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Emode as Proof Js Did Not Write Bom


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18 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

So as a trial lawyer I deal with many matters outside my expertise.  My undergraduate experience was in computer science and statistical economics (econometrics).  As a trial lawyer I hire many different experts to render opinions:  Metallurgists, psychiatrists, nuclear engineers, hydrogeologists, geologists and more.  I have to master geology enough to elicit an opinion from my expert and explain that opinion to a judge and/or jury.

But what I do know is that to pass muster with the court and courts of appeal, I must show that my experts have sufficient expertise to state their opinions.  A major test is, according to Daubert and corresponding state analogues, is whether their opinion is accepted (or criticized with sufficient expertise) by their peers.   Thus, Fleishman's and Pons' opinions about cold fusion would never pass muster, and haven't, because they have no peer support. 

And so such is the case with Dr. Carmack and, as well, Dr. John Sorenson.  No peer review. The only folks patting them on the back are religious folks.  That means, it isn't a real opinion subject to the rigors of established statistical science.  That means, their opinion is useless to me and many others, and supports only those who need their opinion as a crutch.

And you have zero credibility. 

 

Your understanding of Daubert is not correct. Peer review is not a “test.” It is a potential factor in reliability. 

You’re articulating the Frye standard that was rejected in the 1970s. 

So much for the crutch. And credibility. 

Edited by PacMan
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1 hour ago, PacMan said:

Your understanding of Daubert is not correct. Peer review is not a “test.” It is a potential factor in reliability. 

You’re articulating the Frye standard that was rejected in the 1970s. 

So much for the crutch. And credibility. 

Ouch!  Way ouch!  I am not here to defend my credibility nor engage in ad hominens.   I dislike anonymous posters and especially insults from them, and make my views known.  As they are not real persons I don't think a direct attack upon them is an ad hominen.  I didn't realize Chumpatch was Dr. Carmack and I will adjust my posts accordingly. 

I gotta tell the California courts to stop citing the Kelly/Frey rule as good law (they also reject Daubert as good law) based upon your inciteful post.

Edited by Bob Crockett
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3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Any literary work may be evaluated based on strict scholarly standards, a fact which you pointedly ignore.  The fact that something is published in 1830 tells us nothing of its ultimate origin.

Whether Cowdery and other scribes are to be included in the con-job which you suggest is just another off the wall apriori assumption, which has to be proved.   It doesn't pass the common sense test, especially since all manner of people were present during the dictation of the book and none of their descriptions fit your wild speculation.  You are clearly unfamiliar with that process.

You seem to want to include descriptions of Book of Lehi project which was aborted after that manuscript was lost. The numerous scribes, witnesses, and accounts of that project cannot be compared with a text we can then read and see the quality and content of the product. That project took a little under a year to produce approximately 116 pages. The BoM project that followed and almost exclusively involved Smith and Cowdery working at the farm owned by the Whitmers included over 400 pages produced in about three months. Smith famously refused to commit to a narrative description of it's production, instead keeping it to the ambiguous gift and power of God. Whatever else we can say, we ought to agree that details regarding the production of the BoM are opaque to everyone and likely will never be known. So what we have is the text itself.

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The presence of systematic EModE in the BofM is a huge problem for you.  Just waving it away nonchalantly doesn't deal with the facts.

Not at all. The obvious influence, the King James Bible, is quoted in the book throughout. The primary participants in it's production, Smith and Cowdery, use the same EModE phrases outside the BoM when attempting to sound biblical. The book itself is not written in EModE but instead contains phrases and markers...like a Mormon prayer inserting otherwise archaic thee, thou, thine, and -th as borrowers rather than fluent speakers. It's not systemic or complete, which you keep dodging.

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

There are first of all no so-called "native Americans" in the Western Hemisphere.  All are immigrants.  Second, I am a strong proponent of the claims that the Jaredites, Nephites, and Mulekites were actual immigrants from the ancient Near East, and I have written extensively on such matters -- citing my sources, rather than making unsupported apriori declarations.

Careful. Cultural appropriation is a dangerous game.

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

 Should we prefer repeating the apriori notions of those with no training in history, linguistics, or archeoldogy?  Or is there a better way?

A funny claim, considering. Not a fan of The Interpreter, then? :)

Seriously, the vast majority of people with said training, and the fields that apply, are dispassionately at odds with the fanciful claims you put forward and I can't imagine seeing Carmack's work published in a profession journal in the field. So this is more smoke.

Experts on the Maya don't share the views of Mormon apologists, Egyptologists are not clamouring to uncover just what else Joseph could have known based on what is provided. Archeologists don't turn to the BoM for clues in where to discover pre-Columbian cities or understand pre-Columbinan culture. And scholars of Early Modern English aren't scouring the pages of the Book of Mormon.

Edited by Honorentheos
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4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

In the blogosphere, Bob, opinions expressed should be evaluated based on merit, not on personality.  This is not a courtroom.

