The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans

[_honorentheos]

Thought some here might find today's reply from Dr. Bruce Dale interesting given the other discussion in this thread.

Hi Billy:
No, the controls do not support your interpretation.

The question we asked is: “Is Dr. Coe correct when he states that 99% of the details in the Book of Mormon are false”?

We show that, according to the details given in his own book, the Book of Mormon fits very well with ancient Mesoamerica but neither View of the Hebrews nor Manuscript Found fit at all with that world as described by Dr. Coe in The Maya.

In particular, the fact claims of Manuscript Found, which is clearly fiction, fit terribly with the facts summarized in The Maya.

If the Book of Mormon is fiction, as you no doubt believe, why does it fit so well? If our method is hopelessly biased toward finding positive correspondences with the Book of Mormon, as you claim, why does Manuscript Found fit so abysmally? Why did the author of Manuscript Found not guess a lot better than he did?

If you think we have miscounted the positive and negative correspondences between the The Maya and Manuscript Found, then do your own comparison.

Read The Maya carefully (I suggest 6 times, which is what I did). Read Manuscript Found carefully. Read View of the Hebrews carefully. Make your own list of positive and negative correspondences, and then tell us what you have learned, in detail, as we have done in our paper.

Do your homework. Be a responsible critic of our paper.

I make the following offer to you and everyone who wishes to responsibly criticize our paper:

I will buy a copy of The Maya for anyone who will agree to read it at least twice and then carefully compare the Book of Mormon with The Maya.

That means you have to also read the Book of Mormon, but I won’t ask you to read it several hundred times, which is what I have done over the years. Just once, carefully, and then carefully study our correspondences, positive and negative, between the Book of Mormon and The Maya.

If you are going to criticize the Book of Mormon, then please do so based on some actual scholarship, not from prejudice, as did Dr. Coe.

And, as I wrote to Honorentheosen, you are just flat wrong when you claim that you can compare two works, both of which claim to be fact-based, on subjects that they do NOT deal with.

You cannot compare a book on quantum mechanics with another book on microbial metabolism and then complain that the book on microbial metabolism does not mention Max Planck and black body radiation.

The two books have different purposes. They must be judged against each other only on what they affirmatively state with respect to a particular fact area…not on what they do not say.
In the paper, we wrote the following to address this specific point:

“Near the end of Podcast #907, Dr. Dehlin invited Dr. Coe to unburden himself about anything that Coe thought should be in the Book of Mormon, but is not. Dr. Coe mentions four things: the absence of (1) books, (2) chocolate, (3) turkeys, and (4) jaguars.

Since Dr. Coe does not hesitate to use the word ridiculous to characterize arguments for the Book of Mormon he finds extremely unconvincing, we do not hesitate to use the same word to characterize these particular objections. They are, in fact, ridiculous.

First of all, the Book of Mormon clearly refers to multiple books being present (see Appendix A, Correspondence 6.9). If Dr. Coe had read the Book of Mormon more than once and more recently than 45 years ago, he might have noticed that fact. As for chocolate, turkeys, and jaguars, the Book of Mormon does not claim to be a text on elite foods, poultry, or exotic wild animals…

1 Nephi 6:6 describes the intent and scope of the Book of Mormon. This is the intent by which the Book of Mormon should be judged. It reads, “Wherefore, I shall give commandment unto my seed that they shall not occupy these plates with things which are not of worth unto the children of men.”

Knowledge of turkeys, jaguars, and consumption of chocolate among the ancient Mesoamericans is of no real worth. Knowing about Jesus Christ, about eternal life, about the resurrection, and the mercy that has been made available to us through Christ are topics of supernal worth.

If we are to take seriously Dr. Coe’s objections to the lack of equal time given to subjects as chocolate, jaguars, and turkeys in the Book of Mormon, we have an objection for him about his own book…

Dr. Coe does not mention the extensive use of the “golden section” or phi ratio in Maya architecture, although it is clearly present. Why did Dr. Coe not mention this “golden section” in his book The Maya? Shall we disbelieve the rest of his book because of this omission?

No, that would be ridiculous. All books must limit their scope and have a focus. Every author/editor must decide what to include and what to leave out. Dr. Coe did this in The Maya. So did the editors and authors of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Bruce

[_Lemmie]

Lemmie, the authors keep referring to supportive, positive and strong as Bayesian terms. That seems misleading to me. Doing the Bayesian analysis requires no such descriptive terms, right?

second attempt, sorry I didn't read your question correctly, no they are not strictly Bayesian terms, but i seem to recall reading that a branch of medical diagnostics commonly uses the terms in their sensitivity analysis. But keep in mind, the medical testing that uses LRs like this has actual sets of test results on which they base their numbers. The authors here just subjectively assign a single statement a likelihood ratio, as though it had a real value.

[_honorentheos]

Pending moderation -

Hi Dr. Dale –

Since you mentioned your earlier comment to which I had already replied without acknowledging that reply I’ll make the same point more directly.

When you say, “… as I wrote to Honorentheos, you are just flat wrong when you claim that you can compare two works, both of which claim to be fact-based, on subjects that they do NOT deal with.

