Morrissey wrote:No, it's at best a lucky hit. Not too dissimilar from the case where I might be thinking about someone at the very second she calls.
That's a ridiculous comparison to make.
Morrissey wrote:Kind of like the numerous other geographical references in the Book of Mormon for which there has been no independent and unbiased verification. What's Joseph's hit rate? Not too good, it turns out.
And the lack of evidence for one toponym has absolutely whatsoever to do with the validity of another. You seem unaware of the phenomenon known as the accident of preservation.
Morrissey wrote:Joseph Smith did, however, have a habit of borrowing words and inserting them in full form or in altered from into his narratives.
Or so you conclude based on words filling a spectrum of comparability to biblical words that you have a priori decided cannot come from actual historiography.
Morrissey wrote:Borrowing and altering the word Nahum, with which he would have been familiar, and achieving one lucky hit (in the midst of dozens if not into the hundreds of misses), is a far more parsimonious and plausible explanation than the Book of Mormon is an actual ancient record of a lost civilization, and all the implausible baggage that drags in its train.
First, you're creating a conjunction fallacy by adding details to the general conclusion that naturally make it less probable than a single very general conclusion (A is more probable than B in conjunction with B1 in conjunction with B2, etc.). To turn the tables I could say that it's more parsimonious that the Book of Mormon is true (very general) than that Joseph Smith borrowed a name that happens to parallel a toponym from Arabia that also matches the time period of the Book of Mormon, as well as the location of Lehi's party and the utility of the locale. On top of that, the two candidates for Bountiful lie almost exactly where the Book of Mormon puts it in geographical relation to Nahom. You also have to add the "implausible baggage" about eleven witnesses all lying together and maintaining that lie even after becoming hostile to the church, and the numerous Hebrew literary techniques in the book that were completely anomalous to the 19th century, and the etc., etc. If I add more on top of the hypothesis and compare it to a very general one, it's going to sound less probable no matter what the situation.
Hopefully you see how you're lack of familiarity with statistics, the law of parsimony, and logical fallacies has simply misled your amateur assessment of this issue. Don't let that get in the way of your impotent posturing, though.
Second, if one appeals to your methodologies here then we'd be forced to conclude the same even if we discovered Nephi's original manuscripts buried in the area. After all, borrowing on the part of Joseph Smith still makes more sense than the Book of Mormon being true (as long as we sling all the baggage on top). You seem to think that's how this kind of history works.
Morrissey wrote:I'm wondering, how many non-FARMS scholars, non-LDS scholars in the appropriate fields find your toponym evidence as compelling as you appear to do?
Another rather naïve pseudo-standard invented by cynical non-scholars. It also happens to be an appeal to authority.
Morrissey wrote:Surely, if this evidence is so persuasive as you make it out to be, you and your colleagues have used this wonderful evidence to win over your skeptical colleagues?
We're not out there to hawk our wares to other scholars in the field. Apologetics is meant to answer critics and to provide information for Latter-day Saints.
Morrissey wrote:I thought not.
If only smarminess could make up for historiographical naïveté.