

The notice of the Nihm tribe comes many years later.

Glenn

Okay, notice we have to assume Bountiful is somewhere in the Dhofar region (which is no small region). But anyways, the quote says Lehi reached Hadhramaut, Hadhramaut is nowhere near Sanaa or Nehem, Hadhramaut is about 300 miles North East of Sanaa. We must also consider how many Arabian models were made before the discovery of the Nihm tribe by LDS scholars, but anyways it seems no one speculated Nahom to be few miles north of Sanaa. There is a reason why Ryan told me "none of us can predict the future," the scientific method can. 

 

Edited October 18, 2017 by SamuelTheLamanite

[Physics Guy]

I asked about the assertion by this Dr Maraqten, which we only have at third hand, that Nehem or Nehhm or whatever would have had to have been N(H-with-a-dot-under)M, and not NHM, which is the inscription. I was wondering whether NHM might be only a near miss. Glenn responded:

On 10/16/2017 at 7:29 PM, Glenn101 said:

PG, when the cartographers who made the two earliest maps that show a region Nehhm (Niebuhr) or Nehem (D'Anville) made their maps they had no road signs or other types of markers for the names of the towns and regions. They obtained that information from local residents of the area. Carsten Niebuhr stated in his book ""I have had no small difficulty in writing down these names; both from the diversity of dialects in the country, and from the indistinct pronunciation of those from whom I was obliged to ask them." (Travels through Arabia, 1:35) And that is the way Nephi would have recorded it, by the way it sounded to him. There is no way of ascertaining if the pronunciation was the same during the time the Lehi entourage passed through the area and 1750-1770. Niebuhr noted there were many dialects spoken among the locals and I imagine that was probably the case during Lehi's day also. But the main point is that Nephi was not copying from an inscription but rather penning (or scratching) what he had heard.

Sure, if your writing is mostly carving in stone, your language is going to be mostly oral. And pronunciation definitly varies between dialects. Castilian Spanish is famously lisped, while Latin American Spanish is not; but in Argentina they pronounce "LL" as "DJ" instead of "Y", as in most other dialects, so that "chicken" is "pojo". Pronunciation also shifts over time. The "B" sound of ancient Greek has morphed into a "V" today, so that the name that means "king/basileus" is Vassilios. The border between "V" and "B" isn't really sharp, either. The sound of a foreign or regional accent is the slightly different pronunciation of phonemes that are nominally the same.

The thing is, that cuts both ways. Fluid as pronunciation may be across space and time, it is locally rigid. To be a native speaker of a language is to perceive its phonemes as qualitatively distinct. For native English speakers, "L" and "R" are as distinct as red and yellow, even though Japanese people hear them as indistinguishable variants of one sound. When I was first learning German, it drove me nuts the way Germans got so confused when I mixed up "A" and "Ä". Weren't they both just basically A-sounds? Well, no, no they're not, to a German. They're two completely different vowels whose written symbols just happen to be fairly close.

So I'm not sure we can just say, "Oh, H versus H-with-a-dot-under. They're both basically H-sounds." If we don't know exactly how these people spoke, we may have no idea whether "Nahom" would have had one or the other, because who knows how the Nahomite accent sounded to Nephi, or how Nephi's pronunciation differed from ours. The people at the time, however, would have had no doubts at all. If what they said was something that sounded like "Nechh'm" to us, then NHM could have been as wide of the mark, for them, as NRM or NJM.

Would we be so excited by NHM if it had been, say, NRM? Would we have said, "Hey, it's got the N and the M right, and the R is probably just a fluke of local pronunciation"? Two out of three isn't bad. It would still have been an interesting coincidence-or-maybe-not with just two characters matching, out of the five in "Nahom". Only not quite so much.

But you know, somehow the step down from three-out-of-three consonants to two-out-of-three doesn't seem so unimportant. Three's the charm. Only having two looks like more of a fluke. Only two matching consonants, after all of the Mormon effort at looking for signs to support the Book of Mormon, is a disappointingly limited reward.

So is it really two-out-of-three? Is it actually three-out-of-three, because this Maraqten guy is totally wrong? Or is it two-and-a-half-out-of-three because it's unclear whether Nahom should have had its H dotted or not? Is all of the matching really just a fluke in how Sabean glyphs have been transliterated into Roman characters, because the transliteration could just as easily have been BGP and then no-one would ever have thought of Nahom?

Or what? How much can we actually tell? This is what I'd like to hear from Dr Maraqten, or anyone else who might have the expertise he's supposed to have.

