The Gold Plates

[mfbukowski]

17 hours ago, Teancum said:

Ha! hardly.  Your approach is whatever feels good is true.  And because what you feel good about is true to you it is the best truth.  You know. Men becoming Gods. Though nobody believes that other than Latter-day Saints.  But for you it is the best. Even when it contradicts others best truths.

There are none so blind....

 

[smac97]

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

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

I guess for me, I don't think that anyone is questioning the existence of Joseph Smith or the witnesses existed.

Sure.  But plenty of people question the existence of the Plates.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

I can believe that Caesar was killed based on the record as passed down with a fairly high level of certainty, lets say it is more likely than not that the main points of his death are accurate; 1. Julius Caesar is a real person and 2. He died around 44 BC.

I quite agree.  But that "high level of certainty" is based on forms of evidence that, if applied to the Plates, would be characterized as shaky and unreliable.  

Provenance and chain-of-custody issues of the accounts of the assassination are fairly extensive. In contrast, there is no reasonable dispute regarding the provenance of the statements of the witnesses.  We know who these men were, we have a pretty solid body of evidence as to what they said and did not say, as to their character and basic honesty, as to their incentives and motivations, etc.

Hearsay and multiple hearsay, from historians writing decades/centuries after the fact, are the predominant sources of information.  For example, Plutarch "had access to the imperial library in Rome ... to scores of ancient sources that are now lost."  In contrast, the Witnesses declare themselves to be percipient witnesses.

Many of the details in historical records about the assassination are per se suspect.  Can we confidently declare that Cassius Dio, a Greek historian writing centuries after the fact, was competently situated to provide "a detailed account of the assassination itself," including such particulars as the motives of the conspirators, specific quotes from the participants ("There were shouts of ‘we need a Brutus...'")?  And what about Appian, another Greek historian, writing many decades after the fact "who detailed the actual assassination," including "detail{s} about the stabbing and the immediate aftermath," that the killers "were covered in blood and left the scene of the assassination still carrying the bloody knifes" and "even stabbed each other in their haste to kill Caesar."  They did?  Appian saw that, did he?  In contrast, the Witness statements are fortunately from A) quite brief, and B) from percipient witnesses, such that there is very little room for embellishment or embroidering by subsequent historians, translators, etc.  

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

The actual story of his death and who was responsible has multiple narratives. But I think it is fair to say that most people can agree with points 1 and 2, (1 more so than 2). There are written works that Julius Casear is the presumed author,

Yep.  Why is it that we are comfortable with that presumption?  I'm genuinely curious.  It seems like social acceptance/approval is predominating factor.  It's a powerful influence, both persuasively and dissuasively.  

Becoming and remaining a faithful Latter-day Saint provides ample opportunity to cope with the dissuasive aspect.  On the one hand, we have an entire cottage industry devoted specifically to tearing down our beliefs, populated by many who were formerly one of us.  Websites.  Podcasts.  YouTube videos.  Books.  Pamphlets.  Seminars.  Sections of bookstores.  And then on the other hand, commenting on the pervasiveness of these efforts draws accusations that we have a "persecution complex."  

All because we believe in things that others do not, things that do not enjoy the foregoing societal presumption.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

the Roman Empire timeline and that of his successors was well documented by historians at that time, their are coins and statues and artifacts contemporaneous that increase the likelihood of his existence.

We sure seem to have a lot of documented historical evidence as to the existence of the Plates, yet their existence is disputed on a regular basis.

And if and when the existence of the Plates is stipulated, we get into all sorts of freewheeling, evidence-free conjecture and guesswork which either A) studiously avoids getting into details (such as how Joseph Smith might have had the financial means, materials, skills, facilities, etc. to fabricate the Plates), or B) go into "conspiracy theory" territory.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

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

With respect, I disagree.  I think the Witness statements are mostly intended to establish the physical reality of the Plates.  The translation of the Plates is attested to in the statement of Witnesses, but that is purely a matter of faith since the Witnesses are conveying hearsay (much like we have to take the word of Moses as to what the Lord said on Sinai).

