Don Bradley's Lost 116 Pages is out...

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, DonBradley said:

Tacenda,

I can understand where you're at and how you feel about all this. 😃

You don't need to start from definite knowledge, just that seed!

Alma 32 is particularly rich in discussing this--and is a text I think we've just barely begun to mine the depths of. While this presentation is not my most organized one, because I switched tracks of what I wanted to present when I made new discoveries about the text while finalizing my talk, here are some thoughts on what Alma 32 means...

 

Don

Yes it's pretty fascinating how consistent our world view is- I won't use the word "theology" because I believe what we have is a consistent world view which allows us to interpret scripture in a consistent way upon which we agree, because we think in a similar way.

The notion that "faith is a principle of action" is of course part and parcel of the way we LDS define the word.

From the Lectures on Faith:  http://lecturesonfaith.com/1/

Quote

 

8 Now faith is the substance [assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

9 From this we learn, that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings.

10 If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action, in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental.

11 Were this class to go back and reflect upon the history of their lives, from the period of their first recollection, and ask themselves, what principle excited them to action, or what gave them energy and activity, in all their lawful avocations, callings and pursuits, what would be the answer? Would it not be that it was the assurance which we had of the existence of things which we had not seen, as yet?—Was it not the hope which you had, in consequence of your belief in the existence of unseen things, which stimulated you to action and exertion, in order to obtain them? Are you not dependent on your faith, or belief, for the acquisition of all knowledge, wisdom and intelligence? Would you exert yourselves to obtain wisdom and intelligence, unless you did believe that you could obtain them? Would you have ever sown if you had not believed that you would reap? Would you have ever planted if you had not believed that you would gather? Would you have ever asked unless you had believed that you would receive? Would you have ever sought unless you had believed that you would have found? Or would you have ever knocked unless you had believed that it would have been opened unto you? In a word, is there any thing that you would have done, either physical or mental, if you had not previously believed? Are not all your exertions, of every kind, dependent on your faith? Or may we not ask, what have you, or what do you possess, which you have not obtained by reason of your faith? Your food, your raiment, your lodgings, are they not all by reason of your faith? Reflect, and ask yourselves, if these things are not so. Turn your thoughts on your own minds, and see if faith is not the moving cause of all action in yourselves; and if the moving cause in you, is it not in all other intelligent beings?

 

What I have found fascinating is how Alma 32 IS a philosophical treatise describing the philosophy called Pragmatism as understood by William James, John Dewey and others in the early 20th century.

It doesn't "parallel" Pragmatism, it is not "similar" to Pragmatism, it IS Pragmatism.   Clark G was a great fan of one of its founders, Charles Peirce, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/  while I am more a fan of Dewey and James.  We sparred a lot on who was more "right". 

But really it was Alma 32 that completed my intellectual conversion to the church because I saw its view as completely justified philosophically by Pragmatism.   Once I was comfortable with the philosophy it contained, I let myself go ahead and actually take the Moroni promise seriously, but it was Pragmatism and Alma 32 and how well it fit with William James and his book "The Varieties of Religious Experience" that did the job of getting me close enough to actually try the promise.

I was totally blown away.

How could these farmers from Utah (I was a New Yorker- and an atheist-  sorry! ) and their stories of golden plates and angels actually PREFIGURE Pragmatism to the degree they did??   How could Pragmatism be SCRIPTURAL??  WHO were these guys??

And then I prayed about it and God whopped me upside the head with a spiritual confirmation I will never forget- and like Joseph, I knew and I knew that God knew that I knew and I had no choice but to get baptized.

I was cooked.

I went to an LDS chapel the next day and asked around and found a guy they called a "Stake Missionary"- (what? they were trying to convert steers??  Teach people that steak is good for you?  A little odd, but well I did like steak...) and told him I wanted to get baptized.

I started reading everything I could get my hands on about these Mormons, and they made me sit through these "lessons" -- it seemed that by the time they taught me something, I had already read about it elsewhere.   I whipped through the D&C and Book of Mormon in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, YES it is amazing that this idea of faith being a principle of action pervades LDS thought.

