You are about to see how M2C taints the work of exemplary scholars. It's way past time for LDS scholars to re-think their commitment to M2C.
This time we have another Interpreter article titled "Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya)." You can read the original article here:
https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/joseph-smith-the-worlds-greatest-guesser-a-bayesian-statistical-analysis-of-positive-and-negative-correspondences-between-the-book-of-mormon-and-the-maya/
Let me begin by emphasizing that I have the greatest respect and admiration for the authors. They make important and valuable contributions in their respective professions and I wish them all the best.
I also write from the perspective of a firm believer in what Joseph Smith claimed: i.e., that he actually translated the engravings on ancient metal plates with the use of the interpreters Moroni put in the stone box for that purpose.
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I won't repeat aspects of the article I addressed in another blog post here:
http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2019/05/illusion-of-scholarship-interpreter-and.html.
I'm commenting on the article in this post partly because readers asked me to, and partly because this article is framed as a scientific validation or verification of the M2C hoax.
The contrast between (i) the authors' otherwise exemplary work and (ii) the M2C hoax promoted in this article illustrates the serious damage M2C inflicts.
IOW, this article (regardless of its sincerity) is yet another good example of how M2C has created such a thick bubble that it warps the work-product of so many faithful intellectuals and their followers, including employees of BYU, CES, and COB.
The entire article is misguided because the authors begin by uncritically accepting Mormon's Codex and its fallacies:
There are strong reasons for suspecting ancient Mesoamerica as the physical location of Book of Mormon events in the New World.8
8. John L. Sorenson, Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (Salt Lake City: Desert Book, 2013).
I've discussed
Mormon's Codex in a series on another blog, such as here.
http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2019/04/illusion-of-scholarship-mormon-codex_25.html
_____
In the comments to the article in the
Interpreter, the authors often accused their critics of not having read the article. Therefore, I'm including their own words here in
blue, with my interlinear comments in
red.
_____
The bulk of the article is a list of 149 evidences (131 positive, 18 negative) regarding the Book of Mormon. The authors assign a value to each one and then use these values to calculate Bayesian statistical analysis. The assigned values are subjective, as we'll see.
Here is their overall approach:
If the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, then it is a work of fiction. It is simply false, as Dr. Coe obviously believes it to be.
[Dr. Coe claims it is false in an ancient Mesoamerican setting, based on his expertise in that area, but he does not claim expertise about the Hopewell/Adena civilizations.]
There are no other rational options.
[This false dilemma affects the entire analysis in this article. It's not a question of either/or because literature is on a continuum. There is "pious fiction" such as the parable of the Good Samaritan that uses a factual setting with typical characters to teach important truths, even though the specific characters and events did not exist in the real world. There is "faction" that combines historical facts, beliefs or legends with invented characters and events. Fantasy creates entirely new worlds, and so forth.]
If the Book of Mormon is a piece of fiction, then some person or persons in the early 1800s made it up.
[This conclusion doesn't follow logically. It could have been written earlier, or copied/edited from an earlier work. Of course, as a matter of pure logic, the plates themselves could have contained an ancient fictional work.]
If the Book of Mormon is fiction, then its author was guessing every time he wrote as fact something about the ancient inhabitants of the Americas.
[Fiction authors often weave facts into their narratives. It's not all guessing--in fact, most fiction authors incorporate as much fact as possible for purposes of verisimilitude. The premise here is that the "facts" the authors cite from the Book of Mormon were entirely unknown to Joseph Smith (or another author), leaving "guesses" as the only possible explanation.
One of the foundational tenets of M2C is that Joseph was an ignorant farm boy who speculated about lots of things (such as the New York Cumorah). This is the pretext for the M2C intellectuals asserting their superiority over the prophets generally, but over Joseph specifically. As a result, the entire framing of this article fits M2C ideology, but is not compelled or even implied by the known facts. In 1828, quite a bit was known about the ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica.]
This means we can compare reasonably these “guesses” in the Book of Mormon with the facts presented by Dr. Coe in The Maya.
[We'll point out where these "guesses" are consistent with facts known by Joseph and/or his contemporaries.]
