Gorman wrote:Since a few people are discussing my first point above, I should clarify what I mean.
The uncomfortable part for an unbeliever in the translation process of the Book of Mormon is the shortness of time in addition to the lack of an aid combined with the apparent lack of major revision of the manuscript.
If I were to assume an unbeliever's stance, Joseph Smith dictated a book entirely from memory straight through without any going back to revise or see where he left off. Even if he had the entire thing written out before hand, this would be almost impossible. Just contemplating reciting the Isaiah chapters word for word with almost no difference would require a savant-like memory. I cannot see how an unbeliever would be fine with the dictation story. This may be why hidden manuscripts or flat out lying about the dictation has been quite popular since the beginning. I this were the case, though, the witnesses make it a hard sell. Maintaining a belief in the Book of Mormon was not a popular thing. Both Cowdrey and Whitmer faced later professional ridicule for maintaining their belief. You have to assume the Three Witnesses were duped along with the rest. That just makes it harder. Now you have to figure out how Smith et al convinced three men that they had heard the voice of God and seen the plates and then manufactured an angel for the other witnesses. This just makes the response more complicated.
Gorman - the only thing 'complicated' here is the unnecessarily strict set of circumstances that you have purposefully limited the alternatives to, aside from 'rock in hat did it'.
There is absolutely nothing uncomfortable to me about the Book being a fabrication, even on the
shortest of claimed legitimate production time line estimations. Again,
7 pages a day is all that it takes.
Perhaps a refresher is in order. Open your Book of Mormon to any page and tell me that it could not be turned out in an hour or two by a reasonably talented speaker. One of my favorites is pg. 128, from Jacob, replete with "
But, behold..." and "
It came to pass..". Or take pages 298 and 299, from Alma, where the content is little more than recycled lamentations. Or hop on over to Helaman on pg. 396, to see another page of what basically amounts to fluff. Or any of the pages where Isaiah is repeated, nearly word for word. How is any of this beyond the ability of one fairly competent speaker from dictating at the rate of 7 pages a day?
Now, before you try to tell me about Joseph Smith's inability to speak English above a poor second-grader's level or somesuch, please refer back to the volumes we have recorded for his off-the-cuff speaking. If the man can produce such a copious record of contemporaneous examples, then I fail to see what his supposed limitations would be in churning out a single page of the Book of Mormon within an hour or two... and, again, that's under the
fastest claimed time line, assuming no help from any other person in on the effort. In other words, the
most demanding scenario poses no real challenge given his recorded abilities, and every other scenario just makes the task much easier.
Gorman wrote:I'm not saying there are no responses to this. I am saying they will always have serious credibility issues.
Perhaps for an individual who opts to ignore Occam's Razor, and decides to park their common sense on the shelf in favor of 'rock in hat'. But doing so seems to redefine what is
credible.
Otherwise, can you tell me why the scenario that I've given above - i.e., the
most demanding single-author theory - is less plausible than 'rock in hat', given the record of Smith's speaking ability?