And, in any case, are ad hominems the warp and woof of courtroom procedure?  Or are you just trying to be clever?

I think to engage in an ad hominem there must be a real person to attack.  I suppose that avatars eventually assume a life of their own and attacking an avatar becomes a form of an ad hominem.  But I don't think being a critic of anonymity is necessary an ad hom.

My opinions remain. 

1  I don't think the conclusions about Ye Olde English and the Book of Mormon are adequately founded on science and statistics.  I wonder if it is even possible to do so. The methodology I've seen seems to employ statistics adequately but does not do an adequate literature review, nor do I think that is possible.  Certainly, I'd like to know if such an effort has been performed elsewhere.  But without precedence and peer acceptance, I'm more than suspicious.  I think the defense of the Book of Mormon should not be based upon witchcraft and incantations. 

2.  The Book of Mormon has all the characteristics of responding to the defects of Christianity of its day. The Book of Mormon was written for "our day," meaning 1830.  Just because Alma suffered auto-da-fe and just because St. Thomas More had protestant priests burned at the stake does not mean that the Book of Mormon was based upon text derived in More's day.  Burning people at the stake remains a powerful motif in literature today, the 20th and the 19th centuries.  I've studied Brant Gardner closely and his conclusions seem to make a lot of sense.  I really question why good men throw their lives away with such inconsequential and meaningless study.

3.  You and others make a personal attack on me for being a lawyer and a lousy one at that.  I'm rather used to that.  I think my record speaks for itself and I won't really respond.  I am not anonymous.  bobcrockettlaw.com.

 

 

Edited by Bob Crockett
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12 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

So, when you are not making ad hominem attacks, you then falsely accuse others of doing so?  Is this really your version of scholarship, Bob?

I actually enjoy being called a lousy lawyer on this board because it helps me understand that I'm not the big shot I think I really am.

Edited by Bob Crockett
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3 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

You seem to want to include descriptions of Book of Lehi project which was aborted after that manuscript was lost. The numerous scribes, witnesses, and accounts of that project cannot be compared with a text we can then read and see the quality and content of the product. That project took a little under a year to produce approximately 116 pages. The BoM project that followed and almost exclusively involved Smith and Cowdery working at the farm owned by the Whitmers included over 400 pages produced in about three months. Smith famously refused to commit to a narrative description of it's production, instead keeping it to the ambiguous gift and power of God. Whatever else we can say, we ought to agree that details regarding the production of the BoM are opaque to everyone and likely will never be known. So what we have is the text itself.

Not at all. The obvious influence, the King James Bible, is quoted in the book throughout. The primary participants in it's production, Smith and Cowdery, use the same EModE phrases outside the BoM when attempting to sound biblical. The book itself is not written in EModE but instead contains phrases and markers...like a Mormon prayer inserting otherwise archaic thee, thou, thine, and -th as borrowers rather than fluent speakers. It's not systemic or complete, which you keep dodging.

You are clearly unfamiliar with the process of translation in 1829, in which all took place in clear view of people in the house, and in which Oliver was not the only scribe.  The formal, written descriptions by those present are available for review.  You clearly haven't read them.  You have also not bothered to read the source which I cited for you.

Your concomitant failure to familiarize yourself with the text of the BofM, and with the actual scholarship of Stan Carmack also leads to your stumbling badly in reflecting the results.

3 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Careful. Cultural appropriation is a dangerous game.

Yes it is, for those who are both woke and politically correct, instead of dedicated to anthropological reality.

3 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

...................... the vast majority of people with said training, and the fields that apply, are dispassionately at odds with the fanciful claims you put forward and I can't imagine seeing Carmack's work published in a profession journal in the field. So this is more smoke.

Experts on the Maya don't share the views of Mormon apologists, Egyptologists are not clamouring to uncover just what else Joseph could have known based on what is provided. Archeologists don't turn to the BoM for clues in where to discover pre-Columbian cities or understand pre-Columbinan culture. And scholars of Early Modern English aren't scouring the pages of the Book of Mormon.

Those, like you, who make apriori judgments and thus ignore the actual data, cannot be expected to take anything seriously -- nor to give the time of day to anything related to the demeaned group or source.  Your statement on the Maya and Mayanists is typical of you, and tells us why you are unable to address the issues seriously:  LDS scholars do not claim that the Maya are the Nephites.  The Maya are but one of the five major Mesoamerican culture groups, even if they are the most famous.  Moreover, most non-LDS scholars ignore the BofM.  So your silly statement that they ignore the BofM is mere tautology, and absolutely meaningless.  Like you, they make apriori judgments, and promptly ignore examining anything further, and that is their right -- which doesn't surprise anyone.  Yet you mistakenly think that ignorance is evidence of something.  They prejudge because they are prejudiced.  That is in no way any sort of scholarly evaluation.

