Themis wrote:mentalgymnast wrote:My point in the original thread that ended up being split up was that we ought to look inside the Book of Mormon along with looking at the outside. And that was pretty much all I was suggesting.
But you were never willing to when I went into some detail about it, and now that Mikwit has given you even more, you take the cowards way out. If you really were honest you would do as you want everyone else to and engage the subject and answer the questions asked you in our posts. In particular Mikwut's which really goes into some detail of the issues. Maybe you could learn something, but knowing your history I won't bet on it.
And no one would take that bet. Why? Because he claims to have studied the matter "in depth", but then claims that he doesn't understand it, but will link to it and expect others to accept that it has real meaning. It doesn't. But that won't stop him from continually regurgitating this esoteric nonsense over and over again, because he is a wanna stay grasping at straws. What value do those "studies" offer? None. There are so many problems with them, that it boggles the mind that anyone would recommend wasting their valuable time reading that doggerel. The basic premise of stylometric analysis as mikwut explained is in this sentence: "It is only when translations of the same author are compared is there any hope for stylometric machine-learning methods to tell translator from translator (Rybicki 2012)" No one that I know of, has overcome this. Where are the other examples of the multiple authors they claim wrote the claimed original text that resided on the gold plates in an unknown language? No one can ever produce them. And there are massive problems with trying to attribute the Book of Mormon to authors other than Joseph Smith as mikwut pointed out:
For example, one of the reasons the Jocker's study is problematic is because Sidney Rigdon's supposed wordprint doesn't match his theology. The portions of the wordprint attributed to him in Jocker's study also attribute to him theology that is literal when his Campbellite theology was figurative. This dissonance is problematic for wordprint analysis which is secondary to known historical fact.
I again reiterate that Smith didn't want anyone to know anything about the Book of Mormon text and we never will other than that the text itself is a 19th century creation. It is not a "translation" of an ancient document or series of documents, the internal problems with the text have PROVEN this. What is the point of trying to prove Sidney Rigdon, or Oliver Cowdery had something to do with it? It just doesn't matter. I repeat, it just doesn't matter because the book is a FRAUD. It is painfully obvious, and more so every day with the advanced DNA evidence.
One cannot ignore what the text SAYS or supplant that with bogus "studies" analyzing the style of it, or the supposed "hebraisms" or chiasmus or other esoteric nonsense. It is an exercise in futility and will continue to be. The best explanation we have is that Smith wrote it. If he had help, so what? It doesn't matter because that can't trump that the text itself is a 19th century creation of Joseph Smith and whoever might have helped him (if anyone did).
The Book of Mormon is Smith's pseudepigrapha. As I said above, the Community of Christ realized this long ago and made took appropriate steps to accept it as such. The Utah branch continues to hold on to their pipe dream that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, but cannot overcome the evidence that proves it is not and thus they continue to knowingly perpetuate Smith's fraud on the world. That throws doubt on everything else they do, and they will continue to be looked upon as disingenuous until they admit the truth as did the Community of Christ.
MG knows this, but his wanna stay desire overcomes his desire to know the truth every time. His "shelf" can't support the weight he has placed on it and so he continues to deceive himself and tries to deceive others to try and stifle his own dissonance.
the great Darth J called it, way, way way back in 2010: