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39 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

 

And that’s how it goes. It’s a bit of a verbal game. You won’t find what you are looking for because in order for an account to be “coherent” it has to address each and every apologetic point that *you find convincing. So it’s an impossible standard to even try. Because you weren’t convinced by apologetic arguments. You were convinced by the witness of the spirit. You know it’s true and from God. So how could there possibly be a “coherent” counter argument. 
 

On the witnesses in particular, people in this thread have over and over explained why they don’t find the testimony compelling. That eye witness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence. That there is no “cross examination”. That they were all close to Joseph Smith. They essentially are from two families.  That they shared his spiritual/“magic” world view. Yet none of this is “coherent” for you. So why try? It doesn’t matter what is presented, it’s not “coherent”. 

Yup. I find it mystifying that we are expected to give weight to the witness testimony. Why? Well, they were decent honest men who never denied their testimony. Yes, and? What is the testimony evidence of? Well, that these honest men saw an angel and plates in vision. I get that, but what does that provide probative evidence for? Well, that they saw an angel and plates. 

Am I missing something or just hard-hearted?

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2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

”One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Well, you're proof that escaping a bamboozle can be done, right? So you must have some hope for the rest of us. Thank you for being persistent in your rescue efforts!

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6 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Well, you're proof that escaping a bamboozle can be done, right? So you must have some hope for the rest of us. Thank you for being persistent in your rescue efforts!

I have no interest in rescuing you or anyone else (assuming you want or need rescuing from something), but your derision is once again duly noted. 

My quoting of Sagan was simply to note that it’s not a given that, assuming the witnesses were bamboozled, they would necessarily have denounced or even recognized the deception. Last I checked, no one has ever tricked me into seeing an angel, so I don’t think my experience is relevant. 

Edited by jkwilliams
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Just now, Hamba Tuhan said:

Ouch. :vava:

I apologise that I misread your motivation as genuine concern for the 'captured'.

What are you talking about? Who has been captured, and how on earth would I go about “rescuing” them? 

If you are talking about getting people out of the LDS church, then no, I have no interest in that. Never have. Belonging to the church is good for some people, so that’s where they should be. My wife, for example, has always thrived in the church, and it would be crazy for me to try to change that. 

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22 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

What are you talking about? Who has been captured?

It's taken directly from the Sagan quote that this discussion reminded you of.

And I, for one, have been completely captured by the bamboozle (including angels).

Or does this issue apply only to the 11 witnesses?

Edited by Hamba Tuhan
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Just now, Hamba Tuhan said:

It's taken directly from the Sagan quote that you were 'reminded of'.

And I, for one, have been completely captured by the bamboozle.

Or does this issue apply only to the 11 witnesses?

It was a general statement about the psychology of deception, as it had been suggested that people who have been deceived are highly motivated to denounce the deception. I agree with Sagan that such is not the case. My uncle, for example, was defrauded of most of his savings by a church leader. Despite everything that happened, he was convinced it was all a misunderstanding and that said leader would never have intentionally cheated him. My aunt disagreed.

I certainly wasn’t suggesting you or anyone else here has been bamboozled, or the witnesses, for that matter. I’m sorry I was unclear in that.

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2 hours ago, Analytics said:

ECREE repressing novel, unexpected results isn't a major problem in science right now. What is a major problem is the opposite; people do an investigation of something or another, find ordinary evidence for extraordinary results, and then publish it thinking they discovered something amazing. This is known as the replication crisis (Replication crisis - Wikipedia). With traditional statistics, something is generally considered "statistically significant" if there is something like a 5% chance of seeing the results of the experiment due merely to chance. That level of statistical significance could be considered "ordinary" evidence. The problem is that if 20 people do 20 different experiments on something that is in fact false, we would expect by chance that 19 of them to get the expected results, and one would get particularly unlucky and would have a false positive. That one who gets the false positive tends to be the one who gets published, and that is why journals tend to get filled with junk.

This schema appears satisfactory in terms of experimental results, but how does it translate to legal-historical evaluation where replication is not available as a proxy for determining "extraordinary"?

Edit: It seems to me that Hume's formulation is more applicable across domains. 

Edited by OGHoosier
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11 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

Yup. I find it mystifying that we are expected to give weight to the witness testimony. Why? Well, they were decent honest men who never denied their testimony. Yes, and? What is the testimony evidence of? Well, that these honest men saw an angel and plates in vision. I get that, but what does that provide probative evidence for? Well, that they saw an angel and plates. 

Am I missing something or just hard-hearted?

Their witness testimony collaborates Joseph Smith’s claim concerning the origin of the Book of Mormon.

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14 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Respectfully, Ryan's application of the term "unlikely" does not need to be changed even with the climbing number of conditions. It appears to be you who introduces the shift from Ryan's framing of "unlikely" to "impossible," and I don't believe we are obligated to accept that shift. 