Thus we take the statements of fact in The Maya as essentially true, and we compare the “guesses” in the Book of Mormon with these statements of fact. To repeat, for purposes of our Bayesian statistical analysis, we accept the universe of facts summarized by Dr. Coe in The Maya as essentially true. We then rate the value of each “guess” in the Book of Mormon (or statement of fact) as evidence using three criteria:
[I disagree with framing the text of the Book of Mormon as "guesses" even for purpose of analysis because in almost every case, the "guesses" the authors identify consist mainly of their own interpretations of the text. We'll see how this works in specific examples below.]
- Is it specific? Is it clear that the guess in the Book of Mormon is directly comparable to a statement of fact in The Maya?
- Is it specific and detailed? Are there important details in each guess in the Book of Mormon that correspond to at least some of the details given in The Maya?
- Is it specific, detailed, and unusual? Is the statement of fact in the Book of Mormon (or “guess”) unusual in the sense that someone writing the book in the early 1800s would probably not have the background or knowledge to include [Page 80]this statement of fact in his work of “fiction,” that is, the Book of Mormon?
We assign a number to the quality or strength of the evidence for (or against) the hypothesis as follows: The numbers 2, 10, and 50 are the strength of the evidence for the hypothesis, that is, the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction. The numbers 0.5, 0.1, and 0.02 are the corresponding strength of the evidence against the hypothesis; that is, these are points of evidence that support the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Illustrative examples are given below following a brief introduction to statistics in general and Bayesian statistics in particular.
[We can't look at every example, but we will look at enough to see how subjective they are.]
Later in the article, p. 85, the authors explain an important part of their approach:
It is a common error (deliberate or otherwise) to consider only a few pieces of evidence when examining the truth or falsity of a given hypothesis. In the extreme, this practice is called cherry-picking. In cherry-picking, evidence against one’s existing hypothesis is deliberately excluded from consideration. This practice is, of course, dishonest.
[And yet, the authors engage in cherry-picking by excluding evidence from the Bible, alternative interpretations of the text, and from non-Mayan ancient civilizations. I call this practice "orchard-picking."]
It is another common error to consider some pieces of relevant evidence as having infinite weight or having zero weight compared to other pieces of evidence. This practice is irrational and unscientific.
[Note that the authors started by giving infinite weight to Mormon's Codex and zero weight to evidence from North America.]
These practices of cherry-picking or overweighting/underweighting evidence cannot be allowed in scientific enquiry. They are neither rational nor honest. We must consider all relevant evidence if we hope to make honest, rational decisions. Also, no piece of evidence has infinite weight. There are always limitations on the strength of any individual piece of evidence. Assuming a piece of evidence has infinite weight is equivalent to saying the question is already decided and is therefore beyond the scope of further rational, honest enquiry.
[And yet, they assigned infinite weight to Mormon's Codex.]
On page 86, the authors offer three examples, one for each likelihood ratio.
Specific correspondences: 0.5 (Bayesian supportive evidence for the converse hypothesis). The author of the Book of Mormon might have learned this fact by study or experience, but it is not obvious: for example, the fact that people eat food. We aren’t impressed by the fact that someone ate dinner, but if we know they ate a specific kind of food on a specific day as a religious observance, that has value as evidence. One example is the practice of repopulating old or abandoned cities described in Dr. Coe’s book and also in the Book of Mormon. Such evidence acts against the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is fiction, but it is not particularly strong evidence. Instead, such evidence is considered to be merely “supportive.”18
[Jerusalem itself is an obvious practice of repopulating "an old or abandoned" city, as it was completely destroyed by the Romans but in 1829 was a thriving city well known to Bible (and newspaper) readers.]
Specific and detailed correspondences: 0.10 (Bayesian positive evidence for the converse hypothesis). Facts assigned a likelihood of 0.1 are details in the Book of Mormon that agree with details in The Maya. The author of the Book of Mormon might have been able to reason out such details, given time, study, or expert knowledge, but we think it would have been very difficult for the writer to have guessed correctly. Thus these correspondences are quite specific and also provide some important details.