You cannot compare a book on quantum mechanics with another book on microbial metabolism and then complain that the book on microbial metabolism does not mention Max Planck and black body radiation.”

- you are misrepresenting the critique. The point is that you did not actually take the time to compare the facts that both books addressed. The point is that you subjectively determined what constituted a point of correspondence.

For example, instead of recognizing that if The Maya has something to say about the language spoken among the Mayan people and the Book of Mormon has something to say about the language spoken among the Nephites, that’s a point of correspondence. Just because the Maya languages were not Hebrew which the Book of Mormon tells us was spoke at least up to the time of Mormon when he was compiling the plates doesn’t make that a subject on which both books lacked correspondence. Likewise the subject of a calendar, crops, defensive and offensive individual armament as cultural objects, system of government (kings over a people, a transition to judges with a chief judge, etc., a central military that Mormon commanded, etc.), military maneuvers, religious rituals, religious beliefs and deities worshipped, etc., etc., etc., are all mentioned in both books. Just not in a way that a mind bent on proving the Book of Mormon might decided forms a plausible point of overlap.

If you followed a more objective approach, you would have first identified these cultural points of comparison that both shared AS CULTURAL DEFINITIONS and then assessed each in relation to both hypotheses. One ought to be able to look to your paper to see how likely it was that an author writing a fictional account in the 19th Century would have included what was included in the Book of Mormon compared to an author writing in the Pre-classic and Classic Mayan periods would have been to have included what was said in the Book of Mormon to even give an appearance of objectivity.

What you’ve done instead is assumed that there is interdependency between the Book of Mormon and The Maya and then assigned subjective, capped likelihood ratios asking how likely Smith would have been to have guessed at this which is…beyond problematic. It’s fundamentally not even wrong.

[_honorentheos]

Awaiting moderation -

To continue by using the language analogy, it doesn’t make sense to cap the likelihood an authentic Mayan would describe the language they spoke as Hebrew at 1 in 50. That implies that in a city of 50,000 people, 1000 of them would mistaken describe the language they spoke as being Hebrew. Intuitively that likelihood alone could be orders of magnitude over the limit. Could a person ask a billion Mayan people what language they spoke before one mistakenly said it was Hebrew? One billion billion? Would any Mayan person even have the ability to make that error in the time period when Mormon was supposedly writing?

Conversely, if one were to ask what language a 19th century author might guess a group of Hebrews who migrated to the Americas would have spoken Hebrew even after almost 1000 years since the migration its intuitively much more likely. Would it be 1 in every 2 such authors? More? Fewer? Either way it’s orders of magnitude more likely than that an authentic Mayan author would have described Hebrew as their language.

Yet the paper apparently excluded this because language wasn’t included as a correspondence despite both books describing what they believe is the language spoken. If we take the paper at face value, we also ought to have assumed Coe was correct with his description.

[_Gadianton]

H, it's really hard to read his responses.

He keeps saying Dr. Coe didn't address the hits and only the misses. I think Coe did address the hits in the spirit of Bayes. There just isn't anything in the Book of Mormon that can't be explained by the 19th century and the KJV, and so any parallels become something like 1/2 according to the corrected interpretation from Lemmie: "hardly worth mentioning".

The misses on the other hand are substantial. Ironically, they aren't nearly as substantial as the Dales imply, as several totally independent misses, but significant in ways the Dales don't consider -- it's not just horses but horses with stables. Apparently Coe didn't mention Cocoa in his book, which is hard to believe. Oh -- the Book of Mormon doesn't mention it so it doesn't count? Do i have that right? anyway:

Cacao was greatly appreciated among the ancient Mayas and it is still widely used by the Mayas of today. Therefore it is no surprise that some Gods were made of Cocoa beans.

Cocoa was consumed as a drink during ceremonies, it was used either as an offering or consumed by the participants, and at times both. The different Maya tribes had the custom of drinking cocoa during the celebration of important events, such as births, entry to puberty, marriages or funeral rites.

Anthropological studies have identified signs of human DNA (skin cells) on the vessels used to drink cocoa. Their interpretation of this phonomena is that the body of the deceased was washed with water during the funeral rites, and the same water was then used to prepare the Chokoh’ Ha’ (Chocolate).

Another possibility is that the blood was mixed with the drink because it contained the mana (strength) of the other person. Today natives of the Kuna tribe, an amerindian tribe located in Panama and Colombia continue to follow their ancestral rites, using cocoa as a sacred and central element of their ceremonies.

https://adeptexpeditions.com/olmec-origin-chocolate/

it's not just missing cocoa that dales missed, but missing it in all the complexity of Gods made of cocao, and complex religious rights based on cocao.

Coe implicitly uses Bayes in comparing both hits and misses far better than the dales do.

