The Wow! A rigorous statistical approach

[DT_]

In June, Kipping submitted a new paper and uploaded a video explaining his new research. At the beginning of the video, Kipping made very compelling arguments as to why the Wow signal had to be of extraterrestrial origin. I was initially very impressed with the evidence of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. However, in the second half of the video Kipping made a rigorous analysis. In the end, Kipping concludes there's only a 1 in 50 chance that Wow is an extraterrestrial repeating signal.  Kipping says the Wow extraterrestrial hypothesis can't be ruled out, but it's very unlikely.

I have a question about LDS apologetics. I understand LDS academics make good arguments to defend The Church. LDS academics like to write papers about Hebraism, Chiasmus, Nahom, the witnesses, and so on.  Has a rigorous statistical analysis ever been made for one of the Book of Mormon models or evidences?  Kipping's video reminds me that it's very easy to make "compelling" arguments about almost anything.     

https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.08374

 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by DT_

[Kenngo1969]

Right.  I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because a rigorous analysis of the statistical and empirical evidence convinced me that this is the most logical choice in an infinite universe of possible choices.     

[pogi]

Here I thought we were going to have a discussion about the word of wisdom.  Oh well. 

13 hours ago, DT_ said:

Has a rigorous statistical analysis ever been made for one of the Book of Mormon models or evidences?  

Because statistics can't be manipulated or deceiving?  What would you even be measuring in a statistical analysis of the Book of Mormon?  Keep in mind that there are many faithful Latter-day Saints who don't support a literal interpretation of the Book of Mormon, so statistics are kind of useless for them. 

Faith can't be proven through statistical analysis.  Nor can it be disproven. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by pogi

[Calm]

The only possibly rigorous statistical study of the Book of Mormon I remember was studying possible voices, whether it was one author being creative or a number of authors as the book claims and where the divisions fell.  There were some earlier versions that have been criticized by pretty much everyone iirc, but supposedly the method has been refined. 
 

This discusses it and has the info in the footnotes:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/knowhy/is-it-possible-that-a-single-author-wrote-the-book-of-mormon

Edited August 8, 2022 by Calm

[DT_]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

Faith can't be proven through statistical analysis.  Nor can it be disproven. 

I completely agree with you. Science can't rule out the existence of God. It's one thing to have faith, it's another thing to claim there is evidence.

2 hours ago, pogi said:

  What would you even be measuring in a statistical analysis of the Book of Mormon? 

I'm interested in looking at specific claims like Hebraism, Chiasmus, Nahom, the witnesses, geography models, and so on. Watching the video would be helpful to give you an idea. You would have to create a model (make some assumptions) and make predictions. You would have to attempt to answer some questions. What are the odds of finding evidence confirming that Ismael (a member of the Tribe of Joseph) was buried in Nahom? or the odds of finding Hebraism and Chiasmus in a 19th-century book?  or the odds that a specific Book of Mormon geography model is correct.    

Edited August 8, 2022 by DT_

[DT_]

33 minutes ago, Calm said:

The only possible rigorous statistical study of the Book of Mormon I remember was studying possible voices, whether it was one author being creative or a number of authors as the book claims and where the divisions fell.  There were some earlier versions that have been criticized by pretty much everyone iirc, but supposedly the method has been refined. 
 

This discusses it and has the info in the footnotes:

https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/knowhy/is-it-possible-that-a-single-author-wrote-the-book-of-mormon

Very interesting.

Edited August 8, 2022 by DT_

[rodheadlee]

Oh darn I thought we were going to be talking about ETs. Remember Oumuamua?

[DT_]

43 minutes ago, Calm said:

This discusses it and has the info in the footnotes:

Would you have any idea when the study by Roper, Fields, and Bassist is getting published? And do you think the results would someday be confirmed by non-LDS academics?  

6 minutes ago, rodheadlee said:

Oh darn I thought we were going to be talking about ETs.

Go ahead.  Do you think there is intelligent life in the universe? 

[rodheadlee]

There's a really good book out called Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb 

He makes a case for Oumuamua being a ship from another solar system. His description of the Big Bang is very interesting too. For me it coincides with the Book of Genesis.

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, DT_ said:

Would you have any idea when the study by Roper, Fields, and Bassist is getting published? And do you think the results would someday be confirmed by non-LDS academics?  

Perhaps this is it:

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol53/iss3/8/

This isn’t something I follow, so haven’t read it myself.

I don’t know if stylometry is rigorous enough to prevent bias from significantly influencing the results, so I have no clue if such will end up confirmed by nonmember scholars.  However, John Hilton, a member, worked with a group of nonmembers and Hilton published the conclusion of their work that if wordprint analysis was a valid methodology, that it demonstrated Joseph Smith and the most likely candidates of his contemporaries were not the authors of the Book of Mormon.  This suggests that nonmembers will confirm the validity of such a study.  Multiple authors does not require the Book of Mormon be of a divine origin, after all.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4013&context=byusq

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

5 hours ago, DT_ said:

I completely agree with you. Science can't rule out the existence of God. It's one thing to have faith, it's another thing to claim there is evidence. ...

Whether you find a particular datum or a particular quantum of data to be persuasive evidence for or against a certain proposition says absolutely nothing about whether such evidence exists.  You may or may not find it persuasive, but your (dis-)inclination to be persuaded says absolutely nothing about the existence of such evidence.  You may find a particular attempt to apply a certain "rule of evidence" to a particular datum to be faulty, but, again, that says nothing about the existence of the evidence itself. 

