Origins of the Book of Mormon

[_charity]

Thus, charity can cobble together disparate parallels and then insist that the critics' house of cards has collapsed. Why? Because she's seeing evidence where there is none.

And you can fail to see evidence where there is evidence.

Back to Givens. Credible belief or dismissive denial.

And it was Trevor that said there was "little evidence." Little isn't nothing.

By the way, do you guys understand you are apologists, too? You are arguing from a specific position.

[_Runtu]

And you can fail to see evidence where there is evidence.

I see it. I just weigh the very little evidence for your position against the avalanche of evidence for the null proposition. When the null proposition has the weight of the evidence, the null proposition is most likely true.

Back to Givens. Credible belief or dismissive denial.

And it was Trevor that said there was "little evidence." Little isn't nothing.

Little evidence is also not sufficient for credible belief when the evidence for dismissive denial is overwhelming.

By the way, do you guys understand you are apologists, too? You are arguing from a specific position.

That's assuming that I care one way or another which way the evidence points. If the evidence were as compelling and abundant as you claim, I'd find sufficient reason to believe again. You seem to think we are all arguing to defend a position we've staked out. I would guess most of us aren't.

[_SatanWasSetUp]

This is a pretty goofy argument. The question was how come the Lehites used a 7 day week when native mesoAmerican cultures didn't. And the answer is because that was the calendar they were used to using. Why would we think they used a different calendar style? Good grief.

Charity, aren't you one of the people who looks at mesoAmerica for Book of Mormon parallels? The point here is: Book of Mormon = 7 day calendar. Native mesoAmerica = non 7 day calendar. You ask why we think this is an issue. I don't know, you're the ones suggesting the Book of Mormon took place in mesoAmerica. Shouldn't these little things, like how they kept track of time, match up?

Yes, like horse for tapir. Very convincing. Care to tell me how you see these animals matching up?

There was a language in the area that called tapirs "deer you could ride on." What do you make of that?

Where in the Book of Mormon did they ride deer? And since tapirs still existed in the 1820s, why wouldn't Joseph Smith translate "tapir" to "tapir"? Why would he change species? Maybe Lamanites aren't really people, but some other animal. That would explain why we can't seem to find them.

[_charity]

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By the way, do you guys understand you are apologists, too? You are arguing from a specific position.

That's assuming that I care one way or another which way the evidence points. If the evidence were as compelling and abundant as you claim, I'd find sufficient reason to believe again. You seem to think we are all arguing to defend a position we've staked out. I would guess most of us aren't.

You wouldn't be here if you weren't still trying to stand on a position. You would walk away and do something else. I can understand the more rabid guys over on concerned christians. They think they are saving poor deluded Mormons from hell.

But what about those of you who "leave the Church, but can't leave it alone?"

And you don't understand the nature of positive versus negative evidence.

Look at it this way. A guy is accused of shooting up a 7-11. The guy says he was never even in that 7-11 and his lawyer brings in 30 people to say they didn't see him do it. The prosecution brings in one tiny piece of his DNA on the counter and 1 person who says they saw him walk in with a gun and start shooting. He's toast.

If there is any evidence that the Book of Mormon is true, it completely knocks out any suppositions that is isn't. The old absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Read it and weep.

[_Trevor]

You said little. It doesn't take much. If there IS any external evidence, which you seem to admit, then the critic's house of cards falls down.

It sure takes a lot more than you have. Evidence is different from proof. It takes a lot of evidence to constitute proof. What appears to be evidence in favor of something, may on further examination turn out to be coincidence or evidence in favor of something else. It takes a lot of evidence to get a complete picture. For the Book of Mormon that kind of evidence simply does not exist. If I were to say that there is no evidence, then that would be me adopting an unfair bias against it. I do not say that.

At the same time, the existence of any evidence does not mean that the evidence and argument against it falls down like a house of cards. I am sure you would like to believe that, but it simply is not so.

Even if he wrote a 500 page novel, or was part of a group that did, you still have to account for the very well documented process of producing the manuscript which was taken to the printer. You would have to admit that over a period of something like 90 days he dictated the whole thing from memory, never looking at notes and never asking for a read back when starting up after a break. Got an explanation for that?

Actually, I do not. I think it has been reasonably well established that people are capable of producing long works of fiction in a method not dissimilar from the one Joseph used. I thought the Pearl Curran story was applicable, and so is the example of oral composition. Joseph Smith had many years to construct and memorize the basic outline of the Book of Mormon narrative. With all of that time, he could have accomplished that much and more. He need not have had a word-for-word text memorized to pull it off.

Could he have committed the text he had been constructing for years to paper in 90 days? Of course he could.

Oh, yes, you have to account for the 11 sworn witnesses and the dozens of informal witnesses to the existence of the plates.

As I have said many times, these witnesses had no expertise in authenticating antiquities. They had no way of knowing whether what they were looking at was a real ancient artifact or a forgery. There is also some question as to the literalness some of their examination of the plates. These were, in some cases, the same men who were convinced that Joseph Smith had the power to locate treasures guarded by ghosts. Not exactly the best witnesses for determining the reality and antiquity of the plates, to be sure.