[_Res Ipsa]

Lemmie, the authors keep referring to supportive, positive and strong as Bayesian terms. That seems misleading to me. Doing the Bayesian analysis requires no such descriptive terms, right?

second attempt, sorry I didn't read your question correctly, no they are not strictly Bayesian terms, but i seem to recall reading that a branch of medical diagnostics commonly uses the terms in their sensitivity analysis. But keep in mind, the medical testing that uses LRs like this has actual sets of test results on which they base their numbers. The authors here just subjectively assign a single statement a likelihood ratio, as though it had a real value.

Thanks!

[_Res Ipsa]

Bruce really misses the point when he dismisses turkeys, jaguars, cocoa, etc. because they are “exotic.” The question is not whether it is likely that Smith would mention turkeys in the Book of Mormon. The question is whether we would expect the omission of turkeys to be more likely in a historical Book of Mormon than in a fictional Book of Mormon. The odds might be low for both, but that’s not what matters — it’s the ratio of the two. Essentially, Bruce puts a zero likelihood on turkeys being mentioned in a historical Book of Mormon. But the paper says we can’t do that. So we have to assign it some value. And if we do, by Bruce’s own method, we must assign it a value of at least 2.

After railing against cherry picking in his paper, Bruce is picking cherries like crazy.

And the notion that one has to replicate his paper in order to criticize it is ridiculous. It’s his paper — he has the burden of proving that his methodology is sound.

[_I have a question]

Bruce really misses the point when he dismisses turkeys, jaguars, cocoa, etc. because they are “exotic.” The question is not whether it is likely that Smith would mention turkeys in the Book of Mormon. The question is whether we would expect the omission of turkeys to be more likely in a historical Book of Mormon than in a fictional Book of Mormon. The odds might be low for both, but that’s not what matters — it’s the ratio of the two. Essentially, Bruce puts a zero likelihood on turkeys being mentioned in a historical Book of Mormon. But the paper says we can’t do that. So we have to assign it some value. And if we do, by Bruce’s own method, we must assign it a value of at least 2.

After railing against cherry picking in his paper, Bruce is picking cherries like crazy.

And the notion that one has to replicate his paper in order to criticize it is ridiculous. It’s his paper — he has the burden of proving that his methodology is sound.

There seems to be two barriers to Bruce being objective in his consideration to others critiques about this paper.
1. His predetermined conclusion that the Book of Mormon is historical.
2. His parental protection of the papers primary author, his son Brian.
For those two reasons I don't think that Bruce will ever acknowledge that the papers methodology is problematic, no matter how blatant the flaws are, no matter how clearly and objectively they are put to him.

[_Philo Sofee]

There seems to be two barriers to Bruce being objective in his consideration to others critiques about this paper.
1. His predetermined conclusion that the Book of Mormon is historical.
2. His parental protection of the papers primary author, his son Brian.
For those two reasons I don't think that Bruce will ever acknowledge that the papers methodology is problematic, no matter how blatant the flaws are, no matter how clearly and objectively they are put to him.

I wonder what the odds are that he could ever be objective about his own research....

[_Gadianton]

Thanks res, he mentioned chocolate not cocoa.

Near the end of Podcast #907, Dr. Dehlin invited Dr. Coe to unburden himself about anything that Coe thought should be in the Book of Mormon, but is not. Dr. Coe mentions four things: the absence of (1) books, (2) chocolate, (3) turkeys, and (4) jaguars. Since Dr. Coe does not hesitate to use the word ridiculous to characterize arguments for the Book of Mormon he finds extremely unconvincing, we do not hesitate to use the same word to characterize these particular objections. They are, in fact, ridiculous.

First of all, the Book of Mormon clearly refers to multiple books being present (see Appendix A, Correspondence 6.9). If Dr. Coe had read the Book of Mormon more than once and more recently than 45 years ago, he might have noticed that fact. As for chocolate, turkeys, and jaguars, the Book of Mormon does not claim to be a text on elite foods, poultry, or exotic wild animals. The Book of Mormon, from beginning to end, is meant to testify of Christ and bring all humankind to

Good Lord, he has it exactly backwards. The point is that the jaguar wasn't exotic if you lived in Mesoamerica. And if the Book of Mormon can diverge from it's message of Christ long enough to mention plain animals like horses that didn't exist, it should have mentioned plain old jaguars instead. "Elite foods"? The ritualistic use of chocolate is elite as taking bread and wine for sacrament. Oh yes, per the Dales, we would rather expect the Book of Mormon to mention doctrines of Christ that have nothing to do with mesoamerica, as evidence that the Book of Mormon is a mesoamerican text, over and above rituals that were mesoamerican -- that's Mopologist logic at its finest.

Even granting a "Bill Hamblin" theory where the Book of Mormon people were conquered and thus there is little evidence behind of things like widespread Christianity, we still have references to the apostate doctrines of the unbelievers. Instead of chocolate and jaguar gods, we get a Lamanite king that believes in "the great spirit" -- which was a cheap shot at either native american beliefs or a caricature of Christianity.

But you make a great point res -- what if jaguars were exotic? Surely, if not jaguars, there were uncommon elements to mayan society that a real Book of Mormon might have a low probability of mentioning but that should also be considered. In fact, you're helping me make a point I was trying to get across that you guys aren't appreciating, and so I'll need another post for that.