Check out the FAIR/MAD thread going on...

[_Analytics]

Now that really gave me the warm fuzzies, analytics. Where should I send my tithing check?

325 Campbell Ave Southwest
Roanoke, VA 24016

[_Trevor]

What I meant by that is the most rational way to approach this, or any other issue in a rational, secularly-oriented way is to make an a priori choice for the null-hypothesis (i.e. it will be considered false until proven true) and decide how strong the evidence must be for you to decide that the null-hypothesis is false.

In the case of the Book of Mormon, the null-hypothesis is that it is a product of 19th century America, and the people arguing against that haven’t met the burden of proof for objective observers to believe otherwise.

I absolutely agree with this. It is my position, which you have articulated much better than I could have.

[_Trevor]

325 Campbell Ave Southwest
Roanoke, VA 24016

I grew up in VA, and for a time our branch was in the Roanoke stake.

[_beastie]

I haven't read all of the replies on the linked thread, nor do I intend to - they all end up being reruns that were bad the first time around. But I do notice Brant is claiming that he knows of four experts who are convinced of the Book of Mormon. I'm sure we can guess their names (John Sorenson, John Clark, for example), but you may want to bring up Clark's statement from his BYU devotional talk:

[John Clark:] Those who choose not to believe it [i.e., the Book of Mormon] will never believe it; those who choose to believe it already do. ...

But I'm, I would never tell anybody to try to prove the Book of Mormon is true through physical evidence, just because of the way metaphysics and epistemology work—it's not possible. And so, you have to get the testimony some other way, and then the evidence will become very clear. If you're on the opposing side you can say we basically just, ah, brained washed ourselves (one or two words inaudible). You're free to think that—we're not doing anybody any harm.
[Mp3 Time: c. 26 mins.]

[John Clark:] And, no, I can't convince any of my archeology colleagues that the evidence proves the BoMor is true. They have read it, but they just read it like they're reading an archeology book, and that's not going to go anywhere.[Mp3 Time: c. 41 mins.]

[John Clark:] Well, for example, you had this flap about DNA recently. ... The DNA question is never going to be a problem. It only works one way, and in our favor. But the only reason that it looked like a flap or a problem is because they say: Well, Mormons believe (first of all they tell us what we believe) Mormons believe that all Indians in North and South America descended from these people who came over that are described in the Book of Mormon. I grew up believing that—but that's false, that's absolutely wrong.

And so once you say there were other people here, you say: OK, where were the Nephites, and how many more people were here. We have all kinds of other DNA signatures to worry about all of a sudden. It may be that we never find any Hebrew DNA (whatever that looks like) in the New World. ... But if we do find some, that's fine; if we don't find some, that's fine too. There's no way that negative evidence on that hurts the Book of Mormon whatsoever once you believe in a limited geography. If you believe in a global geography, you're basically done, toasted, game over.

I highlighted the pertinent part, and just included the "game over" out of sheer enjoyment.

I've brought this up to Brant before, and he denies that Clark is saying you have to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon before you are able to recognize evidence supporting it. He did not clarify just what Clark could have possibly meant, however. Perhaps he would deign to do so for you.

I dare say John Clark is in a better position to make an accurate statement about the reception his peers give the Book of Mormon than Brant Gardner, by the way.

[_Trevor]

I've brought this up to Brant before, and he denies that Clark is saying you have to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon before you are able to recognize evidence supporting it.

Brant is not a bad guy, but he is one of those people whom I sometimes really wonder about. I mean, it is difficult for me to believe that even he believes some of the things he says. It does not surprise me that Brant would interpret Clark to be saying precisely the opposite of what most anyone else would interpret him to mean. That's classic Brant.

[_Analytics]

I haven't read all of the replies on the linked thread, nor do I intend to - they all end up being reruns that were bad the first time around. But I do notice Brant is claiming that he knows of four experts who are convinced of the Book of Mormon. I'm sure we can guess their names (John Sorenson, John Clark, for example), but you may want to bring up Clark's statement from his BYU devotional talk:

[John Clark:] Those who choose not to believe it [i.e., the Book of Mormon] will never believe it; those who choose to believe it already do. ...

