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Analytics wrote:You didn't see the penis piercing covenant in the Book of Mormon? Obviously you need to read it another hundred times. If you'll agree to do so, I'll send you a free copy.

Will you add your testimony in the cover?

It is a funny quirk of theirs isn't it?

The Dales are back, and would like, if possible, to restrict comments to 4 points:

So I would like to invite anyone who wishes to do so to respond to these specific questions:

1. Do you think that a single reading, over 45 years ago, of the Book of Mormon qualifies Dr. Coe as an expert on the Book of Mormon and how it might relate (or not) to ancient American Indian cultures?

2. No matter how weakly we weight the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how strongly we weight the evidence against the Book of Mormon, our conclusion is unchanged. The Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica. Do you have a suggestion for a fair and reasonable sensitivity analysis that we have not done?

3. If the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century and of that century’s understanding of ancient American Indian cultures, why does the Book of Mormon compare so well with The Maya and why do the two other 19th century books focused on ancient American Indian cultures compare so badly with The Maya?

4. If you want to eliminate specific pieces of evidence from Appendix A which you think are NOT valid points of correspondence between the Book of Mormon and The Maya, which specific pieces of evidence are those?

It looks to me as if all of the comments on the importance of getting the methodology right before drawing conclusions are being discarded.

Bruce Dale wrote: No matter how weakly we weight the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how strongly we weight the evidence against the Book of Mormon, our conclusion is unchanged. The Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica.-{SNIP}--

No surprise here. Come on, Bruce.

Given your failure to start with exhaustive and mutually exclusive hypotheses, your quoted statement is meaningless. There is no way that your limited problem statement, hypotheses, and follow on analysis justifies your global conclusion regarding the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

If you had started with an appropriate and valid set of hypotheses, and then done the math correctly, you would have come to a reasonable conclusion - and probably saved yourself the ton of work you did writing your paper in the first place.

You failed to do that and now find yourself forced to limit discussion to your four carefully selected topics. You have staked out for yourself a very small and insignificant hill on which to die. If you can't see and acknowledge that, then no one here can help you.

DrW wrote:

Bruce Dale wrote: No matter how weakly we weight the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how strongly we weight the evidence against the Book of Mormon, our conclusion is unchanged. The Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica.---

No surprise here.

Uh, is it just me, or does that sound like a process independent of evidence? Hmmm...

I'm truly curious about how the Dales handle the ritual of penis piercing in Mesoamerica and how this ties in with the Book of Mormon.... seriously. They say there is correspondences, but would this one not count against the Book of Mormons complete silence on such a powerful Mesoamerican ritual?! Am I just too thick mentally to see the lack of correspondence and parallel here? Does Bayes allow him to skip over this obvious miss with the Book of Mormon?

I just noticed that I "outed" myself by posting as malkie, and then following up as Malcolm McLean - not that it matters now as much as it did a few years ago.

Philo Sofee wrote:I'm truly curious about how the Dales handle the ritual of penis piercing in Mesoamerica and how this ties in with the Book of Mormon.... seriously. They say there is correspondences, but would this one not count against the Book of Mormons complete silence on such a powerful Mesoamerican ritual?! Am I just too thick mentally to see the lack of correspondence and parallel here? Does Bayes allow him to skip over this obvious miss with the Book of Mormon?

It is obviously a corruption of the HEBREW practice of circumcision so it counts as a hit!

Maybe I should offer my services to the Dales to help them write their responses.

fetchface wrote:

Philo Sofee wrote:I'm truly curious about how the Dales handle the ritual of penis piercing in Mesoamerica and how this ties in with the Book of Mormon.... seriously. They say there is correspondences, but would this one not count against the Book of Mormons complete silence on such a powerful Mesoamerican ritual?! Am I just too thick mentally to see the lack of correspondence and parallel here? Does Bayes allow him to skip over this obvious miss with the Book of Mormon?

It is obviously a corruption of the HEBREW practice of circumcision so it counts as a hit!