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2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You are clearly unfamiliar with the process of translation in 1829, in which all took place in clear view of people in the house, and in which Oliver was not the only scribe.  The formal, written descriptions by those present are available for review.  You clearly haven't read them.  You have also not bothered to read the source which I cited for you.

You seem to demand we conflate the Book of Lehi project with the Book of Mormon project when we are not able to review the content of the Book of Lehi. Frankly, the theory of production I favor includes the work taking place in front of the Smiths and Whitmers during the April to June 1829 period when the bulk of the BoM was produced. Oliver and David were clearly co-conspiritors with Smith using Harris to fund the project. Smith and Oliver describe discussing the work which included precipitated claimed milestone events such as their baptism, the ordaining to the priesthood and many of the sections of the D&C. Oliver and Joseph were the two responsible for everything from 1 Nephi to the Words of Mormon and Alma through Moroni, skipping Mosiah which was produced before Oliver arrived and likely was part of the earlier translation process. 

As to this idea that the Book of Mormon needs to be reframed as a work of EModE, I suppose when it gets picked up by a journal otherwise disinterested in Mormonism with the brilliant discovery that it is a hidden gem from across time, then we will see. But again, a book that mixed phrasing and word choice as the BoM does can't be described a systemically demonstrating EModE. It's far, far more probable to be borrowed archaism as is clear when we see Smith and Cowdery using these phrases outside the BoM in contexts where they are attempting to speak with a spiritually authoritative voice.

So do you similarly refuse to acknowledge Asian, Europeans or Near Middle Eastern peoples due to their originating from an African out-migration as are all species of the genus Homo?

It also seems you confused ready recognition of the BoM as a product of a time not warranting such swathes of a person's valuable time as is demanded by those a priori disposed to try and shoehorn it into the evidence. An Egyptologist need not dedicate volumes to an effort that is obviously mistranslating burial facsimiles. Dr. Michael Coe need not read the BoM more than once to be able to recognize the lack of Mayan content regardless of how much work others put in to trying to close read it out of the text. If there was gold in the vein, it would attract attention.

Edited by Honorentheos
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14 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Again, another close reading exercise. The Book of Mormon includes a martyr's tale in the story of Abinidi. Not particularly interesting given Smith would have known of many from Stephen in the NT to the stories of the deaths of the original Apostles and beyond.

The point is to show who is more likely to have written the story. Joseph was likely not aware of the story of Michael Servetus. Yet the Abinadi story follows this particular event in many details. This event was well known, on the other hand, to potential 17th Century authors. So if we're keeping score, that's 1 point for the 17th Century and 0 for the 19th.

14 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Christian pacifism was a topic in Smith's day including espoused by the aforementioned Campbell. The wars in the Book of Mormon are nothing like the English revolution but wars between two opposing nation's that is practically obvious fiction for being between two factions over the course of centuries that reform three centuries after they were claimed to have merged  and disappeared. That's fiction not history. Smith's own contemporaries recognized he was responding to the controversy of their day. It's not complicated, and the reason for making it so is merely to attempt to extract the BoM from it's obvious origin of production at the expense of numerous scientific fields. They don't describe the Americas between 600 BCE to 450 CE, while being quite familiar with the world of Joseph Smith. The religion is that of Smith. The worldview championed in it is that of Smith. It is based on a problematic belief that the Americas had been populated by a civilization wiped out by the "savage" Native Americans. It tells of pre-Columbian American Christians using old world technologies - all of which contradicts the state of the evidence from archeology and anthropology. It demands Genesis be accepted as history, and maintains it was written by Moses. These are just a handful of the ways it fits Smith's context while being at odds with the broader facts that touch on its historical reliability.

The close reading exercise is smoke, not heat.

I don't disagree that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction, which is what you seem to be arguing most strongly for. But I think you can take almost any perceived parallel with the 19th Century and find a better one with the 16th or 17th. The Book of Mormon is not Joseph's religion, for example. (Where are the three kingdoms, the pre-existence, and the temple rituals?) It's the religion of 17th Century Arminians who were persecuted by Calvinists. Thus we also see a strongly anti-Calvinist bent in the Book of Mormon such as the execution of Servetus by Calvin previously mentioned. Is there any indication Joseph was anti-Calvinist? I doubt he even knew the finer details of the different Protestant sects.

The worldview is also not Joseph's. For example, we don't find the Enlightenment concept of separation of church and state, which is how he would have likely viewed the world in 1829. The ideal church/state relation presented throughout is a view consistently espoused by some of the great thinkers in the first half of the 1600s. It is a decidedly pre-Enlightenment view.

The wars in the Book of Mormon were not something Joseph would have been familiar with either. The Revolutionary War was secular, relatively short and decisive. The Book of Mormon wars were sometimes religious, many times disastrous, and frustratingly never-ending. This was the the state of Europe in the late 1500s and early 1600s. I'm not including the English Civil Wars in this. I'm talking about the 80 Years War, the 30 Years War, the French wars of religion, and others.