[Page 86]One example is the existence of highlands and lowlands within the relevant geography. Dr. Coe’s book repeatedly emphasizes the highland and lowland populations of Native American peoples in Mesoamerica. The Book of Mormon also repeatedly uses the words “go up” and “go down” when traveling. From its very beginning, the Book of Mormon likewise employs going “up” and going “down” when traveling to and from Jerusalem. Jerusalem sits at a higher elevation than most of the surrounding geography. Thus we assume that the phrases “go up” or “go down” mean to ascend or descend in elevation while traveling. Such evidence is considered to be Bayesian “positive.”19
[Anyone who reads the Bible is familiar with this usage. To characterize it as Bayesian positive is akin to the authors' previous comment about simply eating food. Compare these passages:
Book of Mormon.
Ether 13:7 For as Joseph brought his father down into the land of Egypt, even so he died there;
Bible.
Genesis 26:2 And the Lord appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of:
Deut. 10:22 Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons;
Acts 7:15 So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers,
To characterize this evidence as "guessing" makes sense only if one excludes the Bible from Joseph's knowledge.]
Specific, detailed and unusual correspondences: 0.02 (Bayesian strong evidence for the converse hypothesis). We believe that facts with a 2% likelihood (one in 50 chance) are essentially impossible to guess correctly, given any amount of knowledge or study reasonably available to the writer of the Book of Mormon. But in order to rigorously test the Book of Mormon’s claims as a fact-based record, we assume that the writer had a one in 50 chance of guessing these correspondences correctly. A one in 50 or 2% chance (0.02) is the maximum weight we will allow for evidence supporting the Book of Mormon’s claims to being fact-based, even if we think the odds are more like one in a million or less. Such evidence is considered to be Bayesian “strong” evidence.20
One example of Bayesian “strong” evidence is the remarkably detailed description of a volcanic eruption and associated earthquakes given in 3 Nephi 8.
[This is an exceptionally poor example. Nowhere does the Book of Mormon even mention volcanoes. It is pure M2C circular reasoning to "find" volcanoes in the text.]
Mesoamerica is earthquake and volcano country, but upstate New York, where the Book of Mormon came forth, is not. If the Book of Mormon is fictional, how could the writer of the Book of Mormon correctly describe a volcanic eruption and earthquakes from the viewpoint of the person experiencing the event?
[We see a double fallacy here. First is the assertion that the text is describing a volcanic eruption. The text never mentions volcanoes. The descriptions in the text fit a massive earthquake in a river valley. Such a real-world event took place in along the Mississippi River in 1811-1812 and was widely reported. The second fallacy is the assumption that one could only "guess" such a description, when such descriptions are widely available. For example, the book Saints opens with the massive volcano that caused the bad growing seasons that forced the Smiths out of Vermont.]
We rate the evidentiary value of that correspondence as 0.02. We assume a piece of evidence is “unusual” if it gives facts that very probably were not known to the writer, someone living in upstate New York in the early 19th century, when virtually nothing of ancient Mesoamerica was known.
[Here we see how the unquestioned assumption of M2C leads even scientists to make basic logical fallacies. Here they assign the highest value to a mere interpretation of the text (Volcanoes) while accepting John Sorenson's description of what was known about ancient Mesoamerica. Thanks to the work of Humboldt, published in 1804 and available in Palmyra in 1818, people in Joseph's day knew all about the lost civilizations.
See: http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/2019/06/why-m2c-undermines-faith.html.]
In their Summary, the authors make this observation.
Dr. J. B. S. Haldane, the great British biologist, once said that prejudice is an opinion arrived at without considering the evidence. Book of Mormon scholarly critics ignore a very large body of evidence. They fail to read the Book of Mormon carefully and objectively. In other words, they approach the Book of Mormon with deep preexisting prejudices.
[This article, too, approaches the Book of Mormon with deep, pre-existing prejudices formed by M2C. The authors are oblivious to their prejudices, as we see in their detailed analysis.]
Let's look at some of the "correspondences" cited in the article, especially those with the highest ranking.