Sometimes we actually can tell how ancient people pronounced things. A fair amount of pronunciation is biological, because all these sounds are produced by the same human body parts, and there are physical factors involved in how your tongue can move from one spot in your mouth to another. So we can tell which kinds of sounds can't really come right before or after each other, because of how physically difficult that would be to pronounce for any human being; and we can tell which kinds of sounds slide into each other easily. By looking at which characters in an alphabet never appear next to each other, and which often appear in pairs, and in which order, we can make decent guesses about what the sounds were.

More specifically, ancient writers sometimes talk about how people pronounced things, for instance to make fun of other people's accents. Mocking the way barbarians fail to distinguish between two different letters may not be the first thing that people decide to write down, but once they're well through the grain-contracts-recorded-in-tick-marks stage of writing, it does come up now and then.

So it could be that Maraqten has got nothing, but it could conceivably be that he's clearly right.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Physics Guy

[Ryan Dahle]

27 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

I am not sure how the number of variants is relevant to what I am saying about Book of Mormon names. Many Book of Mormon names are very similar to Biblical names, so all I am saying is that it should be more than 42%.  I am not talking about the list of Biblical names increasing, what I am talking about is how many Book of Mormon names are similar to Biblical names.  It is easy to make a list of similar names, you can make up for example Obraham, but Obraham is pretty close to Abraham. You can make thousands of similar names to the Bible, it is easy, but in the end we only end up with the roots. 

If I understand right, the whole premise of your argument is that if we take into account that Joseph could have potentially been deriving some of his names from another source (the Bible) rather than just randomly making them all up, then the chances of him getting a coincidental match in the Nihm tribal region would increase. This is because Southern Arabian names seem to also share a good number of names with the Bible. This is a three stage problem and there are three things we need to know for each stage:

Toponyms

• (1a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have exact consonant matches with Bible Names  
• (2a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have consonant matches with variants of Bible Names 
• (3a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have consonant combinations derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants

Bible Names, Bible Variants, and Random Names

• (1b) total number of Bible names that can be reduced to distinct consonant combinations 
• (2b) total number of distinct consonant combinations that could be derived from variants of Bible names
• (3b) total number of distinct consonant combinations for names that could be randomly generated, and yet which are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants (limited to reasonable lengths and typical proportions of vowels and consonants)

Percentages of Book of Mormon Names

• (1c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant matches with Bible names. According to Samuel this is 42% (I've never checked myself).
• (2c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant matches with variants of Bible names (i.e. Sam from Samuel)
• (3c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant combinations that may seem to be randomly generated and are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants (i.e. Gidgiddonah) 

With this info at hand, you can appropriately tackle your problem as three different equations that relate to the same event (Joseph Smith choosing a specific name with all of these probabilities at play). To determine  probability as a percentage (P), you can use the following equation ((a ÷ b) x c) x 100 = P in each situation. Once you have found the probabilities for each equation in the problem, you simply add them together (at least I'm pretty sure that's how it works in this situation). 

Here is a hypothetical equation dealing with distinct consonant combinations from the Bible:

• (1a) = 50
• (1b) = 2,300
• (1c) = 42%
• Equation: ((50÷ 2,300) x .42) x 100 = .91%
• Total:  .91% (less than 1 in 100)

Here is hypothetical equation for distinct consonant combinations derived from variants of the Bible:

• (2a) = 100
• (2b) = 50,000 (very low estimate of possible Bible variants)
• (2c) = 20%
• Equation ((100 ÷ 50,000) x .20) x 100 = .04%
• Total =  .04% (less than 1 in 2,500)

Here is a hypothetical equation for distinct consonant combinations that may seem to be randomly generated and are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants:

• (3a) = 250
• (3b) = 16,679,966,744,322 (derived by computing the probability for all possible combinations of consonants in words up to 4 consonants)
• (3c) = 38%
• Equation ((250 ÷ 16,679,966,744,322) x .38) x 100 = .00000000057%
• Total =  .00000000057% (not statistically relevant)

Grand Total: .95% (still less than 1 in 100)

Obviously, I'm making up some of the numbers, but I tried to be very liberal towards Samuel's thesis. The point, here, is that even with numbers skewed way in his favor, the consonants derived from Bible variants and random combinations of consonants don't add hardly anything significant to his argument. You can fiddle with the numbers. For instance (2c) and (3c) could easily be swapped because we currently have no idea what the percentages are right now (at least I don't). But the numbers that matter (2b and 3b) are probably not going to get significantly lower. I can easily demonstrate this, if needed. And (2a and 3a) seem to be unnecessarily high. Samuel hasn't found anywhere near those numbers yet, and I doubt anyone will. This is because I suspect there are probably only a few dozen legitimate toponyms in total for an area the size of 75 square miles in southern Arabia in 600 BC.

