Carmack's current position on Book of Mormon authorship

[Limnor]

I agree. So Joseph somehow feeds the Reformed Egyptian into the iPhone/ FaceTime and the committee translates into olde English and then retransmits back to Joseph.

Ok.

Loose translation, or tight?

One word sent/received at a time (as Joseph saw the Reformed Egyptian using the stone in the hat), or complete phrases/sentences?

Reference material available to the committee (e.g., KJV Bible - don't laugh - why not? ), or everything is done off the tops of their heads?

One committee member per unit of text to translate, or consultation?

Committee members from different time periods understood each other perfectly, or there were little (unrecognized) issues due to changes in the English language?

Right. It’s not just “this sounds weird,” but “this doesn’t result in a coherent process when you really pull it apart.”

[Everybody Wang Chung]

I’m genuinely wondering if Carmack is hitting the crack pipe, because this ghost committee crap is officially too stupid for anyone sober.

[Fence Sitter]

It's like the Mormon God doesn't know about Google Translate.

[malkie]

It's like the Mormon God doesn't know about Google Translate.

It wasn't Mormon god's fault that the Google Translate app wasn't installed on the iPhone

[Philo Sofee]

It's like the Mormon God doesn't know about Google Translate.

It wasn't Mormon god's fault that the Google Translate app wasn't installed on the iPhone

It's too bad Google translate wasn't available for the Urim and Thummmim......

[Marcus]

As i write out McClellan's approach, if i have it correctly assessed, it dawns on me it's only improvement in terms of realism is that Peterson didn't sully it with a ghost committee joke. Otherwise it's still completely unlikely, when considered next to a naturalist explanation.

I read McClellan as a deflection. Explain that the Bible’s transmission is messy too, and you don’t have to explain how the stone in the hat process actually works.

Yes. It borders on denying all the hat, stone, plates and angels, if you think it through.

[Equality]

I think I have finally figured out the purpose Mormon apologetics serves.

It's to come up with the wackiest alternatives possible to the official narrative regarding early church history to make the official narrative seem downright reasonable in comparison.

Gold bibles delivered by a resurrected ancient American Indian and translated by peering into a hat at a treasure-hunting peepstone is way higher on the plausibility list than this loony Carmack ghost-committee theory.

[Limnor]

It all seems to work like misdirection in a magic trick, and reflects the same thing apologists complain about—throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. And if it doesn’t stick, you can always fall back to angels and rocks like equality says. If it’s a “magic trick” when critics do it, it doesn’t magically become scholarly or nuanced when apologists do it.

[Gadianton]

Joseph Smith believed in the Adamic language, a "pure" language, and it seems like ideas like the "interpreters" are based on exactly this kind of a childish understanding of language. In a world where undefiled languages exist and/or languages are translated perfectly into each other such as in the case of a secret decoder ring, where symbols are trivially substituted for each other, then would there ever be linguistic evidence for the Book of Mormon?

It would be traceless. The translator would extract the pure concept from the corrupt language and then the right words that lined up with that pure concept would be picked from ones native language. This idea is what's behind Joseph Smith saying the Book of Mormon is the most correct book on the face of the earth -- the Bible is true as far as it's "translated correctly".

There would be no such thing as "Hebraisms" or 16th century grammar. I speculate that there would be no "Mesoamerican-isms" either. And that's because, in order to have the most correct book of the face of the earth, life in ancient times had to be exactly as Joseph could picture it in his mind such that his description would impart immediacy to the pure concept. The bare exception to this model are foods or animals or items that they didn't have back then that we have now, but have no impact to the story or stereotypes that the author is constructing. There would never be, for instance, a moral dilemma where that which was right back then may not be right today. (that stuff is saved for himself). To be fair, it's the same with Star Trek.

In order to make it ancient, they have to throw out the entire premise the Book of Mormon was written on, including the most striking props like interpreters.

[Kishkumen]

Joseph Smith believed in the Adamic language, a "pure" language, and it seems like ideas like the "interpreters" are based on exactly this kind of a childish understanding of language. In a world where undefiled languages exist and/or languages are translated perfectly into each other such as in the case of a secret decoder ring, where symbols are trivially substituted for each other, then would there ever be linguistic evidence for the Book of Mormon?

I like your reasoning here, but the Book of Mormon is not written in Adamic, and the claim "the most correct book" is not the same as saying "the perfect book." The Book of Mormon explains in inscrutable ways its language (Hebrew with Egyptian in some vague combination), which is not Adamic, and it makes many excuses for its inadequacy of language and expression.