Jump to content
Seriously No Politics ×

The Gold Plates


Recommended Posts

On 10/14/2022 at 8:15 AM, smac97 said:

Not at all.

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:

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

I commented in it:

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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:

And here:

And here (same link) :

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).

Not sure what this means.

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:

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

So as expected, peoples perfectly coherent explanations for how they view the witnesses is dismissed as incoherent because they fail to “meaningfully” interact with xyz. “Meaningfully” is another beautiful weasel word on your end. Are there critical explanations for the Book of Mormon yes, but they aren’t “coherent.”  So they interact with apologetic arguments, yes, but not “meaningfully.”

 

As for the rest I was curious about the seal of mulek as though I’ve heard of it, I’ve never examined the evidence. And it’s on your list of things that any “coherent” critical explanation of the Book of Mormon must account for. 

 

After reading this paper on the subject I was left speechless. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=jbms

 

It took me a day, but I’ve regained my voice ;)

 

So, a seal turned up, with an unknown provenance. It’s authenticity is in dispute. We have no idea where it was found.  But if it’s authentic, it’s the seal of one “Malkiyahu ben hamelek” or Malkiyahu son of the king.” Now there is scholarly debate on the meaning of “son of the king”. It could be literal, but might mean as little as “employed as officials in the king’s service”. But if we assume it means literally “son of the king”, this Malkiyahu might be the same one mentioned in Jeremiah. It might also be the previously unnamed son or unrelated servant of any other king. But let’s assume it’s the one in Jeremiah. Further let’s assume that the one in Jeremiah is the son of Zedekiah. This could be his seal. Now further let’s assume that Mulek was a nickname for Malkiyahu. This is not attested in the record, but we know nicknames existed so it’s possible. So if we assume all of the above, then we have an artifact from the Book of Mormon. And to be “coherent” any critical Book of Mormon narrative has to “meaningfully” take into account this fact as well as any other apologetic “claim” you deem necessary. Do you perhaps see the problem here?

Edited by SeekingUnderstanding
Link to comment
11 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So as expected, peoples perfectly coherent explanations for how they view the witnesses is dismissed as incoherent because they fail to “meaningfully” interact with xyz. “Meaningfully” is another beautiful weasel word on your end. Are there critical explanations for the Book of Mormon yes, but they aren’t “coherent.”  So they interact with apologetic arguments, yes, but not “meaningfully.”

 

As for the rest I was curious about the seal of mulek as though I’ve heard of it, I’ve never examined the evidence. And it’s on your list of things that any “coherent” critical explanation of the Book of Mormon must account for. 

 

After reading this paper on the subject I was left speechless. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=jbms

 

It took me a day, but I’ve regained my voice ;)

 

So, a seal turned up, with an unknown provenance. It’s authenticity is in dispute. We have no idea where it was found.  But if it’s authentic, it’s the seal of one “Malkiyahu ben hamelek” or Malkiyahu son of the king.” Now there is scholarly debate on the meaning of “son of the king”. It could be literal, but might mean as little as “employed as officials in the king’s service”. But if we assume it means literally “son of the king”, this Malkiyahu might be the same one mentioned in Jeremiah. It might also be the previously unnamed son or unrelated servant of any other king. But let’s assume it’s the one in Jeremiah. Further let’s assume that the one in Jeremiah is the son of Zedekiah. This could be his seal. Now further let’s assume that Mulek was a nickname for Malkiyahu. This is not attested in the record, but we know nicknames existed so it’s possible. So if we assume all of the above, then we have an artifact from the Book of Mormon. And to be “coherent” any critical Book of Mormon narrative has to “meaningfully” take into account this fact as well as any other apologetic “claim” you deem necessary. Do you perhaps see the problem here?

Yep. Every time I have “engaged” these so-called bullseyes, they end up being a whole lot of nothing. But, they say, any naturalistic explanation that doesn’t account for these ludicrous arguments is “incoherent.” Meanwhile, stating the obvious that the Book of Mormon looks, smells, and tastes like a frontier America work of fiction is “facile” and “superficial.” 

Once upon a time, I took apologetics seriously. Not so much now. 

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Yep. Every time I have “engaged” these so-called bullseyes, they end up being a whole lot of nothing. But, they say, any naturalistic explanation that doesn’t account for these ludicrous arguments is “incoherent.” Meanwhile, stating the obvious that the Book of Mormon looks, smells, and tastes like a frontier America work of fiction is “facile” and “superficial.” 

Once upon a time, I took apologetics seriously. Not so much now. 

You forgot “conclusory.” And the thing is almost each of these claims has been addressed. Up thread Nevo linked to a bunch. But then it turns out none of them “meaningfully” addressed the issue. 

Link to comment
3 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

You forgot “conclusory.” And the thing is almost each of these claims has been addressed. Up thread Nevo linked to a bunch. But then it turns out none of them “meaningfully” addressed the issue. 

The demand for a comprehensive counter explanation is an obvious attempt to shift the burden of proof from where it rightfully sits: with proponents of the Book of Mormon. That this demand would require critics to accept dubious, if not ludicrous, claims tells you all you need. 

I do find it funny that Ben McGuire and Nevo, two of the most knowledgeable and fair posters (both active LDS) here, are dismissed and/or condemned for daring to question apologetic claims. 

Link to comment
6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So as expected, peoples perfectly coherent explanations for how they view the witnesses is dismissed as incoherent because they fail to “meaningfully” interact with xyz.  “Meaningfully” is another beautiful weasel word on your end.

First, I have not "dismissed" anything as "incoherent."

Second, my "I don't see meaningful interaction with the foregoing" comment was illustrative, not definitive.

Third, sneering doesn't establish that there has been "meaningful interaction."

Fourth, conclusory (and deprecatory, and across-the-board) dismissal of the Witnesses is not "meaningful" interaction with their statements (or them).

Fifth, I explained my assessment of the only thing you cited (Vogel), and that assessment is not reasonably characterized as me "dismissing" it "as incoherent."

Sixth, that the best you could do, in responding to my inquiry about a "something-more-than-wholly-speculative-and-conclusory-and-evidence-free counter-explanation for the origins of the Book of Mormon," was to point to a book published 34 years ago, a book that its own author insists "does not deal with the truth claims of the Mormon religion" (which, to me, comes across as a sort of "hedging his bets" mitigation effort), is . . . interesting.  

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Are there critical explanations for the Book of Mormon yes, but they aren’t “coherent.”  

For the third time (emphasis added) :

Quote

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.

If such a counter-explanation exists, quit griping and start typing (point to it).  

You pointed to Vogel's 1986 book.  I acknowledged it, addressed it, and laid out some of my reasons for why I think it is so-so (though still "{doing} one of the better jobs of trying to get beyond sheer conjecture" in terms of formulating a naturalistic counter-explanation).   Meanwhile, you did nothing to advance or explain its merits except to provide a link and ask me if I have read it.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So they interact with apologetic arguments, yes, but not “meaningfully.”

Who is this "they?"

And are you including Vogel in it?  And if so, do you really think his book "meaningfully" interacts with "apologetic arguments" (particularly given how much of those arguments have been published after 1986)?

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

As for the rest I was curious about the seal of mulek as though I’ve heard of it, I’ve never examined the evidence. And it’s on your list of things that any “coherent” critical explanation of the Book of Mormon must account for. 

I pointed to my 2020 post in an attempt to "pare things down some," to signal that I am not looking for an exhaustive, covers-all-the-bases counter-explanation.  As I noted previously (emphasis added) :

Quote

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.

 

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

After reading this paper on the subject I was left speechless. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1327&context=jbms

It took me a day, but I’ve regained my voice ;)

An appeal to ridicule.  Quelle surprise.  

I previously noted (emphasis added) :

Quote

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.

You are illustrating my point.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So, a seal turned up, with an unknown provenance.

Yes, the provenance of ancient artifacts is often less than perfectly preserved and documented.

That said, are you implying that this artifact is a "plant"?  That some mischievous Latter-day Saint might have crafted it and placed it somewhere in Jerusalem, and then waited an indeterminate number of years until it was purchased in New York in 1991 by a Jewish milliionaire

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It’s authenticity is in dispute.

Yes.  A point specifically noted in Jeffrey Chadwick's 2003 article about it:

Quote

 Lemaire’s original assessment of the seal questioned its authenticity. However, the preface to Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals lists it as one of several seals that, despite their unknown provenance, Avigad, the dean of Israeli stamp-seal scholars, considered authentic.¹² The authenticity of the Malkiyahu seal is supported by the existence of a number of other seals very similar to it, some of which may have been unknown to Lemaire.  Avigad and Sass identify a seal of the same general artistic design as the Malkiyahu seal, including perpendicular lines separating the three registers and a pomegranate motif, although the left register features only a single pomegranate.¹³ That seal, however, was published after 1991, the latest date it could have been used by a forger as a model for the Malkiyahu seal. Avigad and Sass also display a number of seals and impressions that feature a personal name followed by the term ben hamelek, or “son of the king,” demonstrating that this phrasing was not unique to ancient Judean seals.¹⁴ Avigad felt that two of the personal names on these seals may have been those of sons of kings known from the Bible. One of the seals (no. 16 in Corpus) is inscribed ˚lmh ˜b hçnml (lemenasheh ben hamelek), which means “[belonging] to Menasheh son of the king.” This was possibly Manasseh, the son of King Hezekiah.¹⁵ Manasseh, who was the great-grandfather of Zedekiah, became king of Judah himself in 687 bc, ruling until his death in 642 bc (see 2 Kings 20:21–21:18). 