In any case, I hope this clarifies any confusion. The equations are there now, so it should be easier to quickly see how plugging in different numbers would effect the overall argument. Someone who is better at math than me should probably check on the viability of how the problem is set up. And I'm sure I am using the wrong math terms in some instances. I haven't taken math since high school, and I wasn't very good at it then. But I think this is the valid way to approach Samuel's project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Glenn101]

4 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Sure, if your writing is mostly carving in stone, your language is going to be mostly oral. And pronunciation definitly varies between dialects. Castilian Spanish is famously lisped, while Latin American Spanish is not; but in Argentina they pronounce "LL" as "DJ" instead of "Y", as in most other dialects, so that "chicken" is "pojo". Pronunciation also shifts over time. The "B" sound of ancient Greek has morphed into a "V" today, so that the name that means "king/basileus" is Vassilios. The border between "V" and "B" isn't really sharp, either. The sound of a foreign or regional accent is the slightly different pronunciation of phonemes that are nominally the same.

That was my point. The cartographers made those maps based upon how the name sounded to them. They came up with Nehem and Nehhm. Most of the maps that showed the region used Nehem. Nephi would have had to do the same.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

7 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

Okay, notice we have to assume Bountiful is somewhere in the Dhofar region (which is no small region). But anyways, the quote says Lehi reached Hadhramaut, Hadhramaut is nowhere near Sanaa or Nehem, Hadhramaut is about 300 miles North East of Sanaa. We must also consider how many Arabian models were made before the discovery of the Nihm tribe by LDS scholars, but anyways it seems no one speculated Nahom to be few miles north of Sanaa. There is a reason why Ryan told me "none of us can predict the future," the scientific method can. 

Nibley was making his predictions based up the maps he had available. He did not actually visit the area. When the LDS researchers actually visited the Dhofar area looking for areas that fit the description that Nephi gave in the Book of Mormon two candidates were discovered. That has narrowed the probable places and modified the thoughts on the probable turning point. The probable turning point was modified before the discovery of the Nehem maps.

Are you unaware of all of this? Have you nor read any of the research that has gone into this? Hope and Lynn Hilton? Warren Aston? George Potter? If you have not done so, maybe you need to get yourself up to speed on what most of the posters here already know. At least you would have a better idea on the research and scholarship that has been put in on this subject. One does not have to agree with all or any of the conclusions but it is really helpful to know what you are actually arguing against.

Glenn

[Physics Guy]

41 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

That was my point. The cartographers made those maps based upon how the name sounded to them. They came up with Nehem and Nehhm. Most of the maps that showed the region used Nehem. Nephi would have had to do the same.

Is that really so clear? The more recent maps have transliterated from modern Arabic straight to some modern European language. For Nephi, though, we would seem to be dealing with transliteration from ancient Sabean, to whatever language Nephi spoke, to the language/writing in which his plates were written, to English. How confident are we that Nahom and the name marked on this altar are really a unique one-to-one pair for this transliteration process? 

There is also a whole other way of looking at these old inscriptions as evidence. Instead of asking how likely it is to find a particular inscription at any particular point in the desert, suppose we take for granted that there's a place in Arabia called something like Nihhm, with inscriptions to that effect on some stones. That's the case, after all, whether Nephi was real or made up. Then the question becomes, how likely is it that somebody making up the Book of Mormon in 1830 would write a description that could be interpreted as referring to that place, and call it something that could be interpreted as a transliteration of the Sabean NHM?

The Book of Mormon mentions Nahom only once, as the place where Ishmael was buried and mourned by his daughters. The name of the Biblical prophet Nahum seems to be translated as "comforter", but if you dig into Strong's you find that's kind of in the sense of "mourner", because the root word is literally "to sigh", and the verb is used in the Bible to describe regret and sympathy as well as consolation. Mormon apologists have cited the coincidence of Nahom and mourning as a Hebraic wordplay that supports the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as a translation from Hebrew, and indeed it might make sense for Lehi's party of wanderers to name the site of Ishmael's grave Nahom, because it was a place of mourning. The thing is, if Mormon apologists can see this wordplay as support for the Book of Mormon, then Joseph Smith could have seen it, too.

The book of Nahum in the Old Testament is a fine fire and brimstone text on which preachers around Smith may well have preached often over the years. For a preacher to explain that "Nahum" was related to "mourning" would have been the kind of nugget that preachers love to dispense as proof that their Biblical learning deserves a generous donation, and it would have been apposite to the gloomy themes of their sermons on Nahum. So even if Smith knew nothing but what he had heard in sermons in the course of his life, he might well have known this factoid about the meaning of Nahum. The custom of naming places after events that occurred in them is common in the early Old Testament. So if Smith (or whoever helped him) happened to be having anyone in their story die anywhere that could be interpreted as near what turns out to have been the Nihhm lands, the chance that they would then declare that the place was called Nahom would not be so low. It's the kind of touch that a fraudster would try to put in, using only a random smattering of knowledge gleaned from a sermon.

