KEP Dictation Argument: The Evidence

[_Kevin Graham]

In addition to the compelling arguments that have been made and are continuing to be made by Will and Daniel and others for the priority ..

No arguments have been made, just assertions. When asked for evidence, we're told to wait for yet another forthcoming work of some sort. Calling these nonarguments "compelling" just shows you were sold before you ever saw the product. It is what salesman promises that has you convinced, not the quality of the product itself. Again, no one outside LDS apologetics would consider any of this nonsense "compelling." You call it compelling because you need it to be, pure and simple.

Paul, you would probably have recognized by now that you've lost this argument in its entirety, as has Graham, Metcalfe, and others of similar bent.

Then why have Will and Dan run off? Will is and has always been a coward who refuses to own up to his errorss. All I have to do is relay a post that illustrates his past deceptions and misrepresentation of documents, and he vanishes for another week until the smoke clears. He is a glutton for punishment because he keeps returning with yet another embarrasing theory he found under a rock out in left field. He and Daniel have not responded to any counterarguments whatsoever, and Daniel's focus is so basic and narrow that he refuses to discuss anything unless it is the dittograph. I proved him wrong on several points and he ran away in a huff because I was diverting away from his precious dittograph argument.

I've demonstrated quite "compellingly" that Will's is a ridiculous argument that only those in LDS apologetics would entertain - ask your regular Mormon about this stuff and he'd think Will was nuts too (I have)- and Daniel's proposal suffers the same fate of creating more questions than it answers. Nobody has even touched my rebuttal which offered a far more plausible explanation than his. I suspect Dan knows this. Which is why they've left the battle to morons like you.

[_Paul Osborne]

Well at least you're not doing illegal drugs Paul, that's something. It is actually interesting to see Will dishing out to you what you dished out to me for years regarding my own alcohol problems, and continued to do long after they had ceased

True, I don't do anything illegal. But, if pot was suddenly made legal I might like to smoke a little for old time's sake and then get the munchies and pig out. That would be fun, I suppose, but then again I might not like it. Hard to say.

Really, I'm not an alcoholic and don't have the gene. I use alcohol as a drug to get me off. It's fun. But I'm the master and use it according to my pleasure and could put it down at will anytime. But it sure taste good and I'm enjoying the sensations.

If you were sober on a more regular basis, Paul, you would probably have recognized by now that you've lost this argument in its entirety, as has Graham, Metcalfe, and others of similar bent.

For Christ's sake, get off it. The only people that will accept the garbage spun by William and his gang are Mormons who need a way out to explain the mess produced by the Book of Abraham saga. NonMormons are not going to buy the apologetic argument. William is not going to convince the world that the Book of Abraham is not attached to the lies of the KEP and false revelations. YOU are stuck with the false revelations, so eat them up, Droopy. Just like President Kimball and his Presidency eating up Hoffman's garbage. The Mormon First Presidency is a joke.

And, I'm glad that Joseph Smith was murdered. That bastard.

Paul O

[_wenglund]

First, Wade, it is not “charitable” to concede that Joseph Smith et al may have believed Masonic figures were Egyptian in origin: by this point, you have been forced to make this concession.

Evidently, you haven't had a chance to catch up on all that I have written about this today. Go ahead and take whatever time you need to let it all sink in.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_beastie]

First, Wade, it is not “charitable” to concede that Joseph Smith et al may have believed Masonic figures were Egyptian in origin: by this point, you have been forced to make this concession.

Evidently, you haven't had a chance to catch up on all that I have written about this today. Go ahead and take whatever time you need to let it all sink in.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Evidently you haven't had time to eliminate presentism from your posts. Go ahead and take your time to do so.

[_wenglund]

No arguments have been made, just assertions....

...I proved him wrong on several points and he ran away in a huff because I was diverting away from his precious dittograph argument.

I've demonstrated quite "compellingly" that Will's is a ridiculous argument that only those in LDS apologetics would entertain..

Hmm, first you say no arguments have been made, and then you twice explicitly mention the arguments that have been made.

This doesn't reflect well on your accuracy or your credibility. I know you are capable of much better.

Nobody has even touched my rebuttal which offered a far more plausible explanation than his. I suspect Dan knows this. Which is why they've left the battle to morons like you.

I really don't think that name-calling and posturing will help elevate the level of discourse here in a way that would encourage productive interlocution with you--assuming that it what you would genuinely like to have.

Again, I think you have some good ideas and you present some arguments that are worthy of engagement. It just that such things tend to get obscured by the dense fog of repelling behavior. If you could ratchet way back on the vacuous intensity and counter-productive abrassiveness, things could go far differently for you. I , for one, would like to see that.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_wenglund]

Evidently you haven't had time to eliminate presentism from your posts. Go ahead and take your time to do so.

It takes no time to eliminate what doesn't really exist. The elimination is germane to the non-existence. Surely you knew this.

But, perhaps you are seeing things that I am not. If so, then would be so kind as to point out what you view as the alleged presentism in my posts, and I will be pleased to consider it.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[_beastie]

Evidently you haven't had time to eliminate presentism from your posts. Go ahead and take your time to do so.