I was baptized in 1979 and I still have not gotten over it.

This is the real thing.

 

[Stargazer]

23 hours ago, Tacenda said:

With my faith crisis in the church, my faith in God/Jesus went way down, sadly. But I do have some faith that they exist. So the mustard seed apparently is enough? Hoping so, and that it will build back up to where it once was.

The Seed of Faith

In one of the most widely known Scriptures, Matthew 17:20, Jesus said, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. ”

Yes, and as the mustard seed is extremely small, it nevertheless grows into a large plant!

[Stargazer]

7 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh, he is the MOST logical.  Clearly a Positivist.  That's a philosophy joke. 

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

 

I've been wondering something for a long time.  Inasmuch as Lucifer/Satan had been denied a body and cast out, to serve as a voice of disobedience (in case we needed extra impetus, I guess), I have wondered why he would continue to act in opposition to Father's plan, since He knows he will be cast into outer darkness in the end.  Why continue the rebellion?  It's a lot of work, and he ends up in the same place anyway, so why bother doing the work?  It finally hit me!  He's still trying to convince the Father that his own plan is best!  And in order to convince the Father, Satan is trying to make as many of us as possible fail.  I think he is convinced that if he can make enough of us fail, he may be able to convince Father that Jehovah's plan was second-best after all, thereby changing Father's mind. So that a "do over" will take place, wherein everything will be reset back to zero, and replaced with Lucifer's plan.

That, at least, is somewhat logical, if flawed and unlikely to succeed.  As Mr. Spock once said, there comes a point at which logic fails and desperation must take over.  Lucifer is desperately trying to get out of his predicament, even at this late date.

[champatsch]

On 12/2/2019 at 1:10 PM, the narrator said:

Don responds to this in a footnote. Skousen's own later research contradicts his argument here.

Let me just say, on Skousen's behalf, that he doesn't think his later research contradicts his argument in this case. That's not to say he never changes his mind, based on clear and convincing evidence, but he doesn't think that any new evidence warrants it in this case. The basic point is that while OC was more than 100 pages ahead of the typesetting by November 6, that doesn't mean he was 100 pages ahead by August 26.

The reason for this rests on a reasonable assumption of a fairly steady copying rate of O by OC. It also rests on an assumption that the copying began sometime in August, which comports with MacKay and Dirkmaat (2015). The trigger for making P was the Grandin contract, which happened in late July or early August, according to MacKay and Dirkmaat's book From Darkness Unto Light (2015). If we conservatively say that August 1 was when OC began to copy O, then he would have been far short of 116 pages by August 26, since we know he was at page 263 by November 6. The simple calculations are these:

Aug 1 - page 3
=> Aug 26 - page 69
Nov 6 - page 263
(84 working days, from Aug 1 to Nov 6, inclusive => a copying rate of 3.13 pages / day)

If OC began on August 1, then he would have been near page 70 by August 26.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is the following:

Nov 6 - page 263
Aug 26 - page 116 (the lost pages assumption, minimally)
(62 working days, from Aug 27 to Nov 6, inclusive => a copying rate of 2.37 pages / day)

This lower copying rate implies a July 1 start, going back 49 working days from August 27.

In other words, Bradley has OC most likely starting the copying in very early July, which is highly unlikely because the Grandin contract didn't happen until late July or early August. Also, if the page count was higher than 116 by August 26, then the speed of the initial copying must have been higher to avoid pushing the start into June.

Ultimately, to save Bradley's position we must assume that OC's copying rate was at least 5.3 pages per day in August, and that he slowed down to about 2.4 pages per day during September and October.

 

Also, Skousen (2001:36) estimates that O was 122 pages for the small plates section (124 – 2 [blank leaf]), up to Words of Mormon, not 116 pages.

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by champatsch

[mfbukowski]

On 12/5/2019 at 5:38 AM, Stargazer said:

I've been wondering something for a long time.  Inasmuch as Lucifer/Satan had been denied a body and cast out, to serve as a voice of disobedience (in case we needed extra impetus, I guess), I have wondered why he would continue to act in opposition to Father's plan, since He knows he will be cast into outer darkness in the end.  Why continue the rebellion?  It's a lot of work, and he ends up in the same place anyway, so why bother doing the work?  It finally hit me!  He's still trying to convince the Father that his own plan is best!  And in order to convince the Father, Satan is trying to make as many of us as possible fail.  I think he is convinced that if he can make enough of us fail, he may be able to convince Father that Jehovah's plan was second-best after all, thereby changing Father's mind. So that a "do over" will take place, wherein everything will be reset back to zero, and replaced with Lucifer's plan.

That, at least, is somewhat logical, if flawed and unlikely to succeed.  As Mr. Spock once said, there comes a point at which logic fails and desperation must take over.  Lucifer is desperately trying to get out of his predicament, even at this late date.

Another way of seeing this, and honestly I don't know if this is more true or not, is to see God as the Ideal Human, and Satan as the epitome of evil.

In the end, is it eternal life or Eternal death?

Is there a life after death with rewards for being good?

Seeing it that way enables us to look at the principles taught in the story, and eliminates the personality clash which may or may not actually exist.

This much I know:

If evil is a person, he/she is not stupid.

 

[Brant Gardner]

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

Let me just say, on Skousen's behalf, that he doesn't think his later research contradicts his argument in this case. That's not to say he never changes his mind, based on clear and convincing evidence, but he doesn't think that any new evidence warrants it in this case. The basic point is that while OC was more than 100 pages ahead of the typesetting by November 6, that doesn't mean he was 100 pages ahead by August 26.

The reason for this rests on a reasonable assumption of a fairly steady copying rate of O by OC. It also rests on an assumption that the copying began sometime in August, which comports with MacKay and Dirkmaat (2015). The trigger for making P was the Grandin contract, which happened in late July or early August, according to MacKay and Dirkmaat's book From Darkness Unto Light (2015). If we conservatively say that August 1 was when OC began to copy O, then he would have been far short of 116 pages by August 26, since we know he was at page 263 by November 6. The simple calculations are these:

Aug 1 - page 3
=> Aug 26 - page 69
Nov 6 - page 263
(84 working days, from Aug 1 to Nov 6, inclusive => a copying rate of 3.13 pages / day)

If OC began on August 1, then he would have been near page 70 by August 26.

 

Another thing to bear in mind is the following:

Nov 6 - page 263
Aug 26 - page 116 (the lost pages assumption, minimally)
(62 working days, from Aug 27 to Nov 6, inclusive => a copying rate of 2.37 pages / day)

This lower copying rate implies a July 1 start, going back 49 working days from August 27.

In other words, Bradley has OC most likely starting the copying in very early July, which is highly unlikely because the Grandin contract didn't happen until late July or early August. Also, if the page count was higher than 116 by August 26, then the speed of the initial copying must have been higher to avoid pushing the start into June.

Ultimately, to save Bradley's position we must assume that OC's copying rate was at least 5.3 pages per day in August, and that he slowed down to about 2.4 pages per day during September and October.

 

Also, Skousen (2001:36) estimates that O was 122 pages for the small plates section (124 – 2 [blank leaf]), up to Words of Mormon, not 116 pages.

 

Thank you for the clarification.

[Tacenda]

On 12/4/2019 at 2:23 PM, DonBradley said:

Tacenda,

I can understand where you're at and how you feel about all this. 😃

You don't need to start from definite knowledge, just that seed!

Alma 32 is particularly rich in discussing this--and is a text I think we've just barely begun to mine the depths of. While this presentation is not my most organized one, because I switched tracks of what I wanted to present when I made new discoveries about the text while finalizing my talk, here are some thoughts on what Alma 32 means...

 

Don

Thanks Don, loved how this presentation was centered on the mustard seed analogy! I will definitely need to work on making that seed grow.

