Estimating the Evidence, Episode 23: On Conclusions

Intro/FAQ ⎜ Episode 1 ⎜ Episode 2 ⎜ Episode 3 ⎜ Episode 4 ⎜ Episode 5 ⎜ Episode 6 ⎜ Episode 7 ⎜ Episode 8 ⎜ Episode 9 ⎜ Episode 10 ⎜ Episode 11 ⎜ Episode 12 ⎜ Episode 13 ⎜ Episode 14 ⎜ Episode 15 ⎜ Episode 16 ⎜ Episode 17 ⎜ Episode 18 ⎜ Episode 19 ⎜ Episode 20 ⎜ Episode 21 ⎜ Episode 22 ⎜ Episode 23

[Editor’s Note: This is the last in a series of 23 essays summarizing and evaluating Book of Mormon-related evidence from a Bayesian statistical perspective. See the FAQ at the end of the introductory episode for details on methodology.]

The TLDR

After summarizing the strongest pieces of evidence we’ve considered in our statistical journey, we discuss what we can conclude from our Bayesian analyses. Though that evidence doesn’t represent unassailable proof for the Restoration and all it entails, what it does is show how belief in an authentic Book of Mormon can be reasonable, which supports further reasoned belief in God and Christ. But reasons to believe do not necessarily correspond with reasons to live by the teachings of the Church in the modern day. The Book of Mormon can help provide those latter reasons, but the best way to know their truth is to live them. Figuring out how to do that is likely to be a better use of our time and energy than continually re-appraising Book of Mormon authenticity.

NET OVERALL EVIDENCE SCORE: 69 orders of magnitude in favor of authenticity.

The Narrative

When last we left you, our ardent skeptic, you had finished turning over the possibilities of finding yet another book of scripture, one that came from the same mind that allegedly produced the one that still sat in your pack. But as intriguing as those possibilities are, they aren’t what you came here to do. You turn to the clerk as you’re about to leave the store. “Say, have you seen that young man about, the one peddling a book?”

The clerk gives a small sigh and a roll of his eyes. “The one with the golden bible? He was in here this morning, though I’m not sure what’s keeping him in town. Word is he’s got a room at the inn for one more night.” The sigh turned quickly to a grin. “If you want to lash him with that silver tongue of yours, I’m betting you can still catch him.”

You return the grin halfheartedly and bid the clerk a quick farewell with a tip of your hat. Your thoughts the last few days had given you plenty to lash with, though some of them might turn to lash your own softening hide. You have no idea what you want say to the young man, but you know you want to say it quickly. It only takes a few minutes to guide your wagon to the town’s only inn.

The innkeeper seems similarly annoyed at the presence of his book-wielding guest. “I’m not sure why you’d want to spare more than two words for the man, but you’ll get your chance if you’re willing to wait. He took his golden bible off on some fool’s errand, but said he’d be back after lunch.”

And so you take a refreshingly comfortable sit in one of the small foyer’s upholstered chairs. A little time to sit and wait is just what you need. You’d considered never actually finishing the last few pages of the book itself—you feel that you’d read quite enough to make up your mind one way or another—but to put it down at this point would grate at every part of your literature-loving soul. You ignore the quizzical look on the innkeeper’s face as you pull out this apparently infamous “golden bible,” and quickly find the place where you’d left off.

You’re somewhat surprised to read yet more words from Moroni, supposed son of the book’s namesake, as he’d already signed off several chapters back. His unexpected return reminded you of novels you’d read with a few too many endings. You can’t help but find this aside interesting, even if it mostly consists of administrative instructions for the operation of the church.

But it’s the last chapter that really gets your attention:

And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you.

It strikes you that, despite your intense reading, you’d been too busy trying to figure out whether the book was actually authentic to pay much attention to what the book was actually saying. You suppose this is probably your last chance to get a sense of what this Moroni actually wanted you to do.

Go on Moroni, you think to yourself. Hit me with your best shot.

I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men…

You almost have to stifle an angry, mirthless laugh at that line. If there was a God, you hadn’t seen much in the way of mercy from him in some time. Had he been merciful to your wife and children, lost now these many years? Had he even been merciful to the people in this book, who’d been slaughtered to the last man? How? you exclaim to yourself. How has the Lord been merciful?

I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God…And again, I would exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God.

What power, what gifts could he be talking about here? The gift of a short, cruel existence with an often painful and merciless end? If there was something that he’d been given from God, he’d been denying for a bit now without consequence. These miracles and spiritual gifts he went on to refer to, and that the apostle Paul had already spoken of so eloquently—what evidence had there been for them in those long centuries besides the quaking you’d seen at camp meetings? How? you ask again. How can I not deny the gifts of God?

I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that every good gift cometh of Christ.