Meanwhile, however, we have ample other "corroborating evidences" as to the civilization described in the text.  And I don't think the text describes "a previously unknown (to the modern world) civilization."  Consider, e.g., this observation by John Clark:

Quote

Book of Mormon cities have been found, they are well known, and their artifacts grace the finest museums. They are merely masked by archaeological labels such as "Maya," "Olmec," and so on. The problem, then, is not that Book of Mormon artifacts have not been found, only that they have not been recognized for what they are. Again, if we stumbled onto Zarahemla, how would we know? The difficulty is not with evidence but with epistemology.

I sure would like to know what a Nephite pottery shard looks like.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

If we break down the Book of Mormon to similar points as Caesar;

Actually, I think the better comparison is to break down the existence of the Plates as attested to by the Witnesses "to similar points as {to historical sources regarding the assassination of} Caesar."

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

1. The Nephites existed

"The Nephites existed and left a historical record later discovered by Joseph Smith, which he then showed to eleven other men, all of whom declared themselves to be percipient witnesses attesting to seeing physical gold plates, and most of whom were later estranged from Joseph, and none of which ever recanted their testimony."

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

2. They existed on the American continents (location unknown) until around 600 AD;

Until about 421 A.D., actually.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

we have have a book, miraculously translated and the source material is not available.

Yes.  But the text is available.  And the Witness statements as to the physical reality of the Plates are available.  And ample historical evidence about the lives and character of the Witnesses is available.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

There are not any known artifacts,

NHM altar.

Seal of Mulek.

Again, if you can explain what a Nephite pottery shard looks like, I would be really interested in that.

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

stories, histories, outside of the Gold Plates that are known to corroborate their existence.  Literally nothing. 

We have huge amounts of data and scholarship which "corroborate" (as in "confirm or give support to (a statement, theory, or finding)") the existence of the Nephites/Lamanites/Jaredites.  Latter-day Saint scholars and apologists have published huge amounts of argument and evidence.  FARMS.  FAIR.  Interpreter. Book of Mormon Central.  Dozens (hundreds?) of published books. 

Now, what we have may not be definitive, or even sufficient.  But to say these things don't exist at all is unserious.  It is one thing to disagree with those responses, but it is manifestly another to pretend as if they don't exist, and to refuse to meaningfully interact with them at all.  

On 10/14/2022 at 8:39 AM, Snodgrassian said:

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

The Eight Witnesses did not claim to have "had a spiritual experience" when they examined the Plates.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited August 7, 2025 by smac97

[smac97]

50 minutes ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

For those of you who are "all in" on the plates as a physical artifact,

For me, the reality of the Plates (and, concomitantly, of the Nephites and Lamanites) is as essential to meaningfully accepting the Book of Mormon as scripture as the reality of Jesus Christ is essential accepting the Bible as scripture.

50 minutes ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

there must be a discussion of alloys and so on. Gold itself is very heavy, and is soft.

Yes.  We've been there and done that a lot.  Tumbaga sure seems to fit the bill.

Thanks,

-Smac

[OGHoosier]

2 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

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

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

It's fair to regarding a life-changing ask as extraordinary - that is, determining if the claim motivating the ask is extraordinary. Though I will note that this does not directly connect to the truth value of the claim itself, but rather its impact if applied to us, which unavoidably implicates bias and trends towards pragmatism as opposed to strict rationalism in my view. If you're fine with that, then I have no objections as I'm something of a pragmatist myself. I will note that, based on this view, I should view claims against the Book of Mormon as being extraordinary and in demand of extraordinary evidence since rejecting the Church would be a big, life-changing ask of me.

That being said, I suppose I was imprecise in my original comment, and you have my apologies. To clarify, I view replication as a proxy for determining whether the evidence is extraordinary, not the claim. One can repeat experiments which, as they accumulate, will constitute more and more extraordinary evidence. (I would question how we determine if a false positive is 5% likely given the controversy surrounding the concept of "likeliness" that has played out, but I digress). However, this method of assessing whether or not evidence is extraordinary is not available where replication is not possible, thus I think it isn't available to legal-historical evaluation. 

In short, physics envy strikes again. 