The general procedure in the article is to quote from Coe, offer an interpretation of the text that is consistent with Coe, and then claim that Joseph could not have come up with that interpretation because... well, the authors impose their own ideas about what Joseph could or couldn't have known, what he would or wouldn't have thought, etc. It's all entirely subjective.
1.1 Fundamental level of political organization is the independent city-state
Coe’s standard: “Sylvanus Morley had thought that there was once a single great political entity, which he called the ‘Old Empire,’ but once the full significance of Emblem Glyphs had been recognized, it was clear that there had never been any such thing. In its stead, Mayanists proposed a more Balkanized model, in which each ‘city state’ was essentially independent of all the others; the political power of even large entities like Tikal would have been confined to a relatively small area, the distance from the capital to the polity’s borders seldom exceeding a day’s march” (p. 274).
Book of Mormon correspondence: Throughout the Book of Mormon itself there is never a reference to “Nephite nation” or to a “Lamanite nation.”
[Focusing on non-existent terms is a red herring. The Book of Mormon refers to two separate but competing civilizations: the Nephites and the Lamanites. This is the antithesis of a Balkanized model of independent city states.]
Interestingly, the word nation is used in reference to the Jaredites (Ether 1:43), a very different people culturally than the Lehites.
The Book of Mormon uses this phrase: “nations, kindreds, tongues and people.” The Nephites and Lamanites were clearly kindreds. In contrast, the word nation is used frequently in terms of the “nations of the Gentiles.” The noncanonical Guide to the Scriptures has eight references to “Nephite nation,” showing how deeply engrained this idea of nationhood is in modern readers. But the Book of Mormon never puts those two words together for Nephite/Lamanite societies. The nation-state is not a political structure found anywhere in the Book of Mormon.
[Mormon does refer to his people as a nation.
Moroni 8:27 Behold, my son, I will write unto you again if I go not out soon against the Lamanites. Behold, the pride of this nation, or the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction except they should repent.]
Instead, the Book of Mormon peoples were organized politically in city-states.
[The entire text refers to the two separate groups: Nephites vs. Lamanites. The text never mentions "city-states," and especially no "city state" that is independent of all others.
Often one city-state would dominate a group of other city-states. This dominance is the subject of the next correspondence.
Analysis of correspondence: The correspondence is specific and detailed. There is not a single reference in the text of the Book of Mormon to “Nephite nation” or “Lamanite nation.” It is also unusual. Joseph Smith was growing up in the new nation of America, with a great deal of pride and self-identity as an independent nation.
[Joseph grew up in an age when the states were independent sovereigns, linked by the Constitution. The Native Americans were organized as both tribes and nations within the same framework. People identified as Americans, not members of the "American nation." The identified as Methodists, or Baptists, not as members of a "Methodist nation." They identified as family members, community members, etc. The authors here are imposing an artificial and unrealistic expectation on Joseph, then claiming it was a strong correspondence that he didn't write out that unrealistic expectation.]
How did he avoid identifying the Lamanite or Nephite peoples as “nations”? But he did avoid it. [Except for Mormon...] What a lucky “guess” — over and over again during the course of the Book of Mormon history.
Likelihood = 0.02
1.2 “Capital” or leading city-state dominates a cluster of other communities
Coe’s standard: “Clusters of villages and communities were organized under a single polity, dominated by a large ‘capital’ village, which could have contained more than 1,000 people. (p. 51).” “Quirigua lies only 30 miles [Page 100](48 km) north of Copan; … that seems, on the basis of its inscriptions, to have periodically been one of the latter’s suzerainties” (p. 137). “Bonampak, politically important during the Early Classic, but by the Late Classic an otherwise insignificant center clearly under the cultural and political thumb of Yaxchilan” (p. 149). “These are Tamarindito, Arroyo de Piedras, Punta de Chimino, Aguateca, and Dos Pilas; the latter city seems to have dominated the rest” (p. 150). “We now know that not all Maya polities were equal: the kings of some lesser states were said to be ‘possessed’ by the rulers of more powerful ones (the phrase y-ajaw, ‘his king,’ specifies this relationship” (p. 275).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See Omni 1:12; Alma 61:8; Helaman 1:27. Zarahemla is clearly the Nephite capital city in the Book of Mormon, with 140 mentions in the book. It is to Zarahemla that the other cities of the Nephites look to for leadership and supplies in their wars against the Lamanites.