...
The stamp seal of “Malkiyahu son of the king” now in the London collection of Shlomo Moussaieff seems to be authentic. 

(Emphasis added.)

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

We have no idea where it was found.  

But we have some idea as to its likely authenticity.  See the Chadwick article.

We can't foreclose the possibility for forgery, of course.  But the extant evidence leans, I think, toward authenticity.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

But if it’s authentic, it’s the seal of one “Malkiyahu ben hamelek” or Malkiyahu son of the king.” Now there is scholarly debate on the meaning of “son of the king”. It could be literal, but might mean as little as “employed as officials in the king’s service”.  But if we assume it means literally “son of the king”, this Malkiyahu might be the same one mentioned in Jeremiah. It might also be the previously unnamed son or unrelated servant of any other king.

Yes.  There are all sorts of "could" and "might" and "if we assume" qualifying statements when evaluating ancient artifacts.  That is as it should be.  Chadwick's article does a decent job of trying to not overstate the probative value of the artifact.  This criticism (regarding overstating significance) has been leveled - by a Latter-day Saint (David Seely) in a BYU imprint - against an article about the artifact included in the 1992 book, Reexploring the Book of Mormon, edited by John Welch:

Quote

The article about biblical evidence for the existence of Mulek (pp. 142-144) is significant, and the evidence is very suggestive to a Latter-day Saint reader, but the argument is seriously compromised by overstatement.  It begins, "Biblical scholarship now bears out this Book of Mormon claim: king Zedekiah had a son named Mulek" (p. 142).  But biblical scholarship, as noted throughout the article, as only suggested  that Zedekiah had a son Malkiyahu (KJV Malchiah), and if so, it is possible that this name could be related to Mulek. These are only possibilities.  
...
In conclusion, the article quotes an unnamed "prominent non-Mormon ancient Near East specialist" as saying "If Joseph Smith came up with that one, he did pretty good {sic}!"  This scholar is portrayed as being "in general agreement that 'Malkiyahu, son of the King' might very well be a son of King Zedekiah and that the short-form of the name could indeed be Mulek" (p. 144).  But why is the name of the so-called specialist omitted?

The Reexploring book was published in 1992, the year after the artifact came to light in 1991.  I wonder if the name of the specialist was omitted because the book was going to print and Welch did not have time to firm up the citation.  In any event, later iterations or derivations of this article (such as this 2017 FAIR presentation and this 2020 article on evidencecentral.org)  identify the specialist as David Noel Freedman.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

But let’s assume it’s the one in Jeremiah. Further let’s assume that the one in Jeremiah is the son of Zedekiah. This could be his seal.

Yes, it could be.  

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Now further let’s assume that Mulek was a nickname for Malkiyahu. This is not attested in the record, but we know nicknames existed so it’s possible. So if we assume all of the above, then we have an artifact from the Book of Mormon.

Well, not really. Like the NHM altars, the seal could be said to be lending credence to a narrative element in the Book of Mormon, but neither is "an artifact from the Book of Mormon."

If those provisos and caveats are a given, we have an artifact that justifies a statement along the lines of this concluding one by Evidence Central:

Quote

Each of the abovementioned names—Malkiyahu from the stamp seal, Malchiah from Jeremiah 38:6, and Mulek from the Book of Mormon—are derived from the same ancient Hebrew root (mlk), they show up in the same time period, and they are the sons of a king. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that they might very well refer to the same individual and that that individual’s father was indeed King Zedekiah, as strongly implied in Jeremiah 38 and directly asserted in the Book of Mormon.

While this connection remains unproven,12 the Book of Mormon’s assertion that King Zedekiah had a son named Mulek is now supported by linguistic and archaeological evidence. Upon encountering these findings, the prominent biblical scholar David Noel Freedman reportedly exclaimed, “If Joseph Smith came up with that one, he did pretty good!”13

(Emphasis added.)

Or this one (from Chadwick's article) (emphases added) :

Quote

So was Mulek the “Malkiyahu the son of the king” mentioned in Jeremiah 38:6? Nothing in the Bible or the Book of Mormon negates this identification. And the evidence rehearsed above lends significant support to it. The m-l-k basis of both Hebrew names is clear, and the case of Berekhyahu/ Baruch demonstrates that there is theoretical precedent for a person being called both Malkiyahu and Mulek—the one a longer, more formal version of the name with a theophoric yahu element, and the other a shorter form lacking that element but featuring a different vowel vocalization. ³¹ Malkiyahu/Mulek would not have been killed by the Babylonians before Zedekiah’s eyes, as were his brothers (all younger than himself), because as the king’s oldest son and heir to the throne, he was likely sent to Egypt by his father well before the fall of Jerusalem and the capture of the royal family. Whether Mulek was sent to Egypt as a royal messenger or ambassador or in an effort to ensure his safety, it is unlikely that he could have taken all of his possessions with him to Egypt. Other men in Judah with the ben hamelek title are known to have possessed multiple stamp seals,³² and if Malkiyahu/Mulek did also it would have been easy for him to have left one behind. Some 2,570 years or so later, that seal was found by someone digging in Jerusalem and was surreptitiously sold. The stamp seal of “Malkiyahu son of the king” now in the London collection of Shlomo Moussaieff seems to be authentic. In answer to the question posed at the outset of this article—and the significance of this can hardly be overstated—it is quite possible that an archaeological artifact of a Book of Mormon personality has been identified. It appears that the seal of Mulek has been found

Chadwick's conclusion, though enthusiastic, is nevertheless qualified.

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

And to be “coherent” any critical Book of Mormon narrative has to “meaningfully” take into account this fact as well as any other apologetic “claim” you deem necessary. Do you perhaps see the problem here?

You are not accurately stating my position.

Again:

Quote

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.

And again:

Quote

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
Link to comment
On 10/14/2022 at 3:05 PM, Brahms said:

I think I understand and agree with Benjamin's point, but I would still say points can accumulate to make a greater case in support of probabilities and plausibilities.

But, again, this is a flawed view of likelihoods and probabilities. Every time you add a variable, you don't make something more likely, you can only make it less likely. This is counterintuitive (at least it runs counter to the way that our brains generalize about things). And this is why it sounds good - even when it isn't.

Again, this is from David Hand's book chapter 9:

Quote

The obvious starting point is to note that our intuitive grasp of probability isn’t good. A simple illustration of this is the fact that we find it very difficult to behave in a random manner. If you ask people to produce a stream of random digits, they often produce series which are too homogeneous (for example, tending to avoid consecutive repetitions of the same number). Probability and chance often appear to be counterintuitive. Indeed, even professional statisticians can be fooled—until they sit down and go through the calculations.
Consider the following scenario:

John initially took a degree in mathematics, and followed it with a PhD in astrophysics. After that, he worked in the physics department of a university for a while but then found a job in the back room of an algorithmic trading company, developing highly sophisticated statistical models for predicting movements of the financial markets. In his spare time he attends science fiction conventions.

Now, which of the following do you think has the higher probability?

     A: John is married with two children.
     B: John is married with two children, and likes to spend his evenings tackling mathematical puzzles and playing computer games.

Many people answer B. In fact, the set of people described by the characteristics in B is a subset of those described by the characteristics in A: for John to have the characteristics of B, he has those of A and more . It follows that the probability that John is described by B cannot be larger than the probability that he’s described by A.

One proposed explanation for the counterintuitive aspect of this illustration arises from the fact that B nicely matches the stereotypical depiction of John: those activities look like the sorts of things John would do, given his description. In contrast, consider the following scenario, which has exactly the same logical structure but a rather different description of John.
     John is male.
     Now, which of the following do you think has the higher probability?
          A: John is married with two children.
          B: John is married with two children, and likes to spend his evenings tackling mathematical puzzles and playing computer games.
Here it’s clear that the probability that John has the characteristics of B must be smaller than the probability that he merely has those in A.
This failure of intuition is often called the conjunction fallacy , and it can be even more pronounced than in that illustration. Sometimes people perceive the combination of two independent events as more likely than either event: the probability that you will win the lottery and it will rain today may be seen as greater than just the probability that you will win the lottery.
Another proposed explanation for the conjunction fallacy is that sometimes people invert the probabilities. That is, they’re given the description of John and asked for the probability that he has the characteristics in A or B, but they think of it the other way around: they start with the characteristics in A or B, and come up with the probability that John will be like the description.