[caspianrex]

On 11/23/2019 at 6:57 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

There is also a preview of Don's book online at https://www.academia.edu/41028278/The_Lost_116_Pages_Reconstructing_the_Book_of_Mormons_Missing_Stories_-_PREVIEW_EXCERPT .

 

Thanks for posting the link to this preview, @Robert F. Smith. I found the excerpt interesting enough that I thought it was worth it to order the full ebook from Amazon. Looking forward to digging into the book.

[RevTestament]

On 11/22/2019 at 10:16 PM, strappinglad said:

Questions that I have about the lost pages start with … why?

Why give the entire manuscript to Martin?

Why not bring Martin's wife to the house and show her what has been done so far? 

Why not make a copy of at least a few pages to give to Martin?

Because Joseph wanted Martin's help, and at the time that was somewhat contingent upon Lucy's approval. 

[Meadowchik]

On 11/23/2019 at 5:16 AM, strappinglad said:

Questions that I have about the lost pages start with … why?

Why give the entire manuscript to Martin?

Why not bring Martin's wife to the house and show her what has been done so far? 

Why not make a copy of at least a few pages to give to Martin?

Yes. Just imagine all that work, and parting with the product. It didn't have to be what seems to be reckless in order to fulfill Harris' request.

[ksfisher]

54 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Yes. Just imagine all that work, and parting with the product. It didn't have to be what seems to be reckless in order to fulfill Harris' request.

It seems reckless in hindsight, but at the time apparently it didn't.  It would be interesting to understand why the decisions that were made were made.

[DonBradley]

The suggestion was made above that Joseph could have just had Lucy Harris come over to his house to look at the manuscript. It may help to know that Lucy lived a four-day stagecoach ride away in a different state than Joseph, and that Martin was headed home anyway; so the idea of him taking the manuscript home with him would have made sense.

There are various questions that arise about why people did what they did in this situation. Why, for instance, was Martin Harris so persistent, pestering God to let him take the manuscript? Fortunately, as I lay out in my chapter about the theft, when we line up the events in their proper order, it becomes evident why Martin did this. Many of these questions can be answered by analyzing the data we have.

Don

[strappinglad]

On 12/9/2019 at 2:12 PM, DonBradley said:

The suggestion was made above that Joseph could have just had Lucy Harris come over to his house to look at the manuscript. It may help to know that Lucy lived a four-day stagecoach ride away in a different state than Joseph, and that Martin was headed home anyway; so the idea of him taking the manuscript home with him would have made sense.

There are various questions that arise about why people did what they did in this situation. Why, for instance, was Martin Harris so persistent, pestering God to let him take the manuscript? Fortunately, as I lay out in my chapter about the theft, when we line up the events in their proper order, it becomes evident why Martin did this. Many of these questions can be answered by analyzing the data we have.

I now have possession of the book. Learning new stuff every day. Thanks for your efforts , Don. 

[why me]

I have a lot of respect for Don. I remember him as an apologist and then an anti. And then he came back to the fold and as done marvelous work for the defense of the lds church. I am grateful that he came back to the fold and most likely brought back many with him with the work that he has done.

Marin is an interesting person. He did leave the church and then he came back. He didn't have to come back but he did. And why? Because of his spiritual experiences that he had during those fine days with the book of mormon. If it were a fraud, I don't believe that he would have came back but rather he would have spilled the beans. Also, if Joseph were writing the book of mormon and took pains to do so, I don't think that he would have lent it out. No one wants to lose a work that they have been working on unless they have a copy. Both joseph and martin died faithful to their calling.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, why me said:

then an anti

Critic perhaps, anti....I don't believe he was one.

[why me]

49 minutes ago, Calm said:

Critic perhaps, anti....I don't believe he was one.

I think that he was more than a critic. But there is a fine line between the two. Many people who leave the church go through various stages. First they can become an anti because of the hurt they feel. And then as they mature, they become critics. He could have been both at one point.

[Calm]

An anti is someone who wants to destroy the Church or at least see it destroyed or at the very least to hurt it in my view.

