Heavy Dragonplate or Extra Thin Tissue Paper?

[huckelberry]

Is there any evidence in Kyler’s work that is predicted from the “ancient record” hypothesis? Maybe one or two. NHM, for instance, would be value added with proper Bayes, as I’ve not seen anyone tackle it yet. (but proper Bayes may not be as friendly as hoped). These others like long book, Early Modern English, witnesses, are all maybe predictable outcomes of various hypotheses, but not the one he force fits backward......

Dr Moore, I am not sure if this is the consideration you were wondering about but a poster some time back presented serious geographic problems with the NHM connection. He claimed to have a substantial familiarity with the area between NHM and the sea and it presents very formidable travel barriers. It is too bad that information some of it first hand is lost . It is perhaps too bad that no actually knowledgeable person questioned it .The poster felt the Book of Mormon story of travel with NHM was unworkable.

[Billy Shears]

The biggest problem here that Billy doesn't point out is that 4 is a rather small sample size of pseudobiblical works.

Four is more than enough to use a chi-squared test to prove with 99.999% certainty that pseudo-biblical works aren't identically distributed.

Remember, you didn't fit the four pseudo-biblical works to estimate a distribution for how archaic elements in pseudo-biblical works differ. Rather, you assumed that all pseudo-biblical works have an identical distribution. You would need many pseudo-biblical works to prove that this assumption is true, but you only need two to prove it is false. And as it turns out, your own data proves your key assumption is false.

Billy is right to point out that the differences between the psuedobiblical books exceed what we'd expect just by chance as well, presumably because of those different syntactic choices. But Billy is glossing over the fact that differences between the Book of Mormon and pseudobiblical books are much, much larger than the differences within that set of books, which is reflected in my estimate.

Padding the parameters doesn't change the fact that we know the functional form is wrong.

There might be some validity in the argument you are articulating here. The problem is that this verbal argument has no relationship to your math.

[Lem]

And for some reason, twice that comment was deleted. Why am I not surprised.

Not sure why that was, Lem. Probably because you submitted two very similar comments before the moderator had a chance to approve one of them.

I understand that you disagree with me in terms of the independence question, but just to keep the conversation in one place I'll keep my substantive replies over on Interpreter.

Glad you've been reading!

Hmmm. My question about Kyler's assumption of complete and total independence between syntax of Early Modern English and archaic language of Early Modern English was not responded to directly, but I noticed this afternoon that Kyle did insert an answer elsewhere in the conversation in which he quoted me. It may be that the Interpreter's comment section is just wonky.

An any case, Kyler's argument that the two elements, both of Early Modern English language, should be considered independent because of this:

In my view, the only way that you get both lexis and syntax is to either speak it natively, or to be purposefully trying to emulate (non-biblical) Early Modern English. I don’t see any rhyme or reason that would lead Joseph or anyone else in the 19th century to try to do so, nor would I expect them to be able to pull that feat off.

But note that Kyler's original hypothesis included this:

The Book of Mormon was written by Joseph using an imitation of Biblical style—According to this theory, any ancient grammatical forms in the Book of Mormon can be explained by Joseph’s (imperfect) imitation of biblical style. It doesn’t matter much whether this imitation was intentional or was merely a reflection of how steeped Joseph and others in the nineteenth-century were in biblical language—the result should be fairly similar.

He specifically notes that this is part of his main hypothesis that Joseph Smith did not write the Book of Mormon:

This could be framed as two separate hypotheses, but I think it works better as one...

Just to recall, his first reason that independence was allowed was this:

However, for the hypothesis of 19th century fraud, those two things would be independent. If one was trying to imitate biblical style, it might be possible (though incredibly unlikely) to end up with a syntactic style that appeared to be truly archaic. But in doing so you would not be any more likely to pick up the extinct archaic word meanings found in the Book of Mormon. The same applied to the reverse scenario. Using words in ways that happened to be extinct and archaic, as rare as that would be, wouldn’t provide you with the ability to execute archaic syntax.

So, in arguing independence, Kyler is assuming that the elements of his hypothesis are true, after which he tests his hypothesis, and miraculously finds independence and his hypothesis in favor of Book of Mormon authenticity supported.