This failure of intuition is often called the conjunction fallacy , and it can be even more pronounced than in that illustration. Sometimes people perceive the combination of two independent events as more likely than either event: the probability that you will win the lottery and it will rain today may be seen as greater than just the probability that you will win the lottery.

Another proposed explanation for the conjunction fallacy is that sometimes people invert the probabilities. That is, they’re given the description of John and asked for the probability that he has the characteristics in A or B, but they think of it the other way around: they start with the characteristics in A or B, and come up with the probability that John will be like the description.

This was long (and I apologize), and I will try to simply the discussion. In the example, the description with the fewest requirements is the one that has the highest probability. When we add a second variable (married with two children + likes to spend his evening tackling mathematical puzzles) we can only shrink the probability or likelihood. The only way to increase the likelihood would be to reduce the variables - instead of "married with two children", if we went with just "married", we would raise the likelihood. This principle applies when we look at these apologetic arguments for the Book of Mormon. Every time we add another set of propositions, (Nahom, Wadi Sayq, EModE, and so on), we can only maintain the existing likelihood or make it smaller. We don't accumulate evidence mathematically in the way that you describe - even though our brain tends to think this way.

And, to bring this back to my point, this same (false) principle cumulative argument is used by those who deny the authenticity of The Book of Mormon. By piling up arguments they believe that they have (like LDS apologists) created a convincing argument that the Book of Mormon cannot be an authentic translation of an ancient text. This accumulation of arguments on their part is just as wrong.

Don't get me wrong - this kind of reasoning can be effective in combating claims of impossibility (by showing possibility). And this allows people to maintain the premises about the authenticity of the Book of Mormon that they begin with. But, it isn't actually evidence of that authenticity.

Link to comment
On 10/14/2022 at 12:24 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:
On 10/14/2022 at 10:37 AM, Ryan Dahle said:

The issue is much broader than that, as it applies to the way that you are approaching evidence in general. It is about a fundamental inconsistency/flaw in your definitional framework: the fact that you are arbitrarily privileging impossible as the starting assumption for virtually all of these evidences. And that allows you to minimize their value and meaning in an arbitrary way, so much so that you don't even consider them to qualify as evidence to any meaningful degree (in relation to the major claims surrounding the Book of Mormon's authenticity). The most you are willing to concede is that they render certain of these claims as being possible (a position which is non-sensical if one were to start off with the assumption that they were possible). 

No. I am just insisting that the evidence needs to actually be about the proposition that it is claimed to be about. These arguments don't occur in a vacuum.

You are clearly dodging my point. You have repeatedly characterized evidences such as Nahom and chiasmus and so forth as only being capable of moving certain Book of Mormon claims from impossible (your starting assumption) to possible. Why do you start with impossible? The only reason that makes sense is that you are adopting hypercritical assumptions held by those who, for whatever reasons, are strongly biased against the text's truth claims. Otherwise you would never couch the evidence in these terms. I won't bring this up again, seeing that you are evading directly responding to it. It doesn't really matter what your specific assessment of Nahom is, as it doesn't affect my assessment of your starting assumptions.  

Link to comment
On 10/14/2022 at 12:24 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:
On 10/14/2022 at 10:37 AM, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm not asking if it would constitute proof that she didn't write it. Nor am I asking for you to evaluate the precise value of such evidence. I'm just asking, categorically speaking, if you think it would constitute legitimate evidence (i.e., would it provide a valid reason for a teacher like me to believe [or suspect] that she didn't write those words herself)? 

Let's cut out the words "constitute legitimate evidence" - I think that confuses what you were trying to say. I think that yes, it would be sufficient evidence for you to question whether or not they wrote the words themselves.

It's apparent you don't want to concede that such data constitutes legitimate evidence. That is what I expected. 

Let's say, hypothetically, that I was concerned enough about the possibility of plagiarism that I brought in the student and her parents to discuss the matter. Yet, imagine that the parents adopt something similar to your position on chiasmus, EModE, etc. They claim that the unusual features of the student's writings don't in any way constitute actual evidence of plagiarism (remember we have already established that the student claims no help from any source whatsoever in the composition of her paper, so it would indeed be plagiarism if it turned out that she heavily relied on such a source). So I ask them why the student's sudden manifestation of impressive literary ability doesn't constitute evidence toward that end.

First of all, they point to the fact that my assessment can't be objectively measured. In other words, I hadn't completed a study which demonstrates the exact probability of a middle-school aged student using the precise combination of words and phrases in the student's paper. And without that data, they claim that my assessment is little more than subjective guesswork. Second, they point to examples of many other precocious youth who accomplished amazing literary achievements. They claim that in every school there are some students who perform above average. What their daughter accomplished is therefore not that out of the ordinary. Third, they claim that there are many things that might have contributed to the child's sudden increase in ability. Perhaps the student simply wasn't trying on previous assignments, but for whatever reason found this topic interesting enough to utilize her full ability. Or perhaps she just really wanted to impress me on this one, to help improve her dismal grade in my class. Or maybe she starting thinking about college and it motivated her to try in a way that she never had before. They argue that these and other possibilities can't be ruled out. 

I listen carefully to their points and admit that they should be taken into consideration. Furthermore, I acknowledge that because these possibilities can't be ruled out, it would be inappropriate for me to make a formal charge of plagiarism against the student. In other words, I acknowledge that I can't be 100% certain that the student did indeed commit plagiarism. However, I tell the parents that despite the points they raised, I am still concerned. I recognize that I don't know the precise probability of the student producing those words herself, but it seems very small to me, based on my collective prior experience with middle school writing. I admit that every school does have some kids who perform above ability, but that to me their daughter's writing seemed well beyond what even the highest achievers are likely to produce for her grade. And while I acknowledge that perhaps an unknown cause produced this rapid advancement in her ability, that type of sudden shift just doesn't seem very likely to me, even if she abruptly had the motivation to improve or try harder.

In response, the parents are appalled. They assert that my subjective evaluation doesn't come close to demonstrating that it is likely, or even plausible, that their daughter committed plagiarism. All it does is prove that plagiarism on her part isn't impossible. They therefore double down and claim that what I have found simply doesn't count as evidence of plagiarism, period. Their daughter would never cheat. 

Edited by Ryan Dahle
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You are clearly dodging my point. You have repeatedly characterized evidences such as Nahom and chiasmus and so forth as only being capable of moving certain Book of Mormon claims from impossible (your starting assumption) to possible. Why do you start with impossible? The only reason that makes sense is that you are adopting hypercritical assumptions held by those who, for whatever reasons, are strongly biased against the text's truth claims. Otherwise you would never couch the evidence in these terms. I won't bring this up again, seeing that you are evading directly responding to it. It doesn't really matter what your specific assessment of Nahom is, as it doesn't affect my assessment of your starting assumptions.

I have a large body of published work supporting the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. To claim that I have a strong bias against the text's truth claims is utter nonsense.

The challenge is that these things are not evidence. And you haven't been able to explain how they are evidence without appealing to a comparison with the impossible. And that is the problem here. You are mistaken in what my starting assumptions are.

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It's apparent you don't want to concede that such data constitutes legitimate evidence. That is what I expected. 

No, I tried to get rid of it because you haven't actually made a case for what might constitute legitimate evidence. This is a real problem.

2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's say, hypothetically, that I was concerned enough about the possibility of plagiarism that I brought in the student and her parents to discuss the matter. Yet, imagine that the parents adopt something similar to your position on chiasmus, EModE, etc. They claim that the unusual features of the student's writings don't in any way constitute actual evidence of plagiarism (remember we have already established that the student claims no help from any source whatsoever in the composition of her paper, so it would indeed be plagiarism if it turned out that she heavily relied on such a source). So I ask them why the student's sudden manifestation of impressive literary ability doesn't constitute evidence toward that end.

Let me rephrase this.

Evidence that someone committed plagiarism is very simple to produce. You take two texts, and you show that one is reliant on the other. You strengthen that argument by showing how the author had access to the source material, and you demonstrate that the use occurred without proper credit. This is what plagiarism is. And evidence for plagiarism involves facts related to these issues. What you offer is just a variant of the prosecutor's fallacy that I have mentioned more than once here in this thread. I didn't disagree with you that the student probably had help (so either they misunderstood what you asked them when they claimed that they didn't have help or they lied). But there are several issues -

1: Help with the language of a paper is NOT plagiarism. Most universities actually encourage students to get the help of tutors, writing labs, and so on. In most of the peer reviews that I have provided over the years (and there have been lots of them - Interpreter, Maxwell Institute, etc.), I generally make recommendations about language as part of my review.

