the apologists like Father and Son LOL

[_DoubtingThomas]

Yesterday I read an article by Stephen Smoot where he wrote "Jeremy Runnells, the poster child for the Dunning–Kruger Effect" http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2017/0 ... eking.html

I was also having a conversation with Dan Peterson

Me: No need for a map...With thousands of inscriptions around finding one that fits Nahom shouldn't be that hard, and NHM was a tribe, not a burial ground...When we want to find something we find it.

Peterson: And when we're determined not to see it, we don't. The NHM altars were found at the right place, in the proper relationship to another well-suited place, dating to the right time, at the one location along Lehi's Arabian trail where the toponym isn't one that he bestowed upon the place

Me: but that "right place" has thousands of inscriptions... I am sure you know a lot about antiquity, but I think you need to read about cognitive biases and mathematical thinking

Peterson: And you're a spectacular living illustration of cognitive biases

Jack: Of course, you could be right that the NHM correspondence ultimately boils down to coincidence. But, oh, what a coincidence. It is a perfect storm in how all of the proper elements converge to make it look like a real whopper.

I don't understand why there being other inscriptions at the site would be problematic. It's not likely that there would only appear the giant letters "NHM" on the altars. The more salient fact is that those letters happen to appear *where* they do *when* they do.

Also, Nephi's idea of the direction "eastward" is probably rather narrow as he is fussy enough to note a change from "south-southeast" to "nearly eastward." He didn't say that they bent their course a little more to the east. The sense is: "Now we're traveling toward the east." And his use of the word "nearly" is rather telling as it connotes a straight course with minimal deviations

Me: No need for some crazy 1 in a million coincidence. The odds of finding "NHM" where there are thousands of inscriptions are not that low. Nearly eastward allows for many sites, it is not specific enough. Say I am in Lincoln county of Oregon state, I travel "south-southeast" and end up in Nevada. I decide to turn "nearly eastward" until I reach the ocean. Which state did I end up in? It is hard to know which state I ended up in, let alone a specific site. I simply didn't give you enough information.

B Wilson: You don't need to be a person of lower cognitive ability to have spectacular biases.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Dan Peterson: If you're determined not to allow anything to count as evidence against your views... it's amazing how little evidence against your views you'll ever encounter.

Me: I am sometimes wrong and I have no problem with changing my mind, I have many times. I think you are describing yourself, not me.

[_honorentheos]

I'd contend the biggest issue for the NHM evidence is that it requires the Lehite party to travel along a well-used trade route which completely contradicts the Book of Mormon itself. Perhaps just as damning evidence is that apologists for the Book of Mormon have been claiming hits for Nahom all over the middle east as it suites their current Texas Sharp Shooter bullseye. I believe DrW also decimated the idea that the wadi they like to point to could be place Nephi was able to build an ocean going boat in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38400&p=897689

[_Symmachus]

It's fair to say that I am not open to one or two pieces of evidence in support of a theory when the rest of the evidence is overwhelmingly against it. On the other hand, if those two pieces of evidence in support of a theory multiply exponentially in inverse proportion to a decrease in the evidence against that theory, then I start to change my view. It's not that I'm bitterly bias but that I only have a few years to live on this planet. I have to some view with which to engage the world, and my experience doesn't align with the claim that angels in the 19th century directed a half-literate farmer in Podunk New York to a gold book buried in his backyard. I need more than an inscription in Yemen or a Nahautl pronoun derived from a Hebrew verb to change that. So what do they have?

There is NHM, which has been debunked, Stubbs is a typical FARMSian apologetic that has the fortune of being hard for non-experts to understand, 15th century syntax is pretty dubious at best and glaringly irrelevant at worst...what else is there that doesn't have an analog in the Bible or the nineteenth century? The only piece of evidence that really stood out to me was the name Paanchi, which doesn't have a clear Biblical analog to my knowledge and which looked an awful lot like the name of Piankhi, the Nubian founder of the 25th dynasty in Egypt. Why that name would be picked up a century and a quarter later by Nephi's family and only to show up centuries later with a politician in central America was mysterious, but still, there was the name.

Lo and behold, in 2008 it was shown that the name has been read wrong all this time, and that Piankhi should be read as Piye instead. That name doesn't occur in the Book of Mormon.

In other words, the trend seems to be tending to diminish the little tidbits in support of the literalist claims.

[_Tator]

I believe DrW also decimated the idea that the wadi they like to point to could be place Nephi was able to build an ocean going boat in this thread - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38400&p=897689

That is a great thread, remember it well, thanx again DrW.

