The Noose again begins to tighten on the critics...

[_Bond...James Bond]

I would very much like to know what evidence you are relying upon when you speak of a Celtic visit to the New World.

You remember, William Wallace was that tomahawk owning dude in The Patriot. Oh nevermind.....

(Welcome to the board LL ;)

[_beastie]

Keep up the smug pretense of possessing greater intelligence or educational background than me Beastie, it only further exposes you for what you are: a patronizing intellectual snob on a fishing expedition to destroy the Church grasping at whatever thread you can in the attempt.

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/AmerAntiq.pdf

What Beastie leaves out here is that there isn't any empirical evidene that the inscriptions are not authentic. The augument of his authors are completely circumstantial. The

The authors don't prove the stone a fake, only that it could be. Carbon 14 seems to be against them, as all the organic materials are of ancient date. What we have here of course, is to staunch establishment scholars totally committed to a strict fundamentalist Darwinian view of the origin of human culture using a credentialist argument against evidence they cannot conclusively refute empirically. They could be right, but they may well be dead wrong. Pitting Gorden against Cross? What good does that do? Both were equally qualified to translate the inscriptions.

Cogs,

This has nothing to do with snobbery or education. It has to do with the fact that your eagerness to find scientific or logical validation of your beliefs, that you developed in a way that has nothing to do with science or logic, has left you susceptible to bad science.

"The authors don't prove the stone a fake, only that it could be." What a resounding vote of confidence!

Just imagine saying the same sentence about the Book of Mormon: "The authors don't prove the book a fake, only that it could be."

But at any rate, do you care to explain the discrepancy between your two statements about the Bat creek stone?

First statement:

The authenticity of the Bat Creek inscription was confirmed long ago.

Second statement:

The authors don't prove the stone a fake, only that it could be.

[_harmony]

You have Celts, Vikings, Africans, Chinese, other Caucasians of various types, Jews (we know they were here, as they left a stone carving mentioning the fact) and any other number of possible groups.

I would very much like to know what evidence you are relying upon when you speak of a Celtic visit to the New World.

Hi Loqu. Love the avatar. My kinda kitty!

[_The Dude]

This was the position I remember Dr. Whiting giving when I was at BYU pursuing my master's degree. I wondered why an adherent of parsimony would offer up an ad hoc hypothesis such as this. I guess if you're of the mind that the Book of Mormon is a literal history no matter what, you have to come up with ways to protect that claim, even if they go against traditional Mormon thought.

I don't think it's quite that. These modern LDS scientists seem to view the Book of Mormon as a very fuzzy hypothesis, not something that can be definitively tested; and they also have a strong alternative based on archaeology, blood group studies, linguistics, and now DNA, which all support something like a prehistoric Bering Strait crossing -- this is in contrast to Joseph Smith, who had no other hypothesis except the Book of Mormon. When he saw the bones of "Zelph" he proclaimed "Lamanite!" When he heard about the ruins in Central America, he declared them "Book of Mormon civilizations!" He was ready to incorporate every artifact in America as part of his supertheory.

So, in addition to (1) seeing the Book of Mormon as open to new interpretations, and (2) accepting alternative origins delivered by secular sources, these modern LDS scientists must also accept the fact that (3) Joseph Smith had a tendency to speak out of his ass on Book of Mormon topics (at least!). Given those three things, I can understand how LDS scientists do not see their shifting stance as an ad hoc hypothesis. If neither Joseph Smith nor the Book of Mormon ever had the full story, then it is perfectly alright for them to update their beliefs as new information comes to light. That's how science should work.

(You might say all three of those points go against "traditional Mormon thought" ... the difference is whether they start out with 1, 2, 3 because they are intellectuals, or if they retreat to those three things as a true ad hoc rationalizations. Who knows?)

My issue, now, is that I don't think they are using a fair reading of the text. A fair reading of the text is closer to the defunct traditional view, in my opinion, and not very close to "30 or so colonists merging with a vast indigenous civilization". Beastie seems to have the same opinion in regards a fair reading of Book of Mormon politics. Anyway, this all returns to my point that the real debate is textual -- and Coggins, with his flurry of DNA articles, doesn't seem to understand that.

[_KimberlyAnn]

Jews (we know they were here, as they left a stone carving mentioning the fact)

In Search Of? I hope this isn't Bat Creek, again...

The authenticity of the Bat Creek inscription was confirmed long ago.