The problem with the "unlikely" is that he cannot define it - he admitted this. So he cannot tell me how unlikely something is. He can only tell me that he has intuited that it is unlikely. The reason why this is important is that people enforce the 'unlikeliness' by stringing them together, as Ryan does, with the idea that when they are strung together you get something that is even more unlikely. This is exactly how people misapply Bayes' theorem to religious questions. At the same time (and with the same principle) every assumption that Ryan makes also undermines his own basic premise. This is the way that mathematics and probability work. And it is widely recognized that when people aren't able to actually provide probabilities they regularly inflate those probabilities connected to their own bias and deflate the probabilities opposed by their bias. It's human nature. And when you have these intuited estimates, the one thing we can conclude is that the result is always badly flawed.

The problem is that Ryan isn't using this as "unlikely" - he is using it as "impossible". This is the only way that these things become "evidence". I don't think that Ryan's use is much different from the Edwards and Edwards paper I quoted earlier. He has these assumptions that are necessary for this to work the way that it does.

And this is all happening long before we actually start to have the real discussions (which are also critical). I have asserted, for example, that the Book of Mormon does not actually engage EModE - except, potentially, as an intentional effort to use archaic sounding language. The existence of specific places as stops in the desert for Lehi's family that Ryan mentions are locations that are identified and then interpreted back on to the text. The text isn't specific enough in its geographical descriptions to provide any sense of direct correspondence to these locations. Yet combined with the idea that Joseph didn't have access to maps that identify these locations making it 'unlikely' that Joseph Smith could have invented the textual description of the trip through the desert - well this is a completely absurd argument if we start including the unlikeliness that these guesses are right. It may be true that Joseph didn't have access to maps that identify these locations (or at least unlikely). But it is also unlikely that these locations are the one referred to in the Book of Mormon. This isn't meaningful evidence for his basic proposition. And the list goes on.

Being able to find a path through the desert with locations which may or may not be correctly identified provides us with the possibility that the description could relate to real places. This makes the book possible instead of impossible. But how does Ryan work these other unlikely premises into his calculations? He doesn't. At any rate, I suspect that this conversation has run its course.

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15 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I fail to see how you can't see the relevance. Saying that a certain piece of evidence, such as Nahom, can only initiate a shift from impossible to possible betrays your starting assumption (i.e., you are clearly starting with the premise that it is impossible for the narrative in 1 Nephi to be true). And that obviously is going to affect how one interprets the ultimate value of the evidence. In other words, where we are moving forward from matters to your definitional framework. For instance, if you were to start with the premise that the Book of Mormon claims are quite possible (instead of impossible) that would ruin your framework because, as you explained at length to @smac97 , an argument can't make something more possible. Thus, in effect, you would be compelled to admit that to some extent these evidences are actually increasing the plausibility of the Book of Mormon's claims. And that is the very position that you have been stridently arguing against.

Nahom isn't evidence. It cannot be evidence. There are several reasons why it cannot be evidence. I will list a few of them.

1: The Book of Mormon does not provide a detailed map of the journey. It is very ambiguous (at best). We can only make the case for Nahom and Wadi Sayq by making a set of assumptions - including (and this is important) that the interpretation of the text accurately reflects the historical author's intention.

2: There is nothing at any of these sites indicating that the people named in the Book of Mormon traveled there.

3: There is an assumption that our knowledge of the geography in that region is sufficient to make claims about the locations described as they were 2,600 years ago (not a lot of time on the geological time scale, but a sufficiently long time for the concerns of textual interpretation).

The way that we should determine the probability of a specific route would be to determine all of the possible routes that could be taken and then determine the likelihood of each one so that the total likelihood is 100%. This is probably impossible (given the issues listed above) but this recognition should be sufficient to come to the conclusion that it is likely that there are problems with this identification. Having said that, it is certainly one interpretation of the text mapped out onto the geography which means that the text can be read and interpreted in a way that allows for at least one route through the desert. This makes the journey as described possible (without making it plausible). The discussion here is about whether such a route could exist. It is an entirely different discussion as to whether or not the defined route was the route taken by a historical Lehi. These are two entirely different questions (historians tend to distinguish between the two as the difference between verisimilitude and historicity).

This has absolutely nothing to do with an opinion of the text as an authentic translation of an ancient history.

This does have something to do with whether or not the Book of Mormon's claims are possible (or impossible) but not whether or not the events in the book really happened. It is your leap to argue that if the could have happened, then they must have happened. This is shown in the claim that you make that being able to find a route through the desert that matches an interpretation of the text shifts from possibility to evidence. It doesn't work that way.

Edited by Benjamin McGuire
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36 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Nahom isn't evidence. It cannot be evidence. There are several reasons why it cannot be evidence. I will list a few of them.

1: The Book of Mormon does not provide a detailed map of the journey. It is very ambiguous (at best). We can only make the case for Nahom and Wadi Sayq by making a set of assumptions - including (and this is important) that the interpretation of the text accurately reflects the historical author's intention.

2: There is nothing at any of these sites indicating that the people named in the Book of Mormon traveled there.