And though there were Anabaptist off-shoots in Joseph's milieu, when did they ever have to be settled in a safe place to avoid persecution, required to pay for their defense, and protected by other fellow-Christians who hadn't taken a vow of pacifism? Well, the 16th Century, that's when.

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6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

You seem to demand we conflate the Book of Lehi project with the Book of Mormon project when we are not able to review the content of the Book of Lehi.

You seem stuck on that, even though I specified 1829 for you, realizing that you just haven't bothered to adequately inform yourself on the translation process.

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Frankly, the theory of production I favor includes the work taking place in front of the Smiths and Whitmers during the April to June 1829 period when the bulk of the BoM was produced. Oliver and David were clearly co-conspiritors with Smith using Harris to fund the project. Smith and Oliver describe discussing the work which included precipitated claimed milestone events such as their baptism, the ordaining to the priesthood and many of the sections of the D&C. Oliver and Joseph were the two responsible for everything from 1 Nephi to the Words of Mormon and Alma through Moroni, skipping Mosiah which was produced before Oliver arrived and likely was part of the earlier translation process. 

The trouble with such conspiracies, as competent historians all know, is that some conspirators just can't keep their mouths shut.  The moreso since some of those you list became apostates, and certainly would have wanted revenge by blowing the lid on the plot.  Not only do you favor an imaginary plot, but you ignore all the witnesses to the translation process.

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

As to this idea that the Book of Mormon needs to be reframed as a work of EModE, I suppose when it gets picked up by a journal otherwise disinterested in Mormonism with the brilliant discovery that it is a hidden gem from across time, then we will see. But again, a book that mixed phrasing and word choice as the BoM does can't be described a systemically demonstrating EModE. It's far, far more probable to be borrowed archaism as is clear when we see Smith and Cowdery using these phrases outside the BoM in contexts where they are attempting to speak with a spiritually authoritative voice.

However, we are not just talking about one mode of inquiry.  EModE is merely one aspect of study of the BofM.  The details in the text can also be analyzed for their archeological and linguistic value.  You ignore that as well.

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

So do you similarly refuse to acknowledge Asian, Europeans or Near Middle Eastern peoples due to their originating from an African out-migration as are all species of the genus Homo?

If you were a serious anthropologist, you would already know the answer to that question, which you bring in from out in left field.  Sounds very bigoted and prejudiced to me. 

https://www.quora.com/Many-questions-on-Ancient-Egypt-are-about-whether-the-Egyptians-were-black-or-Middle-Eastern-Many-archaeologists-have-answered-that-they-were-indigenous-but-at-times-with-input-from-Nubia-and-the-Middle-East-Why-are/answer/Bob-Smith-3106 .

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

It also seems you confused ready recognition of the BoM as a product of a time not warranting such swathes of a person's valuable time as is demanded by those a priori disposed to try and shoehorn it into the evidence. An Egyptologist need not dedicate volumes to an effort that is obviously mistranslating burial facsimiles. Dr. Michael Coe need not read the BoM more than once to be able to recognize the lack of Mayan content regardless of how much work others put in to trying to close read it out of the text. If there was gold in the vein, it would attract attention.

The entire matter of the BofM certainly seems preposterous enough that refusal to give it the time of day seems quite reasonable to me.  We seem to agree on that, although your turgid prose is hard to understand.  Your final claim that, "If there was gold in the vein, it would attract attention," is just plain silly.  There is no likelihood that most people are going to take it seriously, even if it is completely true.  Indeed, no one except authentic experts have the tools to properly evaluate it, and they cannot afford to sully their reputations by giving it a moment's notice.

As to the late Dr Coe, who firmly believed that Mesoamerica benefited from direct influence from Asia, his own book on The Maya, 9th ed. (Thames & Hudson, 2015), was evaluated today by a couple of guys at the FairMormon Conference, in which they compared in detail the claims made in the BofM with the claims made by Coe about the Maya.  I have always said that one need only read Dr Coe's actual views on Mesoamerica in order to find excellent parallels with the BofM.  I had no idea someone would do exactly that.  Bruce Dale and Brian Dale, "Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (a Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya, 9th Edition)," FairMormon Conference, Aug 5, 2020.

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17 minutes ago, JarMan said:

The point is to show who is more likely to have written the story. Joseph was likely not aware of the story of Michael Servetus. Yet the Abinadi story follows this particular event in many details. This event was well known, on the other hand, to potential 17th Century authors. So if we're keeping score, that's 1 point for the 17th Century and 0 for the 19th.

Servetus was executed for heretical beliefs while Abinidi was killed for telling a King he was a sinner. Abinidi went to King Noah knowing he'd be killed but playing the role of mythical martyr while Servetus was executed by Calvanists to whom he had fled trying to escape the Catholics.

So, yeah.

