"The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

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malkie
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by malkie »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:16 pm
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- Doc
Isn't that a bit unfair?

If I recall correctly, joseph was every bit as successful at finding the lost pages as he was at finding other lost objects.
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

malkie wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 10:12 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Jan 13, 2022 9:16 pm
Image

- Doc
Isn't that a bit unfair?

If I recall correctly, joseph was every bit as successful at finding the lost pages as he was at finding other lost objects.
It is unFAIR. It’s not like bringing that point up ever made a difference with any of the cultists, anyway. Since they’re larping to begin with they just say stuff to make it work out. “Yeah, but Joseph took -2 damage to his leg in that surgery where he didn’t drink booze +2 health and it affected his -4 charisma when looking for treasure and so the +15 magic seer stones didn’t work until God +900 intelligence allowed them to work for their intended purpose +20 translation. And anyway, Ms. Harris -40 chaotic neutral hid them so she could trick Joseph +17 cleverness into blah blah blah.”

It’s all so tiresome to play by their dungeon master rules; and most of them don’t really read anything beyond a quick skim, certainly not for understanding.

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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

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Martin Harris mortgaged the farm, so he must have seen an angel. That is the only plausible explanation.

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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Physics Guy »

Richard Feynman once wrote about "cargo cult science", meaning pseudo-science that goes through some of the motions of real science, but fails completely to be scientific because it lacks crucial ingredients. The analogy was to the activities—which really did happen—of some Pacific island people who tried to bring the Allied cargo planes back again after World War II, by building mock-ups of structures and equipment out of wood and straw.

I think Carmack's Early Modern English theory is a good example of cargo cult scholarship in the humanities. He identifies grammatical structures and computes frequencies, all to compare the Book of Mormon with various contemporary books deliberately written in faux-archaic dialects. He goes through the motions that one might well follow in order to assess authorship of a normal text, for example to try to determine whether some old monastic record were from the 12th century or the 14th.

It's as useless as a bamboo radar dish, though, because Carmack has lost the necessary foundations that make procedures like the ones he follows make sense. The kind of analysis that tries to tell whether an old text is from one century or another takes for granted that the text is not just a crude forgery that does not fit the language of any real era. The normal procedures of textual dating do not really say that a text which shows some usage patterns that were common in the 12th century and rare in the 14th could not possibly have been written in the 14th. They only say that if all the usage patterns—grammar and lexicon and content—fit 12th century better than 14th, then one should date the text to the 12th century. Give a text that shows a mixture of features from 12th, 14th, and 18th centuries to any real textual scholar and the scholar will just ask you testily why you are bothering them with such an obvious 18th century forgery.

Carmack apes some of the procedures of real textual analysis while blithely ignoring the most basic ones. He's building a nice radar dish from bamboo; he is carefully straining his gnats, having swallowed a camel.
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Rivendale »

Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Jan 14, 2022 9:12 am
Richard Feynman once wrote about "cargo cult science", meaning pseudo-science that goes through some of the motions of real science, but fails completely to be scientific because it lacks crucial ingredients. The analogy was to the activities—which really did happen—of some Pacific island people who tried to bring the Allied cargo planes back again after World War II, by building mock-ups of structures and equipment out of wood and straw.

I think Carmack's Early Modern English theory is a good example of cargo cult scholarship in the humanities. He identifies grammatical structures and computes frequencies, all to compare the Book of Mormon with various contemporary books deliberately written in faux-archaic dialects. He goes through the motions that one might well follow in order to assess authorship of a normal text, for example to try to determine whether some old monastic record were from the 12th century or the 14th.

It's as useless as a bamboo radar dish, though, because Carmack has lost the necessary foundations that make procedures like the ones he follows make sense. The kind of analysis that tries to tell whether an old text is from one century or another takes for granted that the text is not just a crude forgery that does not fit the language of any real era. The normal procedures of textual dating do not really say that a text which shows some usage patterns that were common in the 12th century and rare in the 14th could not possibly have been written in the 14th. They only say that if all the usage patterns—grammar and lexicon and content—fit 12th century better than 14th, then one should date the text to the 12th century. Give a text that shows a mixture of features from 12th, 14th, and 18th centuries to any real textual scholar and the scholar will just ask you testily why you are bothering them with such an obvious 18th century forgery.

Carmack apes some of the procedures of real textual analysis while blithely ignoring the most basic ones. He's building a nice radar dish from bamboo; he is carefully straining his gnats, having swallowed a camel.
Seems like every culture has their John Frum.
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by drumdude »

I love the cargo cult analogy. It applies to Interpreter as a whole. Interpreter is a cargo cult's version of a scholarly journal.

They have imitations of all the real processes, like peer review, but they're as effective as the coconut radar dish. They're for show. The quality of the journal, for example, is never touted by Peterson. Instead he focuses on their unbroken ritual of releasing something, anything, at least once a week for almost a decade now.