3: There is an assumption that our knowledge of the geography in that region is sufficient to make claims about the locations described as they were 2,600 years ago (not a lot of time on the geological time scale, but a sufficiently long time for the concerns of textual interpretation).

The way that we should determine the probability of a specific route would be to determine all of the possible routes that could be taken and then determine the likelihood of each one so that the total likelihood is 100%. This is probably impossible (given the issues listed above) but this recognition should be sufficient to come to the conclusion that it is likely that there are problems with this identification. Having said that, it is certainly one interpretation of the text mapped out onto the geography which means that the text can be read and interpreted in a way that allows for at least one route through the desert. This makes the journey as described possible (without making it plausible). The discussion here is about whether such a route could exist. It is an entirely different discussion as to whether or not the defined route was the route taken by a historical Lehi. These are two entirely different questions (historians tend to distinguish between the two as the difference between verisimilitude and historicity).

This has absolutely nothing to do with your opinion of the text as an authentic translation of an ancient history.

This does have something to do with whether or not the Book of Mormon's claims are possible (or impossible) but not whether or not the events in the book really happened. It is your leap to argue that if the could have happened, then they must have happened. This is shown in the claim that you make that being able to find a route through the desert that matches an interpretation of the text shifts from possibility to evidence. It doesn't work that way.

Why do you insist on empirical evidence that the Book of Mormon is true when the prophets who wrote the book solemnly testify that the only way anyone can know the book is true is by the revelatory power of the Holy Ghost? Talk about setting oneself up for futile and endless exercises in frustration! God has deliberately hidden the empirical evidence that will testify the the Book of Mormon is true to insure that the only way one can gain a witness of its divine authenticity is by faith in Christ and revelation from God alone. I pity anyone who needs scientific and historical evidence before they’ll believe the Book of Mormon is true because they are engaging in the fool’s errand to end all other fool’s errands.

32 Yea, verily I say unto you, in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things—

33 Things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof—

34 Things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven. (Doctrine and Covenants 101)

Edited by teddyaware
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6 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Why do you insist on empirical evidence that the Book of Mormon is true when the prophet’s who wrote the book solemnly testify that the only way anyone can know the book is true is by the revelatory power of the Holy Ghost? Talk about setting oneself up for futile and endless exercises in frustration! God has deliberately hidden the empirical evidence that will testify the the Book of Mormon is true to insure that the only way one can gain a witness of its divine authenticity is by faith in Christ and revelation from God alone. I pity anyone who needs scientific and historical evidence before they’ll believe the Book of Mormon is true because they are engaging in the fools errand to end all other fools errands.

32 Yea, verily I say unto you, in that aday when the Lord shall come, he shall breveal all things—

33 Things which have passed, and ahidden things which no man knew, things of the bearth, by which it was made, and the purpose and the end thereof—

34 Things most precious, things that are above, and things that are beneath, things that are in the earth, and upon the earth, and in heaven. (Doctrine and Covenants 101)

There is a huge difference between insisting on empirical evidence and questioning overstated apologetics.

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10 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

but how does it translate to legal-historical evaluation where replication is not available as a proxy for determining "extraordinary"?

 

To whatever else anyone else would say, I would classify as “extraordinary” anything with a life changing ask. Like if someone showed up to my home, told me that I needed to quit my job, sell the house and leave my family behind, because xyz. That’s extraordinary. Similarly, the church of Jesus Christ expects its members to commit to the law of consecration when they covenant to dedicate “ time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed us to building up Jesus Christ’s Church on the earth.” 
 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/what-is-temple-endowment?lang=eng

Edited by SeekingUnderstanding
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14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:
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I am looking for a "counter-explanation."  One that addresses the same things the Latter-day Saints have been pointing to: the Witness statements, the complexity and content of the text.  "Joseph wrote it" is improved by "Joseph wrote it because he had moundbuilders in mind," but not by much.

And that’s how it goes. It’s a bit of a verbal game.

Not at all.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

You won’t find what you are looking for because in order for an account to be “coherent” it has to address each and every apologetic point that *you find convincing.

I'm fine with a piecemeal approach.  And I would not insist on a counterpoint to "each and every apologetic point."

Vogel's book is an extended exercise at throwing a few things at the wall, pointing to a few that stick, and ignoring the things that fall or that aren't thrown at all.

I really really want to examine a good, solid, naturalistic "counter-explanation" for the origins of the Book of Mormon.  And if "coherent" is comes across as pejorative (I can see why you might have thought that), replace it with "evidence-based counter-explanation," one that seeks to go as far in advancing and establishing a naturalistic explanation as can be compared with the "apologetic" approach.  I just don't see a symmetry between the two.  The apologists are taking on and addressing evidences.  Meanwhile, the critics (who, I concede, are not nearly as unified in purpose and motive) take what Daniel Peterson has called a "guerrilla warefare" approach:

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I have faith because I have examined the evidence and received spiritual promptings confirming the divinity of the Restoration.  For me, the ultimate source of knowledge is the Spirit, but the catalyst through which that source is made manifest is the Book of Mormon.  It has to be accounted for.  The statements of the witnesses have to be accounted for.  

The text of The Book of Mormon exists.  The LDS Church has presented an explanation as to how that text came to exist.  Just ask any missionary. 

In contrast, critics and dissidents have presented alternative explanations as to the origins of the text.  That is certainly their prerogative.  But at that point they are the ones making a claim.  They are the ones asserting that the Church's teachings about the origins of the book are factually false.  They are the ones making assertions about naturalistic or quasi-religious-but-still-rejecting-the-Church's-position explanations for The Book of Mormon.  The "Inspired Fiction" theory is an example of such countervailing explanations for the existence and content of the text, as is the Spaulding-Rigdon Theory (and other "multiple author" theories), the "Joseph Smith as the sole author" theory, the "View of the Hebrews" theory, Grant Palmer's "The Golden Pot" theory,  "The Late War" theory, and so on.

So the problem arises when critics and dissidents A) reject the LDS Church's explanation for the Book of Mormon (their prerogative, but bear with me...), B) present an alternative naturalistic (or the oh-so-weird hybrid of fraudulent and inspired) explanation, C) fail to substantiate or provide evidence for such alternative explanations, and D) complain about being mistreated when they are called on their poor reasoning, lack of evidence, etc.

I have found these countervailing theories to be very flawed in, to the extent such things exist, their reasoning, their assessment of relevant evidence, and so on.  Conjecture and evidence-free speculation predominate.  For example, some of the "Inspired Fiction" folks positively twist themselves up in knots trying to explain how Joseph Smith was a "pious fraud" who was inspired by God to write the plates, but who also fabricated a fake set of plates, who lied to or colluded with the Witnesses about presenting false testimonies about these plates, who spent the rest of his life lying about the plates and the origins of The Book of Mormon, and also about how Joseph Smith was alternatively insane or profoundly mentally ill when he did all of these things (hence the "pious fraud" moniker), and also about how all the prophets and apostles from Joseph Smith to now have either been complicit in perpetuating this massive fraud or else have been collectively and uniformly duped and deceived by it, and that God is somehow the author and instigator of this massive web of lies and deceit.

So yes, when the Church presents claims about The Book of Mormon, then the Church has duty to substantiate its position on that issue.  In this I think the Church and its members have done a rather good job of A) focusing on having "the Spirit" be the primary means of conversion, while also B) marshaling some quantum of secondary, non-dispositive "evidence" (the Witness statements about the Plates, textual evidences, Skousen's work, etc.).

Likewise, when critics and dissidents present alternative claims about The Book of Mormon, then it is their duty to substantiate their positions on that issue.  In this I think they have . . . not done very well at all.

Again, the text of The Book of Mormon exists.  It should be accounted for.  In 2004 Daniel Peterson wrote an excellent article on this issue: "'In the Hope that Something Will Stick': Changing Explanations for The Book of Mormon".  It's worth a read.  Essentially, he posits that the Church's position is that The Book of Mormon is a translation, through divine means, of an ancient historical text.  He further posits that the critics' position is that The Book of Mormon is a fraud, that it is not a translation of an ancient historical text.  

Well, if that's their position, then I think they need to defend it.  I think they have done a poor job of this so far.

Of course, the critics/opponents of the Church are not obligated to provide a coherent counter-explanation for The Book of Mormon.  But the point is, they have not been able to.  We're coming up on nearly 200 years since the original publication of the text, and yet when the chips are down, and when a well-informed person like Daniel Peterson (or Ryan Dahle) argues for the plausibility of the LDS position, we don't get reasoned responses and rebuttals.  We get glib sarcasm.  We get curt dismissals.  We get anything but an engagement of the evidence.

This is part of why Daniel Peterson "can't manage to disbelieve," and why he suggests to critics (correctly, in my view) that "it’s intellectually incumbent upon people like that to, come on, give us an answer to this. Otherwise it’s like guerrilla warfare. You attack and attack and attack, you always withdraw, you never defend territory. You never have to stake out your own explanation, which then will be subject to criticism and attack."

In June 2018 Ryan Dahle started a thread I found illuminating and useful: Why Not Engage the Evidence for Historicity?

I commented in it:

Quote

Daniel Peterson and Bill Hamblin are addressing the evidence.  They are addressing the ramifications of divergent opinions about the origins of The Book of Mormon.  The LDS Church is that Joseph Smith was telling the truth.  That explanation, while audacious, is nevertheless "simple and elegant."  In contrast, alternative naturalistic explanations "just don't work and they get more and more complex," to the point of implausibility (and operating well beyond any notions of supporting evidence).  Dr. Peterson, noting this implausibility to a critic, got a response of "I don’t have to lower myself to your simplistic little dichotomies.”

Here's we're getting a response ("I'm not sure we're even speaking the same language") that is saying pretty much the same thing.  It's a refusal to address the evidence.  A refusal to explore and acknowledge the ramifications (and, frankly, the flaws) in the alternative naturalistic explanations for The Book of Mormon.  

Of course, the critics/opponents of the Church are not obligated to provide a coherent counter-explanation for The Book of Mormon.  But the point is, they have not been able to.  We're coming up on nearly 200 years since the original publication of the text, and yet when the chips are down, and when a well-informed person like Daniel Peterson (or Ryan Dahle) argues for the plausibility of the LDS position, we don't get reasoned responses and rebuttals.  We get glib sarcasm.  We get curt dismissals.  We get anything but an engagement of the evidence.

This is part of why Daniel Peterson "can't manage to disbelieve," and why he suggests to critics (correctly, in my view) that "it’s intellectually incumbent upon people like that to, come on, give us an answer to this. Otherwise it’s like guerrilla warfare. You attack and attack and attack, you always withdraw, you never defend territory. You never have to stake out your own explanation, which then will be subject to criticism and attack."

This is likely why Ryan Dahle seems to be suggesting, in the absence of a coherent counter-explanation re: historicity, "the evidences in favor of faith are collectively better than the current competing arguments."

If Daniel Peterson and Ryan Dahle are up in the night, then I want to know that.  I want to consider counter-explanations that actually engage the Book of Mormon on its own terms.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So it’s an impossible standard to even try.

Well, let's pare things down some.  Back in 2020 I wrote this:

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Smart people more knowledgable in this subject than I am:  What evidence is there that the BOM is a historical record?  Is there any evidence?  And to clarify, I'm not asking for proof of anything.  Just evidence in support of.

Yes, there is evidence.  Quite a bit, IMO.  The sufficiency and probative value of the evidence is very much in dispute, but the existence of the evidence is pretty hard to deny.

Putting aside "evidence" from the Spirit, I would first point to the text overall.  Its origins need to be accounted for.  I don't think Joseph Smith could have written it at all, let alone in the timeframe involved.  

Second, I would point to the statements of the Witnesses, and to the credbility of those witnesses (starting, perhaps, with Richard L. Anderson's Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses).

Third, I would point to evidences within the text.  Its complexity.  Its narrative structure.  Linguistic elements.  It's internal chronological and geographic consistency.  Hebraisms.  Chiasmus.  Lots and lots of good stuff in here.

Fourth, there are some evidences which have some sort of interaction with or facet touching on archaeology.  See, e.g. this article: Five Compelling Archeological Evidences For the Book of Mormon.  The "five evidences" are:

  • Metal Plates
  • The Nahom Altar
  • Cement in Mesoamerica
  • The Seal of Mulek
  • Barley in the Americas

Of these, the Seal of Mulek seems to be the one that I think critics would be most likely to construe as "archaeological" (read: artifactual) evidence (though the Nahom Altar seems pretty hard to ignore).  But both of these are Old World artifacts, and I think critics want artifacts from Mesoamerica.

Fifth, I would point an interested party to the Book of Mormon Central website: https://bookofmormoncentral.org/

Sixth, I would point an interested party to Jeff Lindsay's "Book of Mormon Evidences" page: https://www.jefflindsay.com/BMEvidences.shtml

Seventh, I would point an interested party to FAIR's page about evidences for the Book of Mormon: https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Category:Book_of_Mormon

Eighth, I would point an interested party to the following essays:

These are the resources that immediately come to mind.

Much of what is termed "evidence for the Book of Mormon" is better characterized as "assumptions regarding and interpretations of evidence for the Book of Mormon."

Points 1-4 would be a good place to start.  Parts 5-7 is perhaps too expansive, and part 8 is more about philosophical approaches, methodologies, assumptions, and so on.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Because you weren’t convinced by apologetic arguments. You were convinced by the witness of the spirit. You know it’s true and from God. So how could there possibly be a “coherent” counter argument. 

No, no and no.  I have not said this.  As noted above: "Putting aside 'evidence' from the Spirit, I would first point to..."

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

On the witnesses in particular, people in this thread have over and over explained why they don’t find the testimony compelling.

Special pleading has been on ample display.

Most of what I have seen is conclusory.  I am not seeing an assessment, and explanation of why the testimony of the Witnesses is not probative, just special pleading and conclusory statements that it is not.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

That eye witness testimony is the least reliable for of evidence.

And yet historical events are often transmitted through it.  We work with the evidence we have, not the evidence we would like to have.

Meanwhile, we often end up relying on non-percipient and after-the-fact hearsay (sometimes even hearsay within hearsay) sources for historical events, often with substantial provenance problems.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

That there is no “cross examination”.

Even more special pleading.  This is true for witnesses for all long-past events.

Nobody has disputed the historical reality of Caesar's assassination based on the lack of "cross examination" of witnesses (or, for that matter, the near-total reliance on long-after-the-fact hearsay sources).

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

That they were all close to Joseph Smith.  They essentially are from two families.  