It happened the other way around. The explorers were following the directions given in the book, turn this way, turn that, and found a place that met the description with water, fruit trees, honey, etc. THEN they found the iron deposits.

You have provided such general markers. How could we possibly know whether Lehi & crew passed this way without some evidence of their presence there? When Schliemann found Troy, he located a large city in a general area that had long (millennia long) been recognized as the location of the ancient city. So while it is possible to find and confirm something like the well-documented location of an ancient city, it seems nigh impossible to confirm the passage of a handful of travelers over 2500 years ago. Likewise, to affirm that you have actually located their path is fanciful to say the least.

I don't think they have llamas in meso America. You just stuck that in.

Why does that matter? With limited geography I could place it anywhere in the western hemisphere. In fact, from what I see in LDS apologia, it little matters where or when something happens, how widely it occurred, what language was involved, and many other details, so long as you can say that some time before Columbus, something roughly parallel to a Book of Mormon practice occurred. So if that means equating the recreational riding of small deer with a Nephite cavalry, it seems like you see little problem. You'll just chalk up all of the many problems with the argument to a translation issue.

I think the actual problem is a reality issue, as in... Joseph Smith knew very little of the reality of Ancient America.

Right. But your argument that nothing existed, nothing happened becomes much more tenuous when it did exist and it did happen, and now we just have to pinpoint the location.

My argument that nothing existed? Pardon me, but I am sure many things happened, and a few of these things may have coincidentally been mentioned in the Book of Mormon as well, but when it comes to establishing that the Book of Mormon corresponds reasonably well with what actually occurred in Ancient America in specific societies, places, and times, you have a real big problem. Many real big problems, in fact. These problems can't be surmounted by natives riding deer or the discovery of barley in one place. It takes far more than that.

What I see, instead, is a book that fits perfectly in the range of known literature 19th century North America. In fact it does so well that this is the real problem you face. And, we are not talking about Spalding or plagiarism. We are talking about a wealth of literature that tries to understand American natives through a Biblical world view, as does the Book of Mormon.

[_Runtu]

You wouldn't be here if you weren't still trying to stand on a position. You would walk away and do something else. I can understand the more rabid guys over on concerned christians. They think they are saving poor deluded Mormons from hell.

But what about those of you who "leave the Church, but can't leave it alone?"

Uh, I deal with the church every single day of my life, charity. I'm not on some vendetta. It's part of my life, like or not, and this is generally how I deal with it. I'm not trying to tear down your faith or prove you're wrong. But when you make extraordinary claims, you can expect me to question them.

And you don't understand the nature of positive versus negative evidence.

Yep, I'm just a moron. :rolleyes:

Look at it this way. A guy is accused of shooting up a 7-11. The guy says he was never even in that 7-11 and his lawyer brings in 30 people to say they didn't see him do it. The prosecution brings in one tiny piece of his DNA on the counter and 1 person who says they saw him walk in with a gun and start shooting. He's toast.

If there is any evidence that the Book of Mormon is true, it completely knocks out any suppositions that is isn't.

If there were anything remotely as conclusive as DNA evidence, you might have a point.

The old absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Have you seen me argue anything like this? The evidence of 19th-century production is positive evidence (Wow, I can tell the difference between positive and negative evidence. Who knew?), not "absence of evidence." It is conclusive and works quite nicely in describing the whole of the Book of Mormon, its narrative and its production.

Read it and weep.

Heh. Why would I weep?

[_beastie]

From Charity’s link regarding metallurgy:

Charity:

Your argument is dated. Catch up, please. You can find the information at www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Brochures/Anachronisms4.pdf

Just to give you a little bit of information, scientists now believe that metallurgy of some types was well known in the Americas as early as 1000 B.C. Also, the place where the directions in the Book of Mormon lead to the seacoast in the Old World has been found to have smeltable iron ore, which was unknown until recently.

From the pamphlet:

Metallurgy
For years the best evidence suggested that metallurgy was unknown in the Americas until about 900 A.D. Recent studies have altered this view. “Current information,” writes one non-LDS scholar, “clearly indicates that by 1000 B.C. the most advanced metallurgy was being practiced in the Cauca Valley of Colombia.”1 Peruvians began metallurgy as early as 2000 B.C. and since it is generally accepted that Peru and Mesoamerica were in contact by trading, it seems reasonable that this knowledge was passed on to Mesoamerican peoples, especially since at least a dozen pieces of metal have been found in Mesoamerica dating to before 900 AD. 2

The problem with ancient metal artifacts is that metal (left untreated or exposed to the elements) corrodes and deteriorates—especially in the humid and wet jungles of Mesoamerica. Language studies, however, help confirm that metallurgy was known anciently in the Americas. Non-Mormon scholars who have reconstructed parts of several ancient Mesoamerican languages were puzzled to find a word for “metal” existed as early as 1000 B.C. while the early language of the Olmecs had a word for metal as early as 1500 B.C.