In short, Kyle assumed elements of his hypothesis were supported, used that as a FACT in his testing, and as a result, was able to inaccurately multiply two extremely small probabilities together, and then conclude his hypothesis was supported, by 20+ orders of magnitude.

You really can't even make these kinds of statistical errors up.

[Dr Moore]

Is there any evidence in Kyler’s work that is predicted from the “ancient record” hypothesis? Maybe one or two. NHM, for instance, would be value added with proper Bayes, as I’ve not seen anyone tackle it yet. (but proper Bayes may not be as friendly as hoped). These others like long book, Early Modern English, witnesses, are all maybe predictable outcomes of various hypotheses, but not the one he force fits backward......

Dr Moore, I am not sure if this is the consideration you were wondering about but a poster some time back presented serious geographic problems with the NHM connection. He claimed to have a substantial familiarity with the area between NHM and the sea and it presents very formidable travel barriers. It is too bad that information some of it first hand is lost . It is perhaps too bad that no actually knowledgeable person questioned it .The poster felt the Book of Mormon story of travel with NHM was unworkable.

I’d be interested in seeing that. Based on Mopologetic citations alone, NHM would be expected to receive the highest positive evidence score of anything else because it can be compared against something “predictive” in the Book of Mormon.

[huckelberry]

Dr Moore, I am not sure if this is the consideration you were wondering about but a poster some time back presented serious geographic problems with the NHM connection. He claimed to have a substantial familiarity with the area between NHM and the sea and it presents very formidable travel barriers. It is too bad that information some of it first hand is lost . It is perhaps too bad that no actually knowledgeable person questioned it .The poster felt the Book of Mormon story of travel with NHM was unworkable.

I’d be interested in seeing that. Based on Mopologetic citations alone, NHM would be expected to receive the highest positive evidence score of anything else because it can be compared against something “predictive” in the Book of Mormon.

Dr Moore,
Unfortunately I have no knowledge about that Mormon discussions thread being saved anywhere. It contained an individuals personal travel information, maps and photographs. At this point in time all I can really say is that there may be serious questions about the match with NHM which apologists have been so happy with. It could be worth further investigation.

[Lem]

I’d be interested in seeing that. Based on Mopologetic citations alone, NHM would be expected to receive the highest positive evidence score of anything else because it can be compared against something “predictive” in the Book of Mormon.

Dr Moore,
Unfortunately I have no knowledge about that Mormon discussions thread being saved anywhere. It contained an individuals personal travel information, maps and photographs. At this point in time all I can really say is that there may be serious questions about the match with NHM which apologists have been so happy with. It could be worth further investigation.

I think you may be referring to a thread that referenced this discussion, documented on reddit. Here is the start:

Budding Apologists Create Book of Mormon "Nahom" Evidence Video, Random Guy Shows Up, Systematically Destroys Them, Ends Up Setting Decades Of Professional Apologetic Research On Fire

490 points•125 comments•submitted 4 years ago * by [deleted] to r/exmormon2

I don't think I have ever seen a beating like this. Maybe the Jenkins v. Hamblin debate. Although this might be worse. What's interesting about this is you've got a guy who clearly isn't an academic, he's not a professional Bible scholar or anything like that, but he completely destroys those who are. It cannot be described, only witnessed. Posting to preserve for posterity. I suspect these comments will all disappear.

It all starts with a video posted by Book of Mormon Central, Evidences of the Book of Mormon: Nahom, and then proceeds with a blog post and discussions in multiple comment areas on youtube and the blog.

If you aren't familiar with the Nahom / NHM apologetic argument, I recommend just watching the video in its entirety. Watch it either way, it's hilarious. This is supposed to be indisputable evidence of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Not only that, but the only piece of real physical historical evidence. It's a big deal.

In summary, the claim is that the Book of Mormon gives a detailed description of the route the Nephites took from Jerusalem to Bountiful, identifying places by name, landmarks, compass directions, etc., and that this description fits perfectly with the middle east in a way that would have been unknowable to Joseph Smith or any early 1800s people in America. In particular, Nephi writes that Ishmael was buried in a place called Nahom, and that they have found this exact place, by name, over in the Middle East, along with ancient tombs bearing inscriptions of Book of Mormon names. Impressive.

