Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[Bedlamite]

...
Any application of Occam's Razor must be simple.
...

Which reminds me of my past conversations with RLDS
defenders of Joe Smith's purported monogamy.

As they used to say:

The more parties that are theorized being involved in a
conspiracy, the less likely that conspiracy becomes.

Thus, it is less likely that Joe Smith had five secret wives
than that he had one true wife (Emma). And it is less
likely that there was secret polygamy in Nauvoo than
that there was no such spiritual wifery conspiracy.

The testimony from Smith himself, and from the Mormon
newspapers in Nauvoo announced there was no polygamy.
Surely we should believe that testimony. No reason for doubt.

This is the simplest explanation, and thus supported by
Occam's Razor. The charges in the Nauvoo Expositor
make for a more complex, less likely scenario.

Ergo -- Smith was a monogamist and Mormon secret
polygamy was invented by Brigham Young out in Utah.

To the traditionalist RLDS mind, this makes perfect sense,
The witness testimony in the Nauvoo Wasp and the
other Mormon newspapers of the 1840s all agrees that
the only sexual misconduct there was by John C. Bennett.

Early LDS witness testimony + Occam's Razor = TRUTH.

UD

[_MCB]

Occam's Razor, misapplied, can become an excuse for intellectual laziness.

[_GlennThigpen]

Response: Glenn...how does that study or portion you quoted support your comment " Long term memory can be modified by leading or suggestive questions." ? As far as I can see it says nothing about long term memory.

marg, It has been demonstrated repeatedly in multiple studies that memory can be altered by suggestive or leading questions. You can find many references to that. Since any memory which is more than a few seconds old is retrieved from long term memory, then long term memory is that which is being modified. Simple logic.

Glenn

[_Roger]

Early LDS witness testimony + Occam's Razor = TRUTH.

That explains a lot.

[_GlennThigpen]

You do not think that there is a possibility that confirmation bias could have a play in this?

ONLY if they were ONLY exposed to the Roman story. But that's what you're trying to prove. You can't argue that confirmation bias took place because they looked at the Book of Mormon. Because then you are building your case on what you're trying to prove: that there was never any other manuscript besides the Roman story.

But that is the rub. You have not proven or even provided plausible evidence that there was a second manuscript. There are no statements from primary documents that hint at a second manuscript. All you have is anecdotal hearsay.

How would you expect them to make a statement like: "I find a lot of similarities between Spalding's manuscript and the Book of Mormon" if they had never read the Book of Mormon to see whether there actually were similarities?

And if you had determined beforehand that was what you were going to find, and not having heard or read Spalding's manuscript for over twenty years, they saw just what they wanted to see.

The fact is, IF there was a manuscript other than the Roman story that more closely resembles the Book of Mormon, then their statements are pretty much what we would expect them to be.

Hardly. You would not expect to see a reference to the straits of Darien. You would not have expected to see the lost tribes as the main theme of the Spalding story.

marge, that is exactly right. Josiah was never contacted by Hurlbut. Redick McKee and Joseph Miller was never contacted by Hurlbut. And they did not remember the names and events the way that Hurlbuts witnesses did. Why would Josiah have been exposed to the supposedly earlier manuscript when Oliver Smith said that Solomon was working on it in early 1810? There are contradictions every which way you look.

Who says either one was earlier? Who is saying that? Like Dale mentioned, there is every reason to believe Spalding was working on the Roman story in 1813, and what remains after a letter with that date appears in the ms, would seemingly have to have been penned after that date. He could have been working on both. Or he could have started the Roman story after having given MF to Patterson/Engles to review. Aron Wright tells us that Spalding had many manuscripts. There is no reason to conclude the Roman story was a preliminary version of MF and in fact the evidence seems to indicate otherwise.

I agree that the Roman story is not a preliminary manuscript to any supposed second manuscript. Solomon's widow said that she put the manuscript in the trunk along with his sermons and some other papers. His daughter, Matilda said that Solomon had written many short stories for her, one of them being "The Frogs of Wyndham". Josiah Spalding describes the Roman story in his statement. He went to see Solomon after the war of 1812 broke out. He said that Solomon started his novel then. Aron Wright said in his "draft letter" when shown the Roman manuscript, that "in the first place he wrote for his own amusement and then altered his plan and commenced writing a history of the first Settlement of America". Any "second" manuscript would seem to come after the Roman manuscript. He could not have started the Roman story after he gave the "MF" to Engles for review because of Josiah's statement, which places it in 1812.
Josiah, John, Martha, nor Matilda Spalding do not intimate anywhere that he was working on two
manuscripts. You can only conclusively come up with one manuscript.

