Facsimile 3 Assessed and found fraudulent

[_DrW]

Oh, ok. Here we go again. Another person that thinks that only the critics are rational and can't give other rational individuals enough credit that they are serious thinkers like the rest of humanity trying to seriously get down to the bottom of what is going on. You can either get serious about this conversation with someone else that is serious, or you can butt out. The same goes with the rest of you. You can either get serious here, and stop your stupidity, or you can butt out.

Fair enough. Let's see just how rational you really are. Please consider the following.

Fact: Joseph Smith was a self-admitted, and duly convicted, glass looker and treasure hunter.

Fact: Joseph Smith had sex with multiple females to whom he as not married.

Fact: Several of these females were minors, some of them only 14 or 15 years old.

Fact: Extended passages found in the Book of Mormon were copied, word for word, from the King James version of the Bible known to be in the possession of the Smith family.

Fact: The narrative for the "coming forth" of the Book of Mormon is fraught with internally inconsistent and wildly imaginative claims regarding non-existent golden plates, magical rocks, supernatural apparitions and other cult magic nonsense.

Fact: There is not a shred of credible physical evidence in the New World (or the Old) to support the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Fact: There is overwhelming and internally consistent evidence, from multiple scientific disciplines that, time after time, directly contradicts and falsifies affirmative and falsifiable statements made in the Book of Mormon.

Fact: No credible mainstream non-LDS scientist, in any discipline, publicly supports the Book of Mormon narrative.

Fact: Multiple credible mainstream scientists, from any number of disciplines, have considered the Book of Mormon and shown it to be fiction.

Question: Given all the evidence cited above invalidating the claimed provenance and veracity of the Book of Mormon and its purported author, and in the absence of any shred of supporting physical evidence, could any individual who believes that the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith claimed it to be really be considered rational - let alone a "serious thinker"?

[_EdGoble]

I have read some of your blog, but it didn't make sense. You have zero evidence any re-purposing is going on, and will always have zero evidence. Sure someone could have added a dual meaning to each hieroglyph, but why? No one would be able to ever read it, and only God would know your second meaning. The papyri was made for a dead person. It was buried with him, which means no real intent to be read by humans eyes again. Your hypothesis would also have to have another person who created the other papyri for the book of Joseph since they date to different times. Making a dual meaning in your head doesn't really mean much. No one knows but God. It's no different then if I added who paragraph of text to each word of some short story. It makes no sense. I would just write one in the language of the day so that people could read it.

It isn't new dual meanings that somehow take on that meaning generally outside the place where they are used that way. That is the nature of this type of mapping. If you write an acrostic, the only place the mappings take on any meaning to you is in the document where you used them. You didn't just add a new meaning to the letter A generally.

You are once again assuming that the people that originally wrote the Papyri were the ones to use them this way. That is not the case. The Sensen class of papyrus was created long before the people that ended up using it this way. The same is so with the Book of the Dead, which was used the same way, artistically, to decorate the Book of Joseph.

It makes perfect sense, and it is the explanation to fit the evidence.

[_Xenophon]

If you approached Champollion and told him that you would not accept any of his findings unless he could produce another Rosetta stone, that would not be considered rational, as there is no other Rosetta stone to speak of. And so, neither is this rational or called for. And the fact that you couch your badgering in these terms and hide them as if you are an academic asking me for more evidence is not a case for academic dismissal for lack of evidence, but is actually just artful dodging from where the evidence actually lies, and a hidden and artful ad-hominem in one fell swoop. Sorry. This is nothing of the sort of what you claim it to be.

That analogy doesn't quite hold water. What Lemmie is asking you to do would look more like this. Champollion claims he has deciphered Ancient Egyptian using the Rosetta stone. Skeptical, the scientific community asks for proof. He then translates heretofore non-deciphered texts, repeatedly. Also, individuals can take his discovery and replicate the translations for themselves.

[_Lemmie]

What you call badgering is the simple Q & A that would follow any academic or research presentation. Telling a fellow researcher to take your evidence as is does not constitute a valid presentation technique. You leave readers with no option but to disregard your findings if you are so unwilling to support them.