Edited October 14, 2022 by OGHoosier

[Analytics]

12 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

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

Richard Carrier Ph.D. wrote a pair of books that describes applying Bayesian reasoning to historical questions in a pair of books: Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, and On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. The basic point is that if we are going to ask a question about the likelihood of a hypothesis given the evidence (e.g. "Given the evidence, which hypothesis is more likely, A or B?"), the Bayesian reasoning is in fact the only logically coherent framework. Granted, applying specific numerical probabilities to express your credence in different hypotheses is asking for trouble and leads to results such as Carrier saying the probability that Jesus was in fact an historical person is approximately in the range of 32% and 0.025%. But if you refrain from ascribing specific numbers to the probabilities of historical events, looking at it through the paradigm of Bayesian reasoning still causes you to be asking the right questions.

12 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

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

Humes said that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

This does seem to be completely consistent with Bayesian reasoning; you have to look at the totality of the evidence, including background information and the overall context.

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Analytics said:

Humes said that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

This seems to be the argument of those insisting on a comprehensive, detailed natural explanation for the Book of Mormon. If it wasn't delivered by miraculous means, then how could it be so rich, complex, etc., if someone in frontier 1830 America had written it? Joseph is therefore either a genius or a prophet. Such arguments leave me rather cold.

[mfbukowski]

4 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Richard Carrier Ph.D. wrote a pair of books that describes applying Bayesian reasoning to historical questions in a pair of books: Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, and On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. The basic point is that if we are going to ask a question about the likelihood of a hypothesis given the evidence (e.g. "Given the evidence, which hypothesis is more likely, A or B?"), the Bayesian reasoning is in fact the only logically coherent framework. Granted, applying specific numerical probabilities to express your credence in different hypotheses is asking for trouble and leads to results such as Carrier saying the probability that Jesus was in fact an historical person is approximately in the range of 32% and 0.025%. But if you refrain from ascribing specific numbers to the probabilities of historical events, looking at it through the paradigm of Bayesian reasoning still causes you to be asking the right questions.

Humes said that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

This does seem to be completely consistent with Bayesian reasoning; you have to look at the totality of the evidence, including background information and the overall context.

< facepalm>

[mfbukowski]

Nevermind.

Edited October 14, 2022 by mfbukowski

[smac97]

46 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Quote

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

Of course it is a matter of faith.

Well, I think that's an important point.  Many critics would, I think, dispute that their rejection of the Restored Gospel is "a matter of faith."  (I am open to correction on that point.)

46 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Who isn't giving the evidence a fair shake?

By and large, the critics.

46 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

What about those of us who used to promote the same Mormon apologetics but no longer find it remotely compelling?

Perhaps exceptions that prove the rule.

Reasonable minds can disagree about all sorts of things, including important things.  And that disagreement can come even after a meaningful and good faith examination of "the evidence."  You seem to be an example of that sort of outcome.

46 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

What are you supposed to do when you keep giving something the benefit of the doubt until you can't do it anymore?

Each of us must do what we think is right.  For me, I have regularly re-examined what I believe and why I believe it.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

30 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

You have not provided a replacement, but you yet demand that the perfect become the enemy of the possible.

I think this is an important point.  I touched on it back in 2019:

Quote

Another challenge is that some folks, having encountered these "Big Lists," can end up adopting a variant of the "Nirvana Fallacy."  This fallacy is described here:

Quote

The nirvana fallacy is the informal fallacy of comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives.
...
In La Bégueule (1772), Voltaire wrote Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, which is often translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good" (literally: "The best is the enemy of the good").

The nirvana fallacy was given its name by economist Harold Demsetz in 1969, who said:

Quote

The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing "imperfect" institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.

 

My sense is that some members of the Church are harboring idealized, unrealistic expectations about the Church, and its leaders and members, and its history.  This is the "perfect" part of Voltaire's maxim. 

Then these folks encounter "big lists" and other online resources that distill and summarize all sorts of controversies, errors, shortcomings, etc. by members and leaders of the Church.  Such compilations are full of cheap shots presented for shock value.  Presentism.  Facile criticism.  Misrepresentation by omission and distortion.  A determined effort to keep these topics decontextualized and sensationalized.  Sarcasm.  No effort to study or meaningfully understand.  And intermingled with them are some legitimate criticisms. 