This is typical of LDS apologetics in regards to the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica: it is subtlety misleading in ways difficult to detect unless one possesses a certain amount of background knowledge already about Mesoamerica.

Yes, Peru had metallurgy long before Mesoamerica. Yes, there was likely contact. No, there is no evidence that Mesoamerica picked up this skill from Peru. No Mesoamerican scholars makes the link that Ash has done here. It’s fine if he wants to make speculation, but it is only fair, honest, and responsible to clearly state that this is speculation that is not currently supported by Mesoamerican scholars. (non-Mormon, that is)

And then there’s the linguistic issue. The words that exist for “metal” (note: not metallurgy) were referring to metal pieces that were manufactured in Mesoamerica from the Olmec period (or earlier) from meteorite rock or metal outcrops. They were not manufactured through the process of metallurgy, and that is what is dubious in the Book of Mormon.

Not metal. Metallurgy.

After I quit FAIR, I noticed Brant, once again, repeating this old saw of “linguistic evidence”. I knew, by that time, what the linguistic evidence referred to, and knew Brant was misleading people by pretending it supported the Book of Mormon. All Mesoamerican scholars know that ancient Mesoamericans engaged in simple metal working from the Olmec period onward. This is nothing new, and this is what the linguistics refer to. So I started a thread on ZLMB. Brant concurred with me that the linguistic evidence did not reference metallurgy at all. But he also never clarified that for the FAIR thread. I thought that was telling.

Now this reference is even more irresponsible:

While critics have assured us that the Book of Mormon’s use of iron is anachronistic, recent research refutes this claim. A pottery vessel dating to around 300 A.D., for example, might have been used for smelting. A metallic mass within this vessel contained copper and iron. The archaeologist who made this find has also found a refined piece of iron in an ancient American tomb.

This reference was a sheer fabrication on Sorenson’s part. I know, I tracked it down. Yet it is still repeated.

Even one Book of Mormon critic (who questions the relationship between New World iron and Book of Mormon iron) acknowledges that the Olmecs of Central America (which correspond to logical Jaredite times

This is exactly the sort of nonsense that reassures only people who have no background knowledge about Mesoamerica in the first place.

“Even one Book of Mormon critic!!!!” Every Mesoamerican scholar has known for a long time that the Olmec fashioned simply iron mirrors from meteorite rock or metal outcrops.

To pretend that the iron mirrors of the Olmec provides evidence for the process of metallurgy described in the Book of Mormon is irresponsible.

This is what irritates me about LDS apologetics. I really don’t care if people believe God inspired the Book of Mormon. I do care that apologists are misleading people who are looking for legitimate information on the subject, and getting away with it because most people know so little about ancient Mesoamerica that they do not recognize the falsehoods embedded therein.

My essay on metallurgy, for more references and links, including Sorenson’s falsified source repeated by Ash:

http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/ind ... Metallurgy

[_MishMagnet]

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If there is any evidence that the Book of Mormon is true, it completely knocks out any suppositions that is isn't. The old absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

Read it and weep.

1) By this same argument isn't the Koran true then?

2) Why are you guys finding counter explanations and not The Brethren? I would like to know (not that I expect you have the answer) why President Hinkley won't just settle it, take some stand. As I mentioned a few days ago - Joseph Smith was very clear (in my opinion) about where the Book of Mormon took place. How did the general membership come to believe the Book of Mormon took place elsewhere without any higher authority saying so?

[_Trevor]

If there were anything remotely as conclusive as DNA evidence, you might have a point.

Remember, you are talking to someone from the party of DNA means nothing with regard to the Book of Mormon. I find it a little ironic that she raises DNA as an example.

[Anonymous]

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By the way, do you guys understand you are apologists, too? You are arguing from a specific position.

That's assuming that I care one way or another which way the evidence points. If the evidence were as compelling and abundant as you claim, I'd find sufficient reason to believe again. You seem to think we are all arguing to defend a position we've staked out. I would guess most of us aren't.

You wouldn't be here if you weren't still trying to stand on a position. You would walk away and do something else. I can understand the more rabid guys over on concerned christians. They think they are saving poor deluded Mormons from hell.

But what about those of you who "leave the Church, but can't leave it alone?"

And you don't understand the nature of positive versus negative evidence.

Arguing from a postion makes one partisan not an apologist.

Some of us are here because we find history fascinating--on both an empirical and conceptual level. From such a (partisan) vantage point Mormonism can be approached in a completely secular fashion. Believing LDS do not have a monopoly on "History" or on Mormon history.

Also I admit a slight fascination as an academic with what appears to me to be a bizarro world of "argument" that surrounds attempts to rationally prove the supernatual provenance of the Book of Mormon (which by the way is not "a translation" but a text which claims it is a translation). Believe in what you will by faith, when you start bending logic and scholarship you've embarked on a project that is hard for many to take seriously.