vessr wrote:
Brad, what we have been focused on is, in effect, simply a matter of burden of proof. You have placed a heavy burden of proof upon my parallelisms. The question is whether your burden of proof is the right burden of proof. I propose that it is not.
I agree that we're talking about burden of proof, but we're also talking about the weight of evidence and the logical conclusions we can draw from evidence. And I keep trying to talk about conclusions from parallels in general, but doing it in the context of your parallels, which is unfair of me. It must sound like I'm disparaging your efforts, but I'm really not trying to do that. I got wound up in making a specific point about what we can conclude from the mere numbers of parallels.
vessr wrote: In criminal cases, where peole can be executed or put into a prison, the legal standard has always been "beyond a reasonable doubt"; that is, the prosecutor must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant commited the crime he has been charged with.
That is not the burden of proof required in a case of plagiarism, which I would argue is the case we are dealing with, although the New Testament is in the public domain and can't legally be plaiarized. Nevertheless, if we are asked to prove whether Joseph Smith plagiarized the New Testament while writing the Book of Mormon, the standard is different from "beyond a reasonable doubt," which I believe is the standard you have been arguing in this case.
I understand why you think that's what I'm doing, but I don't think it is. I think "more likely than not" is a perfectly appropriate ultimate burden of proof for the issues we are examining here. But that does not mean that all evidence is created equal. We still have to talk about the weight of the evidence, which is a similar, but different, question. My general point is that parallels are a type of evidence that should be subjected to a high level of scrutiny. That's because (1) what constitutes a parallel is often subjective; (2) the role of chance is often neglected; and (3) the human brain is terrible at understanding the role of chance.
I know I'm going at a snails pace when what you want me to do is look at the damn parallels already.
But slow is how I go. So follow me at my snails pace.
You said you had 500 parallels. I said that the number didn't tell me anything. Roger said how big a number does it take. And I said I need to know the number I should expect due to things other than plagiarism. And that's really all the ground I've been trying to cover. What does matter, I think, is the length and quality of the parallel. And that is what we haven't been talking about. To me, there is a world of difference between the lengthy parallel you describe below and number 150 on your list "puffed up." If you had 500 parallels that looked like "puffed up," I'd say you didn't have any evidence at all. That's the reason why I say the number alone doesn't tell me anything.
To give the extreme example: 2 Nephi. The length and quality of the parallel (entire chapters, right?) I think shows (even beyond reasonable doubt) that the text was copied or memorized and recited (as long as we leave God out of it). I'm willing to concede that getting that close of a match on that volume of material without copying it is virtually impossible. But as you shrink the length and quality of the parallels, my confidence also shrinks. At some point, I don't trust my common sense to distinguish between chance and intention, because I know that my brain is inclined to find intention even when no intention is present. Where is that point? I dunno. That's why I'd like some data.
vessr wrote:The standard is proof by a preponderance of the evidence. In other words, is a parallism, such as the one Marg pointed out below, proved more likely than not to have been based on borrowing the wording from the New Testament, as follows:
"let's take a look at this one from Vessr's list.
"8. 1 Nephi 10:8-10: “for there standeth one among you whom ye know not; and he is mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. And much spake my father concerning this thing. And my father said he should baptize in Bethabara, beyond Jordan; and he also said he should baptize with water; even that he should baptize the Messiah with water. And after he had baptized the Messiah with water, he should behold and bear record that he had baptized the Lamb of God, who should take away the sins of the world”;
“but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”: John 1:26-27."
"This is not chance that the Nephi passage parallel's John's in the KJB. Not only are many of the words similar but the concepts and names as well."
To start, I'm comfortable with going out on a limb and saying, without doing some kind of study, that the odds that the colored sections do not represent copying are less than 50-50. In even the limited playing around I've done, I haven't found parallel structures due to chance that look anything like what we have here. It sure looks like Smith wanted to put a prophecy of Jesus in the Book of Mormon, and lifted language from John to write his prophecy. Did he put in the differences intentionally to try and hide the copying, or was it an attempt to recite the verse, or was it an attempt to summarize the verse using certain phrases that stuck in his head? I dunno. But this example tells me much more than the total number of parallels you found.
vessr wrote: You would be taken off a jury by the defendant's attorney if you couldn't apply a preponderance of the evidence test to an example of an alleged plagiarism, rather than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" test that you have been using, I would ague.
Absolutely. Although you do raise an interesting question about the burden of proof. In fraud claims, we actually use the standard "clear, cogent, and convincing evidence." But, as I said, I'm perfectly happy with preponderance of the evidence.
vessr wrote: I believe reasonable minds could only conclude that the above parallelism cited by Marg was based on misappropriation from the writing in the book of John. Again, it's not beyond a reasonable doubt, but it is more likely than not that that specific parallelism involves borrowing the Book of John language and appying it to the Book of Mormon context.
Well, I think that if reasonable minds could only reach a single conclusion, then I think you're beyond reasonable doubt. I think you've made a good case, in this case, that it is more likely than not that Smith intentionally borrowed the language from the Book of John.
vessr wrote:I believe there are many more cases like this among my 500 examples, sufficient, again, to prove it is more likely than not that language in the New Testament was used in writing the Book of Mormon.
And that may very well be the case. My guess is that they also contain examples that I would conclude could not, without other evidence, be reasonably distinguished from chance.
vessr wrote: Now, if you took each such instance from among the parallelisms I've found, I think reasonable minds could only conclude that the Book of Mormon was written with reliance on the New Testament. If you can only apply a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard here, then you should be thrown off the case, because we are not talking about putting Joseph Smith in prison, or executing him. We just believe, those of us who have looked at these parallelims that Smith was guity by a preponderance of the evidence.
If you took each parallel phraseology from the New Testament and applied it to any other book, I believe reasonable minds could only conclude that the New Testament was used when another book comes up with the same words and sequences as we've found in the strongest of the parallelisms from the Book of Mormon.
Make any sense? If it doesn't, then I will ask the court to have you dismissed from the case for failure to apply the appropriate standard of proof : )
I think by this point you know that I think you are making sense. But, cautious guy that I am, it depends largely on what you propose to conclude from what you have found. If by "written with reliance on the New Testament" you mean that in some places Smith copied/memorized language from the New Testament and used it, I suspect I'd agree based on some of the examples in the first 150. If you are concluding something broader, then I'd have to hear what that conclusion is before evaluating it.
So, you gonna use one of your peremptory challenges on me, counselor?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
