A 'Book of Mormon Evidence' implodes at a touch

[Guest]

Apparently Daniel Peterson is to give a talk on April 10 on Book of Mormon evidences somewhere. Those who wonder what it might be like will of course have a look at his essay on this topic;

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=1

One of his killer points is the following, in which he gives us an example of how a sharp scholar like him, trained in semitics, can see evidence that would go right past the noses of us lesser mortals:

I teach Arabic about half-time at Brigham Young University, and one of the linguistic forms in Arabic that's common in other Semitic language as well, is something that's called a "cognate accusative"—where you use a noun that's related to a verb in a sentence. You say, "I hit him a great hitting" or "I have dreamed a dream." And the example that I often use to illustrate this, which is not naturally English, is one right out of 1 Nephi, where Lehi reports to his sons, "Behold I have dreamed a dream, or in other words I have seen a vision." Now this "I have dreamed a dream" is a perfect cognate accusative, and when the students hear about this—the ones who know the Book of Mormon—they say, "Ah, yes. Now we understand," because this is an authentic example of the Arabic or Semitic construction.

Even the second part of the sentence (though we lose something in English) when Lehi says, "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision," (1 Nephi 8:2) demonstrates this. You have to remember that English is based on two different languages. English is a hybrid of a sort of Latin or French with a Germanic language—the Anglo-Saxons and then the Norman Conquest, of course. So you have two different words for many things, a sort of low Germanic word and a high Latin-style word. For example, a handbook: we also have the Latin word manual coming from the word Manis for "hand." They mean the same thing. Likewise, with the words "I have seen a vision,"—what he's really saying is "I have seen a seeing." The Latin word seeing was related to the word for vision, and you have a related German word, sehen, or "I have seen a vision," using the Latin word. But in the original it was probably something like this: "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a seeing." So I use this verse in the Book of Mormon in my Arabic grammar class, just to make a point to the students. Now, I ask you how a nineteenth-century farm boy could have come up with something like that, which is a perfect illustration of an Arabic grammatical point. Probably he did a lot of his work in the graduate school there at Palmyra University—well, of course there wasn't such a place. And there was no such Joseph Smith. This came to him via another route, not through academic study.

Wow! Joseph Smith did a cognate accusative .... the Book of Mormon is TRUE!

But how does John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' (1678) begin?

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. "

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim.iv.i.html

Wow! Another cognate accusative! Bunyan was a prophet too!

Or perhaps, like Joseph Smith, he was just another Protestant English-speaker whose speech and writing could sometimes show semitic influences because the most important book in their lives was the King James Bible, much of which is an English translation of semitic texts? In which we find such sentences as:

Genesis 41:15 "And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it."

And this man DCP is a scholar trained in the handling of evidence, whose judgment in such matters is worthy of respect? Derision is really the only appropriate response to such stuff.


Footnote (perhaps not fair to DCP since he never claimed to know Latin, and it could be a typo ... we have all done them.)

"we also have the Latin word manual coming from the word Manis for "hand."

Declension of Latin manus 'hand'

singular/plural
nominative manus/manus
genitive manus/manuum
dative manui/manibus
accusative manum/manus
ablative manu/manibus

The form 'manis" does not appear.

[edited to add emphasis in quote and to remove duplicate verse number]

[_beastie]

I have a theory about why Book of Mormon evidences tend to implode at first touch (good imagery!).

I think the apologists are not taking any time to try to falsify whatever theory/evidence occurs to them. I have seen this time and again - apologists getting excited about some "evidence" that was fairly easily shown to be weak and/or strained. These are intelligent people, why do they keep doing this? I think their confirmation bias is so strong in favor of the historicity of the Book of Mormon that when they happen upon something that "clicks" with that theory, it doesn't even occur to them to probe it to try and falsify it.

Of course, the alternative is that they have tested and probed the theory and know that it can be falsified or shown to be weak, but they don't share that part of the story because they are deliberately manufacturing faith-promoting evidence for audiences that they know don't possess adequate information to probe or falsify it on their own.

I think either possibility is equally possible, and believe I've seen both demonstrated on MAD.

But it does make critics shake their heads. Of course, we're not the target audience. Likely the "cost" of critical commentary, which the vast majority of their target audience will never see/hear, is a price worth paying to bolster faith. And I do think they genuinely believe the church is true, so even if they're a little misleading, it's ok, because, in the end, the evidence will prove them right all along.

[_Mercury]

Its Chiasmus bulls*** all over again, repackaged and with a fresh coat of brownish green paint.

[_truth dancer]

Hi Chap,

This is a great example of the kind of thing that I find so disheartening when it comes to apologetics.