Most of them were later estranged from Joseph Smith, and had many decades to recant, often in the face of scorn and ridicule.  Yet they never did, and instead steadfastly maintained their testimony.  See, e.g., here:

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According to Richard L. Anderson, throughout Cowdery’s life, “He told the same simple story of the vision, whether under privation, persecution, resentment against the translator of the Book of Mormon, ridicule by non-Mormons, or knowledge of imminent death.”15
...
David Whitmer, the most interviewed of the witnesses, claimed that throughout his life “thousands came to inquire” and according to Anderson, “over fifty of these conversations are reported in reasonable detail in contemporary diaries, letters, and newspapers, supplemented by later recollections.”21 Anderson described Whitmer as “Impeccable in reputation, consistent in scores of recorded interviews, obviously sincere, and personally capable of detecting delusion—no witness is more compelling that David Whitmer.”22

Although Whitmer was the only one of the Three Witnesses who never mended his broken ties with the Church, his deathbed testimony stands as a final stamp of certitude of his lifelong conviction: “if God ever uttered a truth, the testimony I now bear is true. I did see the angel of God, and I beheld the glory of the Lord, and he declared the record true.”23

And here:

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Did the Book of Mormon witnesses know they would be ridiculed and not believed?

The witnesses were not naive

They knew that they would not be believed by many, and would suffer ridicule or personal/professional costs. Despite this, they stuck to their claims.

David Whitmer recalled:

“When we were first told to publish our statement, we felt sure the people would not believe it, for the Book told of a people who were refined and dwelt in large cities; but the Lord told us that He would make it known to the people, and people should discover the ruins of the lost cities and abundant evidence of the truth of what is written in the Book.”[1]

And here (same link) :

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The witnesses had much to gain by denying their experiences

Martin Harris noted that he would have been well-paid if he was willing to deny his witness:

A few hours before his death and when he was so weak and enfeebled that he was unable to recognize me or anyone, and knew not to whom he was speaking, I asked him if he did not feel that there was an element at least, of fraudulence and deception in the things that were written and told of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and he replied as he had always done so many, many times in my hearing the same spirit he always manifested when enjoying health and vigor and said: ‘The Book of Mormon is no fake. I know what I know. I have seen what I have seen and I have heard what I have heard. I have seen the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon is written. An angel appeared to me and others and testified to the truthfulness of the record, and had I been willing to have perjured myself and sworn falsely to the testimony I now bear I could have been a rich man, but I could not have testified other than I have done and am now doing for these things are true.[2]

One non-member noted that the excommunicated Oliver Cowdery would have been the editor of a Democratic Party newspaper, “but was dropped on the discovery that he was one of the seven founders of Mormonism.”[3] Cowdery would have been advantaged to have denied his witness, but did not. Later, in 1848, an opposing political party opposed Cowdery’s Democratic candidacy partly because he was “one of the three witnesses to the discovery of the Golden Plates, or Mormon Bible, by Joe Smith.”[4] Richard Anderson noted that citations from the Book of Mormon were then used as “the basis of personal sarcasm against Cowdery.”[5] Again, Oliver would have been advantaged to distance himself from his testimony and witness, but did not.

I see lots of a priori, out-of-hand dismissal, but I don't see meaningful interaction with the foregoing.

If, in your view, the familial/social proximity of a witness to Joseph Smith affects the credibility of their witness statements, then I think it is incumbent upon you to address their later estrangement from and/or antipathy against Joseph Smith as also affecting their refusal to recant or otherwise qualify or step back from their witness statements (particularly where, as noted above, they had ample incentives to do so).

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

That they shared his modern world view.

Not sure what this means.

14 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Yet known of this is “coherent” for you.  So why try? It doesn’t matter what is presented it’s not coherent. 

Again: I really really want to examine a good, solid naturalistic "counter-explanation" for the origins of the Book of Mormon.  And if "coherent" is comes across as pejorative (I can see why you might have thought that), replace it with "evidence-based counter-explanation," one that seeks to go as far in advancing and establishing a naturalistic explanation as can be compared with the "apologetic" approach.

I think the assessments of the Witness statements are facile, rife with ad hominem, more conclusory than explanatory, and largely fail to address the data/evidence available (in that critics are unaware of, or refuse to address, evidence regarding the character and  credibility of the Witnesses, their subsequent estrangements from Joseph Smith, the pressures/incentives they faced to recant, their uniform refusal to do so, etc.).

As regarding the alternative naturalistic approaches to the authorship of the text of the Book of Mormon, the "Joseph wrote it" explanation is likewise facile, and ad hoc, almost entirely speculative, conclusory, and largely in contradiction of the historical data/evidence (as to Joseph Smith's education, his writing ability, information available to him at the time, the speed and testimonial evidence regarding the translation, and so on).

The same goes for alternative naturalistic explanations for the content of the text itself.  As I said earlier: "Its complexity.  Its narrative structure.  Linguistic elements.  It's internal chronological and geographic consistency.  Hebraisms.  Chiasmus.  Lots and lots of good stuff in here."  Someone had to have written this stuff, and the likelihood of that someone being Joseph Smith seems . . . pretty low.  So that often takes critics into "Conspiracy Theory" territory, where they have really not made a very good showing at all.  