(I admit that if an ideal fraudster really wanted to do this, they would probably have written something more like, "Ishmael's daughers mourned, and therefore the place was called Nahom," rather than mentioning the name Nahom first, and then describing the mourning, without especially drawing attention to the connection between them. But this is an early point in the Book of Mormon. A con artist naturally talented enough to think of trying to stick in a bit about Nahum and mourning, but inexperienced in doing that sort of thing deftly in this kind of project, might well have muffed the delivery a bit.)

You still have to ask why Ishmael had to die at this point in the story, if the story was simply being made up. But I think there are reasons for this. The story needs the daughters of Ishmael to be wives for the sons of Lehi, but then keeping Ishmael around gives the story too many patriarchs. All the wives of Biblical figures leave their fathers to go off with their men; fathers-in-law play no part in the tropes. Ishmael has no place to stay behind in, except the desert, however, so he has to just die.

Is that scenario obviously what must have happened? By no means. All you can say is, it's not too unlikely. But then the Book of Mormon is long, and Mormons have obviously looked in every part of it for correspondences with the real world. The chance that a non-too-unlikely coincidence actually came up, somewhere in the Book, is not low at all.

[Glenn101]

42 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

Is that really so clear? The more recent maps have transliterated from modern Arabic straight to some modern European language. For Nephi, though, we would seem to be dealing with transliteration from ancient Sabean, to whatever language Nephi spoke, to the language/writing in which his plates were written, to English. How confident are we that Nahom and the name marked on this altar are really a unique one-to-one pair for this transliteration process? 

It pretty much matches the transliteration on the maps. The pronunciation is different as might be expected. Carsten Niebuhr's was bit different, Nehhm from that of D'Anville's Nehem. I would like to hear what a non-LDS archaeologist with knowledge of the Sabean scripts, (and unaware of the Book of Mormon connection) would say about the correlation between the altars and the area called Nehem on the maps.

As to the possible word play in Nahom and the mourning of Ishmael's daughters, I am not all that convinced because it was a place with an already given name. But Nephi (to borrow one our your phrases) may well have noted the similarities between the local name and altered the sound a bit to conform to his own Hebrew. But that is just speculation. What I am more inclined to think is that this was an important event, maybe the most important event culturally, that happened on the trek and Nephi made note of that, albeit subtly. The fact that the area contains a vast ancient burial ground is also noteworthy, in my estimation.

But to follow your line of reasoning, one has to insert several may well have, could have, might have, types of speculation serially one after anther to build the theory. All without any evidentiary basis. On a pure secular basis, it is much more reasonable to speculate that Joseph saw the a map with Nehem on it and built his travel narrative around it. If I were a critic I would stick doggedly to that and try to find evidence that Joseph probably saw one of those maps. That still leaves a lot of other details unanswered but at least the name requires much less in the way of a series of "might haves" and "may well haves" without anything concrete to anchor to.

Glenn

[Ryan Dahle]

An important clarification in my equations.

I believe the value for (3b) should be 204,204. I was multiplying the probabilities for each number of potential consonants in a word instead of adding them, and that makes a big difference. However, unfortunately for Samuel's theory, it actually doesn't make that big of a difference in the grand total:

• (3a) = 250
• (3b) = 204,204 
• (3c) = 38%
• Equation ((250 ÷ 204,204) x .38) x 100 = .046%
• Total =  .046 

Grand Total = 1.3% (or just over 1 in 100)

However, like I said. I think 400 toponyms for an area that small is way too high. I suspect there are several dozen, and in that case the real grand total is going to be somewhere way less than 1%. 

[Ryan Dahle]

22 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

I would like to hear what a non-LDS archaeologist with knowledge of the Sabean scripts, (and unaware of the Book of Mormon connection) would say about the correlation between the altars and the area called Nehem on the maps.

Here is what Neal said way back on this thread (page 5):

