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Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:52 pm
by drumdude
DCP wrote:Thank you for your comment, Carl. I think that people who write and dictate quite a bit understand more than others just how remarkable the dictated Book of Mormon is.
Sometimes, critics will assure me that dictating the Book of Mormon in a little over two months was really no big deal. I always suggest "Then, do it!" Nobody has ever accepted the challenge. But talk is cheap.
This is of course an unattributed plagiarism of Nibbley's challenge:
Hugh Nibbley wrote:Below is the Book of Mormon Challenge, an assignment that Professor Hugh Nibley at BYU sometimes gave to students in a required class on the Book of Mormon. Though it is several decades old, it still offers a challenge worth pondering. (Recently discovered evidences for Book of Mormon authenticity should be consulted for some real excitement.) The following text is taken from the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 8, Ch. 11, pp. 221-2:
"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:17 pm
by Rivendale
drumdude wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:52 pm
DCP wrote:Thank you for your comment, Carl. I think that people who write and dictate quite a bit understand more than others just how remarkable the dictated Book of Mormon is.
Sometimes, critics will assure me that dictating the Book of Mormon in a little over two months was really no big deal. I always suggest "Then, do it!" Nobody has ever accepted the challenge. But talk is cheap.
This is of course an unattributed plagiarism of Nibbley's challenge:
Hugh Nibbley wrote:Below is the Book of Mormon Challenge, an assignment that Professor Hugh Nibley at BYU sometimes gave to students in a required class on the Book of Mormon. Though it is several decades old, it still offers a challenge worth pondering. (Recently discovered evidences for Book of Mormon authenticity should be consulted for some real excitement.) The following text is taken from the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 8, Ch. 11, pp. 221-2:
"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.
"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!
"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."
Brian Hales made the same challenge on the Mormon Historians Facebook page. And someone did a few chapters if I remember correctly . Hales just argued that he was college educated and left it at that. It was actually a pretty good read.
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:38 pm
by Doctor CamNC4Me
Mormons don’t even know how the Book of Mormon was produced. This continuous claim that Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon in x-number of days through this or that miraculous machination is an absurdity.
The fact of the matter is this literary creation was a years-long process, and a collaboration to produce a novel. Whatever carnival barking sideshow Joseph Smith held for credulous dupes is completely irrelevant to the actual start-to-finish process this novel underwent. What’s so subversive and kind of nefarious is these apologists know this, but they keep pushing the lie that the novel was dictated and that iS jUsT sO mIrAcUlOuS!
You assholes! You know this book was a novel where they attempted to sell the copyright. All this miraculous stuff was retconned once they decided to start up a church. Ugh. This 90-day narrative they keep pushing is so tiresome.
- Doc
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:11 pm
by Moksha
DCP wrote:"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history."
Good thing the students realized that Professor Nibley was setting them up for charges of apostasy and burning at the Stake Center, just so he could strut around the classroom. Perhaps a student with a sci-fi appreciation could have crafted such a novel and called it
Bender's Game.
"Ya gotta sleep with me or the angel will run me through"
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:30 pm
by drumdude
DCP wrote:Loafer: "Obviously, many - many Latter Saints (in general) are dear, wonderful, kind, well meaning people. Unfortunately, there are a "nut-jobs" in every religion; and in every culture."
That's rather different from what you seemed to be saying previously. You seemed to imply that we would, as a whole, be a better people if we chucked the Book of Mormon. I was curious to know specifically which parts of the Book of Mormon make us less dear, wonderful, kind, and well-meaning.
I'd start with the command from God to murder a helpless drunk man. A murder that was so vitally important to the entire nation, that the plates obtained from it were quickly and completely forgotten about. This kind of "God makes right" nonsense is what led to the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. And the Lafferty murders.
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 7:53 pm
by drumdude
DCP wrote:Self-Proclaimed Latter-day Saint "Patrick": "The text of the Book of Mormon is so unimpressive, anachronistic and poorly written that the Book of Mormon creation was anything but miraculous."
The text of the Book of Mormon is so impressive, so plausible, and so complex that the origin of the English Book of Mormon was almost certainly miraculous.
QED. I have refuted Self-Proclaimed Latter-day Saint "Patrick."
I'm going to give DCP some free advice: click on the name of the posters in your comment section.
Capture.JPG
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:52 pm
by Dr Moore
Speaking of miracles, zero sugar Mtn Dew Baja Blast.
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 10:54 pm
by tapirrider
Been done already. Abner Cole, born 1783, wrote the Book of Pukei in June and July of 1830 attacking the alleged miraculous creation of the Book of Mormon.
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2022 7:18 am
by IHAQ
One only need examine the Isaiah chapters contained within it with those in a KJV Bible to successfully undermine the claim that it was miraculously created.
Re: Critics should be able to produce their own Book of Mormon to attack its miraculous creation
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:56 am
by Physics Guy
The evidence that the Book of Mormon was really produced in just a few months seems to be nothing but statements from interested parties. If we were simply trying to decide which composition time frame were more likely, out of idle curiosity, then those statements might be sufficient evidence to pick "three months" as the leading candidate. It would still be an academic dispute as to whether the claims of rapid composition were reliable. More cynical scholars would suspect Smith of concealing his much longer preparation time just to burnish his image as a literary prodigy. The short time frame would by no means be an accepted fact.
The evidence for rapid production of the Book of Mormon is at best maybe 60-40 against a much longer composition period with notes from which Smith somehow cribbed. The prior odds of a genuine prophet, even for people who accept that such prophets exist, are very low. A 60-40 piece of evidence doesn't raise them enough to matter for anyone. If they were one in a million before you thought about the composition time frame issue, then they improve to 1.5 in a million.
So harping on about how miraculously rapidly the Book of Mormon was produced is an alarmingly bad argument from Mormon apologists. If an extra 0.5 in a million is a prize worth contesting for them, then they cannot have a real case. And furthermore they must know it, even if they don't recognize that they know it, because wasting time and bandwidth on that 0.5-in-a-million point was their choice. If they thought they had a more powerful argument than that, they would have used it, instead.