If plates then God

[honorentheos]

I'm reminded of when the Phoenix Art Museum hosted a traveling Rembrandt exhibit. The opportunity to look closely at the work of a true master is something I didn't appreciate enough before this.

Ooh, that was quite a while ago, if I’m remembering correctly.

Thanks for triggering that memory; somewhere I have a little book of Rembrandt sketches purchased when we went to the exhibition; now I’ve got to go dig it up.

It was. Very cool opportunity and I am glad we went. I have to admit to being slightly hesitant due to the scheduled viewings making it possible it would have been a costly, rushed experience. Far from it. Phoenix has done well in attracting amazing exhibits.

I did feel a little disappointed by the Michelangelo exhibit sometime around the same period but even that was interesting. Another sobering, amazing experinece was when the Pompeii artifacts were on exhibited. Not really the same category but since I'm meandering off topic might as well enjoy the memories.

[honorentheos]

To add: Hardy's book is to literature what the Dales' Interpreter article is to statistics. It's meant to seem impressive but relies on the audience not understanding the subject enough to see how bad it is in contrast to the legitimate use of the tools being employed. And Marcus, please correct my comparison if I butchered the categorization of the Dales' collection of blotches.

No, I think you got it just right.

Thanks for checking my work.

[MG 2.0]

I don't understand what point you're making with these phrases, "one trick pony" and "flash in the pan".

For one thing I think you may be misusing "flash in the pan".

Something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... in-the-pan

Joseph never produced anything like unto the Book of Mormon before or after its production.

Again, if that book about the composition of the Book of Mormon made even one compelling point, why not repeat that point here yourself?

The author says it better than me (emphasis on bolding):

Multiple witnesses declared that Joseph Smith spoke the words of the Book of Mormon rather than personally writing them.38 This observation separates him from more than 99% of all authors who ever published a book.
Historically, the composition technique taught in schools worldwide is called creative writing and comprises three general steps.
Pre-writing: choosing a subject, creating an outline, and performing the required research.
Writing: making the initial draft and combining sections.
Re-writing: revising, content-editing, and all subsequent drafts.39
When dictating a book to a scribe (or stenographer), as Joseph Smith did, step one is restricted to memory, and step three is eliminated. There is no evidence Joseph engaged in step one in any discernable way, [Page 158]although mental preparations would not be detectable. The manuscript went straight to press without step three enhancements.
Dictating a book without pre-writing or re-writing might be called creative dictation. The advent of smart phones and voice-to-text apps has facilitated cell phone users today to produce long manuscripts using creative dictation and thereby attempt to replicate Joseph Smith’s efforts. The need for a scribe is removed by dictating text messages of 20 to 30 words each (the apparent word blocks Joseph spoke to his scribes40) into the app. These are received in order and copied into an expanding document. Before hitting send, grammar and spelling can be corrected, but once sent, the sequence of the sentences cannot be changed.41 The author does not consult manuscripts or books while dictating.42 Repeat this process 10,000 times until a document of roughly 270,000 words is formed that can be sent to a publisher for typesetting and printing.
Creative dictation is more difficult than creative writing because, as Louis Brandeis, who served as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939 explained: “There is no good writing; there is only good rewriting.”43 Popular novelist and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson concurred: “When I say writing, O, believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.”44 This inherent limitation of creative dictation is probably why none of the authors in the comparisons charted below elected to recite their books from memory and then send them directly to the printer. Even genius-level intellects today pre-write, write, and rewrite their books prior to completion.45

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... of-Mormon/

Sure, there's no positive evidence that Smith rehearsed or used notes. There wouldn't be, would there? How much evidence trail are private rehearsals or secret notes going to leave, when no more than a little bit of rehearsal was needed? Heck, you can rehearse a recitation mentally while lying awake in bed without moving or speaking. It would have been easy enough to produce the Book of Mormon with a lot more support than the official story admits—so easy that I don't see how any accounts of the production details can be considered evidence that Smith couldn't have written the Book.