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/batcrk.html

Oh, good grief. The Bat Creek stone is a fraud.

http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat2.html

KA

PS - A note from the above article regarding the carbon dating of the Bat Creek stone:

"The Radiocarbon Determination

The inscription is a fraud, so the radiocarbon date is immaterial. McCarter (1993: 55) rather neatly summarizes the issue:
"But even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that the wooden fragments are as old as the carbon-14 test indicates, the relevance of their date to that of the stone depends entirely on the integrity of their association with it. And if, as I've already suggested, this is a case of fraud, that integrity can hardly be assumed."

The association of the brass bracelets with the burial and the wood fragments is also extremely dubious. The bracelets represent relatively modern European trade items, and simply represent another element in this hoax.

It should go without saying that no professional archaeologist would (or at least, should) use a single radiocarbon determination as the basis for a revolutionary claim. Regarding the association of the wooden disk with the stone, we stand by our previous statements thai [sic] considering the primitive excavation techniques of the day and the unreliability of John Emmert, the degree of association between the dated material and the stone is, at best, very tenuous."

[_Dr. Shades]

...there significant evidence that a rather large number of peoples to various degrees have inhabited the Americas alongside the Amerindians since very ancient times...

Garbage. What is an ancient person in America who lives alongside Amerindians but is not himself an Amerindian? There isn't even a name for this critter (besides in BoM-land), let alone evidence for them.

The Dude:

Forgive the digression, but aren't there rumblings within modern anthropological studies that the original inhabitants of the Americas were coast-hugging negroid peoples, whose only modern remnants are the Ainu of northern Japan, who were wiped out by the invading Asiatics, and of whom Kennewick Man is a sample?

Seems to me that that may account, in part, for the morphology of the Olmec stone heads.

[_The Dude]

Seems to me that that may account, in part, for the morphology of the Olmec stone heads.

Well, I just don't know. I've heard the Ainu-Kennewick connection (speculative) before, but not as an explanation for the negroid morphology of Olmec heads. <shrug>

I wonder if the Olmec heads could be a style of art, not necessarily faithful representations of what the people looked like. Kind of like the Picasso-esque style of ancient egypt, where human figures stand at right angles and have eyes on the sides of their heads.

[_Mister Scratch]

The point of all this is not that it proves the Book of Mormon true. It does do two things, however. It shows that the Book of Mormon's claims are perfectly plausible, and that mtDNA studies are in their infancy regarding the full story of Amerindian origins. Dude, Seth, Tom Murphy, or anyone else are way over their heads claiming the demise of the Book of Mormon based upon this kind of evidence.

mtDNA studies and Y-chromosome studies most certainly confirm what many people, even LDS scientists, already knew -- that the Book of Mormon is not a true story about Native American origins as Joseph Smith and his contemporaries once believed.

Now you say the Book of Mormon's claims are perfectly plausible? What are those claims? That's the only thing to debate -- not DNA. All of your articles and links are beside the point, including the first one in your OP. If Book of Mormon claims are limited genetic claims, where a small group of Lehite colonists came to the Americas and literally disappeared then of course DNA can't disprove it. It could have happened, just like the Vikings built a colony on Vinland (except, of course, we have evidence for that one). However, if they are claims that predict a measurable impact, well... here's my signature line from over at MAD:

""There's no way that negative evidence on [DNA] hurts the Book of Mormon whatsoever once you believe in a limited geography. If you believe in a global geography, you're basically done, toasted, game over." --BYU archaeologist John Clark"

I've never claimed the demise of the Book of Mormon based on DNA evidence. Only traditional views are dead. This is where critics (like Murphy) often overstate the DNA case. If you don't believe the traditional view anyway, then all of your agitating is for nothing but a demonstration that you misunderstand your own position. Which is kinda' funny.

Dude---

Am I mistaken, or do you not find it extraordinarily strange the good ol' Coggins7 seems blissfully unaware of the rather lengthy debate you undertook with David Stewart? I mean, *surely* someone with Loran Blood's massive expertise--culled entirely from The Internet---would know about that! Right? I mean, he *is* a Warrior for The Lord's One True Church, isn't he? Or is he merely self-anointed?

[_DonBradley]

So, let me get this straight, the fact that some other Asian lineage was introduced into the Americas well before the time Adam was still the gardener at Jackson County constitutes the death knell for critics of the Book of Mormon? Even if this fact in way helped defend the Book of Mormon from DNA criticisms, which it doesn't, it would hardly constitute evidence in favor of the book, and so doesn't seem to do critics any harm at all.

In fact, if a noose could be said to be tightening on anyone, I think it would be the American Adam taught by Joseph Smith. He either didn't exist or wasn't the progenitor of all mankind.

Don

[_Loquacious Lurker]

Thanks, Harmony and Bond. (blush)

Sorry for the derailment. Carry on.