"NHMyn as Tribal or Place Name

In form, it is a nisbe, so it means that a person is "of NHM." This could be a place name, but it is most consistently interpreted as a tribal name. I'm not sure if nisbes can be interpreted as family names, but I haven't seen anyone interpret the NHMyn of the altars as being a family name. Sima (above) translates nhmyn as "from Nihm," and says that "The dedicant, Bi'athtar ... comes from the Nihm region, west of Marib" (pp. 166-167). This is in the same general area as Nehem/Nihm today. Vogt (above) and Kitchen (in Aston's publications) translate nhmyn as "Nihmite". Vogt says that the Bi'athtar on the altars is from the Nihm tribe (tribu de Nihm), which was located "at the time without doubt north of Jawf, today northeast of Sanʾa" (p. 144, originally in French: "à l’époque sans doute au nord du Jawf, aujord’hui au nord-est de Sanʾâ"). Like Sima, he is clearly connecting the NHMyn  on the altars to the Nihm/Nehem tribal territory today, and locating it in the same general area. Peter Stein, Die altsüdarabischen Minuskelinschriften auf Holzstäbchen aus der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München. Band 1: Die Inschriften der mittel- und spätsabäischen Periode (Tübingen and Berlin, GER: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 2010), 23, fig. 1 maps out "place, tribal, or regional names mentioned in the minuscule inscriptions" (originally in German: "anderer in den Minuskelinschriften erwähnter Orts–, Stammes– oder, Landschaftsname"), which date to a later time-period (late BC to early AD) and places NHM (Nihm) in the same general area as it is located today, based on the occurrence of  NHMyn in a list of tribal names (YM 11748) dated to ca. 4th century BC-4th century AD. Although this is later, I point it out because it is the same form of the name as found on the altars (the nisbe). In general, Stein lumps together nisbe, stamm (tribe), under the "toponym" umbrella, which of course means "place names." 

My point in all of this is the published literature that I have been able to consult consistently interprets NHMyn in the altars from Bar'an and other places as a reference to either a place or a tribe, and consistently locate that place or tribe in the general area where the current Nehem/Nihm tribal territory is today." (bolds added)

[Physics Guy]

4 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

But to follow your line of reasoning, one has to insert several may well have, could have, might have, types of speculation serially one after anther to build the theory. All without any evidentiary basis. On a pure secular basis, it is much more reasonable to speculate that Joseph saw the a map with Nehem on it and built his travel narrative around it. If I were a critic I would stick doggedly to that and try to find evidence that Joseph probably saw one of those maps. That still leaves a lot of other details unanswered but at least the name requires much less in the way of a series of "might haves" and "may well haves" without anything concrete to anchor to.

Yeah, that's true about my scenario being a series of speculations without concrete evidence. To me it seems roughly as plausible as the map theory, though; and the two theories are not incompatible, so it's worth presenting them both. It's one of the basic strengths of the fraud theory, that there are many ways that the fraud could have been done.

Even if you insist that Joseph Smith was completely honest, other people have clearly been frauds, and those people have worked their frauds by doing "might haves" and "may well haves", while concealing the evidence. There have been many examples of frauds like that, in fact, and far fewer true major prophets have been recognized even by believers in prophets. So it seems to me and most skeptics that the burden is on Mormons to rule out "might haves" and "may well haves" that could explain the evidence without resort to rare miracles, rather than on skeptics to accept miracles unless alternatives can be supported with concrete evidence.

In saying that, I'm not trying to argue that Mormons have to give up their faith just because I can dream up a fraud explanation. If I were trying to persuade convinced Mormons out of Mormonism, I agree that I would have to provide some more evidence. I have no desire to convert convinced Mormons though, and it would take a strong motivation on my part to justify all the effort involved. So I'm not even going to try to dig up any smoking-gun evidence against Mormonism. If Mormons are trying to convince me, however—or if Mormons who are not actually all that convinced are kidding themselves about flimsy evidence and weak arguments—then I'm interested enough to do the much easier job of pointing out holes in the Mormon arguments.

So if you want to say that the NHM-Nahom match is evidence that supports your firm belief in Book of Mormon historicity, I'll agree with you. If you want to say that it's compelling evidence that should convince me to become Mormon, I disagree. And if someone says, I'm really bothered by the polygamy and a bunch of other things, but I just can't get around Nahom, so that's keeping me in—then I'll say, Um, it's not actually so hard to get around Nahom, if you want to get around it.

Edited October 18, 2017 by Physics Guy

[Glenn101]

5 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

My point in all of this is the published literature that I have been able to consult consistently interprets NHMyn in the altars from Bar'an and other places as a reference to either a place or a tribe, and consistently locate that place or tribe in the general area where the current Nehem/Nihm tribal territory is today." (bolds added)

Thanks. Still can't give you a like. But I like what you said.

Glenn

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

So if you want to say that the NHM-Nahom match is evidence that supports your firm belief in Book of Mormon historicity, I'll agree with you. If you want to say that it's compelling evidence that should convince me to become Mormon, I disagree.

I pretty much agree with this. Nahom is good evidence. However, if I weren't a Latter-day Saint, I don't think any single piece of evidence (at least evidence currently available) would convince me to accept Mormonism's foundational truth claims. I would admit that Nahom at least seems to be  good evidence and if the LDS church held any appeal to me in other areas (spiritual, social, eschatological, emotional, good health, moral living, etc.) then Nahom might prompt further investigation, hopefully through seeking the promised spiritual witness and through surveying more evidences. If I had emotional, social, or moral tensions with the LDS faith, however, I highly doubt that Nahom alone would convince me to be a part of something that I didn't really want to be a part of. 

For instance, if a bunch of alien hunters had what seemed to be a similarly strong argument for one of their theories, I would probably say "Wow, I can't explain that, but I really don't care." Rather than resorting to the argument that such coincidences, if true, are still meaningless because of Littlewood's law, I would probably assume that I just needed to do more research before I could make an informed decision. And without a lot of drive to be a part of their group, I doubt I would ever do enough research to sufficiently convince myself of their claims.

 

[Ryan Dahle]

10 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Thanks. Still can't give you a like. But I like what you said.

Haha, well Neal said it, not me. I'm glad you found his information helpful.  

[Glenn101]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

Yeah, that's true about my scenario being a series of speculations without concrete evidence. To me it seems roughly as plausible as the map theory, though; and the two theories are not incompatible, so it's worth presenting them both. It's one of the basic strengths of the fraud theory, that there are many ways that the fraud could have been done.

I don't think that you would take seriously a paper published in physics with might have and may well have statements.  If I were sitting on a jury for a man on trial for fraud and all the prosecutor could produce is might haves, may well, haves, etc. in the place of evidence I wold be duty bound to vote for acquittal. I do not really believe that any such scenario, absent any evidence pokes holes in any theory.

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

So if you want to say that the NHM-Nahom match is evidence that supports your firm belief in Book of Mormon historicity, I'll agree with you. If you want to say that it's compelling evidence that should convince me to become Mormon, I disagree. And if someone says, I'm really bothered by the polygamy and a bunch of other things, but I just can't get around Nahom, so that's keeping me in—then I'll say, Um, it's not actually so hard to get around Nahom, if you want to get around it

I would hope that no one would be converted to Mormonism by what they would think is compelling evidence for the Book of Mormon. I am a believer in God the Father and Jesus Christ despite the holes in the Biblical narrative. The same way for the Book of Mormon. It is not based upon physical evidence but spiritual. When I look at the story of the Lehi trek through the wilderness and the mention of Nahom, bits and pieces of which have come together over the years, I see it as a very plausible explanation, a narrative that fits with a person having actually traveled the route that is being described.

As for the whole NHM thing, the Nehem area, and non-LDS scholars, researchers, archaeologists, see Ryan Dahle's post above. If a person is not burdened with Book of Mormon angst, the inference seems clear to the archaeologists that have been working the area.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

47 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Haha, well Neal said it, not me. I'm glad you found his information helpful.  

I missed that. I have been skipping about mostly replying to posts.(Note: Don't skip about. keep up with the whole thread.)

Well, you have officially posted enough posts to get the "Like" button.

Glenn

[Calm]

53 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Haha, well Neal said it, not me. I'm glad you found his information helpful.  

Now everyone can go back and give your posts the likes they wanted to.  I am lazy and just doing it for this one instead.

[SamuelTheLamanite]

14 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Nibley was making his predictions based up the maps he had available. He did not actually visit the area. When the LDS researchers actually visited the Dhofar area looking for areas that fit the description that Nephi gave in the Book of Mormon two candidates were discovered. That has narrowed the probable places and modified the thoughts on the probable turning point. The probable turning point was modified before the discovery of the Nehem maps.

Glenn, 

Please give me a source of an LDS scholar predicting Nahom to be north of Sanaa, or at least in a 100 mile radius. The 1950s quote doesn't tell us Nahom is few miles north of Sanaa.   Before LDS scholars noticed the Nihm tribes there was not much LDS scholarship on Nahom. 

[SamuelTheLamanite]

19 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If I understand right, the whole premise of your argument is that if we take into account that Joseph could have potentially been deriving some of his names from another source (the Bible) rather than just randomly making them all up, then the chances of him getting a coincidental match in the Nihm tribal region would increase. This is because Southern Arabian names seem to also share a good number of names with the Bible. This is a three stage problem and there are three things we need to know for each stage:

Toponyms

• (1a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have exact consonant matches with Bible Names  
• (2a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have consonant matches with variants of Bible Names 
• (3a) total number of toponyms in the Nihm tribal region around 600BC that have consonant combinations derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants

Bible Names, Bible Variants, and Random Names

• (1b) total number of Bible names that can be reduced to distinct consonant combinations 
• (2b) total number of distinct consonant combinations that could be derived from variants of Bible names
• (3b) total number of distinct consonant combinations for names that could be randomly generated, and yet which are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants (limited to reasonable lengths and typical proportions of vowels and consonants)

Percentages of Book of Mormon Names

• (1c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant matches with Bible names. According to Samuel this is 42% (I've never checked myself).
• (2c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant matches with variants of Bible names (i.e. Sam from Samuel)
• (3c) % of BofM names that have distinct consonant combinations that may seem to be randomly generated and are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants (i.e. Gidgiddonah) 

With this info at hand, you can appropriately tackle your problem as three different equations that relate to the same event (Joseph Smith choosing a specific name with all of these probabilities at play). To determine  probability as a percentage (P), you can use the following equation ((a ÷ b) x c) x 100 = P in each situation. Once you have found the probabilities for each equation in the problem, you simply add them together (at least I'm pretty sure that's how it works in this situation). 