I don’t think I’ve linked to it yet but this essay written by one your favorite people goes into length on Joseph Smith as storyteller and what hurdles would have to be jumped in order to compose the Book of Mormon.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... oryteller/

Literary characteristics of the 1830 Book of Mormon-
Characteristic Quality/Quantity
Word count 269,320
Number of sentences 6,852
Average sentence length 39.3
Reading level 8th grade
Dialect Early English
Punctuation none
Unique words 5,903
College-level vocabulary words (not in Bible) dozens
Original proper nouns 170
Parallel phraseology— chiasms 367
Parallel phraseology — alternates 400
Poetic literary forms (other) 911
Stylometric consistencies at least 4 unique authors
Bible intertextuality hundreds of phrases and integrations
Named characters 208
Socio-geographic groups 45
Geographical locations (Promised Land) over 150
Geographical references (Promised Land) over 400
Ecological references 2,065
Monetary system weights 12 distinct values
Chronological references over 100
Storylines 77 major; additional minor
Flashbacks and embedded storylines 5
Sermons 68 major; additional minor
Sermon topics dozens
Sermon commentary often intricate and multifaceted
Formal headings to chapters and books 21
Editorial promises 121
Internal historical sources quoted at least 24
Subjects discussed with precision at least 3 (e.g. biblical law, olive tree, husbandry, and warfare tactics)

From what I’ve read on this topic over the years my opinion is simply that you’re giving Joseph Smith too much credit for doing something that would have been beyond his reach. You’ve asked me to go through Grant Hardy’s book and spoon feed selections and ‘proofs’ that had meaning to me and yet you’re not willing to read it. The only one here that I’m aware of who says that they’ve read it is honor. He, of course, has his own opinions on what is in the book. But at least he says he’s read it.

There will never be any evidence which convinces the critics in regards to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon as being the work of God. I’ve provided links, not a few, in this thread that let the experts speak for themselves in regards to their research into Book of Mormon origins/translation.

At the end of the day each one of us makes our own determination as to the validity and truthfulness of this modern day scriptural work and whether its testimony of Christ will impact and guide our lives.

I appreciate your viewpoint on this topic.

Regards,
MG

*bump

[MG 2.0]

*snip whole post

Have you no shame? 80-90% of your responses to me are large volume cut and pastes.

For being such a smart person (you do work in the academy from what I seem to remember) you sure do some dumb things.

Any substantive original response to the post made upthread to PG?

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=158043&start=1290

Or are you just trying to make it disappear?

Folks, take a look at what this lady can do. Isn’t she amazing? Not only the board nanny but also the cut and paste queen. What skill! What acumen!

Do you think Joseph Smith wrote/dictated the Book of Mormon on his own? How did you come to the conclusion that you have?

Regards,
MG

*bump

[huckelberry]

Thomas Kinkade, Fairy Garden.

Morley this Kinkade is as painful in small details as it is in the overall total picture.

I was going to say I enjoy your art comments and contributions and I think that your comments on Monet are spot on.

This may be a side track but I found myself thinking of Jeff Koons upon seeing this image. His work seems to exist is some parallel space. I find it easy to say I do not care for Koons but I realize his work manages to be art in a way this Kinkade does not. I am not up to explaining it or maybe I am shy of understanding it. perhaps the big picture for any given work is larger than the physical dimension.

[I Have Questions]

“We have Joseph the farmboy producing a work that has gone on to becoming a recognized book of scripture” Nope. You have Joseph the imaginative story teller and Oliver the well educated school teacher, with some contemporary reference materials (including the KJV of the Bible) producing a work of 19th Century Fiction.

It’s amazing (well maybe not so much) that you are able to concisely explain how the Book of Mormon was created whilst at the same time ignoring all that has been written to the contrary that would poke holes in your one sentence shrink wrapped conclusion.

And critics criticize believers for supposedly walking around with blinders on.

Regards,
MG

I’ve provided facts:

Joseph was an imaginative story teller.
His scribe, Oliver, was a well educated school teacher.
There were contemporary reference materials, such as the King James Bible, available to them.