21 minutes ago, JarMan said:

I don't disagree that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction, which is what you seem to be arguing most strongly for. But I think you can take almost any perceived parallel with the 19th Century and find a better one with the 16th or 17th. The Book of Mormon is not Joseph's religion, for example. (Where are the three kingdoms, the pre-existence, and the temple rituals?) 

I'm 1829 it very much is Joseph and Oliver's religion. That includes the very non-LDS view of the godhead, the hodgepodge of Protestant beliefs with a Methodist lean, ect. It's written before he developed his theology which evolved constantly over the 14 years or so between the founding and his lynching. That's also a point in favor of 19th c. authorship as inserting the divine into the production raises serious questions about this problematic lack of restoration doctrine as well. Whether by a 16th c. writer or Nephites, the problem is the same.

30 minutes ago, JarMan said:

.The Book of Mormon wars were sometimes religious, many times disastrous, and frustratingly never-ending.

The conflict between Native Americans and Europeans was as well.

Here's a poem from the same era written by one of the best known poets of the 1830s, and in no ways affiliated with the Mormon movement:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55341/the-prairies

Excerpt:

 As o’er the verdant waste I guide my steed,
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his sides
The hollow beating of his footsteps seems
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here—
The dead of other days?—and did the dust
Of these fair solitudes once stir with life
And burn with passion? Let the mighty mounds
That overlook the rivers, or that rise
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks,
Answer. A race, that long has passed away,
Built them;—a disciplined and populous race
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet the Greek
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock
The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields
Nourished their harvest, here their herds were fed,
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed,
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke.
All day this desert murmured with their toils,
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, and wooed
In a forgotten language, and old tunes,
From instruments of unremembered form,
Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man came—
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,
And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
The solitude of centuries untold
Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground
Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone;
All—save the piles of earth that hold their bones,
The platforms where they worshipped unknown gods,
The barriers which they builded from the soil
To keep the foe at bay—till o’er the walls
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by one,
The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped
With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres,
And sat unscared and silent at their feast.
Haply some solitary fugitive,
Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense
Of desolation and of fear became
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die.
Man’s better nature triumphed then. Kind words
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude conquerors
Seated the captive with their chiefs; he chose
A bride among their maidens, and at length
Seemed to forget—yet ne’er forgot—the wife
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones,
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his race.

 

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10 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You seem stuck on that, even though I specified 1829 for you, realizing that you just haven't bothered to adequately inform yourself on the translation process.

And minus some small bits of Mosiah for whom it's generally assumed Emma served as scribe, Oliver was the scribe for the text we have. Them's the facts.

10 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The trouble with such conspiracies, as competent historians all know, is that some conspirators just can't keep their mouths shut.  The moreso since some of those you list became apostates, and certainly would have wanted revenge by blowing the lid on the plot.  Not only do you favor an imaginary plot, but you ignore all the witnesses to the translation process.

Considering the Whitmers used the Book of Mormon to claim a leadership role in their own Church that lasted into the 1890s, the Smiths battled over the church with the 12, Oliver had a soft split from Smith going to lead the Missouri saints that flared into a schism and his departure into a life in which he struggled to shake the Mormon albatross until his failures sent him back...I don't know. Sounds like a pretty shaky relationship between scoundrels alright.

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15 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

As to the late Dr Coe, who firmly believed that Mesoamerica benefited from direct influence from Asia, his own book on The Maya, 9th ed. (Thames & Hudson, 2015), was evaluated today by a couple of guys at the FairMormon Conference, in which they compared in detail the claims made in the BofM with the claims made by Coe about the Maya.  I have always said that one need only read Dr Coe's actual views on Mesoamerica in order to find excellent parallels with the BofM.  I had no idea someone would do exactly that.  Bruce Dale and Brian Dale, "Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (a Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya, 9th Edition)," FairMormon Conference, Aug 5, 2020.

Yeah, that was a terrible paper that failed on all points. The over 800 comments on The Interpreter involved probably the only real review the work legitimately received and exposed failings from it's use of Bayesian Analysis to the abysmal abuse of parallel mania that the supposed points were based on. It's a poor showing on the part of the Dales.

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24 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

If you were a serious anthropologist, you would already know the answer to that question, which you bring in from out in left field.  Sounds very bigoted and prejudiced to me. 

https://www.quora.com/Many-questions-on-Ancient-Egypt-are-about-whether-the-Egyptians-were-black-or-Middle-Eastern-Many-archaeologists-have-answered-that-they-were-indigenous-but-at-times-with-input-from-Nubia-and-the-Middle-East-Why-are/answer/Bob-Smith-3106 .

That's not answering the question asked. You dismissed the very notion of Native Americans on the grounds the Americas were populated by a migration. The same could be said of Australia, Europe, Asia, and almost everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa where the human species originated. So why single out Native Americans in this way? It would seem your zeal in imposing a Mormon worldview onto the evidence is taking you into problematic territory on this issue.

