Spalding-Rigdon Theory: Fatal flaws

[_Trevor]

Here you go.

That's evidence that I need to consider. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[_marg]

What would be the motivation for lying here, marg, on the part of Ridgon, or his son?

I agree with Jersey Girl's reply on this Ray. All the people involved had a vested interest in not revealing they were part of a con, if not for themselves and their own lives at least for their family and their name. Revealing the truth would not have offered them one iota of benefit. The only people that cared about Mormonism and its name were Mormons. If Rigdon and anyone else offered to the truth to those outside of the religious group there would have been no sympathy, no financial benefit ..nothing but disrespect. You always have to look at what would motivate or prevent someone to do something.

[_marg]

quote from R. Packham: "The authors have done a meticulous job of examining old diaries, court records, genealogies, stagecoach schedules, local histories, contemporary newspaper articles and other contemporary sources to document their theories. Of course, in reconstructing events that have been the object of concerted efforts to cover them up, they have had to resort to some conjecture, but if one must choose between the authors' suggestions of a natural, human explanation for the origin of the Book of Mormon and a supernatural explanation, the principle of parsimony ("Ockham's Razor") must favor the natural explanation, however conjectural."


That's the crux of it, in emphasis. Without a "natural explanation", this one will have to do. But the atheist Packham isn't averse to speculation himself:

in my opinion Packham should not have brought up Ockham's Razor. It tends to be very poorly used as well as understood. When there are 2 or more explanations that both or all work equally well in explaining a phenomenon then the one which most concisely explains it should be used. When it comes to supernatural explanations the main reason they are discounted is because of lack of evidence. And in reasoning extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to be accepted. So a supernatural claim would require extraordinary evidence but typically there is no evidence at all. So Occam's Razor is not the reason for discounting supernatural claims. The supernatural claim simply do not explain adequately any phenomenon if they did they wouldn't be considered supernatural.

Now in the Smith as sole-author versus Rigdon-Spalding explanations for how the Book of Mormon was constructed we do not have 2 equally acceptable theories. That is why we are discussing them. If we did have 2 equally good explanations which in both scenarios took in and considered all the data, then we could invoke Occam's Razor and say we should simply accept the most concise explanation of the two. But that is not the case here. So I think Packham made a mistake to mention or bring in Occam's Razor into this discussion.

[_Trevor]

I agree with Jersey Girl's reply on this Ray. All the people involved had a vested interest in not revealing they were part of a con, if not for themselves and their own lives at least for their family and their name. Revealing the truth would not have offered them one iota of benefit. The only people that cared about Mormonism and its name were Mormons. If Rigdon and anyone else offered to the truth to those outside of the religious group there would have been no sympathy, no financial benefit ..nothing but disrespect. You always have to look at what would motivate or prevent someone to do something.

I have made the very same argument before, and of course it is true, but the trick is how to prove that it was the case for them (those involved in the Book of Mormon). I do believe there are some evidences, but I can't recall them off of the top of my head.

[_Trevor]

Now in the Smith as sole-author versus Rigdon-Spalding explanations for how the Book of Mormon was constructed we do not have 2 equally acceptable theories. That is why we are discussing them. If we did have 2 equally good explanations which in both scenarios took in and considered all the data, then we could invoke Occam's Razor and say we should simply accept the most concise explanation of the two. But that is not the case here. So I think Packham made a mistake to mention or bring in Occam's Razor into this discussion.

On another topic, marg, have you checked out the link that Shades sent me? The site's author argues that the Book of Mormon manuscript errors are transcription, not dictation, errors. I would love to see an analysis of the errors against the hands of Sidney, Joseph, and Spalding, to see which hand would lend itself more easily to that particular pattern of errors!

[_marg]

Now in the Smith as sole-author versus Rigdon-Spalding explanations for how the Book of Mormon was constructed we do not have 2 equally acceptable theories. That is why we are discussing them. If we did have 2 equally good explanations which in both scenarios took in and considered all the data, then we could invoke Occam's Razor and say we should simply accept the most concise explanation of the two. But that is not the case here. So I think Packham made a mistake to mention or bring in Occam's Razor into this discussion.