Certainly DCP knows that anyone immersed in a particular language would use similar phrases and words as those to which he/she is accustomed. And, anyone immersed in the Bible since childhood would use similar phrases as those with which he was familiar if he were trying to write scripture. One doesn't need a PhDs to understand this.

Yet, this silliness of trying to pretend that the only way Joseph Smith could have used such a common, familiar term is because he, with the help of a stone in a hat, could correctly translate an ancient (completely unknown) lost language rooted in Hebrew supposedly in Mesoamerica, goes on. I don't get it.

I don't want to assume they are being deliberately dishonest, or playing with their audience, or knowingly tricking vulnerable fans. Are they laughing at how others will take their information and run with it? Do they think it is OK to be dishonest because it is strengthening testimonies? Do they think they are actually making a good case for the Book of Mormon?

They can't really believe what they are saying can they? I don't know.

And, the bigger point for me is... what sort of God creates the one and only truth so complicated, convoluted, and messy that it could only make sense to someone who has twenty-seven PhDs who can twist and contort it all to appear true? Or maybe some apologists think they they are here to help the less educated?

I just really do not know.

What do you think?

~dancer~

[_guy sajer]

Apparently Daniel Peterson is to give a talk on April 10 on Book of Mormon evidences somewhere. Those who wonder what it might be like will of course have a look at his essay on this topic;

http://farms.BYU.edu/display.php?table=transcripts&id=1

One of his killer points is the following, in which he gives us an example of how a sharp scholar like him, trained in semitics, can see evidence that would go right past the noses of us lesser mortals:

I teach Arabic about half-time at Brigham Young University, and one of the linguistic forms in Arabic that's common in other Semitic language as well, is something that's called a "cognate accusative"—where you use a noun that's related to a verb in a sentence. You say, "I hit him a great hitting" or "I have dreamed a dream." And the example that I often use to illustrate this, which is not naturally English, is one right out of 1 Nephi, where Lehi reports to his sons, "Behold I have dreamed a dream, or in other words I have seen a vision." Now this "I have dreamed a dream" is a perfect cognate accusative, and when the students hear about this—the ones who know the Book of Mormon—they say, "Ah, yes. Now we understand," because this is an authentic example of the Arabic or Semitic construction.

Even the second part of the sentence (though we lose something in English) when Lehi says, "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision," (1 Nephi 8:2) demonstrates this. You have to remember that English is based on two different languages. English is a hybrid of a sort of Latin or French with a Germanic language—the Anglo-Saxons and then the Norman Conquest, of course. So you have two different words for many things, a sort of low Germanic word and a high Latin-style word. For example, a handbook: we also have the Latin word manual coming from the word Manis for "hand." They mean the same thing. Likewise, with the words "I have seen a vision,"—what he's really saying is "I have seen a seeing." The Latin word seeing was related to the word for vision, and you have a related German word, sehen, or "I have seen a vision," using the Latin word. But in the original it was probably something like this: "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a seeing." So I use this verse in the Book of Mormon in my Arabic grammar class, just to make a point to the students. Now, I ask you how a nineteenth-century farm boy could have come up with something like that, which is a perfect illustration of an Arabic grammatical point. Probably he did a lot of his work in the graduate school there at Palmyra University—well, of course there wasn't such a place. And there was no such Joseph Smith. This came to him via another route, not through academic study.

Wow! Joseph Smith did a cognate accusative .... the Book of Mormon is TRUE!

But how does John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' (1678) begin?

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. "

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/pilgrim.iv.I.html

Wow! Another cognate accusative! Bunyan was a prophet too!

Or perhaps, like Joseph Smith, he was just another Protestant English-speaker whose speech and writing could sometimes show semitic influences because the most important book in their lives was the King James Bible, much of which is an English translation of semitic texts? In which we find such sentences as:

Genesis 41:15 "And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it."

And this man DCP is a scholar trained in the handling of evidence, whose judgment in such matters is worthy of respect? Derision is really the only appropriate response to such stuff.


Footnote (perhaps not fair to DCP since he never claimed to know Latin, and it could be a typo ... we have all done them.)

"we also have the Latin word manual coming from the word Manis for "hand."

Declension of Latin manus 'hand'

singular/plural
nominative manus/manus
genitive manus/manuum
dative manui/manibus
accusative manum/manus
ablative manu/manibus

The form 'manis" does not appear.

[edited to add emphasis in quote and to remove duplicate verse number]

Dan compounds his idiotic argument with silly sarcastic reference to Palmyra University as if to say, "why this is so obvious, how could anyone fail to see it?"

On the one hand, here's a guy who wants so desperately to be taken seriously as a scholar, but who on the other hand makes such stupid, silly arguments for which his "peers" would laugh him off the stage.