[_Philo Sofee]

It's fair to say that I am not open to one or two pieces of evidence in support of a theory when the rest of the evidence is overwhelmingly against it. On the other hand, if those two pieces of evidence in support of a theory multiply exponentially in inverse proportion to a decrease in the evidence against that theory, then I start to change my view. It's not that I'm bitterly bias but that I only have a few years to live on this planet. I have to some view with which to engage the world, and my experience doesn't align with the claim that angels in the 19th century directed a half-literate farmer in Podunk New York to a gold book buried in his backyard. I need more than an inscription in Yemen or a Nahautl pronoun derived from a Hebrew verb to change that. So what do they have?

There is NHM, which has been debunked, Stubbs is a typical FARMSian apologetic that has the fortune of being hard for non-experts to understand, 15th century syntax is pretty dubious at best and glaringly irrelevant at worst...what else is there that doesn't have an analog in the Bible or the nineteenth century? The only piece of evidence that really stood out to me was the name Paanchi, which doesn't have a clear Biblical analog to my knowledge and which looked an awful lot like the name of Piankhi, the Nubian founder of the 25th dynasty in Egypt. Why that name would be picked up a century and a quarter later by Nephi's family and only to show up centuries later with a politician in central America was mysterious, but still, there was the name.

Lo and behold, in 2008 it was shown that the name has been read wrong all this time, and that Piankhi should be read as Piye instead. That name doesn't occur in the Book of Mormon.

In other words, the trend seems to be tending to diminish the little tidbits in support of the literalist claims.

I did not know that about Pianki. Man I used to use that as one of the STRONGEST evidences for the Book of Mormon. Where can I find how it was misread? I think this is seriously significant.

[_DoubtingThomas]

I did not know that about Pianki. Man I used to use that as one of the STRONGEST evidences for the Book of Mormon. Where can I find how it was misread? I think this is seriously significant.

Lehi's Journey happened in the US. In New York state there is a town called "Jerusalem". From Jerusalem, NY go "nearly a south-southeast" 1 Nephi 16:13 (but mostly east) to get to Needham, MA (Needham almost fits NHM). You make a "nearly eastward " 1 Ne 17:1 turn to get to rivermoor habitat park (Bountiful).

See, now repent you wicked atheist! stop worshiping the devil

[_Symmachus]

I did not know that about Pianki. Man I used to use that as one of the STRONGEST evidences for the Book of Mormon. Where can I find how it was misread? I think this is seriously significant.

Hi Philo,

One reference on the complications of the name "Piankhi" vs. Piye on the so-called "Victory Stele of Piye" is a 2006 article by Karola Zibelius-Chen ("Zur Problematik der Lesung des Königsnamens Pi(anch)i") in Der Antike Sudan 17:127-33.

As I understand it, other epigraphic evidence give his name is Piye but on the "Victory Stele" it had been read as Piankhi. If it occurs elsewhere, I invite the Egyptologists here to correct me. You can see documents from Piye's reign in Ritner's anthology The Libyan Anarchy (a preview available here), which even provides a transliteration so you can see the name for yourself.

The apologists still have the name Piankh (or Payankh), a high priest from the 21st dynasty (so, 11th century BC; a document related to him is also in that Ritner volume). He was the son of Herihor (that sounds just like Korihor!). How could Joseph Smith have known this name? It's a good question, but another good question is: how could an Israelite merchant/prophet from the sixth century BC have known so much about the politics of the Third Intermediate period in Egypt five centuries before his own time and then somehow passed the name to his family where it does not appear until a further five hundred years? It makes no sense.

[_Simon Southerton]

There is zero evidence of the existence of a literate, iron-age, Hebrew civilization in the Americas that thrived for a THOUSAND years. But there is powerful evidence that Lehi's family camped for a few DAYS at a particular watering hole on the Arabian peninsula, before they sailed.

This explains why Utah is the MMM capital of the US.

[_Philo Sofee]

There is zero evidence of the existence of a literate, iron-age, Hebrew civilization in the Americas that thrived for a THOUSAND years. But there is powerful evidence that Lehi's family camped for a few DAYS at a particular watering hole on the Arabian peninsula, before they sailed.

This explains why Utah is the MMM capital of the US.

Now seriously, ten years ago, I would not have grasped your point Simon. I would have said well go with what we have for crying out loud! Now? Well, I see the utter silliness of the apologetic thinking. And they will simply parrot what they have been told to say, "All we need is faith, not evidence." We have some of their number in our midst who quite unconvincingly continually falls back to that dead end kind of thinking.