Which facts are you disputing, and why?

[Kishkumen]

Let’s say one were to grant that the Book of Mormon is a remarkable book. I know a lot of people here say it is not, but even if we grant that it is, there are other books that are remarkable. That does not make them beyond human ability to produce, as a category. Evidently humans are capable of remarkable things, and divine intervention is in the eye of the beholder.

I have read Hales on the subject of automatic writing, etc, and he basically looks for ways to emphasize the uniqueness of the Book of Mormon in order to reassure himself and others that the Book of Mormon is the real deal and not like the others.

Well, every book is going to be different from others in its own way. All channeled books will be a little different from other similar works. Similarity is not really proof of divine intervention. Hales leans pretty heavily on the bogus idea that it does.

We all have things that we really connect with. Some people really connect with a particular artist’s or musician’s work. Some the work of one author. If you dig Mormonism, then the Book of Mormon may just be your jam, and to you it will be obvious that the hand of God was required to bring it about.

The next person may not see the appeal or be all that impressed. Statistics and lists are unlikely to win them over.

[Morley]

For the moment, and for argument's sake, I'll go with Book of Mormon being remarkable. If angels were involved, it was something more than remarkable: It had to be a miracle.

The product of a miracle needs to be something a little more than just remarkable. It's not a miracle that a shiny piece of quartz is discovered on my front porch one morning. It may be a miracle if the quartz were discovered to be a genuine version of the Heart of the Ocean pendant from the film Titanic, that had somehow magicked itself there. That something is classed as being worthy of being called a miracle depends, in part, on the worth of the result of said miracle. Clearing up that zit on my nose, no matter how improbably it happened, won't be called a miracle, while the spontaneous, overnight, sprouting back of my amputated left hand might be.

So, the question is: Is the remarkable Book of Mormon significant enough to be worthy of being called a miracle. As a text, it has little unique literary value, or it would be studied in universities worldwide. It contains no breakthrough theological doctrine for the world, or even Mormonism--as that all evolved later. It has proven to be next to worthless as a guide for historians, archeologists, biologists, geologists, or linguists--all areas that one might think an ancient text, in Reformed Egyptian, about a thousand-year-long empire of Jewish proto-Christians in the Americas might be. It makes no significant contributions to psychology, philosophy, art, or science. So, what is the worth of the book? As dantana notes in another thread, the book's only value is that it was used as a catalyst to kick off yet another new religion. And as Physics Guy suggests, books like that are a dime a dozen and are hardly unique.

[Physics Guy]

Something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... in-the-pan

If you read that dictionary entry more carefully you'll see that the implication is always negative: it's a disappointment that the thing only happened once, instead of persisting as one would have hoped. A flash in the pan is a failure. That's why it's confusing to call the Book of Mormon a flash in the pan when you mean that it was something uniquely wonderful.

Anyway, so what if Smith never produced anything else like the Book of Mormon before or after it? How the heck is this any kind of argument at all to say that he couldn't have produced it? Is there some kind of rule that if someone can do something, then they have to keep doing it over and over, and if they don't keep on doing it again year after year then they can't ever do it at all, even once? Connect the dots for me, here; fill in the steps. He didn't do it more than once, therefore he couldn't have done it even once, because ...?

Multiple witnesses declared that Joseph Smith spoke the words of the Book of Mormon rather than personally writing them.38 This observation separates him from more than 99% of all authors who ever published a book.

First of all, these witnesses were all either deeply involved in the whole project themselves or else only saw a brief episode. We can hardly be sure that Smith really didn't write or revise anything. Secondly, how the heck would it have been impossible for him to dictate the book? Most published authors do a lot of rewriting because they are trying to avoid literary and stylistic faults like those with which the Book of Mormon is riddled. When a famous professional author says that you have to do a lot rewriting, this is like an A-list movie director telling you that you can't make a proper film for under a hundred million dollars. That's totally true for the kinds of films they make, but it absolutely does not mean at all that a kid with a smartphone can't put something on YouTube. In the same way, it's totally true that real literary masterpieces take a lot of rewriting, but works like the Book of Mormon do not.