If you approached Champollion and told him that you would not accept any of his findings unless he could produce another Rosetta stone, that would not be considered rational, as there is no other Rosetta stone to speak of. And so, neither is this rational or called for. And the fact that you couch your badgering in these terms and hide them as if you are an academic asking me for more evidence is not a case for academic dismissal for lack of evidence, but is actually just artful dodging from where the evidence actually lies, and a hidden and artful ad-hominem in one fell swoop. Sorry. This is nothing of the sort of what you claim it to be.

Champollion deciphered the Rosetta Stone, and then followed it up by using his technique to successfully read many other hieroglyphic texts. He gave examples.

So I ask again:

...there must be other instances where your technique is used. Can you show examples?

ETA: I see Xenophon already explained this very clearly.

[Guest]

Fact: Joseph Smith was a self-admitted, and duly convicted, glass looker and treasure hunter.

Fact: Joseph Smith had sex with multiple females to whom he as not married.

Fact: Several of these females were minors, some of them only 14 or 15 years old.

Fact: Extended passages found in the Book of Mormon were copied, word for word, from the King James version of the Bible known to be in the possession of the Smith family.

Fact: The narrative for the "coming forth" of the Book of Mormon is fraught with internally inconsistent and wildly imaginative claims regarding non-existent golden plates, magical rocks, supernatural apparitions and other cult magic nonsense.

Fact: There is not a shred of credible physical evidence in the New World (or the Old) to support the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

Fact: There is overwhelming and internally consistent evidence, from multiple scientific disciplines that, time after time, directly contradicts and falsifies affirmative and falsifiable statements made in the Book of Mormon.

Fact: No credible mainstream non-LDS scientist, in any discipline, publicly supports the Book of Mormon narrative.

Fact: Multiple credible mainstream scientists, from any number of disciplines, have considered the Book of Mormon and shown it to be fiction.

Question: Given all the evidence cited above invalidating the claimed provenance and veracity of the Book of Mormon and its purported author, and in the absence of any shred of supporting physical evidence, could any individual who believes that the Book of Mormon is what Joseph Smith claimed it to be really be considered rational - let alone a "serious thinker"?

Yes, because my beliefs and commitments have no reflection on my ability to think, aside from the fact that belief creates a black box around issues like this, where I am willing to believe and set aside things for the time being, on a personal level. While critics believe that each and every item in that black box must be all proven at once through science to have any standing, there are individuals out there that deal with things using a different method, a different epistemology, one by one, with patience and faith. It is not irrational to take a wait and see approach, and not let these things affect my commitments and covenants or my behavior.

One could suggest that critics have an irrational amount of impatience for issues to be resolved immediately when their resolution is not rationally something that is forthcoming. The critic may overconfidently declare victory at a certain point in time, when there is nothing to indicate that an issue is indeed resolved or come to an end of any sort. Therefore, a believing person is willing to have patience as his virtue, while a critic is not, and only has impatience for his vice. It is only in hindsight after issues truly resolve themselves where either the critic knows whether he was the fool for his impatience, or whether the believer was a fool for his patience and belief. Neither has a view in hindsight. Yet the critic finds fault with the virtues of the believer, when the critic may be the one to end up being the fool, just as much.

Now, if you want to deal with this issue and not be overcome with details of things that have nothing to do with it, you must take it bit by bit.

Extraneous issues that all have their own set of apologetic arguments for, and critical arguments against, do not have bearing on the current issue at hand, any more than evolutionary biology has an immediate bearing on plate tectonics. While both are issues that eventually have something to do with each other from a 100,000 foot view, when you are focused on one, and not on the other, they have nothing to do with each other at that point in time, because it is necessary to have some sort of focus to get anything done.

[_Themis]

It isn't new dual meanings that somehow take on that meaning generally outside the place where they are used that way. That is the nature of this type of mapping. If you write an acrostic, the only place the mappings take on any meaning to you is in the document where you used them. You didn't just add a new meaning to the letter A generally.

You are once again assuming that the people that originally wrote the Papyri were the ones to use them this way. That is not the case. The Sensen class of papyrus was created long before the people that ended up using it this way. The same is so with the Book of the Dead, which was used the same way, artistically, to decorate the Book of Joseph.