 

Edited by Honorentheos
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On 8/2/2020 at 12:45 PM, bdouglas said:

Two months ago someone from my extended family, Richard (not his real name), left the church.

“I believe Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon,” he said.

I spent an hour or so pushing back on this point. I brought up the complex geography of the BOM (“Fiction writers very rarely invent geography, and when they do it’s a very simple geography”); the language (“Who invents something like Reformed Egyptian? If you’re inventing a story about Jews from 600 BC you have them speaking Hebrew”); the various plates (“Someone could write a whole book on the various plates in the BOM alone, the abridgments, the abridgments of abridgments, the large plates, the small plates, what happened to these plates over the course of a thousand years”); the messiness yet internal consistency of the narrative (“Fiction is not messy, it is tidy, organized. But the BOM is untidy, messy, and there are loose ends everywhere. Why? Because it is not fiction"); etc., etc.

But it was all to no effect. Richard has never been a reader, and most of what I said––well, it just didn’t register with him.

But what I said next, did.

“The Book of Mormon was originally rendered in a language Joseph Smith didn’t know.”

“What?”

“The Book of Mormon, the original text that Joseph Smith dictated, was not written in the English of that day. It was not the King James English of the Bible, nor was it the English of Joseph’s day. It was written in Early Modern English, a language which had been out of use for 200 years by 1827. This was a language Joseph Smith did not know and could not have known.”

Long pause. I’d finally hit on something that Richard could grasp.

"The presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon is proof that Joseph Smith did not produce the book himself," I said.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is a different kind of proof, one that is easily grasped by someone like Richard, who is not going to respond to other proofs.

Not that Richard is suddenly going to return to the church. I doubt that he will.

But the presence of EModE in the BOM, when taken with all of the other proofs, makes it extremely unlikely, really impossible, that JS wrote the BOM.

P.S. - Tried to edit headline but can't.

Is there any substantive evidence to support the "reformed Egyptian" claim? With the Anthon historical narrative no longer accepted as credible, is there any other evidence? If such a language ever existed outside of the Mormon claims, would we be able to translate it into 19th century American English? Can we remove 19th century allusions and hints of so-called "Second Great Awakening" hysteria? It is suspect, from a historical and archaeological perspective, that God would choose this one particular culture to wipe all evidence of existence including a scriptural manuscript from the earth and say, "Just pray about it and the Spirit will take care of the rest." 

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19 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

And minus some small bits of Mosiah for whom it's generally assumed Emma served as scribe, Oliver was the scribe for the text we have. Them's the facts.

No, they ain't.  You seem never to get the hint.  You just ignore the fact that Oliver was not the only scribe for the Original Manuscript of 1829.   Two other scribes participated in June (likely John and Christian Whitmer), and those are only the ones we know of.  Since most of the O MS is missing, we can't evaluate the handwriting on the bulk of it.  Had you bothered to read my own study, you would have known that Emma’s brother-in-law, Michael Morse, knew Joseph in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and saw him translating on several occasions.  He later recalled that Joseph would place

Quote

the Seer Stone in the crown of a hat, then putting his face into the hat, so as to entirely cover his face, resting his elbows upon his knees, and then dictating, word after word, while the scribes – Emma, John Whitmer, O. Cowdery, or some other, wrote it down.  W. W. Blair letter, May 22, 1879, Sandwich, Illinois, to Saints’ Herald, 26 (June 15, 1879), 190-191.

Morse was not a member of the Church.

19 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

Considering the Whitmers used the Book of Mormon to claim a leadership role in their own Church that lasted into the 1890s, the Smiths battled over the church with the 12, Oliver had a soft split from Smith going to lead the Missouri saints that flared into a schism and his departure into a life in which he struggled to shake the Mormon albatross until his failures sent him back...I don't know. Sounds like a pretty shaky relationship between scoundrels alright.

Your rationality is pretty shaky there, buddy.  You are speaking of a bunch of "scoundrels," as though they could be expected to maintain silence, and even including non-LDS people like Morse in the conspiracy.  And that after demonstrating that you can't even get the elementary facts straight.  You haven't got a clue as to good historiography.

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10 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

That's not answering the question asked. You dismissed the very notion of Native Americans on the grounds the Americas were populated by a migration. The same could be said of Australia, Europe, Asia, and almost everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa where the human species originated. So why single out Native Americans in this way? It would seem your zeal in imposing a Mormon worldview onto the evidence is taking you into problematic territory on this issue.

I mentioned it since professional anthropologists don't play your "native American" game.  You first mentioned that false term, not me.  There are no native Americans, just as there are no native Australians.  You live in an imaginary world in which woke and politically correct (but false) notions dominate.  You throw around nonsense in the garb of fact.  Your automatic rejection of fact-based analysis may serve your bigoted purposes, but is highly prejudicial and contemptuous.

