Harmony writes:
The point, dear Glenn, is that if God didn't write the Book of Mormon, a man did. And if a man wrote it, it doesn't really matter who that was.
So what else that God supposedly wrote does Bruce compare the Book of Mormon with?
I think this is a rather facile, and not very useful point. Speech act theory (which includes written works) can divide the act of production of a speech act into several parts. Goffman, in his book
Forms of Talk broke it into three useful roles - 1) the animator - the person who is actually speaking, or writing, 2) the author - the person who is composing what is said or written, and 3) the principal - the person whose ideas and beliefs are being expressed and who is ostensibly the authority behind the text.
Usually, all of these roles are played by the same person. But this isn't always the case. A classic example of this might occur if the President of the U.S. had to deliver a speech. The President is the principal, while his speechwriter is the author, and supposing he had a scheduling conflict and arranged for the Vice President to deliver it on his behalf, the Vice President would then become the animator. Three separate roles played by three individuals. I suspect that were we to start considering the many different (and probably obscure) circumstances in which speech acts are made, we could further expand these three roles into as many as we want to create. And if we look at the Book of Mormon - depending on your view (as a believer of course) - we could be quite narrow and specific as to the role that God filled in the creation of the text of the English Book of Mormon. It doesn't hurt for us to be specific here.
You suggest that God "wrote" the Book of Mormon - but clearly, God didn't "write it". We might say that Joseph's scribes did all the writing (and be accurate in saying that). We might say that Nephi, Jacob, et al., "wrote" the Book of Mormon (and we might be reflecting a believer's point of view quite accurately in saying that - without also contradicting the fact that Joseph's scribes also wrote it). At most, the only role God plays in the process is in the so-called translation. Believers see God interacting only in a very limited way in the production of the Book of Mormon (and of course, for those that have even considered it, there is this difference between those who favor a loose translation and those who favor a tight translation). So even in this limited role, God's impact falls into a spectrum of opinions.
So, even if we decide that a man wrote the Book of Mormon in some sense (or even in multiple senses), I think it doesn't change the discussion much at all from the perspective of a believer - partly because we believe from the outset that men are largely responsible for the book, for the original gold plates, for nearly ever part of the process (historical and modern) which was required to provide us with this book.
On the other hand, the question is a much larger issue for the book's critics in many ways. They already know God wasn't involved at all. But, until recently really, they refused to interact with each other. In many ways, they took a position much like yours. The question of how the Book of Mormon was produced wasn't really an issue, it was always about challenging the faith. But the various critical camps cannot all be right. And most of the holders of these views - when it comes right down to it - were more interested in dealing only with the believers as opposed to critics with exclusive points of view. In other words, it didn't really matter as long it was agreed that a man (and not God) wrote the book. And often this set such a low evidentiary bar that bad arguments had become quite commonplace. That is, if all you have to do is to compete with the angel, than almost anything you provide will be better than that. But, as I noted, this has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years.
Whether we go with MCB and figure that we merely need to finesse the data and manipulate it until we get the 'right' result, or we side with the other group in the notion that clearly these stylometric approaches fail because of the nature of the text for one or more reasons, I think we will continue to see discussion on this topic for quite some time. I think that there has always been some hope by many believers that it would reveal something interesting that could be used as some kind of proof, but I am fairly confident that stylometric analysis will not provide us with something of that nature.
Ben McGuire