Let's see what Miller actually says:

When Mr. Spalding lived in Amity, Pennsylvania, I was well acquainted with him. I was frequently at his house. He kept what was called a tavern. It was understood that he had been a preacher; but his health failed him and he ceased to preach. I never knew him to preach after he came to Amity.

He had in his possession some papers which he said he had written. He used to read select portions of these papers to amuse us of evenings.

These papers were detached sheets of foolscap. He said he wrote the papers as a novel. He called it The Manuscript Found, or The Lost Manuscript Found. He said he wrote it to pass away the time when he was unwell; and, after it was written, he thought he would publish it as a novel, as a means to support his family.

Some time since, a copy of The Book of Mormon came into my hands. My son read it for me, as I have a nervous shaking of the head that prevents me from reading. I noticed several passages which I recollect having heard Mr. Spalding read from his Manuscript. One passage, on page 148 (the copy I have is published by J. O. Wright & Co., New York) I remember distinctly. He speaks of a Battle; and says the Amalekites had marked themselves with red on their foreheads to distinguish them from the Nephites. The thought of being marked on the forehead, was so strange, it fixed itself in my memory. This, together with other passages, I remember to have heard Mr. Spalding read from his Manuscript.

Those who knew Mr. Spalding will soon all be gone and I among the rest. I write, that what I know may become a matter of history; and that it may prevent people from being led into Mormonism, that most seductive delusion of the devil.

From what I know of Mr. Spalding's Manuscript and The Book of Mormon, I firmly believe that Joseph Smith, by some means, got possession of Mr. Spalding's Manuscript, and possibly made some changes in it and called it The Book of Mormon.
March 26, 1869

So Miller mentions Nephites. When you say

Redick McKee and Joseph Miller was never contaqcted by Hurlbut. And they did not remember the names and events the way that Hurlbuts witnesses did.

...you give the impression that McKee and Miller's statements contradict the Conneaut statements. But they don't.

Please read my words carefully again, I said that McKee and Miller "did not remember the names and events the way that Hurlbut's witnesses did." I did not say that they they contradicted the Conneaut statements. Millers statement did not support the Conneaut witnesses statement. He remembered the event where the Amalekites marked their foreheads with red paint in order that their allies, the Lamanites could distinguish them from Nephites. This has a very close correlation with a scene from the Roman story.

Now, let's look at McKee's story:

I recollect, quite well, Mr. Spalding spending much time in writing on sheets of paper (torn out of an old book), what purported to be a veritable history of the nations or tribes who inhabited Canaan when, or before, that country was invaded by the Israelites, under Joshua. He described, with great particularity, their numbers, customs, modes of life; their wars, stratagems, victories, and defeats &c. His style was flowing and grammatical, though gaunt and abrupt -- very like the stories of the "Maccabees" and other apocryphal books, in the old bibles. He called it Lost History Found, Lost Manuscript, or some such name: not disguising that it was wholly a work of the imagination, written to amuse himself, and without any immediate view to publication.

That is a contradiction. McKee doesn't even have the story in America, but in Canaan. Oh, well.

They can't win either way. If Miller would have mentioned Lehi or Nephi specifically you would have said he got it from either the Book of Mormon or by reading Hurlbut's witnesses. As it is, you say because he doesn't specifically mention them that means they were a creation of Hurlbut. But it doesn't. He mentions "Nephites." But of course, you will say he got that from the Book of Mormon and not from MF.

It's an endless battle. The fact is you don't want to believe them, so you have to come up with some reason to justify not believing them. But Miller's statement does not contradict the earlier witnesses.

Glenn, I have a question for you.... let's say you (and Matt Roper, which is obviously where you're getting all this) are right and the Roman story is all Spalding ever wrote on any topic even remotely resembling the Book of Mormon. How do you explain these parallels:

http://solomonspalding.com/SRP/SRPpap04.htm

All the best.

Roger, Ben has already gone over your parallelomania in other threads. You have to show that there is some scientific, historical, or literary reason for those parallels to be significant. The only reason you have been able to produce is that you think they should mean something, but you have not been able to support that feeling from any of those sources or methods.

Glenn

[_Roger]

Glenn wrote:

Roger, Ben has already gone over your parallelomania in other threads. You have to show that there is some scientific, historical, or literary reason for those parallels to be significant. The only reason you have been able to produce is that you think they should mean something, but you have not been able to support that feeling from any of those sources or methods.

