Billy Shears makes a bet with Bruce Dale

[drumdude]

Rasmussen has posted Episode 15. I don’t even know how to approach this. How do you tell someone they have lost their damn mind? And that they have a career they need to not be destroying?

Peterson, you can’t seriously be presenting this on your Foundation’s website. This is ridiculous.

It's a sign of the times. Dr. Peterson can't see that Kyler's flawed logic is the same flawed logic that drives people to think Trump won the 2020 election. That drives people to think vaccines are poison. Kyler won't listen or respond to basic arguments against his position, and neither will the Trumpers or anti-vaxxers.

Objective reality is slipping away from us.

[Lem]

The one comment on episode 15, from Bruce Dale of the OP, on "plausible geography":

Bruce E. Dale on October 15, 2021 at 3:45 pm

Hi Kyler,

In your list of anachronisms, you have “Plausible Geography” #85 as one of the Book of Mormon anachronisms that has not as yet been confirmed. I wonder if you aware of the recent (last year or so) work at Book of Mormon Central to identify a plausible Book of Mormon geography based completely on internal Book of Mormon directions, elevations, etc.

That effort has culminated in an interactive map found at https://geografia.centralldm.es/

The map can be navigated using Google Earth Pro. The materials are currently in Spanish (apparently to avoid conflict with the Heartland Model adherents, at least for now) but they can be easily translated into English by Google Chrome in case your Spanish is rusty. (More than 50 years after my mission in Mexico, my Spanish is very rusty indeed.)

I spent most of today checking the 246 separate geographical references in the Model Map. It looks to me like they all check out…100% fit makes for a pretty plausible geography in my opinion.

I was particularly impressed by three things:

1) How naturally the sea east, the sea west, the sea north and the sea south (all specifically mentioned in the Book of Mormon) fit into the combined geography of southern Mexico, Belize and northern Guatemala. I am not aware of any other New World location where these geographical correspondences come together in a limited geographical area.

2) The likely location of the Hill Cumorah as Cerro San Martin Pajapan, a 1,180 meter high volcanic mountain complex about 10 km inland from the Bay of Campeche in southern Veracruz, Mexico (i.e., near “many waters” Mormon 6:4). I can imagine many hundreds of thousands of people fighting to the death in this large, well-watered area whereas that many people would not even fit on or around that insignificant drumlin in upstate New York.

3) How well the Usamacinta River matches with the northward-flowing River Sidon, including a few flat areas on its banks where armies could fight.

I think with this work by Book of Mormon Central, we are well on the way to having a very plausible geography for the Book of Mormon. Check off one more anachronism for the Book of Mormon.

You may wish to take a look at that interactive map. I am a map addict, and navigating the map with the Book of Mormon in hand is fun.

Best wishes,
Bruce

Middle Earth has some competition.

[Rivendale]

Sounds like someone has been primed for something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYG2oZXSvdE

[Dr Moore]

You know, it occurs that what Kyler has done here is, rather than address known anachronisms (ALL of them) one by one as negative evidence, which would be devastating, he’s taken the apologetic “slope of the line” to turn the whole constellation of anachronisms into a single point of positive evidence. And at that, a + 20 oom positive in favor of historicity. It’s quite an astonishing act of self deception when you think about it.

[malkie]

You know, it occurs that what Kyler has done here is, rather than address known anachronisms (ALL of them) one by one as negative evidence, which would be devastating, he’s taken the apologetic “slope of the line” to turn the whole constellation of anachronisms into a single point of positive evidence. And at that, a + 20 oom positive in favor of historicity. It’s quite an astonishing act of self deception when you think about it.

It seems unlikely that an allegedly fraudulent text could become more plausible after decades of intense critical examination.

I wonder why he doesn't look at the other side of the anachronisms.

Does it not bother him that, after all this time, and all of the effort put in by apologists, so many remain?

If this were a text critical of Mormonism, might we not imagine an apologetic statement like this:

It seems unlikely that an allegedly valid text could retain so many anachronisms after decades of intense examination.

How can there possibly be such astronomical odds against the Book of Mormon being fraudulent when so many anachronisms remain? Should that consideration alone not give Kyler pause?

And, while we're about it, might the Book of Mormon "Sermon on the Mount" (3Nephi12-14) not count as an anachronism? Has Kyler missed any more from his list?
Proof that Jesus could not have delivered the Book of Mormon Sermon