What other journal cares about such a trivial thing?
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Moksha »

Dr. Peterson has powerful conjuration and necromancy skills, so don't count him out in terms of pulling a dead rabbit from his hat. The rabbit will immediately begin ad hominems, which could turn the tide of battle and allow the Maxwell Battleship to be reclaimed. Bah! It is being wasted as a research vessel. Do you know that its Mud Cannon was designed to throw over 17 miles? None of those anti-vessels could match it. Best darn Mud Thrower in the fleet when Dr. Peterson is at the helm!
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Alphus and Omegus »

drumdude wrote:
Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:04 pm
I love the cargo cult analogy. It applies to Interpreter as a whole. Interpreter is a cargo cult's version of a scholarly journal.

They have imitations of all the real processes, like peer review, but they're as effective as the coconut radar dish. They're for show. The quality of the journal, for example, is never touted by Peterson. Instead he focuses on their unbroken ritual of releasing something, anything, at least once a week for almost a decade now.

What other journal cares about such a trivial thing?
They draw near to knowledge with their procedures, but their brains are far from it.
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by drumdude »

DP wrote:Ahijah51: "Let's keep track of your logical fallacies here."

So you would clearly prefer not to deal with the relevant historical facts.

Ahijah51: "Your entire argument is based on an assumed belief that Premise C is true (the LDS accounts of angels are true)."

I didn't actually make an argument. Not, anyway, of the kind you imagine me to have made. (You seem to have a difficult time making or even recognizing arguments.) I do indeed think that Martin's having allegedly had his experience as a Witness offers an excellent explanation, if it's true, for his putting up the money for the printing of the Book of Mormon not long thereafter. But I don't see it as "proof." I don't think that there is any "proof" he saw an angel and the plates and heard the voice of God. But the evidence for his having done so, which has been abundantly summarized and analyzed and commented upon elsewhere, in print and online and in film, is very good.

Ahijah51: "The date of the sale [sic] presumably came after the date of the alleged angel encounter does not mean that the encounter happened. It is not proof in any way. It simply is a thing which came afterward. You have not proved causation. You have speculated."

We're not talking physics here, where causation is, very frequently, both simple and clear. We're talking about history, where it's not. The fact that Martin Harris put up the money fairly soon after his claimed experience as a Witness, though, is just one of a host of facts suggesting the sincerity of his belief that he had that experience. It's a matter of inference to the best explanation.

Ahijah51: "Rather than say how you have not engaged in fallacious reasoning, you throw out a red herring by instructing me to read a book, one which may not actually be relevant to your assertions. That is a distraction. It is not a rebuttal."

The book is directly relevant to my assertions, and recommending it to you saves me the effort of attempting to summarize its contents for somebody who apparently can't be bothered even to glance in its direction. The fact that you're evidently unaware of the book seems to confirm my impression that you don't know much about the topic, not enough to comment meaningfully upon it.

Ahijah51: "There is a plethora of materials out there claiming that various other LDS sects saw angels."

DP: Irrelevant.


Ahijah51: "And there is even more material that adherents of other faiths say are facts. When there are many faiths making contradictory claims about angels, it is probably best not to assume that their assertions are "facts.""

I haven't merely "assumed" anything. There is a large body of scholarly work on the Witnesses that undergirds what I've said here and serves as its background. Your apparent unfamiliarity with that work doesn't constitute a weakness in my position.
It's interesting how DP always carefully couches his writings online. As was noted in Mormonism Live, he very carefully places strategic exits for himself to utilize when he is challenged on any issue.

Buried in the middle of his post, you'll see him finally make a positive assertion. "It [Martin Harris actually seeing an angel] is a matter of inference to the best explanation." Note how he is framing "someone saw a mythical creature" as the null hypothesis, and putting the burden of proof to disprove it on the ordinary person who doesn't believe in magic.
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Re: "The Book of Mormon surpasses all known pseudo-archaic writings in breadth and depth of archaism"

Post by Physics Guy »

He thinks he’s drawing reasonable inferences from the available historical evidence, because he’s assuming the default likelihood of an angelic visitation to be only as low as that of ordinary events—somewhere in the 10-50% range, perhaps. He finds evidence that would only occur without an angel around 1-10% of the time, so he reckons that the angel is the most likely case, given the evidence.

And that’s reasonable as an inference, given his prior as a premise. What’s not reasonable is to fail to disclose, or even recognize, the huge role that his wildly generous prior has played in his inference.

This is more of that cargo-cult scholarship, being thoroughly careful of gnats, having swallowed a camel. As any con artist or illusionist will tell you, get the trick in early, before anyone’s being careful, and then you can let them be as careful as they like. This also applies when you’re tricking yourself.
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