To sum up, I'll end with quoting this comment from Dr. Peterson:

Quote

The most serious contemporary criticisms of the Book of Mormon and of Mormonism more broadly tend to come not from self-proclaimed orthodox (i.e., usually Evangelical) Christians, but from self-identified atheistic materialists or naturalists. The Utah-based historian Dale Morgan, largely forgotten today but still much admired in certain small contemporary circles, wrote a 1945 letter to the believing Latter-day Saint historian Juanita Brooks. In it, he identifies the fundamental issue with unusual candor:

Quote

With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church.

In Risen Indeed, Stephen Davis remarks that 

Quote

believers point to something of an embarrassment in the position of those who do not believe in the resurrection: their inability to offer an acceptable alternative explanation of the known facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. The old nineteenth-century rationalistic explanations (hallucination, swoon theory, stolen body, wrong tomb, etc.) all seem to collapse of their own weight once spelled out, and no strong new theory has emerged as the consensus of scholars who deny that the resurrection occurred.

A similar situation obtains, in my judgment, with regard to the Book of Mormon and certain other elements of the Restoration. While, for instance, this or that aspect of the Book of Mormon can, hypothetically, be accounted for by means of something within Joseph Smith’s early nineteenth-century information environment, a fully comprehensive counterexplanation for Joseph’s claims remains promised but manifestly unprovided. Critics have disagreed over the nearly two centuries since the First Vision about whether Joseph was brilliant or stupid, whether he was sincerely hallucinating or cunningly conscious of his fraud, whether he concocted the Book of Mormon alone or with co-conspirators (their own identity either hotly debated or completely unknown), whether he was a cynical atheist or a pious fraud defending Christianity, and so forth.

Peterson here calls for "a fully comprehensive counterexplanation for {the Book of Mormon}."  I sure would like to see that as well, but I'll settle for something more than the scattershot approach taken by so many critics, which approach is largely based on the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited by smac97
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8 minutes ago, smac97 said:

With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church.

You really think this is why people don't find Mormon apologetics compelling? Yikes.

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18 hours ago, smac97 said:

There is also "an unbroken historical record" that A. Joseph Smith and the Witnesses existed and B. that they testified as to the physical reality of the Plates (the Three Witnesses testified of considerably more than that).

And yet nobody is saying that this "unbroken historical record" establishes the reality of the Plates, right?  So "an unbroken historical record" doesn't seem to get us very far.

Moreover, if we look that this historical record, is it based on first-hand, percipient witness testimony of the assassination (in 44 BC)?  Well, not so much.  See, e.g., here:

First off, I am now adding Julius Caesar to my list of things to read about, so thank you. 

I guess for me, I don't think that anyone is questioning the existence of Joseph Smith or the witnesses existed. There is an unbroken record of them as people and what them are witnesses of.

I can believe that Caesar was killed based on the record as passed down with a fairly high level of certainty, lets say it is more likely than not that the main points of his death are accurate; 1. Julius Caesar is a real person and 2. He died around 44 BC. The actual story of his death and who was responsible has multiple narratives. But I think it is fair to say that most people can agree with points 1 and 2, (1 more so than 2). There are written works that Julius Casear is the presumed author, the Roman Empire timeline and that of his successors was well documented by historians at that time, their are coins and statues and artifacts contemporaneous that increase the likelihood of his existence. 

The fact that Joseph Smith claims to have translated ancient plates about a previously unknown (to the modern world) civilization, and the corroborating evidence of this civilization was only witnessed by people who could not independently verify his claims as to the translation of the characters on the plates reduces (not eliminates) the strength/power of this event.

If we break down the Book of Mormon to similar points as Caesar; 1. The Nephites existed 2. They existed on the American continents (location unknown) until around 600 AD; we have have a book, miraculously translated and the source material is not available. There are not any known artifacts, stories, histories, outside of the Gold Plates that are known to corroborate their existence. Literally nothing. 

I am listening to an interesting podcast on the Hare Krishna's, and they are a fascinating group. one of the leaders, Kirtanananda Swami, did some truly awful things, yet he has followers that will not believe that he did any wrong, and the movement has followers that may believe that things went astray, but will not deny what they felt as practitioners. They had a spiritual moment, and they will not deny it. I believe that the witnesses of the plates had a spiritual experience, but that is unique to them. 

 

 

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1 minute ago, jkwilliams said:
Quote

With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church.

You really think this is why people don't find Mormon apologetics compelling? Yikes.

I think it's more of an explanation for why people refuse to give the evidence a fair hearing and consideration.

In the interests of full disclosure, I think there are some Latter-day Saints who have something of a mirror image of this mindset.  They have reached a conclusion about the Church, and so refuse to give any consideration to any arguments or explanations which contravene that conclusion.