But I'm, I would never tell anybody to try to prove the Book of Mormon is true through physical evidence, just because of the way metaphysics and epistemology work—it's not possible. And so, you have to get the testimony some other way, and then the evidence will become very clear. If you're on the opposing side you can say we basically just, ah, brained washed ourselves (one or two words inaudible). You're free to think that—we're not doing anybody any harm.
[Mp3 Time: c. 26 mins.]

[John Clark:] And, no, I can't convince any of my archeology colleagues that the evidence proves the BoMor is true. They have read it, but they just read it like they're reading an archeology book, and that's not going to go anywhere.[Mp3 Time: c. 41 mins.]

[John Clark:] Well, for example, you had this flap about DNA recently. ... The DNA question is never going to be a problem. It only works one way, and in our favor. But the only reason that it looked like a flap or a problem is because they say: Well, Mormons believe (first of all they tell us what we believe) Mormons believe that all Indians in North and South America descended from these people who came over that are described in the Book of Mormon. I grew up believing that—but that's false, that's absolutely wrong.

And so once you say there were other people here, you say: OK, where were the Nephites, and how many more people were here. We have all kinds of other DNA signatures to worry about all of a sudden. It may be that we never find any Hebrew DNA (whatever that looks like) in the New World. ... But if we do find some, that's fine; if we don't find some, that's fine too. There's no way that negative evidence on that hurts the Book of Mormon whatsoever once you believe in a limited geography. If you believe in a global geography, you're basically done, toasted, game over.

I highlighted the pertinent part, and just included the "game over" out of sheer enjoyment.

I've brought this up to Brant before, and he denies that Clark is saying you have to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon before you are able to recognize evidence supporting it. He did not clarify just what Clark could have possibly meant, however. Perhaps he would deign to do so for you.

I dare say John Clark is in a better position to make an accurate statement about the reception his peers give the Book of Mormon than Brant Gardner, by the way.

Thanks Beastie. I'm curious what they'll say now that I've shown John Clark actually agrees with my major points.

[_beastie]

Indeed. You may enjoy this blast from Brant's past from the Z board. I used the screen name seven of niine at Z. We were discussing John Clark's BYU devotional, and Brant made this comment:

Joey:

Before you dismiss Book of Mormon archaeology you might pay attention to what Michael Coe said about it. While he is no fan of much that has been written on the subject, he nevertheless said the following:

"We come to "Book of Mormon archaeology," which I would define as an attempt by Mormons to establish the historicity of the Book of Mormon by means of "dirt" archaeology, or by the analysis of archaeological findings made by non-Mormons. . . I think that it is still a viable field of study."

Michael Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Dialogue 8, no.2 (1973) :43

Is there a reason why you don't consider it viable, but Coe did? What do you know about Mesoamerica that Coe doesn't?

http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/topic/82 ... tml?page=2

Now, Brant never reregistered at Z when it changed servers, so you can't tell that it's him speaking, although I'm pretty sure people who replied to him called him by name. But at any rate, it was Brant.

I didn't have access to the full article at that time, so replied:

Quote:
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Before you dismiss Book of Mormon archaeology you might pay attention to what Michael Coe said about it. While he is no fan of much that has been written on the subject, he nevertheless said the following:

"We come to "Book of Mormon archaeology," which I would define as an attempt by Mormons to establish the historicity of the Book of Mormon by means of "dirt" archaeology, or by the analysis of archaeological findings made by non-Mormons. . . I think that it is still a viable field of study."

Michael Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Dialogue 8, no.2 (1973) :43

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Sadly, I haven't been able to obtain a full copy of this essay, so I have no idea what the context of this particular comment was. I know that he encourages LDS archaeologists to continue their good work in the field of Mesoamerican studies in particular, but at the same time, encourages them to forget about trying to find evidence for the Book of Mormon.

Other comments from the same talk (taken from various sources since I don't have the entire essay)

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as far as I know there is not one professionally trained archaeologist, who is not a Mormon, who sees any scientific justification for believing the foregoing [that Hebrew immigrants build a civilization in ancient America as described in the Book of Mormon] to be true, and I would like to state that there are quite a few Mormon archaeologists who join this group
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Quote:
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The bare facts of the matter are that nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever shown up in any New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon, as claimed by Joseph Smith, is a historical document relating to the history of early immigrants to our hemisphere
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In the same article, it appears that Coe quotes Matheny:

Quote:
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The tools that the people [in cultures that did have metallurgical industries] used are primitive but nonetheless they are there, and they spell out a system of exploitation of those natural resources. In refining ores and then bringing these to casting and true metallurgical processes is another bit of technology that leaves a lot of evidence. You can't refine ore without leaving a bloom of some kind orthat is, impurities that blossom out and float to the top of the oreAlso blooms off into silicas and indestructible new rock forms. In other words, when you have a ferrous metallurgical industry, you have these evidences of the detritus that is left over. You also have the fuels, you have the furnaces, you have whatever technologies that were performing these tasks, they leave solid evidences. And they are indestructible thingsnon-ferrous metallurgical industries have similar evidences. No evidence has been found in the new world for a ferrous metallurgical industry dating to pre-Columbian times. And so this is a king-size problem, it seems to me, for so-called Book of Mormon archaeology. The evidence is absent." (Michael Coe, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 1973, p. 23).
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Somehow, in the context of these other quotes from the same talk, I doubt that Coe would agree with your interpretation of his remarks.

Other comments quoted from him in an article by Hampton Sides:

http://www.rickross.com/referenc...mon33.html


Quote:
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Perhaps the most outspoken critic of Mormon archaeology has been Yale University's Michael D. Coe, one of the world's preeminent scholars of the Olmec and the Maya. The author of the best-selling book Breaking the Maya Code, Coe says there's not "a whit of evidence that the Nephites ever existed. The whole enterprise is complete rot, root and branch. It's so racist it hurts. It fits right into the nineteenth-century American idea that only a white man could have built cities and temples, that American Indians didn't have the brains or the wherewithal to create their own civilization."'

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Quote:
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Yale's Michael Coe likes to talk about what he calls "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness," the tendency among Mormon theorists like Sorenson to keep the discussion trained on all sorts of extraneous subtopics (like tapirs and nuptial beds) while avoiding what is most obvious: that Joseph Smith probably meant "horse" when he wrote down the word "horse," and that all the archaeology in the world is not likely to change the fact that horses as we know them weren't around until the Spaniards arrived on American shores.

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Quote:
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"They're always going after the nitty-gritty things," Coe told me. "Let's look at this specific hill. Let's look at that specific tree. It's exhausting to follow all these mind-numbing leads. It keeps the focus off the fact that it's all in the service of a completely phony history. Where are the languages? Where are the cities? Where are the artifacts? Look here, they'll say. Here's an elephant. Well, that's fine, but elephants were wiped out in the New World around 8,000 B.C. by hunters. There were no elephants!"
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Quote:
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Yale's Michael Coe worked with Gareth Lowe and other NWAF scholars in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and says he has "nothing but absolute admiration" for their work. "They did the first really long-term, large-scale work on the preclassic in Mesoamerica, and they published it all. And by and large, their Mormonism never came through. Occasionally they'd get these dopes out of Utah who'd arrive with metal detectors and earphones and march around their sites trying to find the plates of gold. But the foundation's scholars always made sure they got on the plane and went back home. What's amazing is that they were able to do this kind of scholarship within the context of what is essentially a totalitarian organization. There isn't much of a difference between the old Red Square and Temple Square. But as in the Soviet Union, even given the terrible theoretical framework that they had to operate under, the foundation managed to do excellent work in spite of it."
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Can you give us more context around the portion of Coe's comments you cited, to give us a clearer idea on what he found viable?

(by the way, EA, don't hold your breath for evidence from Pahoran regarding his favorite accusation. I've never heard anyone say it other than him.)

Brant -

Quote:
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As I read that statement, he is saying that his colleagues read the book as a modern archaeological treatise that presents the analysis of a dig.

I am suggesting that the text needs to be read as a an ancient document produced by an ancient culture. I see significant differences between those statements, don't you?
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I think it's strange that you imagine Clark's colleagues would read it as an "analysis of a dig".

Brant defended his statement:

Seven of Niine:

Quote:
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Somehow, in the context of these other quotes from the same talk, I doubt that Coe would agree with your interpretation of his remarks.
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Please ask him, next time you speak. I didn't interpret his remarks. I reprinted them. What do you think those words mean?

I did note that he isn't favorable to the Book of Mormon - which is why his statement is so fascinating.

Quote:
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I think it's strange that you imagine Clark's colleagues would read it as an "analysis of a dig".
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Not surprising. We seem to frequently read very different things from the very same text. If it weren't a nuisance question, I would ask him. Given the way it is stated, however, I don't see any other way of reading it.