In other words, you can't explain them.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
In other words, you can't explain them.

I notice a couple of white blotches off in the distance, from the
bow of HMS Titanic, and conclude they are important icebergs.
Another observer, with different interests and different priorities,
remarks that it is probably just patches of fog -- and that we
can steam full speed ahead without any worries.

Think what would happen to the Mormon observer, constrained
by his testimony, professions, interests and priorities, were he
to agree that Dencey Thompson, or Rebecca Eichbaum, or
George Wilbur, or Robert Harper had any solid information to
convey --- or that patterns of distribution in shared language
and shared themes in any way linked the Book of Mormon to
some other, pre-1830 text.

Mormons no doubt feel that they have made great enough
polemical sacrifice, just in their reluctant admission that long
blocks of Book of Mormon text reproduce biblical chapters.

That's as far as they can go, Roger -- to admit anything more
puts them on a slippery slope to apostasy, excommunication,
and the breaking up of "eternal families."

There is always an explanation -- for the most disturbing
historical or literary fact. And that is: "Satan goes to great
lengths to try and destroy the Restored Gospel of Christ."

You can't fight that sort of profession, Roger. No matter how
objective and logical you may attempt to make your position,
underneath any discussion with a Mormon lies the basic fact
of his unbreakable testimony.

You may have a bit better luck in selling literary parallels to
the non-LDS --- if you can get anybody to stop and listen,
with their wavering, three-minute modern attention span.

UD

[_GlennThigpen]

Glenn wrote:

Roger, Ben has already gone over your parallelomania in other threads. You have to show that there is some scientific, historical, or literary reason for those parallels to be significant. The only reason you have been able to produce is that you think they should mean something, but you have not been able to support that feeling from any of those sources or methods.

In other words, you can't explain them.

Don't have to. Don't need to. No one has explained how they are significant using any commonly used tools for textual criticism and comparison. You have to show some scientific significance before anyone even needs to respond.

Glenn

[_GlennThigpen]

You may have a bit better luck in selling literary parallels to
the non-LDS --- if you can get anybody to stop and listen,
with their wavering, three-minute modern attention span.

UD

Dale, have you been able to convince any non LDS historian or literature specialist that your parallels have any significance?

Glenn

[_Dan Vogel]

Marg,

I have a few comments about your post to Mikwut. I hope Mikwut doesn’t mind.

I’ll quote him making a comment to Loftus after her talk. " Like you study memory, I study perception and vision. What strikes me about human memory in addition to what you said about the fallibility is how extraordinarily reliable it is. It’s astonishing how good our memory is. I can say the same thing about perception. I can produce illusions which violate common sense. And then you find out what causes the illusion. But this doesn’t prove that vision is highly fallible. It proves under ordinary circumstances it’s extremely good. But using contrived stimulus I can produce an illusion which illuminates the mechanisms of perception. "

I couldn’t believe this questioner from the audience got away with the logical fallacy of proof from analogy. The analogy has problems since magicians (or more properly illusionists) don’t fool the eyes—the eyes are working properly the whole time. A more meaningful analogy would be for your eyes to be permanently fooled, which Loftus’s questioner brought up himself. However, he brought it up as if it were a problem for Loftus, implying that memory works the same way as eyes—it doesn’t. Memory can, unlike seeing magic tricks, can be fooled permanently. Memory, as the research shows, is far more fragile than sight.

The same “contrived situations” are used to find cures to diseases, etc. That’s how it works.

That particular Loftus study of subjects being shown a scene and memory tested afterwards does not prove that memory is fallible generally …”

But how good is it after 20 years on particulars like fictional names? Do you have any tests that memory is generally good under those circumstances? Do you have any proof (Rogers anecdotal evidence doesn’t count) for your assumption. You’ve seen some of our evidence, where’s yours?

“… it only proves under those circumstance of that test that memory on details are easily confusable through leading questions witnesses may incorporate recall of false information introduced by questioners. Had the subjects had lots of exposure to the scene, that would be a different particular than what that test employed.”

You don’t know how much exposure the Con. witnesses had. And how much is enough to prevent memory confabulation.

“Or had subjects been questioned about details which were memorable, not easily confusible again..that would be a different particular than employed in that study.”

This is circular. What details are memorable and what are confusable? Easy! The ones correctly remembered are memorable, and the incorrect ones are confusable. After twenty years, any romance about the origin of the Indians using fictional names is confusable.