Maybe I should offer my services to the Dales to help them write their responses.

Oh! Wellllll, that Joseph Smith..... he was a subtle one wasn't he!

So I would like to invite anyone who wishes to do so to respond to these specific questions:

1. Do you think that a single reading, over 45 years ago, of the Book of Mormon qualifies Dr. Coe as an expert on the Book of Mormon and how it might relate (or not) to ancient American Indian cultures?

2. No matter how weakly we weight the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how strongly we weight the evidence against the Book of Mormon, our conclusion is unchanged. The Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica. Do you have a suggestion for a fair and reasonable sensitivity analysis that we have not done?

3. If the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century and of that century’s understanding of ancient American Indian cultures, why does the Book of Mormon compare so well with The Maya and why do the two other 19th century books focused on ancient American Indian cultures compare so badly with The Maya?

4. If you want to eliminate specific pieces of evidence from Appendix A which you think are NOT valid points of correspondence between the Book of Mormon and The Maya, which specific pieces of evidence are those?

What is going on in the Dales' minds? Are they writing a new paper?

From the first section of the paper:

The numbers 2, 10, and 50 are the strength of the evidence for the hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. The numbers 0.5, 0.1, and 0.02 are the corresponding strength of the evidence against the hypothesis; that is, these are points of evidence that support the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

H-0: Book of Mormon fiction.

H-1: Book of Mormon not fiction.

In light of their own hypotheses, I'd like to look at their four questions again, and give my answers:

1. Do you think that a single reading, over 45 years ago, of the Book of Mormon qualifies Dr. Coe as an expert on the Book of Mormon and how it might relate (or not) to ancient American Indian cultures?

Answer: This question is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to the topic, and does not belong in an academic journal.

2. No matter how weakly we weight the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how strongly we weight the evidence against the Book of Mormon, our conclusion is unchanged. The Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica. Do you have a suggestion for a fair and reasonable sensitivity analysis that we have not done?

Answer: IRRELEVANT. It is mathematically impossible to conclude the Book of Mormon is nonfiction set in Mesoamerica, by evaluating likelihood ratios of your hypotheses: H-BoM fiction and H-BoM not fiction. If you've concluded that "the Book of Mormon is an authentic record set in ancient Mesoamerica," no matter how weakly or strongly you evaluate your (cherry-picked) evidence in face of your two hypotheses, then you are not doing any statistical analysis at all, and this belongs in the faith and testimony section.

3. If the Book of Mormon is a product of the 19th century and of that century’s understanding of ancient American Indian cultures, why does the Book of Mormon compare so well with The Maya and why do the two other 19th century books focused on ancient American Indian cultures compare so badly with The Maya?

Answer: Why do any coincidences happen and others don't? Why is outside information about OTHER books' fictional properties being used to evaluate data points with respect to your hypotheses about a separate book?

And more specifically, why does assessing fictional or nonfictional properties now include the requirement that those properties must also match mesaoamerican properties? In a paper that egregiously overvalues coincidences and defines related events as independent, this question is particularly IRRELEVANT.

4. If you want to eliminate specific pieces of evidence from Appendix A which you think are NOT valid points of correspondence between the Book of Mormon and The Maya, which specific pieces of evidence are those?

Answer: This question is also IRRELEVANT, because it bypasses the issue completely. Cherry-picking fewer data points, out of a set of data points chosen because they were ALL true statements in the Maya that the authors assumed were also in the Book of Mormon, and then insisting that all true points are by definition counted in favor of 'H -BoM not fiction,' is not any more mathematically sound than the original cherry-picking.


So in the end, none of those questions are related to the paper in question, and question one is completely and embarrassingly unprofessional. I just cringe inside at that. The reputation of the Interpreter Journal is taking hit after hit after hit with this paper and now these comments.

Lemmie wrote:Answer: This question is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT to the topic,

If there's one thing the Dales have proven to be the masters of, it's to restrict the probability space to the "utterly irrelevant".