As for "Mormon apologetics," I can appreciate and respect the from-the-outside-looking-in skepticism that can (and often does) arise from encountering such materials in the first instance.  Such arguments, evidences, etc. are, I think, intended to be secondary and supplemental.  They are not intended to comprise the principal basis upon which an individual should accept the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is why missionaries don't do much by way of "apologetics."  I think obtaining a testimony is, by design, a process derived from reading, pondering, and praying about the Book of Mormon, and then receiving and acting on spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness and reality of its message.  Thereafter, the individual can (and should) study and utilize "Mormon apologetics" to strengthen and clarify both what we believe and why we believe it.  Kevin Christensen put it very well:

Quote

To me, it's the difference between what Alma 32 points to as "knowing", perfect knowledge, versus imperfect "cause to believe."  There is something wonderfully ironic about those who claim that there can be no grounds for faith in the absence of perfect knowledge.  Faith, by definition, involves imperfect knowledge.  But faith is always accompanied by, and flourishes best, when involved with ongoing, and growing, "cause to believe."   I may not have the tree and fruit in hand, but I do have seed, stems, shoots, and roots, and what I have now is far more than what I started with.  

In the absence of perfect knowledge, even the most skeptical, positivisitic, Post Enlightenment Rationalists, have to have a degree of faith in their ideologies, even if they will not acknowledge that faith as such. 

And the evergreen observation by Austin Farrer: "Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish."

Acceptance or rejection of the Restored Gospel is, in the end, predominantly and fundamentally a process of exercising faith.

Thanks,

-Smac

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1 minute ago, smac97 said:

I think it's more of an explanation for why people refuse to give the evidence a fair hearing and consideration.

In the interests of full disclosure, I think there are some Latter-day Saints who have something of a mirror image of this mindset.  They have reached a conclusion about the Church, and so refuse to give any consideration to any arguments or explanations which contravene that conclusion.

As for "Mormon apologetics," I can appreciate and respect the from-the-outside-looking-in skepticism that can (and often does) arise from encountering such materials in the first instance.  Such arguments, evidences, etc. are, I think, intended to be secondary and supplemental.  They are not intended to comprise the principal basis upon which an individual should accept the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is why missionaries don't do much by way of "apologetics."  I think obtaining a testimony is, by design, a process derived from reading, pondering, and praying about the Book of Mormon, and then receiving and acting on spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness and reality of its message.  Thereafter, the individual can (and should) study and utilize "Mormon apologetics" to strengthen and clarify both what we believe and why we believe it.  Kevin Christensen put it very well:

And the evergreen observation by Austin Farrer: "Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish."

Acceptance or rejection of the Restored Gospel is, in the end, predominantly and fundamentally a process of exercising faith.

Thanks,

-Smac

Of course it is a matter of faith. Who isn't giving the evidence a fair shake? What about those of us who used to promote the same Mormon apologetics but no longer find it remotely compelling? What are you supposed to do when you keep giving something the benefit of the doubt until you can't do it anymore?

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2 hours ago, teddyaware said:

Why do you insist on empirical evidence that the Book of Mormon is true when the prophets who wrote the book solemnly testify that the only way anyone can know the book is true is by the revelatory power of the Holy Ghost? Talk about setting oneself up for futile and endless exercises in frustration! God has deliberately hidden the empirical evidence that will testify the the Book of Mormon is true to insure that the only way one can gain a witness of its divine authenticity is by faith in Christ and revelation from God alone. I pity anyone who needs scientific and historical evidence before they’ll believe the Book of Mormon is true because they are engaging in the fool’s errand to end all other fool’s errands.

Then why does this site exist? https://evidencecentral.org/

The format and narrative of the Book of Mormon is written as a historical book. It is a timeline of events and describes locations and peoples/cultures. If it was a book focused purely on divine teachings, I could agree with you.

When do you accept others beliefs based on their own personal revelatory events? The promptings of the spirit are not unique to members of the Church.

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3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The problem with the "unlikely" is that he cannot define it - he admitted this. So he cannot tell me how unlikely something is. He can only tell me that he has intuited that it is unlikely. The reason why this is important is that people enforce the 'unlikeliness' by stringing them together, as Ryan does, with the idea that when they are strung together you get something that is even more unlikely. This is exactly how people misapply Bayes' theorem to religious questions. At the same time (and with the same principle) every assumption that Ryan makes also undermines his own basic premise. This is the way that mathematics and probability work. And it is widely recognized that when people aren't able to actually provide probabilities they regularly inflate those probabilities connected to their own bias and deflate the probabilities opposed by their bias. It's human nature. And when you have these intuited estimates, the one thing we can conclude is that the result is always badly flawed.

This does not speak to my principal objection which is that human cognitive function has no choice but to engage in assessments of "likeliness" even outside of mathematically tidy experimental scenarios. We evaluate likelihoods in the wild all the time and deploying the concept only under tidy mathematical conditions is not a option. You have not provided a replacement, but you yet demand that the perfect become the enemy of the possible. For my part, I am fine with admitting that human thought and interpretation is flawed and subject to biases - it is and always has been, but the presence of flaws does not make human intuition useless. This attitude is a poster child of McGilchristian left-brain usurpation and further does not engage the Gigerenzer approach wherein apparent biases often appear to have heuristic effects in the wild. 

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