I suspect that among the BYU sheep, there are a number of real critical thinkers who will hear this tripe and recognize it for the silly, unsound argument it is.

[_harmony]

Hi Chap,

This is a great example of the kind of thing that I find so disheartening when it comes to apologetics.

Certainly DCP knows that anyone immersed in a particular language would use similar phrases and words as those to which he/she is accustomed. And, anyone immersed in the Bible since childhood would use similar phrases as those with which he was familiar if he were trying to write scripture. One doesn't need a PhDs to understand this.

Yet, this silliness of trying to pretend that the only way Joseph Smith could have used such a common, familiar term is because he, with the help of a stone in a hat, could correctly translate an ancient (completely unknown) lost language rooted in Hebrew supposedly in Mesoamerica, goes on. I don't get it.

I don't want to assume they are being deliberately dishonest, or playing with their audience, or knowingly tricking vulnerable fans. Are they laughing at how others will take their information and run with it? Do they think it is OK to be dishonest because it is strengthening testimonies? Do they think they are actually making a good case for the Book of Mormon?

They can't really believe what they are saying can they? I don't know.

And, the bigger point for me is... what sort of God creates the one and only truth so complicated, convoluted, and messy that it could only make sense to someone who has twenty-seven PhDs who can twist and contort it all to appear true? Or maybe some apologists think they they are here to help the less educated?

I just really do not know.

What do you think?

~dancer~

I think Daniel is doing what he's paid to do. And I wonder sometimes if we give him too much credit. Maybe, just maybe, he's not as smart as we think he is.

[_guy sajer]

Hi Chap,

This is a great example of the kind of thing that I find so disheartening when it comes to apologetics.

Certainly DCP knows that anyone immersed in a particular language would use similar phrases and words as those to which he/she is accustomed. And, anyone immersed in the Bible since childhood would use similar phrases as those with which he was familiar if he were trying to write scripture. One doesn't need a PhDs to understand this.

Yet, this silliness of trying to pretend that the only way Joseph Smith could have used such a common, familiar term is because he, with the help of a stone in a hat, could correctly translate an ancient (completely unknown) lost language rooted in Hebrew supposedly in Mesoamerica, goes on. I don't get it.

I don't want to assume they are being deliberately dishonest, or playing with their audience, or knowingly tricking vulnerable fans. Are they laughing at how others will take their information and run with it? Do they think it is OK to be dishonest because it is strengthening testimonies? Do they think they are actually making a good case for the Book of Mormon?

They can't really believe what they are saying can they? I don't know.

And, the bigger point for me is... what sort of God creates the one and only truth so complicated, convoluted, and messy that it could only make sense to someone who has twenty-seven PhDs who can twist and contort it all to appear true? Or maybe some apologists think they they are here to help the less educated?

I just really do not know.

What do you think?

~dancer~

I think Daniel is doing what he's paid to do. And I wonder sometimes if we give him too much credit. Maybe, just maybe, he's not as smart as we think he is.

No, Dan is extremely smart, probably smarter than we give him credit for. He is just a textbook example of how smart people can believe really dumb things.

[_harmony]

I think Daniel is doing what he's paid to do. And I wonder sometimes if we give him too much credit. Maybe, just maybe, he's not as smart as we think he is.

No, Dan is extremely smart, probably smarter than we give him credit for. He is just a textbook example of how smart people can believe really dumb things.

I don't think so. I'm not particularly smart, but I can see the holes in his argument. If he was as smart as we think he is, he'd see those holes and close them. He either doesn't see them or doesn't know how to close them. Or else he thinks we're all so stupid, we won't see them. Probably the latter. In which case, he really is not smart. It's not smart to underestimate the opposition. That's how wars are lost.

[_Infymus]

I think Daniel is doing what he's paid to do. And I wonder sometimes if we give him too much credit. Maybe, just maybe, he's not as smart as we think he is.

No, Dan is extremely smart, probably smarter than we give him credit for. He is just a textbook example of how smart people can believe really dumb things.

I don't think so. I'm not particularly smart, but I can see the holes in his argument. If he was as smart as we think he is, he'd see those holes and close them. He either doesn't see them or doesn't know how to close them. Or else he thinks we're all so stupid, we won't see them. Probably the latter. In which case, he really is not smart. It's not smart to underestimate the opposition. That's how wars are lost.

True, but DCP has something else that motivates him. Cash. After cash comes his "followers" who hang by every word that falls out of his mouth. DCP has a lot to loose if he doesn't tow the party line. Because he is so entrenched in the Cult, a wrong move would mean the loss of everything.

[_Tal Bachman]

It is hard to believe that these guys are still using arguments like that. It's actually horrifyingly embarrasing. Oh well.