These summaries of the Church are, understandably, difficult or impossible to reconcile with the Church's narrative about itself, which has long tended toward an idealized presentation (though the Church's publication of Saints, Vol. 1: The Standard of Truth is signaling some real change on this issue).

Some members, then, end up facing seemingly irreconcilable options

• Option A: the Church is essentially good and decent and ordained of God (as claimed by the Church), or
• Option B: the Church is essentially flawed and corrupt, and even evil (as claimed by authors of the above-referenced "big lists").

Applying Voltaire's maxim, the "perfect" (the idealized perception of, and expectations about, the Church and its members) becomes the enemy of the "good" (Option A).  Consequently, some folks go with Option B, because it seems the only plausible means of reconciling what they thought about the Church with what they now know about the Church.

These members can, and often do, grapple with these issues in secret.  Maybe they don't want to "rock the boat" (in the ward, amongst family members, etc.).  Maybe they don't want to disappoint family members and friends.  Maybe they struggle in secret out of fear.  Maybe they feel overwhelmed and anxious at the prospect of their Latter-day Saint "worldview" being challenged or upended.  This can be a particularly potent factor in their decision-making process, as such secrecy tends to isolate the individual from other members, and also tends to lead the individual to hostile sources, who are at liberty to characterize the Church in the worst ways possible.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[jkwilliams]

12 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Nevermind.

That is an excellent album. 

And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, was hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind

Edited October 14, 2022 by jkwilliams

[OGHoosier]

10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I think this is an important point.  I touched on it back in 2019:

Thanks,

-Smac

Exactly. I do not think perfection is a requirement for a sound epistemology because that standard of perfectionism is just impossible to apply generally. If your epistemological theory cannot be applied to day-to-day human life, then it belongs in the lab and not out here.

Edited October 14, 2022 by OGHoosier

[smac97]

11 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

That is an excellent album. 

And I forget just why I taste
Oh yeah, I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard, was hard to find
Oh well, whatever, never mind

The actual lyrics . . . meh.  Just turn your brain off and enjoy the enthusiasm.

Thanks,

-Smac

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The actual lyrics . . . meh.  Just turn your brain off and enjoy the enthusiasm.

Thanks,

-Smac

I kind of like the contrast between the lyrics, with their recognition of the meaningless void that is late American culture, and the "enthusiasm" of the music.

[Ryan Dahle]

 

4 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

20 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

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

Nahom isn't evidence. It cannot be evidence. There are several reasons why it cannot be evidence.

My intent wasn't specifically to justify Nahom as evidence. Sure, the assumptions upon which its evidentiary value depend can be debated. I think you are wrong in your assessment of those assumptions, but that is beside the point.

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). 

I think if you further engage the real-world incident about the student and the teacher (myself), my point will become much clearer. So I will repeat my point from before (with a few clarifications in brackets):

Quote

It isn't about the strict definition of plagiarism. It is about whether it is likely that she wrote the paper using her own abilities, and whether or not the textual data [advanced diction and syntax] provides evidence against that claim. Let's say I asked her how she wrote the paper, and she claimed that she did it all on her own, without any help from parents, mentors, the internet or any other source. And let's say I also ask her parents and they deny giving her any help whatsoever. With those additional details in place, would you see the textual data (unusually advanced syntax and diction) as evidence that she didn't create the text using her own abilities.

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)? 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Ryan Dahle

[smac97]

Daniel Peterson just posted an interesting comment on the speed of the production ("translation") of the English text of the Book of Mormon:

Quote

On a more substantive level, folks at the Obsession Board have noticed that I regard the speed at which the Book of Mormon was dictated, and the complexity of its content, as evidence for its divinity and authenticity.  The trouble is that they seem to imagine me to regard that speed and that complexity as slam-dunk proof of its authenticity and its divinity.  But I don’t.  I never have.  I see the speed of the Book of Mormon’s dictation and the complexity of the Book of Mormon’s text as evidence against the notion that Joseph Smith simply made it up, off the top of his head.