Were you to deal in standard scholarship and accepted facts, our conversation might be fruitful.  Instead you have falsely accused me in one of your imaginary conspiracies.

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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5 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Servetus was executed for heretical beliefs while Abinidi was killed for telling a King he was a sinner. Abinidi went to King Noah knowing he'd be killed but playing the role of mythical martyr while Servetus was executed by Calvanists to whom he had fled trying to escape the Catholics.

So, yeah.

Nope. Abinadi and Servetus were both executed for insulting the ruler. Calvin and Noah vowed to kill their opponents after these insults but had to bide their time until they came back to the city. Both rulers used the pretext of heresy in order to burn them alive. And they both committed the exact same heresy, which was essentially claiming that Jesus was God the Father in the form of a man. A secondary reason for Servetus' execution was his opposition to infant baptism. Abinadi also spoke against infant baptism to Noah and his priests. Servetus finally returned to Geneva in disguise, like Abinadi. He came to Calvin's church where Calvin was preaching. Some think Servetus was purposefully seeking out a confrontation with Calvin. He definitely wasn't seeking safety In Geneva but was just passing through on his way to Italy. In Servetus' trial he quoted the entirety of Isaiah 53, just like Abinadi.

A former Geneva insider, Sebastian Costellio, took up Servetus' cause after his death. Like Alma (a former insider with Noah), who took up Abinadi's cause, he fled the city after the confrontation. He became the father of a new spiritual movement that was eventually adopted by the Dutch Arminians in the early 1600s: the same Arminian doctrine we find in the Book of Mormon.

5 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

I'm 1829 it very much is Joseph and Oliver's religion. That includes the very non-LDS view of the godhead, the hodgepodge of Protestant beliefs with a Methodist lean, ect.

The Book of Mormon does not present a hodgepodge of Protestant beliefs. It presents a religious system very consistent with the Arminian beliefs of the early 1600s. Methodism would eventually descend from Arminianism. And it’s tough to say the Book of Mormon represented Joseph's and Oliver's religion when the evidence is that Joseph immediately began adding things to it after the Book of Mormon was published. That would indicate it did not represent his religion but just a starting point in order to add all the later novelties. 

5 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

The conflict between Native Americans and Europeans was as well.

Again, you have to ask which one is closer? The early modern wars are a much better match.

5 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Here's a poem from the same era written by one of the best known poets of the 1830s, and in no ways affiliated with the Mormon movement:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55341/the-prairies

Excerpt:

Early modern Europeans speculated widely about the native Americans. They debated how they got there. Among the many theories were that they were the lost tribes and that they came from Asia by boat immediately after the tower of Babel. Some thought there were multiple migrations. Many thought they were of Jewish ancestry because they practiced circumcision and other rites that resembled Judaism. Most Europeans  thought of them as savages. Early modern ideas of racial superiority are reflected in the Book of Mormon. I am not aware of a belief in a savage people replacing a civilized people, as in the poem you cited, but I will research this.

Edited by JarMan
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4 hours ago, JarMan said:

It presents a religious system very consistent with the Arminian beliefs of the early 1600s. Methodism would eventually descend from Arminianism. And it’s tough to say the Book of Mormon represented Joseph's and Oliver's religion

I've got no horse in the "which century?" race, but we discussed this a while back. I'm still not certain that the Arminianism in the Book of Mormon didn't come from Nathanael Emmons, Oliver's great uncle, who was a friend of Ethan Smith and also one of the leading figures in the New Divinity movement that swept New England in the decades previous to the Book of Mormon. Dr. John Smith, a cousin of Asael Smith was also an Arminian and taught both Ethan Smith and Solomon Spaulding at Dartmouth. 

Curiously, a narrative about a golden book containing the spiritual history of "lost Israelites" also pops up in a small village in Burma, one year before the Book of Mormon was published. The American missionaries who first told of this account in 1829 were Baptists out of the New Divinity, Hopkinsian movements. They were self-proclaimed followers of Nathanael Emmons, Oliver Cowdery's great uncle.

This says to me that the Dartmouth Arminianism in the late 18th century was the most probable source of the Book of Mormon narrative. Although the toponyms and geography come from 16th and 17th century Utopian texts about Rechabites (Rahmans as they were known) in the isles of the sea. 

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8 hours ago, Damien the Leper said:

Is there any substantive evidence to support the "reformed Egyptian" claim? With the Anthon historical narrative no longer accepted as credible, is there any other evidence? If such a language ever existed outside of the Mormon claims, would we be able to translate it into 19th century American English? Can we remove 19th century allusions and hints of so-called "Second Great Awakening" hysteria? It is suspect, from a historical and archaeological perspective, that God would choose this one particular culture to wipe all evidence of existence including a scriptural manuscript from the earth and say, "Just pray about it and the Spirit will take care of the rest." 