Here is a hypothetical equation dealing with distinct consonant combinations from the Bible:

• (1a) = 50
• (1b) = 2,300
• (1c) = 42%
• Equation: ((50÷ 2,300) x .42) x 100 = .91%
• Total:  .91% (less than 1 in 100)

Here is hypothetical equation for distinct consonant combinations derived from variants of the Bible:

• (2a) = 100
• (2b) = 50,000 (very low estimate of possible Bible variants)
• (2c) = 20%
• Equation ((100 ÷ 50,000) x .20) x 100 = .04%
• Total =  .04% (less than 1 in 2,500)

Here is a hypothetical equation for distinct consonant combinations that may seem to be randomly generated and are derived neither from the Bible nor from Bible variants:

• (3a) = 250
• (3b) = 16,679,966,744,322 (derived by computing the probability for all possible combinations of consonants in words up to 4 consonants)
• (3c) = 38%
• Equation ((250 ÷ 16,679,966,744,322) x .38) x 100 = .00000000057%
• Total =  .00000000057% (not statistically relevant)

Ryan, 

The number of all possible variants is not relevant, we only have to look at how many Book of Mormon names are very similar to the Old Testament  names, or derived from the Bible depending on your worldview. So let's start with the percentage of Book of Mormon names that are also Biblical names, which is 42%. Secondly, let's say (just assume) 13% of Book of Mormon names are derived from the Bible, but not with all the exact letters. So 42% + 13% = 55%. Now, we have take into account that most Biblical names in the Book of Mormon are Old Testament names, so let's just say all of them are.       

Now let's say there are 20 ancient toponyms near Nihm that date to Lehi. 20 of 2,000 (assume 2,000 Old Testament names) is 1%. So assuming 20 toponyms and 2,000 Old Testament names the probability of a lucky hit is 0.6%. Multiply (55/100) x (1/100). 

0.6% may not seem like much, but with many Book of Mormon claims, with many possible Book of Mormon aspects and interpretations, and with thousands of religious books then coincidence becomes a good possibility. Think of the lottery,  a 0.2% chance is only worth seven dollars, see 1 in 500. Now imagine a 3.3 X 10 ^ (-7) percent chance of hitting the grand prize? There are people in the world that hit grand prize, and the probability for a NHM hit is nowhere near 3.3 X 10 ^(-7) percent.   

7 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

For instance, if a bunch of alien hunters had what seemed to be a similarly strong argument for one of their theories, I would probably say "Wow, I can't explain that, but I really don't care." Rather than resorting to the argument that such coincidences, if true, are still meaningless because of Littlewood's law, I would probably assume that I just needed to do more research before I could make an informed decision. And without a lot of drive to be a part of their group, I doubt I would ever do enough research to sufficiently convince myself of their claims.

Littlewood's law, Ramsey theory, and many others laws. Here is the good book recommended by Cinepro here

Scientists didn't conclude the WOW is an ET signal because more research is necessary. Why can't we say the same for NHM = Nahom? More research is necessary, but coincidence is a good possibility.  

14 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Is that scenario obviously what must have happened? By no means. All you can say is, it's not too unlikely. But then the Book of Mormon is long, and Mormons have obviously looked in every part of it for correspondences with the real world. The chance that a non-too-unlikely coincidence actually came up, somewhere in the Book, is not low at all.

Yes, you have a great point.  

On 10/16/2017 at 7:02 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

If you count the fictional works of people like C. S. Lewis (Perelandra, Narnia), J.R.R. Tolkien (the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion), George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones), those Theosophical works you mention, the Urantia Book, etc., you get a hint of the sort of thousands of fictional names and geography which might be compared to actual historical names and geography. 

I am talking about religious books that claim to have the truth. 

Edited October 19, 2017 by SamuelTheLamanite

[Robert F. Smith]

59 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said:

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

The number of all possible variants is not relevant, we only have to look at how many Book of Mormon names are very similar to the Old Testament  names, or derived from the Bible depending on your worldview. So let's start with the percentage of Book of Mormon names that are also Biblical names, which is 42%. Secondly, let's say (just assume) 13% of Book of Mormon names are derived from the Bible, but not with all the exact letters. So 42% + 13% = 55%. Now, we have take into account that most Biblical names in the Book of Mormon are Old Testament names, so let's just say all of them are.       