This one seems manifestly untrue to you. Sure, God could be responsible for many of the good things he’d seen and experienced, but there are so many things in your life that needn’t have come from an all-powerful God or benevolent savior–so many things that humanity had given themselves without God’s help. How? How could all good gifts come from Christ?

You realize, though, that you’d missed one as your eye had scanned the page. You move up a few verses to find another exhortation:

I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

At that one you stop. You think back to everything you had read, and through all that there was one thing you couldn’t deny—this was a strange book, a book that you had a hard time seeing a complete and ready explanation for. Could Smith have really pushed this thing whole cloth out of his head? You’re no longer nearly as sure as you were when you first cracked open the book’s pages.

But you wonder at what Moroni is asking you to do here. You’d already been weighing the evidence at your disposal—surely that was the best way to draw a conclusion about the book, rather than trying to receive a subjective answer to prayer. What value could that have that the evidence itself couldn’t provide? How? The question keeps pounding in your mind. How could he manifest that truth?

I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away.

That was an interesting one. One thing that had puzzled you, even when you had faith, is how the vengeful God of the Old Testament could square with the compassionate, forgiving God of the New. The two seemed at such odds that the gap could never be crossed. Yet your mind, almost of its own accord, casts back to the book. This book purported to span both the Old and New testaments, connecting them in a way that intrigued you, with elements of both Gods present and yet unified in its pages. How? you wonder, more inquisitive than insistent. How can those Gods be the same god?

I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?

That sentence hits you with a power you hadn’t expected. That power turns inward on you, leading you to a thought that feels at the same time foreign and familiar. If there was a God, and there was a Moroni, how would you see yourself when you got to that judgment bar? Would you be happy with what you saw, with the person you are, standing exposed in the full light of truth? That was a question you hadn’t asked yourself in a long time, and it seemed relevant regardless of whether or not he actually would come face-to-face with Moroni. How? you ask, now with a very different flavor of ‘how’. How would I be seen at the bar of God?

I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift…yeah come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace you may be perfect in Christ.

As you read those words you can almost feel the impossibilities underlying them. You realize that you don’t know how perfection could be possible, how someone could really deny themselves of all ungodliness, how anyone could give all of their might, mind, and strength. Never, even in your most spiritual of mindsets, did you see a path for that to come to pass. Humanity was just too flawed, too fallen.

You expect your thoughts to stop there, but they don’t. It seemed impossible, yes. But so too did the idea that this book, after all you’d seen, was the product of a single nineteenth-century mind. If you lived in a universe where that was possible, you lived in a universe where anything was possible. If Joseph could reach that far above every indication of his own natural ability, why couldn’t humanity reach the heights that Moroni spoke of, through the grace of a loving God?

It’s also possible, of course, that you’re just missing something, that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this book that you just can’t see. But, then again, maybe there’s something within the heart of man, within the mind of God—within your own heart and your own mind—that you can’t see either.

How? you ask, one final time—it was a plea, almost a prayer. How could I—how could anyone—be perfected in Christ?

The plea echoes through you as you sit, waiting for your quarry to arrive.

The Commentary

Congratulations on reaching the end of our little journey. The evidence, for our purposes, is now in. Let’s take a look at how that evidence has shaken out over the last 22 episodes:

The orange bars show us the estimated strength of the evidence presented in each episode. Remember, we don’t mean strength in the sense that evidence and the conclusions drawn from it are unassailable and uncontroversial—we mean it in purely in the sense that the evidence we have, as little and uncertain as it might be in some cases, differs from what we’d expect—the (metaphorical) distance away from what we would otherwise assume to be the case under the conditions of our hypotheses. In that sense we can see quite clearly that the Book of Mormon is unexpected. Tallying all of our evidence up—summing all the scores for each piece of evidence, both positive and negative—gives us an overall evidence score of 69—increasing the probability of an authentic Book of Mormon by a nearly unfathomable number of times. We can also see where the strongest and most unusual evidence seems to lie. I’ve laid them out in the table below from the strongest to weakest. (See the Appendix for a brief summary of each analysis.)

Evidence

Evidence Score

(P) Early Modern English

20+

(P) Trajectory

20

(P) Chiasmus

14

(P) Uto-Aztecan

14

(P) Witnesses

8

(N) Book of Abraham

-8

(P) Dictation

5

(P) Stylometry

5

(N) Modern Themes

-5

(N) King James Variants

-4

(N) Archaeology

-4

(P) Consistent Geography

4

(P) Onomasticon

4

(P) Page Count

3

(N) DNA

-3

(P) Nahom

2

(N) Transoceanic

-2

(N) Imperfect Prophets

-2

(N) First Vision

-1

(N) Plagiarism

-1

(N) Politics

Contents