[As I mentioned in the previous example, this is the opposite of Balkanization. It's Nephites vs. Lamanites.]
When the Lamanite chieftain Coriantumr invades the Nephite confederation, he makes straight for Zarahemla, “the capital city,” in the heart of the Nephite lands, and bypasses all the lesser cities.
[The capital of what? In the previous example, the authors claimed there was no Nephite nation, but in Omni 1;12, we see that Mosiah was king over the land of Zarahemla, having abandoned the land of Nephi. Zarahemla served approximately the same function as Jerusalem in the Bible; i.e., it was the most important city.]
Later the city/land of Bountiful seems to become the Nephite capital city-state.
Analysis of correspondence: This political model was clearly part of Book of Mormon political arrangements, so it is specific and detailed in both books. It is also unusual. There is no corresponding political arrangement in Joseph Smith’s time which he might have used as a model.
[This one is simply inexplicable. There was nothing more common in Joseph's day than capital cities. Every state had a capital city, as did every nation. Wars were typically between two adversaries. E.g., the War of 1812 was British vs. Americans, just like the Revolutionary War.]
Likelihood = 0.02
1.4 Complex state institutions
Coe’s standard: “In art, in religion, in state complexity, and perhaps even in the calendar and astronomy, Olmec models were transferred to the Maya” [Page 101](p. 61). “Civilization … has certainly been achieved by the time that state institutions … have appeared” (p. 63). “By Classic times, full royal courts came into view” (p. 93). “closer to the heart of the city itself, where the dwellings of aristocrats and bureaucrats” (p. 126).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See Mosiah 24:1‒2; Alma 2:6‒7, 14‒16; Alma 27:21‒22; Alma 30:9; Alma 51:2‒7; Alma 60:7, 11, 21, 24. Both the Book of Mormon and The Maya clearly show societies that have large, complex state institutions. For example, the Nephites had (1) some form of elections, [like Joseph's society] (2) armies supported by the state, [like Joseph's society] (3) chief judges and lower judges, [like Joseph's society] and (4) kings (at least part of the time). [like the European nations of Joseph's day] The Lamanites appear to have had kings at all times. Dr. Coe (p. 63) notes that state institutions were developed among the Maya by the Late Preclassic, consistent with Book of Mormon timing for the references provided.
Analysis of correspondence: Both the British and American civil governments had large, complex state institutions, but the Native American societies certainly did not. This comparison is specific, has quite a bit of detail, and probably would have been unusual to Joseph Smith. [The Native American nations of Joseph's day were organized into separate nations, with tribal governments. The ancestors of the Indians were also recognized as having significant state institutions.
In View of the Hebrews, Ethan Smith wrote "These works have evinced great wars, a good degree of civilization, and great skill in fortification."]
Likelihood = 0.02
1.6 City of Laman (Lamanai) “occcupied from earliest times”
Coe’s standard: “Far up the New River … is the important site of Lamanai, … occupied from earliest times right into the post-Conquest period”(p. 85).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See 3 Nephi 9:10. The strong tendency is for consonants to be preserved in pronouncing words and names. For example, Beirut (Lebanon) is one of the oldest cities in the world, settled 5,000 years ago. The name derives from Canaanite-Phoenician be’erot and [Page 102]has been known as “Biruta,” “Berytus” and now “Beirut,” while always retaining those three consonants “BRT” in the correct order, and with no intervening consonants.29
In the case of the city Lamanai (Laman), all three consonants, and only these three consonants, namely LMN, are found in the correct order and are the same consonants as given for the city of Laman mentioned in the Book of Mormon. This seems to be a “bullseye” for the Book of Mormon.
[The Onomasticon gives some possible origins for the name Laman. "Laman" also appears on the writings of at least one 17th century theologian. No one suggests that the Book of Mormon Laman was named after a "submerged crocodile" as was the Mayan city Lamanai.