I don’t think I’ve linked to it yet but this essay written by one your favorite people goes into length on Joseph Smith as storyteller and what hurdles would have to be jumped in order to compose the Book of Mormon.

What this person does is to list a bunch of things they've counted in the Book of Mormon. What they do not do at all is show how any or all of those things would have been very difficult for Smith to produce. What is so difficult about them? They all actually amount to the same single thing: that the Book of Mormon is long. Anyone can dictate a long book. Just keep talking. And then let a dedicated apologist pore through the result and find things in it to count.

From what I’ve read on this topic over the years my opinion is simply that you’re giving Joseph Smith too much credit for doing something that would have been beyond his reach.

I think Smith was an unusually talented person, with the kinds of gifts that show up in maybe one person in a thousand. You apparently find it so hard to believe that he could have been one in a thousand, that you are forced to conclude that he was one in a billion: the modern Prophet of God. This is like finding it so hard to swallow a mouse that you have to gulp down a whale.

You’ve asked me to go through Grant Hardy’s book and spoon feed selections and ‘proofs’ that had meaning to me and yet you’re not willing to read it. The only one here that I’m aware of who says that they’ve read it is honor. He, of course, has his own opinions on what is in the book. But at least he says he’s read it. ... I’ve provided links, not a few, in this thread that let the experts speak for themselves in regards to their research into Book of Mormon origins/translation.

Why do you think I would learn anything from these books, if not even one point sticks in your own mind from them, with enough clarity that you can easily explain it in your own words? Doesn't that mean that they must be pretty bad books?

Somebody who claims to have gotten a lot of sound information from books, but complains about having to spoon-feed when asked to explain any of it, is like somebody who claims to know a sure-fire way to make a fortune, but cannot afford lunch.

[Morley]

Hey MG -

On one hand I can understand why you might feel my post quoted here is largely an expression of my opinion. It is. On the other hand, you and I had a direct engagement at the time I read it where we discussed specific issues I had with the book and...you couldn't provide a specific point made by Hardy that you could articulate in your own words nor discuss. It was the first of many instances to come of you expressing your opinion of a source that proved to have little more to it than it evoked a feeling of doing heavy lifting so you shared it with limited to no internal understanding yourself. So there's a bit of huffy hypocrisy to your complaint, in my opinion.

But to help address your concern, Hardy's book is a typical case of abusive textual close reading. In fact he tells us in the intro that was his intention as the approach was meant to apply to the book as literature independent of its religious or historic legitimacy.

And then he used this overly extended close reading to still argue the book couldn't have been written by Joseph Smith so..."Hardy: I'm not saying angels were involved but you draw your own conclusions."

An example includes his attempt to show Nephi being a flawed, complex tragic character writing the history of his people with pre-knowledge of their destruction which flavored his representations of his older brothers. Wow, must be great literature or maybe actual history written by a guy who had visions of the future. Or alternatively, it is a simple didactic narrative where good guys wear white hats, bad guys wear black hats, and Cowdery/Smith wrote 1 Nephi after they wrote Moroni.

So. Yeah. It sucked and I learned a lesson about the value of my own time. I guess I should thank you for that. It led me to quit reading a book by Carter Page suggested by Ajax in the SP forum a while back. I had to learn to trust folks when they tell you repeatedly who they are, and someone who doesn't read posts for comprehension isn't going to read a book even if they promise to after I did. That book sucked worse than Hardy's, believe it or not, so I dropped it and moved on.

In a good faith gesture, I made the same mistake by reading The Crucible of Doubt, one of Terryl Givens's books that MG had insisted would be life-changing. It was a painful and useless experience. MG wasn't interested in discussing the book afterward; he just passed on another reading assignment.

edit to add. Unfortunately, I know I'll never recover the 15 bucks I spent, the hours I lost, or the brain cells I damaged in the experience.