Is the Book of Mormon Divinely Inspired?

[Marcus]

No, three LLMs agreeing on a subject like this doesn't add much. A little bit, but not much.

Simple logic with words that are often used casually, but whose strict meanings are more precise than that, is the kind of thing that LLMs don't do well. They'll have absorbed thousands of Internet examples of statements using the words in loose senses. Most of the people that made those statements knew very well that the words technically had stricter meanings than that. The LLMs don't have that kind of knowledge, however. Their whole existence is about not even trying to have that kind of knowledge. They just repeat what they've heard, on the Internet.

So imagine that you have hired a personal assistant: a young B+ student who knows some things, but doesn't know anything really well, and nonetheless is very keen to have this job of assisting you with their knowledge. They have a lot of chutzpah, and they can put up a good fight up to a point with glib phrases that sound like what someone who knew stuff would say. They're a good salesperson. They're the kind of person who gets the job, at least in plenty of places. Now they're with you.

That's a large language model A.I.. For some things, it's just great. It's not exactly intelligence.

If (as sometimes seems the case) disinformation multiplies faster than accurate information, it may be that LLMs will become progressively poorer as sources that make sense on almost any topic.

Good point. I would imagine there's something like an uncanny valley effect. Bottom line is, as we've seen in this thread, people are better off if they learn something, think about it, and then talk about what they know. Posting A.I. answers, as given at the moment, is a virtually meaningless exercise in the context of using one's own bias in forming questions.

[Gadianton]

Wonder what MG thinks about this syllogism:

1) If you read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, God will manifest the truth of it by the power of the Holy Ghost.
2) MG has read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it.

Therefore,

God has manifest the truth of the Book of Mormon to MG by the power of the Holy Ghost.

[Marcus]

I still think that in the way I’ve been using A.I. on this board that it has mostly added rather than detracted to the relevant information which it has made available ‘on the fly’.

You would be wrong. Multiple times it has been pointed out to you, with great specificity, exactly your errors in randomly using A.I. and you still just gloss over the significant problems and ignore people's detailed explanations..

More often than not, however, I’ve seen simple rejections of A.I. rather than any kind of complex or relevant argument against the information presented.

Sigh. QED.

[I Have Questions]

Here’s an interesting piece on why multiple witnesses are often less reliable.

The misinformation effect
To most people, the idea of conforming to misinformation from a co-witness can seem very unlikely, why would anybody take the word of someone else over their own in such a serious setting? What many individuals fail to understand is that during such occurrences, the eyewitnesses who conform to misinformation from others are not consciously aware that they are being influenced by someone else. Instead they would be convinced that they witness the misinformation first hand – leading eyewitness expert Elizabeth Loftus described this act of influence as the misinformation effect.

To understand how the misinformation effect works we must first understand the problems with memory encoding. When exposed to new information, an individual will be able to remember when and where that information was learnt, this is known as source monitoring. However, as time elapses the individual will be less likely to accurately remember the source from which the information was first discovered. Within an eyewitness setting, the memory of the witness will often be distorted (for reasons mentioned above). As a result, there would be gaps within their memory recall of the event. Due to these absences of information, it would become increasingly more difficult later on for eyewitnesses to be able to differentiate between information that they witnessed and information that they were exposed to afterwards. Therefore due to source attribution errors, eyewitnesses who are exposed to a post-event discussion will be at risk of mistakenly reporting misinformation from others in their own statements.

https://www.thejusticegap.com/misinform ... e-mistake/

The Book of Mormon witnesses were led to their collective statement by an individual who had something to gain from what they said, they were all inter-related in their daily lives by family or friendship, and they only agreed their statement long after the event they supposedly witnessed.

It’s red flag, after red flag, after red flag.

[I Have Questions]

Independent of the menfolk, Mary Whitmer (wife of David Whitmer) bore her own eye witness testimony which doesn’t often get talked about.

Through her son David, she and her family became acquainted with Joseph Smith around 1828. In 1829, she was caring for three boarders (Smith, Emma Hale Smith, and Oliver Cowdery) in addition to her large household while the Book of Mormon was being translated.[3] She said that she was often overloaded with work to the extent she felt it quite a burden. During this time, the male boarders and members of her household were speaking of being shown the golden plates. One evening, when she went to milk the cows, she said that a stranger with a knapsack spoke to her, explained what was going on in her house, comforted her, then produced a bundle of plates from his knapsack, turned the leaves for her, showed her the engravings, exhorted her to faith in bearing her burden a little longer, then suddenly vanished with the plates. Whitmer always called the stranger "Brother Nephi".[4]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitmer

She’s to be believed, right?

She was excommunicated from the church with the entire Whitmer family in 1838

So the Book of Mormon contains the testimony of unworthy excommunicated members. What to make of that…

Here’s what David Whitmer went on to say…

If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon", wrote Whitmer, "if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to 'separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Whitmer

If you believe his eye witness testimony for the Book of Mormon then you seem obligated to believe that Gold told him to separate from the Church. Or you disbelieve his eye witness statement about separating the Church and acknowledge that he’s got the propensity to make a false statement.