Or had the subjects been told to recall only that which they are positive about..again a different particular.

This aspect has been repeatedly answer for you, Marg. Why don’t you accept it? Those with false memories ARE positive. The video mentioned that there was no correlation between certainty of witness and actual facts.

That study closely aligns with the experience by a witness of a crime scene, exposed briefly to a scene who are later questioned by law authorities, there often is pressure to provide any detail even if not absolutely certain. What that study proved was that witnesses of crime scenes exposed briefly in recall of easily confusable items are susceptible to memory fallibility and incorporating false details introduced to them via questions. This sort of study is extremely important to prevent wrongful convictions. It is not a study meant to prove memory is fallible generally.

If you’re arguing that it doesn’t prove people have amnesia after witnessing a crime, you might have a point. But no one is arguing that. These studies show that witnesses are subject to suggestion, especially about incidental details; but they are also often wrong about major parts of the events like the identity of the perpetrators.

The studies provide objective evidence that witness statements in which their experience correlates highly to the study…are unreliable on confusable details. But it’s very important to keep in mind there must be a high correlation with that study before witness testimonies can be dismissed on the basis of the study…

Only when there is a high correlation can you or anyone…conclude something with regards to the Conneaut witnesses memory. And the burden is up to you, to show the high correlation.

Your assuming everyone who heard Spalding read his MS stepped forward and made statements. You don’t know what the correlation for Spalding is. It seems to me that believing everyone spoke up and everyone remembered accurately stains credulity.

If we are going to be intellectually honest then that’s what is necessary in order to understand when and if memory is likely fallible.

Can you tell us under what circumstances twenty-year-old memories are reliable and when they are not? You quibble about short-term memory not being applicable to the Con. witnesses, but do you have studies showing that memory improves over time?

So that youtube test of memory didn’t correlate at all with the situation with the Conneaut witnesses.

Of course, the test wasn’t scientific but was designed as a fun way to introduce people to the subject. The object evidently was to cause some overly confident people some pause. Did cause you some pause? Did it make you question how good your memory is?

Now, to your post to me:

I did not say memory experiments have to duplicate the situation..

I would count this as progress if you didn’t insist in the above post to Mikwut on just that.

There only has to be a high correlation, not an exact duplicate. In Loftus's study which is meant to simulate the sort of experience and situation a witness has when exposed to a crime scene and later questioned by law authorities..there is no requirement that real crime situations needs to exactly duplicate her study to order to conclude something with regards to reliability of witnesses' memory in similar situations.

How similar does it have to be to the Con. witnesses for you to accept the “correlation” (comparison)? Does memory have to be tested for every imaginable situation, before you are willing to make a generalization about memory? Isn’t it easier to see all this data as converging on a theory of memory that can be generalized?

When a doctor gives a diagnosis and takes into consideration key particular symptoms of the patient ..he tries to match up a diagnosis established through studies and experience nd which correlates well with the patient's symptoms. Likewise you need to take the key particular ingredients involved with the conneaut witnesses and match those up to a study which correlates well. And then maybe after a high correlation has been established one can draw a similar conclusion for the conneaut witnesses as was drawn of the subjects of that particular study.

OK! What is a symptom? Isn’t mention of the ten tribes a symptom of memory confabulation? Isn’t discovery of Spalding’s MS evidence that their memories had failed them? Or is it evidence that there is another MS? In this instance, negative evidence is stronger than possible or missing evidence. At any rate, your analogy is weak since what a doctor does and what we are doing are different things. We are not trying to diagnose the Con. witnesses using their symptoms; we already know they were wrong and can explain how they made their mistake.

To Glenn you said:

Please don't bring up a study unless you are confident you know what you are talking about and how it correlates to the Conneaut witnesses. You Mikwut and Dan are very persistent with the notion that memory studies prove memory fallibility for the conneaut witnesses and therefore warrant justification of dismissing their affidavits. But unless you truly do have a study which can be applied legitimately you are wasting people's time... those reading and participating.

You are begging the question here since we don’t accept your definition of the word “correlates”. We think these studies do “correlate” (compare) to the Con. witnesses. You want a “high degree of correlation”. This is merely a fudge word or term that allows you to quibble with any evidence since you control what is “high degree” and what is not. So if you were to design a test of memory that has a “high degree of correlation” to the Con. witnesses, what would that be like? Define your terms. Let us know what you mean. Hint—this game can be played both ways.