2: The idea that we don't have help from sources on everything we write is a myth. If we could only use original material to avoid plagiarism, most of us would have to stop communicating entirely. In fact, our whole system of language is based on the principle that it is familiar to one another. Of course, I haven't gotten enough details about the paper to understand what it is, or how it fits into this discussion yet. That's an issue that I am trying to work around. It reminds me of something that was said by Judd Apatow:

Quote

I know it’s hard to believe that your rock band TV idea, which every writer in this town has thought of at one point, was not on my mind half a year after you told it to me. Yes, you thought of breaking the fourth wall. Groucho and George Burns stole it from you. Maybe you should sue Bernie Mac. Why don’t you sue the guys who have that new show How to Be a Rock Star on the WB. I must have told them your idea. Nobody has ever goofed on rock bands, not Spinal Tap or The Rutles or 800 Saturday Night Live sketches. I should have told everyone on the show, no rock band sketches, that’s Brazill’s area. . . . See, I have no original thoughts. (John Thornton Caldwell, Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008], 208, as quoted in McGuire, Benajmin, "Finding Parallels: Some Cautions and Criticisms, Part One" in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 5 [2013]: 1-59)

3: What makes the parents of any use in your investigation? Why not simply talk to the student and ask them to explain the contents of their paper. Either they know the material and can spit it out in an intelligible way using the language they used in their paper, or they can't. Do the parents really have any idea? I am heavily involved in my children's education. But I also spent time on the school board, as one of the robotics team mentors (for the 6 years my kids were involved there), and, of course, I write and edit a lot of material (I am still on the editorial board of Interpreter). Most parents I know are not so nearly involved. This reminds me, at least a little bit of the scene from the old Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School (might be a little early for you). In the movie, Dangerfield's character is asked by his son how he is going to write a paper on Kurt Vonnegut when he hasn't read any of the books. A minute later Vonnegut walks in to the room. The teacher fails the paper - because she claims it was clearly written by someone else, and "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" It was used for obvious comedy in that scene, but it illustrates, I think, part of the issue here.

You want to add the idea of impossibility here to this argument (it is the same structure of the argument you are making about the Book of Mormon authenticity). The student couldn't possibly have produced this language on their own, so it must be evidence that it came from someone else. The challenge is that it still isn't evidence for plagiarism. It isn't evidence that they did in fact take someone else's idea. And while you could produce the person or source whose ideas they took and presented as their own, you don't. That is, you still don't have actual evidence - you simply have offered observations that make it clear that from your perspective, plagiarism could have happened - but this isn't anything at all like providing evidence that it did happen. And I can say that this isn't evidence at the same time that I agree with you that it is quite likely that they lied about not having help.

You haven't moved your argument forward.

Edited by Benjamin McGuire
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It's apparent you don't want to concede that such data constitutes legitimate evidence. That is what I expected. 

Let's say, hypothetically, that I was concerned enough about the possibility of plagiarism that I brought in the student and her parents to discuss the matter. Yet, imagine that the parents adopt something similar to your position on chiasmus, EModE, etc. They claim that the unusual features of the student's writings don't in any way constitute actual evidence of plagiarism (remember we have already established that the student claims no help from any source whatsoever in the composition of her paper, so it would indeed be plagiarism if it turned out that she heavily relied on such a source). So I ask them why the student's sudden manifestation of impressive literary ability doesn't constitute evidence toward that end.

First of all, they point to the fact that my assessment can't be objectively measured. In other words, I hadn't completed a study which demonstrates the exact probability of a middle-school aged student using the precise combination of words and phrases in the student's paper. And without that data, they claim that my assessment is little more than subjective guesswork. Second, they point to examples of many other precocious youth who accomplished amazing literary achievements. They claim that in every school there are some students who perform above average. What their daughter accomplished is therefore not that out of the ordinary. Third, they claim that there are many things that might have contributed to the child's sudden increase in ability. Perhaps the student simply wasn't trying on previous assignments, but for whatever reason found this topic interesting enough to utilize her full ability. Or perhaps she just really wanted to impress me on this one, to help improve her dismal grade in my class. Or maybe she starting thinking about college and it motivated her to try in a way that she never had before. They argue that these and other possibilities can't be ruled out. 

I listen carefully to their points and admit that they should be taken into consideration. Furthermore, I acknowledge that because these possibilities can't be ruled out, it would be inappropriate for me to make a formal charge of plagiarism against the student. In other words, I acknowledge that I can't be 100% certain that the student did indeed commit plagiarism. However, I tell the parents that despite the points they raised, I am still concerned. I recognize that I don't know the precise probability of the student producing those words herself, but it seems very small to me, based on my collective prior experience with middle school writing. I admit that every school does have some kids who perform above ability, but that to me their daughter's writing seemed well beyond what even the highest achievers are likely to produce for her grade. And while I acknowledge that perhaps an unknown cause produced this rapid advancement in her ability, that type of sudden shift just doesn't seem very likely to me, even if she abruptly had the motivation to improve or try harder.

In response, the parents are appalled. They assert that my subjective evaluation doesn't come close to demonstrating that it is likely, or even plausible, that their daughter committed plagiarism. All it does is prove that plagiarism on her part isn't impossible. They therefore double down and claim that what I have found simply doesn't count as evidence of plagiarism, period. Their daughter would never cheat. 

It seems to me that evidence supporting the content of the girls’ report as reasonable or probable depends on a more fundamental driver, the biases of the teacher, and parents. Evidence supporting the girl’s role and sources in producing the text (e.g., identical words and passages in previous authors’ texts) is another matter; it does not address the quality of the text itself: if the passages in question were a fairy tale, they would not be plausible (is it reasonable or probable -- assuming he likelihood that the teacher, parents and girl agree -- that a fairy godmother would make a puppet’s nose grow?).

Link to comment
4 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You are clearly dodging my point. You have repeatedly characterized evidences such as Nahom and chiasmus and so forth as only being capable of moving certain Book of Mormon claims from impossible (your starting assumption) to possible. Why do you start with impossible? The only reason that makes sense is that you are adopting hypercritical assumptions held by those who, for whatever reasons, are strongly biased against the text's truth claims. Otherwise you would never couch the evidence in these terms. I won't bring this up again, seeing that you are evading directly responding to it. It doesn't really matter what your specific assessment of Nahom is, as it doesn't affect my assessment of your starting assumptions.  

Having a realistic understanding of the critical arguments against the BOM and teaching others about those arguments doesn't mean that one is themselves a critic.  I think we had discussions like this one a few years ago yet I am  CERTAIN of the BOM's "text truth claims".

It seems you have trouble differentiating between knowledge of ARGUMENTS for and against a position on a text vs whether or not a text is justified and therefore true.

Bad arguments for or against the  truth of a text can have little to do with whether or not the text is actually true, especially when discussing a religious text.  You didn't see that in our discussions and it seems you are not seeing it now.

We are all brothers here discussing the strength of arguments, not the truth of the text :)

 

Link to comment
4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Having a realistic understanding of the critical arguments against the BOM and teaching others about those arguments doesn't mean that one is themselves a critic.  I think we had discussions like this one a few years ago yet I am  CERTAIN of the BOM's "text truth claims".

It seems you have trouble differentiating between knowledge of ARGUMENTS for and against a position on a text vs whether or not a text is justified and therefore true.

Bad arguments for or against the  truth of a text can have little to do with whether or not the text is actually true, especially when discussing a religious text.  You didn't see that in our discussions and it seems you are not seeing it now.

We are all brothers here discussing the strength of arguments, not the truth of the text :)

 

This highlights the change in this group that I have observed taking place over many years. Instead of defending the faith against outside interests, we now squabble about it amongst ourselves and with disgruntled  and aggrieved former members. We should always seek for unity rather than division in discussing, defining, and defending our faith. If we are not one, we are not the Lord’s. 

Edited by Bernard Gui
Link to comment
1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

This highlights the change in this group that I have observed taking place over many years. Instead of defending the faith against outside interests, we now squabble about it amongst ourselves and with disgruntled  and aggrieved former members. We should always seek for unity rather than division in discussing, defining, and defending our faith. If we are not one, we are not the Lord’s. 

True. Back in the day there were Evangelical critics either trying to save us deluded cultists or secular critics attacking Mormon truth claims. These days the only disgruntled and aggrieved are people like me, ttribe, and Teancum, who used to be “defenders of the faith” here. Honestly, I think the greatest challenges to the church come from former members and those who want to change the church from within. Nobody takes Evangelical anti-Mormons seriously, and the secular world only notices Mormonism because of its cultural conservatism.

And for what it’s worth, I’m not aggrieved or disgruntled, nor am I a former member. 

Edited by jkwilliams
Link to comment
On 10/15/2022 at 5:56 PM, smac97 said:

But we have some idea as to its likely authenticity.  See the Chadwick article.

We can't foreclose the possibility for forgery, of course.  But the extant evidence leans, I think, toward authenticity.

There is no reason to assume that the seal is authentic.

Chadwick cites the opinions of two eminent scholars: Lemaire and Avigad. Lemaire "questioned its authenticity," but Avigad considered it genuine. For Avigad's opinion, we have to rely on the word of his colleague, Joseph Naveh, since Avigad died several years before Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals was published. 