EA caught Brant by providing the context:

Seven -

Quote:
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Can you give us more context around the portion of Coe's comments you cited, to give us a clearer idea on what he found viable?
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I read the article. It was pretty interesting. You can read it here:

content.lib.utah.edu/cgi-...SOPTR=2396

This is the full quote.

"Next, we come to "Book of Mormon archaeology," which I would define as an attempt by Mormons to establish the historicity of the Book of Mormon by means of "dirt" archaeology, or by analysis of archaeological findings made by non-Mormons; this has been dealt with in a scathing review by Dee F. Green. I think that it is still a viable field of study in spite of Green's assertion that "The first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists" (p. 77)."

In the context of the writing, he is saying there exists a group of people attempting to support the Book of Mormon through archeological research. It's a viable avenue of study.

In the article he acknowledges those interested in supporting Book of Mormon archeology have instrumental to field-work valuable to increasing our data and knowledge about Mesoamerica. However, at no point does he argue that Book of Mormon archaeology has yielded fruitful results that the broader archeological community would or should consider support of the Book of Mormon's historicity. His article is extremely critical of that.

Indeed, the article is quite dismissive of Book of Mormon archeology's success. For instance, he says:

"The bare facts of the matter is that nothing, absolutely noting, has ever shown up in a New World excavation which would suggest to a dispassionate observer that the Book of Mormon, as claimed by Joseph Smith, is a historical document relating to the history of early migrants to our hemisphere"

This makes Brant's use of Coe's article to support the statement, "Before you dismiss Book of Mormon archaeology you might pay attention to what Michael Coe said about it.", a bit odd to me.

Towards the end, he offers three options in light of the failure of Book of Mormon archeology.

Or as he puts it, "What has gone wrong, therefore, with Book of Mormon archeology? Even the Soviets, wedded as they are to a nineteenth century doctrine of social and economic evolution, have not remained so far removed from archeological and anthropological thought as Iron Rod* archeologists."

*Iron Rodders he defines as, "intellectuals, whether archeologists, historians or geographers, [who] believe the Book of Mormon to be literally true and use archeology to "prove" it."

The first approach, which he calls traditionalist, is to argue that archeology is severely limited in its ability to support the Book of Mormon, steer away from it, and attempt to use it to paint the details in the background. He offers Sorensons Old World-New World parallel style argument as an example of this. However, he does not cast that in a positive light when he says, "This is of interest to non-Mormon archeologists, and Sorenson has done much to work out the methodology of such comparisons, but few non-believers have been swayed when faced with the indigestible cattle, horses, wheat, and so forth."

The second is to become a "liahona" Mormon, which he defines as accepting the Book of Mormon useful for its moral content. In other words, adopt a more liberal, less literal theology. He also then offers criticism of this.

The third is apostacy, to which he points out many gifted scholars he counts as friends have done.

I was a little taken aback at how overt he was at suggesting what he obviously was, though he points out that it isn't his place to recommend any of these "escapes" from the "dilemma of Book of Mormon archeology."

In the end he concludes,

In conclusion, an outside observer like myself would make these suggestions. Forget the so-far fruitless quest for the Jaredites, Nephites, Mulekites, and the lands of Zarahemla and Bountiful: there is no more chance of finding them than of discovering the ruins of the bottomless pit described in the book of Revelations...Continue the praiseworthy excavations in Mexico, remembering that little or nothing pertaining to the Book of Mormon will ever result from them. And start digging into the archaeological remains of the Saints themselves.

Carefully compare that to Brant's use of him.

Interestingly, Brant kept defending his obviously misleading reference to Coe throughout the thread.

[_beastie]

Thanks Beastie. I'm curious what they'll say now that I've shown John Clark actually agrees with my major points.

You may want to take a dramamine to counteract the spin.

[_Runtu]

I like Brant, but he lost me when he insisted that Lamoni's horses and chariots are not specifically mentioned in the context of conveyance, even though Lamoni says to make the horses and chariots ready for his trip to visit his father. No, Brant said, the chariots referred to were wheel-less platforms used to carry miniature ceremonial animals ("horses").

I haven't been able to take him seriously since then. And his misuse of Coe just adds to that.

[_Trevor]

Interestingly, Brant kept defending his obviously misleading reference to Coe throughout the thread.

Not surprising in the least.