Don can share if he cares if he ever went to that extreme.

[DonBradley]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

An anti is someone who wants to destroy the Church or at least see it destroyed or at the very least to hurt it in my view.

Don can share if he cares if he ever went to that extreme.

Somehow only just saw this.

Gosh I was conflicted on this.

There are ex-Mormons---I met plenty of them!--who claim to have had a horrible experience growing up in the church. My experience was so opposite to this that I found it near-incomprehensible. I can scarcely imagine a more perfect way to grow up than as a Latter-day Saint child. I had experienced such good in the church--both as a child and as an adult.

So when I came to the conclusion, for a time, that my research demonstrated the falsity of my faith, I felt torn. I had wanted to make a contribution to the church, to my community--that had been the point of my research. When I came to realize that my work, as it then stood and as I perceived it, would not be a contribution to the community, but something destructive of the community itself, I considered simply never publishing. And I left the church. The real prompt for leaving the church for me was not my loss of faith. It was the loss of my sense that I had anything to contribute to the faith.

On the one hand, I didn't want to harm the community. And I didn't want to put others through the agonizing loss of faith I had experienced.

On the other hand, I felt that I needed to trust the truth--that truth would ultimately serve people better than illusion---however painful it might be to endure the loss of that illusion. Or at least I hoped the truth would serve people better. It also seemed so strongly like Mormon history was my life's work---like I was made for it. And how can you not do your life's work? That didn't seem like a responsibility one has the option to shirk.

So I planned to publish. I was not without further conflict on this, and sometimes vacillated, but I did plan to publish my findings as I then perceived them, let the chips fall where they would, and trust to truth that it would be for the best.

I still plan to do that now, and am doing it. I just see the truth that I get to help disclose as a far, far more fortunate truth for us all than the one I had perceived before. 😃

Don

[DonBradley]

10 hours ago, why me said:

I have a lot of respect for Don. I remember him as an apologist and then an anti. And then he came back to the fold and as done marvelous work for the defense of the lds church. I am grateful that he came back to the fold and most likely brought back many with him with the work that he has done.

Aw thanks, WhyMe. 😃

[DonBradley]

I'm not sure exactly how "critic" and "anti" are being defined.

I never saw myself as "anti-Mormon." That label was associated in my mind with Evangelical Christian antagonists who directly argued against core Latter-day Saint faith beliefs, caricatured church history, and did all this not as part of a larger research aiming at discovering truth, but, rather, because they had competing faith claims. Most of them (which occasional exceptions) never seriously considered that the church might be true, and their primary aim was to refute the Restoration as a religious faith rather than to use the tools of history to improve our knowledge of the past.

However others may have seen me at the time, this was not at all where I was coming from and what I was motivated by.

As an aside, I should add that there are "anti-Mormons" whom I greatly respect. I'll name Ron Huggins and Aaron Shafovaloff as the two who come most immediately and forcefully to my mind. I can't question their sincerity in the slightest: they are motivated to save souls. And I believe that Aaron and possibly Ron did consider whether the church might be true when they each, respectively, encountered it as teenagers. And Ron has contributed scholarship toward the understanding of Mormon history.

While I respect their motives, these were not motives I shared. I was not pursuing as a primary goal what all Evangelical "anti-Mormons" pursue: deconverting Mormons from Mormonism to convert them to something else. My aim had been to discover history, and the refutation (as I perceived it) of Latter-day Saint foundational claims in my work was a byproduct of that search rather than a starting end goal.

That said, there was a brief time when I really thought religion was going to destroy the world (a la Sam Harris's The End of Faith), so during that year or so around when I left the church I did have as a secondary goal contributing to saving the world by negating the religion on which I had expertise. The reason I bought into Sam Harris's argument so strongly at the time is that it gave purpose to what often otherwise seemed senseless--the destructive effect on faith that I expected my work would have. This destructive effect had seemed like such a negative thing--not a contribution to the world! So when Sam Harris seemed to prove that it would be a contribution after all--my "destructive" work would help save the world!--I embraced his view strongly. Gradually, however, the view became less and less tenable to me as the clear positives of religion starked to stack up for me.