He never recanted his testimony that God wanted him to leave the Church.

[Res Ipsa]

Here’s an interesting piece on why multiple witnesses are often less reliable.

The misinformation effect
To most people, the idea of conforming to misinformation from a co-witness can seem very unlikely, why would anybody take the word of someone else over their own in such a serious setting? What many individuals fail to understand is that during such occurrences, the eyewitnesses who conform to misinformation from others are not consciously aware that they are being influenced by someone else. Instead they would be convinced that they witness the misinformation first hand – leading eyewitness expert Elizabeth Loftus described this act of influence as the misinformation effect.

To understand how the misinformation effect works we must first understand the problems with memory encoding. When exposed to new information, an individual will be able to remember when and where that information was learnt, this is known as source monitoring. However, as time elapses the individual will be less likely to accurately remember the source from which the information was first discovered. Within an eyewitness setting, the memory of the witness will often be distorted (for reasons mentioned above). As a result, there would be gaps within their memory recall of the event. Due to these absences of information, it would become increasingly more difficult later on for eyewitnesses to be able to differentiate between information that they witnessed and information that they were exposed to afterwards. Therefore due to source attribution errors, eyewitnesses who are exposed to a post-event discussion will be at risk of mistakenly reporting misinformation from others in their own statements.

https://www.thejusticegap.com/misinform ... e-mistake/

The Book of Mormon witnesses were led to their collective statement by an individual who had something to gain from what they said, they were all inter-related in their daily lives by family or friendship, and they only agreed their statement long after the event they supposedly witnessed.

It’s red flag, after red flag, after red flag.

I think you’ve raised a good point. The number of witnesses would be more significant if they were truly independent. Or even somewhat independent. However, given the circumstances, the emergence of a group narrative was almost unavoidable. Under those conditions, the number of witnesses doesn’t increase reliability over one witness.

[malkie]

There's a good reason why the police (at least on Law & Order, and NYPD Blue ) keep witnesses separate from each other before they interview them.

[MG 2.0]

Here’s an interesting piece on why multiple witnesses are often less reliable.


https://www.thejusticegap.com/misinform ... e-mistake/

The Book of Mormon witnesses were led to their collective statement by an individual who had something to gain from what they said, they were all inter-related in their daily lives by family or friendship, and they only agreed their statement long after the event they supposedly witnessed.

It’s red flag, after red flag, after red flag.

I think you’ve raised a good point. The number of witnesses would be more significant if they were truly independent. Or even somewhat independent. However, given the circumstances, the emergence of a group narrative was almost unavoidable. Under those conditions, the number of witnesses doesn’t increase reliability over one witness.

Maybe you’d have a point if we’re talking about the eight witnesses. I think that when it comes to the three witnesses we’re looking at a somewhat different scenario as we look at the flow of time from when they first confirmed their testimony publicly to when they ‘kicked the bucket’.

The lifelong confirmation of their initial affidavit isn’t 100% bullet proof, but it’s pretty solid in my opinion.

I would imagine that you’ve read Richard Lloyd Anderson.

Regards,
MG

[drumdude]

I think you’ve raised a good point. The number of witnesses would be more significant if they were truly independent. Or even somewhat independent. However, given the circumstances, the emergence of a group narrative was almost unavoidable. Under those conditions, the number of witnesses doesn’t increase reliability over one witness.

Maybe you’d have a point if we’re talking about the eight witnesses. I think that when it comes to the three witnesses we’re looking at a somewhat different scenario as we look at the flow of time from when they first confirmed their testimony publicly to when they ‘kicked the bucket’.

The lifelong confirmation of their initial affidavit isn’t 100% bullet proof, but it’s pretty solid in my opinion.

I would imagine that you’ve read Richard Lloyd Anderson.

Regards,
MG

Hearing that there were witnesses to Brigham Young’s transfiguration who couldn’t have physically even been there kind of soured me on Mormon witness testimony. It was a different time back then, and as Quinn points out it all had a magical worldview backdrop.

[MG 2.0]

Maybe you’d have a point if we’re talking about the eight witnesses. I think that when it comes to the three witnesses we’re looking at a somewhat different scenario as we look at the flow of time from when they first confirmed their testimony publicly to when they ‘kicked the bucket’.

The lifelong confirmation of their initial affidavit isn’t 100% bullet proof, but it’s pretty solid in my opinion.

I would imagine that you’ve read Richard Lloyd Anderson.

Regards,
MG

Hearing that there were witnesses to Brigham Young’s transfiguration who couldn’t have physically even been there kind of soured me on Mormon witness testimony. It was a different time back then, and as Quinn points out it all had a magical worldview backdrop.

Yes, I read that years ago. Richard Van Wagoner may have not had all the evidence/stories.

See here:

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-heave ... at-nauvoo/

I’m not sure that the transfiguration story is a ‘done deal’ for the critics. I believe the same in regards to the three witnesses.

Regards,
MG