We now have pretty good evidence that the Book of Mormon as we have it in printed English editions was dictated at a rate of roughly 8.5 to 12 pages daily, day after day, week after week, until it was completed — first and final draft, really — within a little more than two months.  That’s a torrid pace, frankly.  I’m a pretty quick writer, and, fairly faithfully for years now, I’ve kept daily records of how many words I’ve written for publication.  (I don’t count this blog, incidentally.)  I have never, during those years, been able to maintain for more than a few days the speed of composition that Joseph Smith must have maintained for more than two months, if he was the author of the Book of Mormon.  And even that torrent of productivity has only occurred two or three times, in short bursts.  And I have a Ph.D. and a computer.

I’m impressed with the rapidity of the dictation of the Book of Mormon, and with the complexity of it.  But that’s only part of an argument that Joseph Smith wasn’t the book’s author, which is only part of the overall cumulative argument for its authenticity and divinity.  Which, in my view, is impressive but isn’t proof.  I don’t believe that it was ever God’s intent, this side of the veil, to provide intellectually coercive proof for the Book of Mormon or for the Restoration more generally.  And, since I don’t believe that “proof” is available anywhere, I’m scarcely going to insist that a single strand of what I term the overall cumulative case for the Book of Mormon — not even the testimony of the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, impressive though I find them — constitutes “proof.”

Still, as I say, I find the complexity of the Book of Mormon and the rapidity of his dictation powerful indicators that Joseph Smith wasn’t simply making it up as he went along.  And, to illustrate my position, I will now cite an anecdote about the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce that is related by the American horror and science fiction writer Stephen King.

...

On page 151, Stephen King tells a little tale about James Joyce:

According to the story, a friend came to visit him one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair:

“James, what’s wrong?” the friend asked.  “Is it the work?”

Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at the friend.  Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?

“How many words did you get today?” the friend pursued.

Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk):  “Seven.”

“Seven?  But James . . . that’s good, at least for you!”

“Yes,” Joyce said, finally looking up.  “I suppose it is . . . but I don’t know what order they go in!”

There is, however, no evidence of which I’m aware for Joseph Smith suffering from “writer’s block” during the “composition” of the Book of Mormon.  And no evidence that he experienced any difficulties in structuring it.  No wadded up, abandoned, first drafts.  No switching paragraphs around.  No rewrites.  Day in and day out.

That may not impress some people.  But it certainly impresses me.  It’s a small thing, perhaps.  But it’s not nothing.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Benjamin McGuire]

4 hours ago, teddyaware said:

Why do you insist on empirical evidence that the Book of Mormon is true when the prophets who wrote the book solemnly testify that the only way anyone can know the book is true is by the revelatory power of the Holy Ghost?

I am not insisting on it. In fact I seem to mostly be pointing out that things are not evidence (to others who claim that it is). But, since we are here, what exactly do you mean when you say that "the book is true"?

[Benjamin McGuire]

Of course, it's easy to pick examples of writing that prove a point - but it isn't necessarily meaningful. Dan should be quite aware of the other end of the spectrum - two incredibly prolific writers that I know of are Jacob Neusner (wrote and edited close to 950 volumes, and at the height of his writing, he was churning out a book a week - I won't claim that they were all of the highest quality ....), and Lionel Fanthorpe, who for a while made a living writing pulp science fiction in the 50s and 60s. He wrote under a couple of dozen pseudonyms, and his most impressive streak was 89 books written over a three year period (on average, 158 pages of text every 12 days). This isn't to say that the dictation speed of the Book of Mormon isn't impressive (it is) - merely that it isn't amazing either.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

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

Of course we engage in assessments all the time - and a great deal of the time we are simply wrong in our assessments (this is statistical fact). Here are a couple of comments from David Hand's Book The Improbability Principle that I mentioned earlier:

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.
...
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 kind of mistake is an example of a very important and common confusion called the prosecutor’s fallacy , or the law of the transposed conditional . In a trial, the jury might be told by the prosecutor that it would be highly improbable that the defendant’s fingerprints would be at the scene of the crime if he were innocent. Since his fingerprints are there, this is taken as proof that he’s not innocent.
But that’s wrong. What we really want to know is the probability that he’s innocent, given that his fingerprints were at the scene, not the probability that his fingerprints would be at the scene if he were innocent. These two probabilities can be very different.
We can see the error in this transposition if we look at an extreme example. At present, far more CEOs of blue-chip companies are male than female. So the probability of being male given that you are a CEO is considerably greater than ½. But that’s very different from the probability of being a CEO given that you are male, which is very much less than ½ since very few men (or women, for that matter) are CEOs.
...
Unfortunately, the ease of bringing something to mind is subject to various kinds of distortion. The Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, one of the creators of prospect theory (which has been defined as “a rational theory of irrational human behavior”), gave an elegant illustration of this. He asked volunteers to imagine whether a word, randomly chosen from an English text, would be more likely to start with the letter k or on the other hand to have k as the third letter. People tended to choose the former—deciding that more words start with k . In fact, in a typical English text (whatever that is) there are about twice as many words with k for their third letter as for their first. The trouble is that words with k as the third letter are much more difficult to bring to mind.
In general, we tend to overestimate probabilities when it’s easy to think of examples. Kahneman called this phenomenon the availability heuristic . Unfortunately, the readiness to bring examples to mind is highly susceptible to outside influences—like topical media coverage, for example. In fact, news coverage is one possible explanation for increased public anxiety about crime rates, even at times when crime rates are falling.
...
Psychologist Ruma Falk illustrated the malleability of probability assessments by showing that the extent to which a coincidence evoked surprise depended on the context. Adding even irrelevant detail made the coincidence seem more surprising. Furthermore, coincidences which happened personally tended to be regarded as more surprising than those which happened to other people—though this might be a subconscious awareness of the law of truly large numbers: “There are a lot of other people out there that this could happen to, but only one of me, so it’s less surprising when it happens to someone else.”

He goes through a number of other issues - but the point should be clear. While human cognitive function engages the issues of likeliness, they get it wrong all the time. Another example of this sort of thing is the obvious issue with car accidents and lottery tickets. Your odds of dying in a car accident on the way to or from work today are much higher than the odds of you winning the powerball. But, people still buy powerball tickets, and they don't stop driving to work.

It isn't that the process isn't useless - it can be corrected if we want to take the time and do the analysis. The problem is that in the end, when we base the defense of the faith on arguments that aren't actually very strong, I think that we end up doing as much harm as good. People who embrace these explanations will be susceptible to embracing other explanations that use the same weak arguments (and many of these same weak arguments are used by polemicists attacking faith). And when we teach people that these are arguments that show substantial evidence (when they don't actually do this), we are teaching people to embrace uncritical thinking.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 hour ago, 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. Book of Mormon apologetics have consistently (from even before the book was published) been a back and forth between those who believe the proposition that the Book of Mormon is a translation of an ancient history and those who don't believe that proposition. Nahom is a fascinating discussion because it includes all sorts of things related to our discussion here. After the possibility that the Nahom of the Book of Mormon had been at least regionally identified as a location, those opposed to the proposition began looking for old maps that pre-dated the Book of Mormon that had references to place names like this. And sure enough, they found them. They then tracked down references to this location and put them in the near vicinity of Joseph Smith. So we have these dueling possibilities. The problem is that for those who believe the proposition, there isn't any evidence to indicate that Lehi actually used this route. It is merely conjecture. For those who don't believe the proposition, there isn't any indication that Joseph every actually looked at these literary sources and was inspired by them. In neither case do we move beyond a possibility to something more - because in neither case can a connection actually be established.

What you are suggesting is a lot like the scenario I described at some point - person A kills person B with a 9mm pistol. Person C owns a 9mm pistol. The fact that he does so, isn't meaningful to the question of whether Person C is really Person A who killed Person B. Now if Person C didn't have a 9mm pistol and couldn't have access to it - that would generally mean it was impossible for them to be Person A. But having such a pistol only allows for the possibility that Person C killed Person B - it doesn't suggest that he did it. To establish that, you would need to connect them together.