While at that time I was, indeed, very much a critic of Mormonism, in general, at other points, I hated being labeled a critic, because it seemed to put people into opposing camps and assumed my primary motive was attack rather than understanding. While it's true that there are a bunch of polemicists in the world, I wasn't one of them. I wasn't a critic so much as I was a human being and historian who had come to see a naturalistic explanation of Mormon origins as the most tenable explanation.

Not all believers are acting as "apologists," and not all nonbelievers are acting as "critics."

I think a search of my old posts will bear out that when I engaged in actual criticism, the object of my criticism was usually Latter-day Saint apologetics rather than Latter-day Saint beliefs. I respected the latter but perceived the former as often twisting the truth for partisan purposes.

I did sometimes criticize Latter-day Saint truth claims and thought believers were extremely touchy about this - how upset they'd get.

Once I returned to the church, I immediately saw that so differently. I remember thinking, "Well of course Latter-day Saints are going to be upset with critics: the critics are just attacking what's most important to them in the world!"

My how perspectives change depending on where we stand!!!

What a journey!

Don

[Tacenda]

@DonBradley My son has resigned from the church. He is a returned missionary, but went inactive soon after. He and two of his close friends, also returned missionaries, have also resigned. The friends' parents are devout LDS. The one friend is attending another faith, I believe it's a Christian one in Texas. The other friend, I'm not sure. My son is grappling with belief in God, but knows there is something. He, like you once thought, feels the church or some religions are damaging. Yesterday, I saw three posts on FB by him, he rarely posts, but shared Bill Reel's memes of different items that weren't faith promoting.

I'm worried that he is becoming anti and this will be an ongoing thing. I looked up my son's friends on FB. They include my sister who is devout, and his uncles/aunts and cousins on my husband's side that are devout. Also his many friends that are. I worry that he's going to cut off so many people. Including some of his wife's family that are devout. I want to reach out and talk him out of posting such things, but wanted some advice on how to approach him. What do you think? Or anyone else? 

I wish my son had a place like this to go to. I've told him this is where I get all my frustrations out. I'm glad I found MDDB, and believe the day I heard your experience and testimony at the 2012 Sunstone Symposium, I thought perhaps that I could go full circle, like you've done, don't know on that yet. But at least I hope to keep my faith in God. I know this all belongs elsewhere, but thought of it because of the post you made yesterday or the post above, concerning anti's/critics. So hopefully you could offer some advice on what I should say or not say. 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Tacenda

[InCognitus]

5 hours ago, Tacenda said:

I wish my son had a place like this to go to. I've told him this is where I get all my frustrations out. I'm glad I found MDDB, and believe the day I heard your experience and testimony at the 2012 Sunstone Symposium, I thought perhaps that I could go full circle, like you've done, don't know on that yet. But at least I hope to keep my faith in God. I know this all belongs elsewhere, but thought of it because of the post you made yesterday or the post above, concerning anti's/critics. So hopefully you could offer some advice on what I should say or not say. 

I know some people in the same situation, and I echo your feelings about Don's story.  I used to follow these kinds of discussions several years ago, but I gave up message boards for a while because of the amount of time I tend to spend on them, and my work and church callings didn't leave me a lot of extra time.  Not that the time factor has changed now, but I was in between church callings when I sought out MDDB again recently (in a moment of weakness I guess ), and I'm really glad I did because it got me back in the loop of a lot of things that are important to me, like learning about Don's experiences. 

I had known briefly about Don's experience previously because of reading some of Brian Hales' books and listening to some of his podcasts on polygamy, but I wasn't aware that Don's discussions about his leaving and returning were available, and I found them to be very helpful.  And I thank you for pointing out the 2012 Sunstone Symposium talk to me (on 11/30/2019).  I'd like to find a transcript of that talk because I'd like my wife to read it (she prefers to read instead of listen to things).