Now let's say there are 20 ancient toponyms near Nihm that date to Lehi. 20 of 2,000 (assume 2,000 Old Testament names) is 1%. So assuming 20 toponyms and 2,000 Old Testament names the probability of a lucky hit is 0.6%. Multiply (55/100) x (1/100). 

Your assumptions are false and designed to fit your apriori disbelief in the Book of Mormon.  The question of the historicity of the BofM should be approached like any other historical question --  without prior belief or disbelief -- and based on actual evidence, not mere guesswork.

Quote

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

I am talking about religious books that claim to have the truth. 

I guess that you missed the point (again) that the Urantia Book portrays itself as authentic history, and there are many more such books -- such as the supposed history of Earth and Cosmos by L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology).  One can use standard forensic techniques to analyze any such books to determine whether they have the marks of authenticity or forgery, all based on the scientific method.

At the same time, it makes no difference at all whether a book portrays itself as fiction or fact.  The same standards of analysis apply.  For example, one might want to evaluate Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" to determine whether it describes an authentic world with authentic names.

Quote

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 
      The frumious Bandersnatch!” 

He took his vorpal sword in hand; 
      Long time the manxome foe he sought— 
So rested he by the Tumtum tree 
      And stood awhile in thought. 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
      And burbled as it came! 

One, two! One, two! And through and through 
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” 
      He chortled in his joy. 

In fact scholars have examined the likely sources of his odd vocabulary.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[Physics Guy]

8 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I don't think that you would take seriously a paper published in physics with might have and may well have statements.

I certainly would take such a paper seriously, in the following kind of scenario.

Somebody has claimed experimental observations that would overthrow some basic law of nature; then somebody else points out that their observations could just as well be explained by quite ordinary effects which the first claimants overlooked. The second paper does not need to determine exactly what happened in the first paper's experiment. Merely pointing out the mundane alternatives is enough to invalidate the dramatic claims of the first paper, and so the second paper would be well received as good science that debunked the strong claims of the first paper, even though it consisted entirely of might-haves and may-well-haves.

If the authors of the first paper (or anyone else) could come back with airtight evidence that those mundane alternatives were not actually responsible for the strange effects reported in the first paper, then that airtight evidence could be published in an important third paper, and the investigation would go on. If such further airtight evidence does not appear, however, then the scientific case would be considered closed after that debunking second paper.

Scenarios like this happen frequently in science.

Quote

 If I were sitting on a jury for a man on trial for fraud and all the prosecutor could produce is might haves, may well, haves, etc. in the place of evidence I wold be duty bound to vote for acquittal. I do not really believe that any such scenario, absent any evidence pokes holes in any theory.

In a criminal trial there is presumption of innocence. You cannot (I hope) be convicted on mere speculation about how you could have committed the crime—but you can (I believe) be acquitted, if the defense merely raises a plausible theory that can account for all the evidence while maintaining your innocence. Merely pointing out a not-too-unlikely scenario in which all the evidence supplied by the prosecution is accounted for and yet you are innocent is enough to provide reasonable doubt; the defense does not have to prove that this scenario actually occurred, if the prosecution cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that it didn't occur. So the mere construction of a plausible alternative scenario pokes a fatal hole in the prosecution's case asserting that you must be guilty because of the evidence.

At least for me, however, there is no presumption that anyone is a prophet of God who has been given ancient golden plates by an angel. On the contrary, given the small-if-not-zero number of prophets who have received plates from angels in history, there is a presumption that people are not prophets with angelic plates. Whatever evidence Mormons may provide to try to establish the prophethood of Joseph Smith, it pokes a hole in their theory to point out a plausible way that the evidence we have could have been produced, without Smith being a prophet who had material dealings with angels.

Even in court cases there are different standards of evidence. I understand that civil cases are decided on preponderance of evidence, not proof beyond reasonable doubt versus failure to present such proof. If Mormons want to start from a presumption of Smith's prophethood, and claim victory as long as fraud isn't proven, then that's fine—but in that case I think Mormons should explain clearly up-front that this is their presumption, before saying anything else on the subject, because that is not a default presumption for non-Mormons.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Physics Guy

[Glenn101]

4 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

At least for me, however, there is no presumption that anyone is a prophet of God who has been given ancient golden plates by an angel. On the contrary, given the small-if-not-zero number of prophets who have received plates from angels in history, there is a presumption that people are not prophets with angelic plates. Whatever evidence Mormons may provide to try to establish the prophethood of Joseph Smith, it pokes a hole in their theory to point out a plausible way that the evidence we have could have been produced, without Smith being a prophet who had material dealings with angels.

But that is a bias in and of it self. Any explanation will do other than the one that is offered by Joseph himself.