With respect to truth claims, that, primarily, are faith-based, each of us is his or her own trier of fact (judge or juror) with respect to such claims: Each of us determines for himself or herself what the rules of evidence are, what evidence each of us will admit and will exclude as bearing on (and as tending to prove or to disprove) a particular question of faith, and so on.  I wouldn't necessarily expect you to be persuaded by evidence that, by contrast, I find persuasive, and so on.

You can engage me (and by "engage me," I mean, at least, that you can at least spare a second or two to say you're not persuaded by anything I have to say), or you can keep on playing stupid games downvoting anything I say.  You should understand that, while you may consider your arguments to be "new, fresh, and innovative" (my words), that's not necessarily how anyone who has spent any time in the universe of Latter-day Saint apologetics sees them.  Your choice.

Edited August 9, 2022 by Kenngo1969

[DT_]

58 minutes ago, Calm said:

 This suggests that nonmembers will take confirm the validity of such a study.  Multiple authors does not require the Book of Mormon be of a divine origin, after all.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4013&context=byusq

 

Absolutely. Hopefully, it gets sent to non-LDS academics for review.

Edited August 8, 2022 by DT_

[DT_]

42 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

With respect to truth claims, that, primarily, are faith-based, each of us is his or her own trier of fact (judge or juror) with respect to truth claims that, primarily, are faith-based

Explaining that to a judge would likely get you dismissed from a jury. 

42 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

 You should understand that, while you may consider your arguments to be "new, fresh, and innovative" (my words), that's not necessarily how anyone who has spent any time in the universe of Latter-day Saint apologetics sees them.  Your choice.

What arguments? I simply asked a question and Calm answered it.

42 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

 or you can keep on playing stupid games downvoting anything I say. 

I don't appreciate irrelevant sarcasm, but I'll upvote your comment.

Edited August 8, 2022 by DT_

[Kenngo1969]

38 minutes ago, DT_ said:

Explaining that to a judge would likely get you dismissed from a jury. 

So?  I'm not in court.

38 minutes ago, DT_ said:

What arguments? I simply asked a question and Calm answered it.
 

Okay.

38 minutes ago, DT_ said:

I don't appreciate irrelevant sarcasm, but I'll upvote your comment.

Meh.  You needn't upvote it if you're not inclined to do so.  If downvoting everything I say floats your boat, knock yourself out, but it's a pretty juvenile approach to dialogue.  (For what it's worth, I removed my previous negative reactions.)  Even if you were to downvote everything I write, I think that would say much more about you than it ever would about me.  I was here long before you got here, and, chances are, I'll be here, still, long after you leave.  Cheers!  

Edited August 8, 2022 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

45 minutes ago, DT_ said:

Absolutely. Hopefully, it gets sent to non-LDS academics for review.

Why would non-Latter-day-Saint academics care?

[JarMan]

In what I consider to be possibly the biggest fail in Mormon apologetic history, the Hales tried to do a Bayesian statistical analysis on the Book of Mormon: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/joseph-smith-the-worlds-greatest-guesser/

I generally enjoy the Interpreter, but they lost some cred publishing this one.

[InCognitus]

13 minutes ago, JarMan said:

the Hales tried to do a Bayesian statistical analysis

It's the Dales (Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale), not the Hales.  

Perhaps you could explain why you feel this was a "fail".

Edited August 9, 2022 by InCognitus

[Rain]

5 hours ago, DT_ said:

I completely agree with you. Science can't rule out the existence of God. It's one thing to have faith, it's another thing to claim there is evidence.

I'm interested in looking at specific claims like Hebraism, Chiasmus, Nahom, the witnesses, geography models, and so on. Watching the video would be helpful to give you an idea. You would have to create a model (make some assumptions) and make predictions. You would have to attempt to answer some questions. What are the odds of finding evidence confirming that Ismael (a member of the Tribe of Joseph) was buried in Nahom?

No idea, but one of the speakers at the FAiR conference spoke about Ishmael at Nahom.

5 hours ago, DT_ said:

or the odds of finding Hebraism and Chiasmus in a 19th-century book?  or the odds that a specific Book of Mormon geography model is correct.    

 

[DT_]

24 minutes ago, JarMan said:

In what I consider to be possibly the biggest fail in Mormon apologetic history, the Hales tried to do a Bayesian statistical analysis on the Book of Mormon: https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/joseph-smith-the-worlds-greatest-guesser/

I generally enjoy the Interpreter, but they lost some cred publishing this one.

What's wrong with his statistical analysis?

[JarMan]

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

It's the Dales (Bruce E. Dale and Brian Dale), not the Hales.  

Perhaps you could explain why you feel this was a "fail".

My bad. The Dales.

4 hours ago, DT_ said:

What's wrong with his statistical analysis?

There's way too much to rehash. There was a thread on here about it. Or you could read the many comments on the Interpreter site.

[Calm]

Here is the thread:

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/71830-joseph-smith-the-worlds-greatest-guesser/

 

[DT_]

18 hours ago, JarMan said:

My bad. The Dales.

There's way too much to rehash. There was a thread on here about it. Or you could read the many comments on the Interpreter site.

I see.

17 hours ago, Calm said:

Here is the thread:

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/71830-joseph-smith-the-worlds-greatest-guesser/

 

 Thanks.

[DT_]

On 8/8/2022 at 5:19 PM, pogi said:

Because statistics can't be manipulated or deceiving? 

Would Dale's analysis be an example?

[Stargazer]

On 8/8/2022 at 9:13 PM, rodheadlee said:

Oh darn I thought we were going to be talking about ETs. Remember Oumuamua?

Yes!  Here's a cool video about the issues

 

[rodheadlee]

Avi Loeb says there was about a 9 % chance that Oumuamua was cigar shaped and tumbling. He says it could be a solar sail driven object. I don't know if he has any YouTube podcast on it. But he was the chair at the Harvard astronomy section.