It takes no time to eliminate what doesn't really exist. The elimination is germane to the non-existence. Surely you knew this.

But, perhaps you are seeing things that I am not. If so, then would be so kind as to point out what you view as the alleged presentism in my posts, and I will be pleased to consider it.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Each time you assert that Joseph Smith would have known what was or was not Egyptian, you engage in presentism. Neither you, or Will, have presented any actual evidence that would support your assertion, so you're just basing your comments on the fact that today it is obvious that certain elements weren't really Egyptian. But it wasn't obvious during Joseph Smith's time period to people in general, and in particular it wasn't evident to someone like Joseph Smith who would have eaten up the myths about Masonry and ancient Egypt with a spoon. YOU think, today, no one would ever include figures that resembled English figures, but that doesn't mean that's what someone in Joseph Smith's time period might have done.

It is amusing, however, to see how quickly Joseph Smith transformed from an uneducated, barely literate translator of the Book of Mormon to someone educated on the cutting edge of Egyptian, apparently privy to the early scholarship of the rosetta stone, and also knowledgeable about other ancient languages.

[_CaliforniaKid]

George,

I am not persuaded that these characters are derived from the Masonic cipher-- even in their original form on the Anthon Transcript and elsewhere. There are not enough parallels to exclude coincidence as a likely explanation. Furthermore, the Masonic cipher works as a coherent whole, with the shapes of the characters corresponding to cells in a substitution grid like the one below:



The KEP do not operate according to anything like this principle. Nor do the characters systematically derive from a pigpen grid, as the Masonic characters do. Presumably anyone familiar enough with the Masonic cipher to borrow from it would know how it functioned.

Peace,

-Chris

[_Paul Osborne]

The KEP do not operate according to anything like this principle. Nor do the characters systematically derive from a pigpen grid, as the Masonic characters do. Presumably anyone familiar enough with the Masonic cipher to borrow from it would know how it functioned.

Obviously you are not easily fooled, California Kid. (Are you the same California Kid I conversed with some many years ago on the Why Prophets board?) These apologists (William & Wade -- lover boys together) will sing and dance their way across the stage in order to draw attention away from the painful truth. William grabs Wade's ass and Wade grabs William's crotch and hence a cipher is born.

Paul O

[_wenglund]

Each time you assert that Joseph Smith would have known what was or was not Egyptian, you engage in presentism.

I am quite certain that I am not. But, I am open to you attempting to make your case.

You, nor Will, have presented any actual evidence that would support your assertion...

This is demonstrably incorrect, though understandable if you haven't carefully read through, nor fully or accurately comprehended, my posts.

The first argument that I presented was that Phelps and Joseph were known to have been studying Latin and Hebrew at the time the KEP was being produced. I should also mention that there is evidence that Phelps had studied Latin and other language prior to the Egyptian papyri arriving in Kirtland. One can reasonably induce from this evidence that Phelps and Joseph would likely have known that a Latin character was not Egyptian, and that an Aramaic or Hebrew character was not Egyptian. In other words, they would have been able to tell the difference between Latin, Aramaic, and Egyptian characters even if they didn't know Egyptian, patricularly given the marked difference between the characters used by these respective languages..

My second argument was that even though Phelps and Joseph may have considered Masonry in general to be Egyptian in origin, they likely didn't consider every specific thing about Masonry to be Egyptian. I gave as a reasonable example the English words used by Masons, which clearly would not be considered as Egyptian by the English-speaking Phelps and Smith.

I then went on to note that the Masonic cipher used English alphabet letters. This should suggest to the logical mind that the English portions of the Masonic cipher would clearly not be mistaken as Egyptian by the English-speaking Phelps and Smith.

Furthermore, I pointed out that the English letters in the Masonic cipher were separated by an obvious grid--a grid that even in Phelps' and Smith's day, was called a "pig pen" because of its shape. And, because it would obviously be considered as a grid by anyone in any age who was at all familiar with grids (which Phelps and Joseph obviously were, given the grid-like tables they used to formate the key documents of the KEP), it is then reasonable to argue that Phelps and Smith would not mistake an obvious cipher grid for an Egyptian heiroglyph or hieratic--and this even given that they may not have known Egyptian.

Certainly, as Phelps and Smith perused the Egyptian papyri in their possession at the time, and would nowhere on that papyri find anything close to resembling the Masonic cipher gride, we have no reason to believe that they would have mistaken the cipher grid for an Egyptian hieroglyph or hieratic, or thought that is what it was.

In short, since it is reasonable to suggest that Phelps and Smith knew that some of the characters came from an English version of an obvious cipher grid, then it is also reasonable to conclude that they knew that the Masonic cipher characters were not Egyptian.

I am sorry, but this seems so self-evident and uncontroversial that I have to wonder why you seem so iincapable of redily grasping it and/or are highly resistant to accepting it.

Now, is this the only case of alleged presentism that you mistakenly assumed was in my posts? If so, then I will gladly accept your apology. If not, feel free to make the other alleged case.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-