How did Joseph Smith correctly “guess” the correct consonants, and only the correct consonants in the correct order for the name of an important city “occupied from earliest times?”
Analysis of correspondence: The correspondence is specific, detailed and statistically unusual. [When we look at the facts, this is at most a coincidence. With all the proper nouns in the Book of Mormon, and all the Mayan names, it's more surprising that there are not many more names that share the same order of consonants.]
Likelihood = 0.02
1.18 Records kept specifically of the reigns of the kings
Coe’s standard: “the ‘stela cult’ — the inscribed glorification of royal lineages and their achievements” (p. 177). “The text is completely historical, recounting the king’s descent from Pakal the Great” (p. 264n169). “The figures that appear in Classic reliefs are not gods and priests, but dynastic autocrats and their spouses, children, and subordinates” (p. 273).
[Page 106]Book of Mormon correspondence: See 1 Nephi 9:4; Jacob 3:13; Jarom 1:14.
Analysis of correspondence: Like The Maya, the Book of Mormon is very specific and detailed about separate records being kept of the reigns of the kings. We know of no reason or existing historical model that would have led Joseph Smith to have correctly “guessed” that the doings of the kings were kept separately from the rest of the history of a people.
[Anyone who has read 1 and 2 Kings, and then 1 and 2 Chronicles, might have a clue that ancient people kept different histories.]
This is a specific, detailed and unusual correspondence.
Likelihood = 0.02
1.21 Limited number of important patrilineages
Coe’s standard: “There were 24 ‘principal’ lineages in Utatlan” (p. 225). “There were approximately 250 patrilineages in Yucatan at the time of the Conquest, and we know from Landa how important they were” (p. 234).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See Jacob: 1:13; Alma 47:35; 4 Nephi 1:36‒38; Mormon 1:8‒9.
Analysis of correspondence: Both the Book of Mormon and The Maya are very specific and detailed about how important it was to belong to a leading patrilineage. While Joseph Smith might have picked up this idea from reading the Bible (that is, the tribes of Israel) we think this is very unlikely. So we regard this correspondence as specific, detailed and unusual.
Likelihood = 0.02
[The Book of Mormon is full of direct quotations from the Bible, paraphrases and blending of biblical passages, and allusions to biblical events and history. The text specifically refers to the twelve tribes of Israel and the lost tribes of Israel. Why would it be "very unlikely" for Joseph to "pick up this idea" from the Bible? The authors don't explain.]
2.2 Active interchange of ideas and things among the elite
Coe’s standard: “there must have been an active interchange of ideas and things among the Mesoamerican elite over many centuries” (p. 14).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See Omni 1:12‒15; Mosiah 7:9,13; Alma 47:23, 35‒36; Helaman 4:3‒4, 8; Helaman 11: 24‒25; Alma 63:14; 3 Nephi 1:28.
Analysis of correspondence: Coe is very specific and detailed in his statement. The Book of Mormon is likewise detailed and specific about the many exchanges of people (especially elite peoples) and ideas over centuries among the Book of Mormon peoples. Even a well-educated person, which Joseph Smith was certainly not, would have a hard time thinking of a historical model for this behavior, let alone blending it so seamlessly and unobtrusively into the larger Book of Mormon history.
[This one is inexplicable. What is more common in the Bible than "active interchange of ideas and things among the elite?" The history of human civilization everywhere consists of such behavior. It would be much more difficult to find a historical model for the inverse.]
Therefore it is specific, detailed and unusual.
Likelihood = 0.02.
2.8 Steep decline and disappearance of an ancient culture a few hundred years BC
Coe’s standard: “There is some consensus among archaeologists that the Olmecs of southern Mexico had elaborated many of these traits beginning over 3,000 years ago, and that much of complex culture in Mesoamerica has an Olmec origin” (p. 14). “The Olmec civilization went into a steep decline ca 400 BC” (p. 61).
Book of Mormon correspondence: See Omni 1:21; Book of Ether, especially chapters 13‒15.