Naveh writes in the preface:

Quote

Beginning in 1968, dealers and collectors brought Professor Avigad a series of seals and bullae bearing somewhat peculiar iconography and letter forms, presumably produced by a limited number of engravers. Since no such seals were previously known and none of them was of clear provenance, there were rumours among scholars concerning their authenticity. However, no scholar thus far has proven that they are recent fabrications. . . . Avigad was confident that they are genuine (12).

So Avigad was "confident" that these unprovenanced, previously unknown seals "bearing somewhat peculiar iconography and letter forms" were authentic, but other experts clearly were not. Lemaire among them.

Neal Rappleye, in his 2017 FairMormon conference presentation, stated: "Since the information about Malkiyahu in both the Bible and this inscription is quite limited, an absolute identification remains uncertain, but Lawrence Mykytiuk considered this connection as among those 'reasonable enough to invite assumption.'" Rappleye gives the impression here that Mykytiuk is bullish on the identification of the bulla. He is not. Mykytiuk assigns the Malkiyahu seal a "Grade 2 identification," which he defines as "reasonable but uncertain." He continues: "Although there is some chance of their being correct, from our perspective they cannot be considered reliable IDs, because there remains a reasonable doubt" (Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions, 74). 

So, the seal cannot be reliably connected to the figure in Jeremiah 38:6, who may not be a son of Zedekiah anyway. Marvin Sweeney, in the Jewish Study Bible, comments: "Malchiah is Pashhur's father. His designation as the king's son indicates that he is a royal official (cf. Zeph. 1.8)." If Malchiah is Pashhur's father (see 38:1), then he is definitely not a son of Zedekiah. The alternative is that the 32-year-old king had an otherwise unmentioned teenage son who owned a cistern and functioned as a guard, who coincidentally had the same name as Pashhur's father.

Also, the text of Jeremiah 38:6 may well be corrupt. William McKane, for example, regards the reference to "Malchiah the king's son" as a later addition to the text and he omits it from his translation (as does the New English Bible) (see McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 2 [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996], 946n3, 951, 969–971). If that is correct, "Malchiah the king's son" may be a scribal invention.

(But even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that Zedekiah had a son named Malchiah/Malchijah/Malkiyahu ("Yah is my king"), how do we get from that to Mulek? Mulek is a good Book of Mormon name (compare Amulek, Amaleki, Melek, Muloki). The argument seems to be that "Yah is my king" gets shortened to just "king" (mlk)? Is there any precedent for that?)

Edited by Nevo
Link to comment
19 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:
22 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You are clearly dodging my point. You have repeatedly characterized evidences such as Nahom and chiasmus and so forth as only being capable of moving certain Book of Mormon claims from impossible (your starting assumption) to possible. Why do you start with impossible? The only reason that makes sense is that you are adopting hypercritical assumptions held by those who, for whatever reasons, are strongly biased against the text's truth claims. Otherwise you would never couch the evidence in these terms. I won't bring this up again, seeing that you are evading directly responding to it. It doesn't really matter what your specific assessment of Nahom is, as it doesn't affect my assessment of your starting assumptions.

I have a large body of published work supporting the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. To claim that I have a strong bias against the text's truth claims is utter nonsense.

You misunderstand me. I'm not alleging that you actually believe the faulty assumptions that you are adopting and privileging in your framework. That is what is so ironic. You can't deny that it is logically faulty to start with the assumption that Lehi's journey through Arabia is an impossibility. Yet you also can't deny that this is what you are doing when you say that an evidence like Nahom only moves the text's claims about this journey from impossible to possible (for such an argument undeniably privileges impossible as the starting assumption). 

Thus, I'm not accusing you of having a strong bias against the text's truth claims. I am just stating the obvious: your descriptions of evidences like Nahom arbitrarily privilege those biases whether you agree with them or not. I can only guess what your motives might be for insisting on the validity of your descriptions, even after this fundamental flaw has been repeatedly pointed out and described at length. My best guess is that this inconsistency arises from your bias against the evidences themselves (rather than text). You seem willing to adopt assumptions you don't actually agree with just to diminish their value. Whatever your motives or reasons may be, your framework for evaluating these evidences is demonstrably flawed. 

Link to comment
20 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:
22 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

It's apparent you don't want to concede that such data constitutes legitimate evidence. That is what I expected. 

No, I tried to get rid of it because you haven't actually made a case for what might constitute legitimate evidence. This is a real problem.

Exactly. You don't think I've established that this counts as legitimate evidence. That is what I meant. 

Link to comment
21 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Let me rephrase this.

Evidence that someone committed plagiarism is very simple to produce. You take two texts, and you show that one is reliant on the other. You strengthen that argument by showing how the author had access to the source material, and you demonstrate that the use occurred without proper credit. This is what plagiarism is. And evidence for plagiarism involves facts related to these issues. What you offer is just a variant of the prosecutor's fallacy that I have mentioned more than once here in this thread. I didn't disagree with you that the student probably had help (so either they misunderstood what you asked them when they claimed that they didn't have help or they lied). But there are several issues -

I'm not really interested in debating the details of what does and doesn't count as plagiarism (issues 1 and 2 on your list). I am well aware that many considerations are involved. My point, as I have stated before, is about whether the student likely produced the paper using her own abilities. You seem to agree that unusually advanced syntax and diction suggests that she "probably had help" (i.e., she didn't likely produce it using her own ability). That is what this is really about. 

You wrote: 

Quote

3: What makes the parents of any use in your investigation? Why not simply talk to the student and ask them to explain the contents of their paper. Either they know the material and can spit it out in an intelligible way using the language they used in their paper, or they can't. Do the parents really have any idea? I am heavily involved in my children's education. But I also spent time on the school board, as one of the robotics team mentors (for the 6 years my kids were involved there), and, of course, I write and edit a lot of material (I am still on the editorial board of Interpreter). Most parents I know are not so nearly involved. This reminds me, at least a little bit of the scene from the old Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School (might be a little early for you). In the movie, Dangerfield's character is asked by his son how he is going to write a paper on Kurt Vonnegut when he hasn't read any of the books. A minute later Vonnegut walks in to the room. The teacher fails the paper - because she claims it was clearly written by someone else, and "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" It was used for obvious comedy in that scene, but it illustrates, I think, part of the issue here.

Consulting the parents would just be due diligence on my part. Yes, I am aware that parents aren't omniscient when it comes to their children. And, yes, I did in fact talk to the student and ask her about the contents of her paper. 

You wrote: 

Quote

You want to add the idea of impossibility here to this argument (it is the same structure of the argument you are making about the Book of Mormon authenticity). The student couldn't possibly have produced this language on their own, so it must be evidence that it came from someone else.

In my description I explicitly avoided making the extreme claim that you are alleging I made. This seems to be almost an obsession of yours. Look again at what I actually said:

Quote

I listen carefully to their points and admit that they should be taken into consideration. Furthermore, I acknowledge that because these possibilities can't be ruled out, it would be inappropriate for me to make a formal charge of plagiarism against the student. In other words, I acknowledge that I can't be 100% certain that the student did indeed commit plagiarism. However, I tell the parents that despite the points they raised, I am still concerned. I recognize that I don't know the precise probability of the student producing those words herself, but it seems very small to me, based on my collective prior experience with middle school writing. I admit that every school does have some kids who perform above ability, but that to me their daughter's writing seemed well beyond what even the highest achievers are likely to produce for her grade. And while I acknowledge that perhaps an unknown cause produced this rapid advancement in her ability, that type of sudden shift just doesn't seem very likely to me, even if she abruptly had the motivation to improve or try harder.

In response, the parents are appalled. They assert that my subjective evaluation doesn't come close to demonstrating that it is likely, or even plausible, that their daughter committed plagiarism. All it does is prove that plagiarism on her part isn't impossible. They therefore double down and claim that what I have found simply doesn't count as evidence of plagiarism, period. Their daughter would never cheat. 

Does that sound like I was wanting "to add the idea of impossibility" to the argument? Looks a lot to me like I was admitting to precisely the opposite. Just because I don't think the evidence proves that the student didn't write the paper using her own abilities, it doesn't mean their is no evidence pointing toward that conclusion. In other words, I don't think it was impossible  that she wrote it. I just found it to be quite unlikely, despite the hypothetical arguments made by her parents. 

You wrote: 

Quote

The challenge is that it still isn't evidence for plagiarism. It isn't evidence that they did in fact take someone else's idea. And while you could produce the person or source whose ideas they took and presented as their own, you don't. That is, you still don't have actual evidence - you simply have offered observations that make it clear that from your perspective, plagiarism could have happened - but this isn't anything at all like providing evidence that it did happen. And I can say that this isn't evidence at the same time that I agree with you that it is quite likely that they lied about not having help.

You haven't moved your argument forward.