Lots of commenters are saying it's just a coincidence, or there are so many other anachronisms it doesn't matter, and bringing pretty typical arguments along those lines to dispute the video. Nobody disputes the Nahom finding itself Then out of nowhere this random guy Andrew shows up, claims he speaks Arabic and has traveled to all these locations in the middle east and systematically debunks the whole thing. There is no Nahom, it hasn't been found, all the claims in the video are madeup fiction.....

https://np.reddit.com/r/exmormon/commen ... mon_nahom/

[Lem]

The biggest problem here that Billy doesn't point out is that 4 is a rather small sample size of pseudobiblical works.

Four is more than enough to use a chi-squared test to prove with 99.999% certainty that pseudo-biblical works aren't identically distributed.

Remember, you didn't fit the four pseudo-biblical works to estimate a distribution for how archaic elements in pseudo-biblical works differ. Rather, you assumed that all pseudo-biblical works have an identical distribution. You would need many pseudo-biblical works to prove that this assumption is true, but you only need two to prove it is false.

Exactly. Carmack has made this error multiple times. He compares Book of Mormon to an average of things, as though it should match the average. Nothing is likely to exactly match the average. That's the point, and yet Carmack has relied upon that multiple times in his support of Book of Mormon as Early Modern English, and Rasmussen is simply repeating the error.

[Gadianton]

Sorry guys, I commented earlier without having read any of the new material. As soon as I saw the "magnitude 23 earthquake" I passed to avoid the frustration. I'm sure DCP is happy given how much money they've dumped into that project.

So looks like we're continuing with:

Regardless of what his individual hypotheses are, he always assumes that support of any individual hypothesis, no matter how irrelevant, is equivalent to support of his overarching hypothesis

Check. Early Modern English counts against the Book of Mormon as ancient, obviously. Granted, one can still believe the Book of Mormon is ancient despite Early Modern English, but as evidence for it being ancient -- how stupid can you get?

And check on Billy's notes about making the alternative hypothesis 100%. Another one of those. If Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon, we'd expect to find with "absolute metaphysical certitude" a book filled with Early Modern English -- given it's ancient, you know.

I guess for me the most satisfyingly frustrating error is the independence issue since it's a new error. Not independence in general, but I think this is the first time he's pulled a Dale on a single piece of evidence and broken it down into multiple improbabilities.

That would be like arguing that you saw the attached right leg of a two-legged alien in a motion-activated video, and then you ALSO saw the attached LEFT leg of a two-legged alien, right next to the right leg, IN THE SAME VIDEO, and therefore, you conclude that the right leg sighting and the left leg sighting are independent of each other in a two-legged alien, therefore you have two completely INDEPENDENT sightings of a two-legged alien.

ha ha, yeah. that was funny.

You are incorrect. These two elements are both Early Modern English elements of Early Modern English text which inherently occur together. They are, as pieces of information contained in Early Modern English, NOT independent of each other.

Was this the new error Dr. Moore was talking about?

How else to put it. If it just had one of those two elements, then it wouldn't be a hit for Early Modern English. You'd say the appearance of a hit was just coincidence. The 'hit' for Early Modern English is only after all the facets of Early Modern English have been found.

If it was just Early Modern English syntax by itself, wouldn't they say that's a fluke? Wouldn't it be a fluke if Japanese syntax were found also without any other reason to believe it's Japanese?

[huckelberry]

Lem, thank you.Your link is to a version of the discussion and information posted here some time back.It is worth review and consideration.

We received quite a few more pictures I remember.

[Philo Sofee]

I’d be interested in seeing that. Based on Mopologetic citations alone, NHM would be expected to receive the highest positive evidence score of anything else because it can be compared against something “predictive” in the Book of Mormon.

Dr Moore,
Unfortunately I have no knowledge about that Mormon discussions thread being saved anywhere. It contained an individuals personal travel information, maps and photographs. At this point in time all I can really say is that there may be serious questions about the match with NHM which apologists have been so happy with. It could be worth further investigation.

That was the masterful Dr. W! Maybe if we cajole him a bit he can do another thread like that. It was absolutely over the top sensational! Also don't forget it was Jenkins website The Nahom Follies which also has some magnificent destructions of the apologetics, which Bill Hamblin succumbed to.