This is all that you are describing. We are finding lots of ways to show how the proposition about the Book of Mormon could be possible. And those who don't believe the proposition continue to try to either mitigate those claims or to make similar claims showing how the proposition about the Book of Mormon could not be possible. But, the claims have to be connected to events that really happened for them to rise to the level of meaningful evidence. The way that these factsget used without making direct connections is to suggest that they mean something because the alternative isn't rationally possible. From my last post, I quoted this: "This kind of mistake is an example of a very important and common confusion called the prosecutor’s fallacy , or the law of the transposed conditional . In a trial, the jury might be told by the prosecutor that it would be highly improbable that the defendant’s fingerprints would be at the scene of the crime if he were innocent. Since his fingerprints are there, this is taken as proof that he’s not innocent. But that’s wrong. What we really want to know is the probability that he’s innocent, given that his fingerprints were at the scene, not the probability that his fingerprints would be at the scene if he were innocent. These two probabilities can be very different." See this is what is going on here. You want to say that it is improbable that we could find a path through the desert that encounters a place with a name like Nahom and ends up in a paradisaical valley like the text describes (Wadi Sayq) unless Joseph Smith was receiving the text by revelation. But this is wrong. And it is here that you are comparing things with the impossible (not me). It is quite easy for someone to believe that the Book of Mormon is an authentic translation of an ancient text and not believe at all that Lehi stopped at the Wadi Sayq, or that the text was written using EModE, or .... So this isn't favoring some sort impossibility assumption. That's not my intention here at all. I am arguing that the way that you present things as evidence is simply bad logic. I say the same thing about those who don't believe the proposition, who claim that perhaps Joseph Smith was reading a book with a map that had place names that he borrowed for his literary masterpiece. I see the same thing there (in fact I have some lengthy published discussions on this issue). For them, they do the same sort of thing when they assert that Joseph must have used this source (or something like it) because he couldn't possible have received a record from an angel on gold plates. That's where the impossibility comes in again. You could believe that Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon without having to believe anything at all about Nahom and maps.

I also note in passing that neither side has (as far as I have seen - I may have missed something) ever shown the slightest inclination to suggest that any parallel (literary or otherwise) could be a simple coincidence (this is, of course, a bigger issue for those opposed to the proposition, since we should assume that there were things that Joseph got right purely accidentally).

1 hour ago, 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.

[Teancum]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

There are none so blind....

 

Are you looking in a mirror per chance?  🙄

[InCognitus]

26 minutes ago, Teancum said:

5 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

There are none so blind....

Are you looking in a mirror per chance?  🙄

What do blind people see when they look into a mirror?

[mfbukowski]

53 minutes ago, Teancum said:

Are you looking in a mirror per chance?  🙄

Neener neener 😜

[smac97]

3 hours ago, Brahms said:

I noticed that he referred to what he called "the overall cumulative argument"  (for authoring the Book of Mormon in this example) rather than speaking in terms of possibilities leading to probabilities or plausibilities.

I'm not sure I can go along with the idea of "possibilities leading to probabilities or plausibilities."  A "possibility" seems like any non-zero number on a spectrum (.01% to 100%).  A "probability" is likewise more a mathematical term, and therefore not something I would put on a spectrum between "possibility" and "plausibility."  Meanwhile, "plausibility" seems qualitatively distinguishable from the other two.

See, e.g., here:

Quote

As stressed by Wiek et al. (2013), plausibility is not identical with probabilistic prediction. Rather, it is the element or process that modulates the probabilistic predictions of our minds in the form of assessments of how confident we can be in the accuracy of our “prior” probabilistic predictions. Speaking Bayesian, plausibility assessments of the degree of occurability of some event or action is precision. Thus, when precision is high, we take the predictive hypothesis to be comfortably plausible. When precision is low, we take the predictive hypothesis to be uncomfortably implausible. Finally, when we don’t know what to say about precision, we are in the grips of a highly uncanny or “fantastic” ambiguity.

...

Whereas plausibility is thus based on “occurrability”, probability is in the business of “determining the likeliness of occurrence” (p. 137), which is a related but clearly different endeavor. In sum, Wiek et al. (2013) conclude that while 1) highly probable scenarios are plausible, 2) less probable scenarios can still be plausible if they are theoretically occurrable. Furthermore, in their view 3) plausible scenarios are considered consistent, yet 4) consistency is not a sufficient condition for plausibility (since also consistent scenarios can be implausible).

 

3 hours ago, 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.

Okay.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Teancum]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Neener neener 😜

Finally a comment from you that i understand and that is coherent.😏