You say that all this evidence does is demonstrate, from my perspective as a teacher, that "plagiarism could have happened." But guess what, that possibility existed before I even looked at her paper. So your description of these unusual features in the student's paper is essentially meaningless. And I think it exposes the recurring flaw in your thinking.

The dialogue with the parents was hypothetical, but all the points they raised could have been brought up. Yes, I didn't know the precise likelihood of the student independently using the advanced diction and syntax that I saw in the her writing. And, yes, I couldn't completely rule out a sudden burst of motivation, interest, or advancement in her skills, or perhaps that she had been disguising her true ability all along. Because of such uncertainties, by your standards, the usual features in her paper simply don't count as evidence. That is what I expected. 

The problem is that you seem to be repeatedly conflating evidence with something like proof. Yes, I didn't have conclusive proof that the student didn't write the paper using her own abilities. But I definitely had what I believed to be legitimate evidence pointing toward that conclusion. That became my working theory, based on what I knew of the student's prior ability. And it turns out that I was right. What initially started out as mere evidence of cheating eventually turned into proof of cheating, as I was able to use internet searches and track down precisely where she was pulling her language from. Entire sentences and paragraphs from another author's paper had indeed been inserted into her own, without any sort of attribution. And when I confronted her about it, she denied drawing upon any other source for her ideas. 

Ultimately, evidence is cause or reason for belief. Evidence can be weak or it can be strong. It can amount to proof or something or far less than proof. If the unusually advanced features in the student's paper wasn't evidence that she didn't write it, then I don't know what evidence could possibly be. For those very unusual features are what caused me to conclude that she likely wasn't responsible for the wording, which in turn initiated further investigation on my part, which ultimately validated my initial evidence-based theory. We can certainly debate the strength of the evidence which led to my conclusion. But to argue that it isn't evidence at all, to suggest that it didn't reasonably increase the plausibility or likelihood of plagiarism to any degree or extent, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the normative meaning of evidence in virtually all fields of knowledge.  

Edited by Ryan Dahle
Link to comment
44 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You misunderstand me. I'm not alleging that you actually believe the faulty assumptions that you are adopting and privileging in your framework. That is what is so ironic. You can't deny that it is logically faulty to start with the assumption that Lehi's journey through Arabia is an impossibility. Yet you also can't deny that this is what you are doing when you say that an evidence like Nahom only moves the text's claims about this journey from impossible to possible (for such an argument undeniably privileges impossible as the starting assumption). 

Finally, I understand what you are saying ...

So, I am not saying that there is a default position of impossibility. If I have implied this, I apologize.

The problem isn't that Lehi may have traveled through Arabia. In fact, this idea is accepted by everyone who has an opinion on the authenticity of the text (the difference between those who believe that the text is an authentic translation also believe that there was a historical person named Lehi and those who don't believe that Lehi is a modern fictional character). The challenge is associating this journey with specific locations (Nahom and Wadi Sayq e.g.) without any evidence that Lehi actually traveled to these places. This claim works because of two related premises:

We have 1) a proposed reading of the text which matches 2) a proposed set of geographical features in the real world.

Now, if we could not find any instances of (1) and (2) that worked, this would create a potential problem for authenticity. I don't think that this could ever reasonably be the case - there is a lot of flexibility in interpreting the text and in interpreting a 2500 year old geography (and simply a lot of potential options that we may not be able to identify). On the other hand, this isn't actually evidence for authenticity. Why? Because whatever (1) interpretation of the text we use and (2) whichever geographical features we use - these remain hypothetical routes. Real evidence would require us to actually place Lehi into these places. Until that happens, the routes are merely hypothetical, and we cannot tell if our interpretations and route reconstructions are accurate.

Now, from this position, several arguments have been generated. One argument is that because Joseph Smith couldn't have known any of these details, that he could not be the author of the text. This argument is problematic. Why? There are two reasons. First, because we have no idea whether or not Lehi ever actually visited these places (there is no evidence). And, second, because we don't have any assurance that Joseph Smith couldn't have known any of these details. The first is (at least to this point) something we cannot establish (and this is itself reasonable - we have evidence for a relatively limited number of people in the ancient world). The second is adopted by those looking to find potential sources of this information in Joseph's environment. This starts as a response, but then builds into its own (badly made) argument that Joseph could have written the text with locations like Nahom in mind based on maps he had seen (again, without evidence actually connecting Joseph to such a map, this is pure conjecture that has no evidentiary value).

So, I am not privileging the impossible - I am just emphasizing that arguments that are purely hypothetical without connecting evidence are not arguments of fact but arguments of possibility. And when I say that the argument about Nahom does nothing more than make the case for an authentic Book of Mormon possible, I am not suggesting that I am starting from the perspective of impossibility - rather that the arguments themselves are not capable of moving past the merely possible.

So this is one type of possibility/impossibility that I discuss. The other one is the way that people attempt to move this sort of argument of possibility into an argument of evidence. Those believing that the Book of Mormon is an authentic text attempt to do so by suggesting that it would be impossible for Joseph Smith to be able to produce a text containing specific information. That is, an argument that chiasmus is an ancient Hebrew rhetorical form, unknown in Joseph's argument, so that it's inclusion in the text must be evidence that Joseph Smith didn't write it, but some ancient author familiar with the rhetorical device of chiasmus did. This is one way to make an argument for the merely possible into an argument for evidence. It serves as the basis for the Sherlock Holmes quote I provided elsewhere: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." The challenge here is that this sort of sentiment doesn't translate well into these kinds of contexts. The apologetic/polemical argument tries to declare X as impossible so that Y (no matter how improbable) must be true. This is what I criticize when I argue that others are making a comparison with the impossible to move something from merely possible to something that is plausible.

Now if this is what you understood my argument to be, then we are at an impasse, because I am not biased against the "evidence" - I am trying to challenge you to explain how it becomes evidence without an appeal to the impossible (and the point is, I don't think you can explain how it is evidence). I am perfectly happy to accept evidence that actually connects to the claimed historicity of the people and the events in the Book of Mormon - that is, in a real and not hypothetical way.

Link to comment
9 hours ago, Nevo said:

There is no reason to assume that the seal is authentic.

I am not assuming, I am tentatively concluding.  I see a significant difference between the two.  And I also think there are evidentiary grounds as to the latter.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Chadwick cites the opinions of two eminent scholars: Lemaire and Avigad.  Lemaire "questioned its authenticity," but Avigad considered it genuine. 

Disagreement amongst scholars is nothing new.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

For Avigad's opinion, we have to rely on the word of his colleague, Joseph Naveh, since Avigad died several years before Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals was published. 

Naveh writes in the preface:

Quote

Beginning in 1968, dealers and collectors brought Professor Avigad a series of seals and bullae bearing somewhat peculiar iconography and letter forms, presumably produced by a limited number of engravers. Since no such seals were previously known and none of them was of clear provenance, there were rumours among scholars concerning their authenticity. However, no scholar thus far has proven that they are recent fabrications. . . . Avigad was confident that they are genuine (12).

So Avigad was "confident" that these unprovenanced, previously unknown seals "bearing somewhat peculiar iconography and letter forms" were authentic, but other experts clearly were not. Lemaire among them.

Yes.  

Judges face such "battles of the experts" every day.  Medical malpractice, product defect, mass tort, and other types of claims often require the factfinder - who is not an expert - to accept or reject expert testimony as to a disputed issue.

Chadwick walks us through "a number of other seals" which are "very similar" to the one under discussion, including one the publication of which post-dated 1991, "the latest date it could have been used by a forger as a model for the Malkiyahu seal."  Other seals also "feature a personal name followed by the term ben hammelek, or 'son of the king,' demonstrating that this phrasing was not unique to ancient Judean seals."  Avigad felt that one of the other seals possibly referenced Manasseh, son of Hezekiah (and great-grandfather to Zedekiah).  Yet another seal may reference Jehoahaz, older brother to Zedekiah.

I suspect it is not presently possible to use forensic science to definitively assess the age of the artifact (it being stone, and hence not susceptible to radiocarbon dating absent organic residue embedded on it).  

Nevertheless, Avigad's assessment does not seem to be a pie-in-the-sky or because-I-say-so type of thing.  The apologetic assessment of the artifact is based in part on Avigad's review, but also the other artifacts that are similar to it.  This line of analysis (which requires still other tentative conclusions in order to work) is not definitive, as there are too many unknowns and unsettled questions.  But I think it is an overstatement to say that there is "no reason" to tentatively conclude, as Chadwick, Welch and others have, that "the Book of Mormon’s assertion that King Zedekiah had a son named Mulek is now supported by linguistic and archaeological evidence."

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Neal Rappleye, in his 2017 FairMormon conference presentation, stated: "Since the information about Malkiyahu in both the Bible and this inscription is quite limited, an absolute identification remains uncertain, but Lawrence Mykytiuk considered this connection as among those 'reasonable enough to invite assumption.'" Rappleye gives the impression here that Mykytiuk is bullish on the identification of the bulla. He is not.