On another topic, marg, have you checked out the link that Shades sent me? The site's author argues that the Book of Mormon manuscript errors are transcription, not dictation, errors. I would love to see an analysis of the errors against the hands of Sidney, Joseph, and Spalding, to see which hand would lend itself more easily to that particular pattern of errors!

Oh sure I've checked out that site but all that sort of stuff or data I would read at the time to grasp but not to study it in any great depth or memorize for some test. Quite frankly there is just so much data to read about and I'm sure I could spend 1,000's of hours if I was interested in studying it even more. But other than an interest in "truth" or puzzle solving..there isn't much point. It is not as if Mormons are interested and there are lots of people such as yourself, ex-mormons while they may have some interest will perceive the evidence differently. So the issue becomes not one of lack of evidence but rather how one evaluates that evidence. And it is very difficult to convince others to change or even evaluate how they evaluate evidence.

[_jhammel]

Since he didn't use the curtain very much, what do you think he was doing most of the time?

An important part of my answer is the inclusion of Oliver Cowdery as a suspected accomplice.

With that in mind, I think a lot of the production of the "dictated" manuscript could have been carried out by copying or dictating from a source document in a more usual way with nobody else around to witness that process.

But Cowdery wasn't the only scribe to dictate a significant portion of the Book of Mormon. I want to find out more about the portions of the dictated manuscript in I Nephi (at least a few chapters) with handwriting attributed by Royal Skousen to 2 unidentified scribes. Unfortunately, only a minority of the original dictated manuscript is available, but of what is available, Oliver Cowdery was the principal scribe with only the I Nephi sections with the 2 unidentified scribes and a few lines written by Joseph Smith as exceptions. Identification of the unknown scribes could certainly influence my views. John Whitmer is sometimes credited with being a Book of Mormon scribe, but I'm trying to find any evidence of that outside a statement attributed to Emma Smith's brother in law (http://sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/IL/sain1872.htm#061579). Lots of current writings and web sites report John Whitmer as a scribe, but few give a source for the information, and the Blair letter with statement by Morse is all I can find so far. If J Whitmer was a scribe, it's interesting that Skousen didn't identify him as a scribe for any of the extant material, so we're left to wonder how much of the dictated Book of Mormon manuscript (if any) he was really a scribe for. Some attribute the I Nephi passages to J Whitmer's handwriting, by I don't know if this is done with sure knowledge or by assumption - and apparently Skousen wasn't inclined to that.

[_Trevor]

Oh sure I've checked out that site but all that sort of stuff or data I would read at the time to grasp but not to study it in any great depth or memorize for some test. Quite frankly there is just so much data to read about and I'm sure I could spend 1,000's of hours if I was interested in studying it even more. But other than an interest in "truth" or puzzle solving..there isn't much point. It is not as if Mormons are interested and there are lots of people such as yourself, ex-mormons while they may have some interest will perceive the evidence differently. So the issue becomes not one of lack of evidence but rather how one evaluates that evidence. And it is very difficult to convince others to change or even evaluate how they evaluate evidence.

Well, in any case, such a test might help narrow down who was the author of the manuscript from which the scribes were copying.

[_Trevor]

An important part of my answer is the inclusion of Oliver Cowdery as a suspected accomplice.

Is it necessary to assume this as a given for the rest to work, or is there compelling evidence that he was an accomplice?

[_jhammel]

An important part of my answer is the inclusion of Oliver Cowdery as a suspected accomplice.

Is it necessary to assume this as a given for the rest to work, or is there compelling evidence that he was an accomplice?

It helps. I don't know about necessary, but things in the Spalding/Rigdon context make more sense to me with it, and I was always suspicious of Cowdery anyhow (even well before I heard of Spalding) so for me it was just a carry-over, and not something I accepted to make Spalding/Rigdon work. It's been a while now, so I can't say for sure exactly what things made me suspicious of Oliver during my earliest investigations, but I'm guessing they included the much greater efficiency of the Book of Mormon production process and some of the early visions and revelatory experiences he had with Joseph Smith that I tended to see as BS.

So, my answers to some questions are likely to involve Cowdery as accomplice since that is what makes most sense to me, but I may occasionally speculate about things as if he weren't or as if it doesn't matter.

Jeff