Its apparent that Joseph thought one Egyptian character would equate to perhaps a paragraph or two of English text.  It likely just wasn't him who embraced that assumption due to the mystique of ancient Egypt of his era.  

So when the BoM claims that Egyptian was used so they could condense the messages, it feels like it's playing off that mystique.  It seems like it would have been a really involved process for the people to speak one language and yet some elites among them would write in a foreign language.  And to translate the brass plates into Egyptian of some form would have been incredibly difficult for the assumed skills they had.  Nephi comes off more as a charismatic leader than a studied savant.  In the sum that one claim of Egyptian doesn't make sense...unless perhaps Joseph felt the mystique filtered from masonic rumblings.  

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On 8/5/2020 at 8:53 AM, Bob Crockett said:

Ouch!  Way ouch!  I am not here to defend my credibility nor engage in ad hominens.   I dislike anonymous posters and especially insults from them, and make my views known.  As they are not real persons I don't think a direct attack upon them is an ad hominen.  I didn't realize Chumpatch was Dr. Carmack and I will adjust my posts accordingly. 

I gotta tell the California courts to stop citing the Kelly/Frey rule as good law (they also reject Daubert as good law) based upon your inciteful post.

What are you talking about?

You said: "A major test is, according to Daubert and corresponding state analogues...."

As you must know, Daubert is a standard rule of evidence in federal court.  And if California adopted Frye, it is clearly not one of the "corresponding state analogues."  So why bring it up?

More importantly, your articulation of Daubert is flat wrong.  You're just wrong.  Whether California courts adopt Frey or Daubert has no bearing on the fact that you're just wrong.  Daubert does not follow the "test" that you purport.

Your attempt to malign LDS scholars based on a fanciful (wrong) Daubert test is misguided.  That's not ad hominem.  That's just a fact.  And before anyone accepts your views of evidence or expert testimony, they are well-served to know that you don't know what you're talking about.

You also said: "As they are not real persons I don't think a direct attack upon them is an ad hominen."  This is just bizarre.  Unless you believe that anonymous posters are robots or aliens, they are most definitely "real persons."  Further, even if this was not the case, you should know that ad hominen is a form of argument attacking a person rather than his/her position.  The identity of a poster has no bearing on this, and it's not up to you to ordain yourself the heir of Merriam or Webster and start adulterating our poor language for your own perverse purposes.  Heaven knows, California has done enough of that already....

Edited by PacMan
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54 minutes ago, PacMan said:

What are you talking about?

You said: "A major test is, according to Daubert and corresponding state analogues...."

As you must know, Daubert is a standard rule of evidence in federal court.  And if California adopted Frye, it is clearly not one of the "corresponding state analogues."  So why bring it up?

More importantly, your articulation of Daubert is flat wrong.  You're just wrong.  Whether California courts adopt Frey or Daubert has no bearing on the fact that you're just wrong.  Daubert does not follow the "test" that you purport.

Your attempt to malign LDS scholars based on a fanciful (wrong) Daubert test is misguided.  That's not ad hominem.  That's just a fact.  And before anyone accepts your views of evidence or expert testimony, they are well-served to know that you don't know what you're talking about.

You also said: "As they are not real persons I don't think a direct attack upon them is an ad hominen."  This is just bizarre.  Unless you believe that anonymous posters are robots or aliens, they are most definitely "real persons."  Further, even if this was not the case, you should know that ad hominen is a form of argument attacking a person rather than his/her position.  The identity of a poster has no bearing on this, and it's not up to you to ordain yourself the heir of Merriam or Webster and start adulterating our poor language for your own perverse purposes.  Heaven knows, California has done enough of that already....

I'm sorry I've offended you.  Please ignore my posts.  

But what I'm reading about Ye Olde English and the Book of Mormon passes for nonsense.  I've asked to be pointed to precedential studies of other works, or peer acceptance of Dr. Carmack's works.  

Plus Jarman's recounting of the Severus auto da fe as further proof is just plain foolishness.  That story has been cited against the Book of Mormon for decades. 

What passes for a defense of the faith today?   Your temperament or science-less speculation?

Edited by Bob Crockett
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On 8/5/2020 at 9:03 AM, Bob Crockett said:

But I don't think being a critic of anonymity is necessary an ad hom.

Whatever you want to call it (it is ad hominem), you are engaging in the same type of fallacious argument by attacking the source rather than the substance of their argument.  

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4 minutes ago, Bob Crockett said:

I'm sorry I've offended you.  Please ignore my posts.  

Really?  Is that what what you say every time you lose an argument?  "Sorry I've offended you?"

Generally, introducing made-from-whole-cloth straw man arguments to distract from the merits is not intellectually honest.  But then to couch it as a response to "offense?"  Welcome to Looneyville, folks.

Don't worry.  I'm not offended.  I'm having fun.  #bobcrockettexposed

Just calling it like I see it.  Can't remember where I last heard that....

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