"Reasonable enough to invite assumption" does not seem quite the same as "bullish on the identification of the bulla."

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Mykytiuk assigns the Malkiyahu seal a "Grade 2 identification," which he defines as "reasonable but uncertain."

"Reasonable but uncertain" does not seem quite the same as "bullish on the identification of the bulla."

I don't think your characterization of Rappleye's presentation is accurate.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

He continues: "Although there is some chance of their being correct, from our perspective they cannot be considered reliable IDs, because there remains a reasonable doubt" (Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions, 74). 

"Reasonable doubt" is an interesting phrase.  In the legal world, that is a very high evidentiary bar.  Virtually all civil litigation requires a substantially lower "preponderance" standard.

I am quite okay with assessments like "reasonable doubt" and "reasonable but uncertain." 

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

So, the seal cannot be reliably connected to the figure in Jeremiah 38:6, who may not be a son of Zedekiah anyway.

"Reliably connected" seems okay to me.  There is a lot of uncertainty in this field.

But I think it can be plausibly connected.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Marvin Sweeney, in the Jewish Study Bible, comments: "Malchiah is Pashhur's father. His designation as the king's son indicates that he is a royal official (cf. Zeph. 1.8)."

There are apparently at least two "Pashurs" referenced in the Bible.  Pashur ben Immer and Pashur ben Malchiah.

There were several "Malchiahs" as well.

From the Reexploring article (co-authored, as it happens, by our own Robert F. Smith) :

Quote

Was this MalkiYahu a son of King Zedekiah? Several factors indicate that he was. For one thing, the title "son of the king" was used throughout the ancient Near East to refer to actual sons of kings who served as high officers of imperial administration.1 The same is certainly true of the Bible, in which kings' sons ran prisons (see 1 Kings 22:26‐27; Jeremiah 36:26; 38:6) or performed other official functions (see 2 Kings 15:5; 2 Chronicles 28:7). Moreover, in view of the fact that the name MalkiYahu has been found on two ostraca from Arad (in southern Judah), the late head of the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, Yohanan Aharoni, said that "Malkiyahu is a common name and was even borne by a contemporary son of king Zedekiah."2
---
1. Anson Rainey, "The Prince and the Pauper," Ugarit‐Forschungen 7 (1975): 427‐32. 
2.  Yohanan  Aharoni,  "Three  Hebrew  Ostraca  from  Arad," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 197 (February 1970): 22.

Seems like the either/or conundrum you suggest (that "son of the king" is a reference to a royal official and not to a literal son) doesn't quite seem necessary, since actual sons appear to have worked as royal officials.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

If Malchiah is Pashhur's father (see 38:1), then he is definitely not a son of Zedekiah.

First, you properly qualify your statement.  "If."  There are a lot of those going around.

Second, how do you figure?

Third, what do you make of Aharoni's comment quoted above ("Malkiyahu is a common name and was even borne by a contemporary son of king Zedekiah")?

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

The alternative is that the 32-year-old king had an otherwise unmentioned teenage son who owned a cistern and functioned as a guard, who coincidentally had the same name as Pashhur's father.

It's early in the morning, so my thinking is a bit fuzzy.  But what is the "coincidence" here?  I assume you are referencing footnote 61 of Kevin Tolley's 2019 article about the imprisonment of Jeremiah?

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Also, the text of Jeremiah 38:6 may well be corrupt. William McKane, for example, regards the reference to "Malchiah the king's son" as a later addition to the text and he omits it from his translation (as does the New English Bible) (see McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 2 [ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996], 946n3, 951, 969–971). If that is correct, "Malchiah the king's son" may be a scribal invention.

McKane seems to be in the minority on this point.  Of the 50+ English translations available online, 10 retain the erroneous "son of Hammelech," 4 reference him as "royal prince," 1 as "Malkijah, a member of the royal family," and 37 reference him as "the king's son" or "son of the king."  The NIRV references him as "Malkijah ... a member of the royal court."

From footnote 61 of Tolley's article:

Quote

Malchiah is identified as “the son of Hammelech” in Jeremiah 38:6. But Hammelech might reflect a translator’s error since ben-hammelek means “son of the king” and is not a proper name—a fact confirmed by the Septuagint (LXX Jeremiah 45:6). William L. Holladay suggests, “If Malchiah was Zedekiah’s son, he could be approximately fifteen years old, own a cistern and function as a guard; but, on the other hand, ‘king’s son’ may simply mean ‘of the royal family.’” Holladay, Jeremiah 2, 289.

That said, you raise a fair point.  "May well be" and "if" and "may be" are necessary qualifiers in these discussions.

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

(But even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that Zedekiah had a son named Malchiah/Malchijah/Malkiyahu ("Yah is my king"), how do we get from that to Mulek?

See Robert F. Smith's article here.  And here:

Quote

The name Mulek is not found in the King James Version of the Bible. Still, some Latter-day Saint scholars have proposed that Mulek is a hypocoristic (abbreviated or shortened) form of Malchiah/Malkiyahu, or a form of this name that dropped the divine name (yhw) element, leaving only mlk (meaning "king").3 (Hebrew during the time of Nephi and Lehi was written without vowels.) If the Bible's Malchiah is the same person as the Book of Mormon's Mulek, then the stamp seal belonging to Malkiyahu would lend independent credibility to the historical existence of Mulek.
...
3. 
Robert F. Smith, “New Information about Mulek, Son of the King,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research (Salt Lake City, UT and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 142–144; John A. Tvedtnes, John Gee, and Matthew Roper, “Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 1 (2000): 51; Chadwick, “Has the Seal of Mulek Been Found?” 73–74.

"Would lend independent credibility."  Not a smoking gun.  Not definitive evidence.  

9 hours ago, Nevo said:

Mulek is a good Book of Mormon name (compare Amulek, Amaleki, Melek, Muloki). The argument seems to be that "Yah is my king" gets shortened to just "king" (mlk)? Is there any precedent for that?)

Apparently so.  See here:

Quote

Mulek: A Shortened form of Malchiah

Some Latter-day Saint scholars have proposed that Mulek may be a shortened form of the biblical name Malchiah (Jeremiah 38:6),3 much like the name Mike is a shorted version of Michael in English.4 Precedent for this proposal can be seen in biblical names such as Baruch, which is short for Berekiah (spelled alternatively as Berekhyahu).5 In the case of Malchiah (transliterated as mlkyhw), it has been suggested that the suffix “iah” (yhw) may have been dropped, leaving only the consonants m-l-k. Because only consonants, and not vowels, were written out in ancient Hebrew, the shortened version of Malchiah (mlkyhw) would reasonably share the same spelling (mlk) as Mulek in ancient Hebrew.6

---

3 See Smith and Urrutia, “New Information about Mulek,” 143.

4 This analogy is given in Neal Rappleye, “‘Put Away Childish Things’: Learning to Read the Book of Mormon with Mature Historical Understanding,” 2017 FairMormon Conference, 15, online at fairmormon.org.

5 See Pieter G. Van Der Veen, Robert Deutsch, and Gabriel Barkay, “Reconsidering the Authenticity of the Berekhyahu Bullae: A Rejoinder,” Antiguo Oriente, 14 (2016): 103. Because the stamp seal discussed in this article (bearing the name Berekhyahu) is analogous to the seal bearing the name Malkiyahu (discussed later in this evidence summary), Latter-day Saint scholars have drawn attention to it for the sake of comparison. See, for example, Chadwick, “Has the Seal of Mulek Been Found?” 74; Smith and Urrutia, “New Information about Mulek, Son of the King,” 143. More recently, the provenance of the Berekhyahu seal has been brought into question. See Yuval Goren and Eran Arie, “The Authenticity of the Bullae of Berekhyahu Son of Neriyahu the Scribe,” American Schools of Oriental Research 372 (2014): 147–158. Nevertheless, whether or not the seal itself is authentic is really of no consequence to the proposal that Berekhyahu is a longer version of the name Baruch. For instance, even though Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, rev. ed. (New York, NY: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark), 227 doubts the legitimacy of the Berekhyahu seal, he still validates the linguistic connection by concluding that if it were indeed genuine “the parallel to the biblical Baruch would be impressive.” Besides, as most recently argued in Van Der Veen, et al., “Reconsidering the Authenticity of the Berekhyahu Bullae,” 199–136, the grounds for viewing the artifact as a forgery may themselves be invalid. For the original studies on this seal, see Nahman Avigad, Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1986), 28–29; Nahman Avigad, “Baruch the Scribe and Jerahmeel the King's Son,” Biblical Archeologist 42 (Spring 1979): 114–118.  

6 The points summarized in this paragraph are derived from Smith and Urrutia, “New Information about Mulek, Son of the King,” 143; John A. Tvedtnes, John Gee, and Matthew Roper, “Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 1 (2000): 51; Chadwick, “Has the Seal of Mulek Been Found?” 74.