It makes perfect sense, and it is the explanation to fit the evidence.

Someone created the actual document the LDS church has today. On it is a typical Egyptian story made for the dead person and buried with him. There is no evidence of any other meaning for this particular document. Sure the person who made this document could have made a second meaning in his head, but we have zero evidence they did, nor sensible reasons they would. If they wanted another meaning why would they not just write one down in the language they know?

[_EdGoble]

Someone created the actual document the LDS church has today. On it is a typical Egyptian story made for the dead person and buried with him. There is no evidence of any other meaning for this particular document. Sure the person who made this document could have made a second meaning in his head, but we have zero evidence they did, nor sensible reasons they would. If they wanted another meaning why would they not just write one down in the language they know?

That is where this is going. The internal evidence in the KEP shows that it is likely a reproduction in modern speech of an ancient document that existed like this.

[_EdGoble]

If you approached Champollion and told him that you would not accept any of his findings unless he could produce another Rosetta stone, that would not be considered rational, as there is no other Rosetta stone to speak of. And so, neither is this rational or called for. And the fact that you couch your badgering in these terms and hide them as if you are an academic asking me for more evidence is not a case for academic dismissal for lack of evidence, but is actually just artful dodging from where the evidence actually lies, and a hidden and artful ad-hominem in one fell swoop. Sorry. This is nothing of the sort of what you claim it to be.

That analogy doesn't quite hold water. What Lemmie is asking you to do would look more like this. Champollion claims he has deciphered Ancient Egyptian using the Rosetta stone. Skeptical, the scientific community asks for proof. He then translates heretofore non-deciphered texts, repeatedly. Also, individuals can take his discovery and replicate the translations for themselves.

Actually, still, the analogy is not perfect, because my hypothesis has nothing to do with suggesting a method of translation, but rather, I have identified the nature of what the Sensen characters have to do with the English text that they are lined up with. This is not something that is reproducible from the standpoint that I can go out and translate. It is that the more things that are reverse-engineered in the KEP exhibit these same types of pairings when more work is done in that area. So, if you want more evidence, then you will be patient enough for more work to be done on other parts of the KEP for that stuff to be brought out, to demonstrate the claim that I'm actually making. That is where the evidence of this exists, not in some imagined, magical new technique to translate text, which was never my claim. You don't irrationally demand something that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

And so, my advice to you would be, actually familiarize yourself with what I'm saying, and the scope of what my claims are, and stop asking for things that are outside the scope of what I am claiming, or stop making up caricatures of what you think I'm saying, and actually try to understand what I am actually saying. Its all on you to do that. I can do nothing for you. And there will continue to be a disconnect so long as you do not do that.

[_Lemmie]

Ed, you asked to be taken seriously, so I'm bumping these 2 questions.

Go find an Egyptian grammar at any University and you will see tables showing which hieratics go with which hieroglyphics. You are confusing things. Egyptian hieroglyphics are all pictures and are art just by nature.

ok. Then the tables will show that you are matching up hieratics with hieroglyphics, according to established patterns. Would that be a correct assessment?

And if so, then there must be other instances where your technique is used. Can you show examples?

and

If your argument regarding being an "art-form" is that it is an example of iconotropy, then it should be reproducible and testable, as my understanding of iconotropy is that it defines how a culture might appropriate meanings of another culture's symbols, not a one-off, non-reproducible, single-use example which is never replicated or re-used.

Osiris has been shown in many other instances besides the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and the Facsimiles Explanations to be an example of a generally appropriated symbol for Abraham. So I don't get where you have a problem with this. Just because you are invoking something on a cultural level and trying to invalidate this on that basis simply doesn't invalidate the fact that a more localized appropriation of symbols was happening.

Could you give examples of those "many other instances"?

Could you also explain how a "localized appropriation of symbols" could result in "many other instances"?

The two explanations seem mutually contradictory, do they not?

[_EdGoble]

Ed, you asked to be taken seriously, so I'm bumping these 2 questions.

More badgering won't move the conversation forward.