Analysis of correspondence: This correspondence is detailed and specific. It also is unusual. What information or possible model did Joseph Smith have to “guess” a steep cultural decline among a very ancient American Indian culture at the same time the evidence summarized in The Maya says the decline occurred? In a word, how did he “guess” this one?
[Two points here. The rise and fall of civilizations is fundamental to understanding history, as anyone who has read the Bible knows. Besides, the Adena civilization is a better fit for the time and description of the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon.]
Likelihood = 0.02
We could go through each of the correspondences and see that the closest fit is usually the Bible, but other sources available to Joseph Smith in the 1820s provide additional relevant data.
The important question is what ancient civilization better fits the actual description in the text (and not a subjective interpretation of the text): the Olmec/Mayans or the Adena/Hopewell?
The latter, of course, have the benefit of supporting the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah.
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The article includes a section on
View of the Hebrews. The authors reiterate their outcome-oriented approach when they write,
Since View of the Hebrews was published before the Book of Mormon, an important outcome for our article to consider this book was to document in some detail what Joseph Smith might have known about the ancient Mesoamericans.
[What Joseph might have known about ancient Mesoamericans is only relevant to M2C.]
Every specific fact claim in View of the Hebrews that corresponded to a point of evidence mentioned in The Maya was not classified as “unusual” in our comparison of The Maya and the Book of Mormon. We did this because Joseph might have known about that fact from reading View of the Hebrews, and therefore it would be specific and detailed without being unusual.
Since View of the Hebrews also contains many claims that run contrary to facts in The Maya¸ this begs the question “Why did Joseph Smith not also include those erroneous fact claims from View of the Hebrews in the Book of Mormon?” Because we are attempting to be very rigorous in our analysis of the Book of Mormon, we do not account for the additional lack of probability involved with Joseph Smith choosing only correct fact claims from View of the Hebrews and not the incorrect ones.
The effect of ruling out these positive correspondences between The Maya and View of the Hebrews was to reduce the Bayesian significance of these particular correspondences and thus reduce their evidentiary weight in favor of the Book of Mormon by a factor of 59, or about two million. There were nine such correspondences, including temples, a great flood, ancestors coming from the west, roads, watchtowers, walled towns, many cities, volcanoes, and covenants.
It would require another detailed analysis to go through this segment. This part of the article is upside down because it focuses on M2C instead of the Adena/Hopewell. The authors are so focused on the correspondences with Coe's Maya book that they overlook the similarities between Ethan Smith's descriptions and those in the text of the Book of Mormon.
_____
In the comments, the authors explained their approach this way:
The main purpose of our paper was to compare the fact claims of the Book of Mormon with the fact claims of Dr. Coe’s book The Maya. We accept the fact claims in The Maya as true and compare them with corresponding fact claims in the Book of Mormon.
If the Book of Mormon is fiction, as you imply, then every fact claim in the Book of Mormon is a guess. We analyze statistically how likely it was that Joseph Smith “guessed” all 131 of his correct “guesses”. The odds that he guessed all these very specific details correctly is incredibly small…smaller than the ratio of the mass of the neutrino to the mass of the entire universe.
Thus the Book of Mormon is not fiction–it is authentic, factual and set in ancient Mesoamerica to a very high degree of probability.
We also compare two other books (Manuscript Found and View of the Hebrews) written about the same time as the Book of Mormon with Coe’s book. This is our “control”.
One of these two books (Manuscript Found) is obvious fiction, the other is not. Neither one of them correspond to the facts summarized in Dr. Coe’s book. But the Book of Mormon does correspond exceedingly well to those fact claims from Coe’s book.
Please, read our article in detail and try to be objective about the facts as summarized in Dr. Coe’s book and in the Book of Mormon.
My summation: this article fits well within the M2C citation cartel because it confirms the M2C bias. But looking at it from outside the M2C bubble, it is entirely subjective and meaningless.
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*eponymous means "of, relating to, or being the person or thing for whom or which something is named." It's a good name because many of the people involved with the Interpreter like to tell the rest of us what to think. We all appreciate scholarship, and we enjoy thought-provoking articles and insights, but we don't want them to create and enforce a particular point of view, especially when, like this article, it's easy to see how it is bias confirmation.