See also the Onomasticon entry here:

Quote

It is very tempting to read MULEK as a shortened form, perhaps a hypocoristicon, of a longer name. For example, from the same time period, the days of ZEDEKIAH, the name Malchiah in Jeremiah 38:6, reads in Hebrew malkiyahû and means “Yahweh is (my) king.” It has been proposed by some scholars that Malchiah may have been the son of ZEDEKIAH,[4] which, if it is correct, has been obscured by the King James translation. That is, the Hebrew, malkiyahû ben hammelek, can be translated most readily, as the Septuagint does, as “Malchiah the son of the king,” rather than the King James rendering, “Malchiah the son of Hammlech.” Because of the suggested identity of Malchiah as a son of ZEDEKIAH, LDS scholars have also suggested a connection between Book of Mormon MULEK and biblical Malchiah.[5]

The form MULEK, if it is a hypocoristicon of a name similar to Malchiah, would be from the noun pattern for a diminutive or caritative, puʿail (fuʿayl in Arabic), meaning “little king.”[6]The diphthong –ai- can shorten to /e/.[7] Given that MULEK was the son of King ZEDEKIAH (see Helaman 8:21), then a PN based on a diminutive of the Semitic root mlk would seem appropriate.[8]

---

4. Yohanan Aharoni, "Three Hebrew Ostraca from Arad." BASOR No. 197 (Feb 1970), pg. 22. Others have disputed the connection. See Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-552, Anchor Bible 21 C (Doubleday, 2004), 64 (regarding Jeremiah 38:6).

5. See Robert F. Smith, "New Information About Mulek, Son of the King," Reexploring the Book of Mormon, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1992), 142-144; and John A. Tvedtnes, John Gee, and Matthew Roper, "Book of Mormon Names Attested in Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9/1 (2000): 51.

6. For examples in Arabic see Karin C. Ryding, A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic (Cambridge, England: Cambridge, 2005), p. 90. See also Gesenius, note to §86g, “Diminutives in Semitic languages are, however, most commonly formed by inserting a y after the second radical.” Already in 1894, Morris Jastrow, “Hebrew Proper Names Compounded with יה and יהו,” Journal of Biblical Literature 13 (1894):117, mentions the use of the diminutive “Arabic fuʿail” form as the explanation of the biblical PN Obadiah, as opposed to the biblical PN Abdiel (1 Chronicles 5:15).

7. See the diminutive Arabic PN Husein.

8. Hugh Nibley first made the suggestion that MULEK derived from the Arabic diminutive mulik, “little king” (Hugh Nibley, "Two Shots in the Dark," in Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1982), 119.), which would make sense if MULEK had been little when he escaped the Babylonian siege of JERUSALEM, or if he had been derisively called MULEK by those who did not recognize him as king. See footnote 5 above for LDS suggestions to link Malchiah in Jeremiah 38:6 with MULEK. The context in Jeremiah seems to indicate that Malchiah was at least of age, and not a small babe or child. Therefore, if MULEK is Malchiah, then the name may be a caritative or a term of derision.

If "Baruch" is attested as a hypocoristic form of Berekiah/Berekhyahu, then "Mulek" seems to work as a hypocoristic form of Malchiah/Malkiyahu/mlkyhw.  

Thanks,

-Smac

Link to comment
15 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

True. Back in the day there were Evangelical critics either trying to save us deluded cultists or secular critics attacking Mormon truth claims. These days the only disgruntled and aggrieved are people like me, ttribe, and Teancum, who used to be “defenders of the faith” here. Honestly, I think the greatest challenges to the church come from former members and those who want to change the church from within. Nobody takes Evangelical anti-Mormons seriously, and the secular world only notices Mormonism because of its cultural conservatism.

And for what it’s worth, I’m not aggrieved or disgruntled, nor am I a former member. 

Active members can be disgruntled, aggrieved, and critical; moreover, disgruntled and aggrieved critics here and elsewhere are former brothers and sisters. So much the worse for our unity in our Savior. 

For what it’s worth, I mentioned no names.

Edited by Bernard Gui
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

You seem willing to adopt assumptions you don't actually agree with just to diminish their value. 

I do this all the time and find it a very effective tool in debate.

You simply assume that position and then show its absurdity by "questioning yourself" in a Socratic style argument using "what if" or some similar device"

"But if I believe Xyz, then what if...."

 

Link to comment
31 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I'm not really interested in debating the details of what does and doesn't count as plagiarism (issues 1 and 2 on your list). I am well aware that many considerations are involved. My point, as I have stated before, is about whether the student likely produced the paper using her own abilities. You seem to agree that unusually advanced syntax and diction suggests that she "probably had help" (i.e., she didn't likely produce it using her own ability). That is what this is really about. 

You have to be willing to discuss though - because this is the HEART of what evidence is. I am not disagreeing with on on the point about producing "the paper using her own abilities". Just as with your alleged Book of Mormon evidence, this isn't in dispute. It's the way that you use as evidence for something.

33 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, I acknowledge that I can't be 100% certain that the student did indeed commit plagiarism.

Yes, the Sunrise Problem. It relativistic. And as a euphemism (which it really feels like you are using it that way here), it seems like you are saying that I may not know exactly, but, it is close enough to be certain to me. So I contest your notion that you didn't invoke the idea of impossibility (or certainty) here.

So to get back to your comments:

42 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Does that sound like I was wanting "to add the idea of impossibility" to the argument? Looks a lot to me like I was admitting to precisely the opposite. Just because I don't think the evidence proves that the student didn't write the paper using her own abilities, it doesn't mean their is no evidence pointing toward that conclusion. In other words, I don't think it was impossible  that she wrote it. I just found it to be quite unlikely, despite the hypothetical arguments made by her parents. 

What do you think the actual likelihood was?

44 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

The problem is that you seem to be repeatedly conflating evidence with something like proof.

No. The problem is that you present theory and hypothesis and pretend that it is evidence.

48 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Yes, I didn't have conclusive proof that the student didn't write the paper using her own abilities. But I definitely had what I believed to be legitimate evidence pointing toward that conclusion.

I don't disagree with this. I keep pointing that out. I believe that you did have evidence that the student had help writing their paper.

49 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

And it turns out that I was right. What initially started out as mere evidence of cheating eventually turned into proof of cheating, as I was able to use internet searches and track down precisely where she was pulling her language from.

See, that's evidence. And, as you will note, I discussed this above. You actually have to have this kind of evidence when you make charges of plagiarism. But you see, you make actual connections here. You don't have these connections with the Book of Mormon. You have theories and hypothesis - without even a rational way to test them (as you did with the plagiarism example you bring up). The person who believes that the Book of Mormon is a modern invention can make the same kinds of claims that you do - they can find parallels to contemporary issues and sources. Is this not evidence by your standard? It sure is (by your standard).

55 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But to argue that it isn't evidence at all, to suggest that it didn't reasonably increase the plausibility or likelihood of plagiarism to any degree or extent, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the normative meaning of evidence in virtually all fields of knowledge.  

I think you are wrong. Evidence is fact. It is not probability, it is not theory, it is not hypothesis. The identification of Nahom with a location in Arabia is not itself a fact. It is a theory or a hypothesis. Evidence would be facts that support that identification. What are those facts? And which of those facts apply in way that isn't tied up in the literary interpretation of the text of the Book of Mormon?

How is your example much different from a critic who asserts that in reading the Book of Mormon, they saw all of these parallels to ideas, theology and politics contemporary with Joseph Smith - and then, when they went looking, they found examples of these parallels?

Link to comment
30 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:
Quote

You seem willing to adopt assumptions you don't actually agree with just to diminish their value. 

I do this all the time and find it a very effective tool in debate.

You simply assume that position and then show its absurdity by "questioning yourself" in a Socratic style argument using "what if" or some similar device"

"But if I believe Xyz, then what if...."

Lawyers do this all the time.  We introduce it by using a Latin word, arguendo (meaning "in arguing" or "for the sake of argument").

An example: "Further, even assuming, arguendo, that Plaintiff's reliance on state statute is appropriate, the Complaint should still be dismissed because he cannot satisfy the statute of limitations..."

Thanks,

-Smac

Link to comment
1 hour ago, Bernard Gui said:

Active members can be disgruntled, aggrieved, and critical; moreover, disgruntled and aggrieved critics here and elsewhere are former brothers and sisters. So much the worse for our unity in our Savior. 

For what it’s worth, I mentioned no names.

Oh, I know. I didn't take it personally. Just made me think that my aggrieved and disgruntled days are long gone. 

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Finally, I understand what you are saying ...

So, I am not saying that there is a default position of impossibility. If I have implied this, I apologize.

No need for apologies. I'm glad we got past that issue. I doubt we will ever see eye to eye on the value of these evidences. I haven't even begun to engage you on the specifics of Nahom or any of the other issues. It was hard enough just to reach this agreement about the flaw in your definitional framework. 

 

Edited by Ryan Dahle
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...