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Tobin wrote:Now cries the critic, there were no Gold Plates!?! Well, that is the assumption they are operating under and it may not be true. If there are Gold Plates, all of these other notions are superfluous because of that.

The reality of Jo's having gold plates is the least likely scenario in all of this. Why? Because they were never produced for independent examination and were supposedly shown only to a group of men who were in toto superstitious, easily duped, later lied about almost every circumstance surrounding the supposed showing of the plates, and they were shown to them by a known con man.

Chris, Craig (Criddle) is offering to send you the texts for the Spalding attributed chapters of the Book of Mormon. You could then compare those chapters alone against the texts you believed influenced Mosiah and Alma. You really need to chat with Craig on this. He is contactable on Facebook.

Here is a great example of one of the so called "witnesses" lying:

David Whitmer told this story that he told to Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith in 1878:

Joseph sent for me to come to Harmony to get him and Oliver and bring them to my father's house. I did not know what to do, I was pressed with my work. I had some 20 acres to plow, so I concluded I would finish plowing and then go. I got up one morning to go to work as usual and, on going to the field, found between five and seven acres of my ground had been plowed during the night. I don't know who did it; but it was done just as I would have done it myself, and the plow was left standing in the furrow.

Yet, Lucy Smith remembered the incident a little differently and wrote,

In the mean time Joseph was 150 miles distant and knew naught of the matter [A complaint by Lucy Harris against Joseph Smith to a Magistrate in Lyons, New York] e[x]cept an intimation that was given through the urim and thumim for as he one morning applied the<m> to his eyes to look upon the record instead of the words of the book being given him he was commanded to write a letter to one David Whitmore this man Joseph had never seen but he was instructed to say him that he must come with his team immediately in order to convey Joseph and his <Oliver > back to his house which was 135 miles that they might remain with him there untill the trans lation should be completed for that an evil designing people were seeking to take away Joseph’s life in order to prevent the work of God from going forth among the world This was accordingly done and the letter received and Mr Whitmore showed it to his Father mother sisters and brothers and asked their advice as to what it would be best for him to do his Father said why David know you have sow ed as much wheat as you can harrow in tomorrow and next day and then you have a quantity of plaster to spread that is much needed on your land and you cannot go unless you get an evidence from God that it is very necessary. This suggestion pleased David and he asked the Lord for a testimony of the fact if it was his will that he should go he was told by the voice of the spirit to (sow) <(har) inn his wheat> his wheat and then go straightway to Penn In the morning he went to the field and found that he had 2 heavy days work before him He then asked the lord to enable him to do this work sooner than the same work had ever been done on the farm before and he would receive it as an evidence that it was the will of God for him to engage in forwarding the work which was begun by Joseph Smith. he then fastened his horses to the harrow and drove round the whole field he continued on till noon driving all the way round at every circuit but when it came to be time to eat dinner he discov ered to his surprize that he had harrowed in full half the wheat. after dinner he again went on as before and by evening he finnished the whole 2 days work http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSumma ... 1845?p=100

I have many more such examples. It gives me no confidence that these men knew what the truth was, or saw what they said they did.

Mary... I love your avatar.

Mary wrote:Chris, Craig (Criddle) is offering to send you the texts for the Spalding attributed chapters of the Book of Mormon. You could then compare those chapters alone against the texts you believed influenced Mosiah and Alma. You really need to chat with Craig on this. He is contactable on Facebook.

Thanks, Mary. I've let Chris know about this and he will get in touch with Craig.

I've been watching these threads, biding my time. It has come, now that Wade has served up perhaps the most ridiculous turd of all:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/620 ... 1209311392

Any bets on whether he'll dare come over here and defend this? Jesus, what a damned idiot.

canadaduane wrote:

Mary wrote:Chris, Craig (Criddle) is offering to send you the texts for the Spalding attributed chapters of the Book of Mormon. You could then compare those chapters alone against the texts you believed influenced Mosiah and Alma. You really need to chat with Craig on this. He is contactable on Facebook.

Thanks, Mary. I've let Chris know about this and he will get in touch with Craig.

This is so cool!

I can't imagine apologist defenders of the LGT collaborating with defenders of the Heartland model to put data to the test which potentially could damage a model they have been working on for years.

one thing that needs to happen is outlining the hypotheses before testing - specifying in advance what different results will mean and detailing what results might falsify the Gold Bible Company model.

For example, under the Gold Bible Company model, Rigdon and Pratt were working at a separate location to Smith and Cowdery - if it is assumed that one pair or one author were influenced by LW, then we should see less similarity with work from the other location.

Wow.

Just wow.

Wade is a genius of literary criticism. All similarities have been thoroughly trounced as there is not a 1:1 alignment of verses.

Bob Loblaw wrote:I've been watching these threads, biding my time. It has come, now that Wade has served up perhaps the most ridiculous turd of all:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/620 ... 1209311392

Any bets on whether he'll dare come over here and defend this? Jesus, what a f*****g idiot.

Bob,

I think you were being overly generous when you described Wade's post as a "turd".

Does Wade realize how ridiculous his post is? How does his post help address the issues? It's beyond stupid. It worries me if this is the kind of dookey we can expect as a response.

Tobin wrote:

cognitiveharmony wrote:
Oops..I forgot, the Book of Mormon shoudn't be analyzed in any way unless the result is faith promoting...

In other words, I shouldn't expect the dates in a historical book to be random as they are in LW....Oh I get it, so maybe this analysis is actually suggesting that the LW is fictional and the Book of Mormon is actually historical...thanks for pointing that out.

Condescension isn't going to address the problems I noticed. If that is the best response you can muster, it is no wonder you championed such shoddy work in this thread.

They use many examples of events that can be expected to be random such as birthdays, deaths, historical events etc. They then proceed to analyze the Book of Mormon with the same expectation of randomness. This is a reasonable and rational expectation. There is no demonstrable reason for us not to expect the dates in the Book of Mormon to be random if it is in fact a historical text. The analysis simply proves that the chance of the dates in the Book of Mormon being actually random rather than made up is 1 in 2000. I would now ask you to either acknowledge this fact or present an argument that at least challenges the actual premise of the analysis.

Just a hint for you. What makes a birthday and a historical event in this context both apples, is the expectation of randomness. That's why it was such a good example in the analysis.