The Burden of Proof, A Standard for Truth?

Burden of proof is an interesting concept. It is a way of blaming someone else if they aren't convinced. There are people who aren't even convinced that the earth is round. What if something is so bizarre that few can believe it? Or maybe it is really complex, and can't be easily summarized into layman's terms. Proof is defined as the evidence necessary to cause belief, but that is clearly somewhat subjective. What is sufficient to cause belief in some people is totally insufficient to cause belief in others.

When responding to the criticisms of critics in regard to the Book of Mormon, I have been told that I have the burden of proof. I don't believe that I do. I believe I have the burden of plausibility. Since we are talking about a historical text, and not a law of science, the proof is the plausibility. The plausibility of a non-history getting details correct is very small, unless the author is an expert historian. Joseph Smith clearly was not an expert historian. He was a backwoods farmer with a grade school education.

Truth isn't dependent upon ones ability to believe in God. The yardstick for truth is always plausibility. Truth answers more questions than it raises. The theories concerning the source of the Book of Mormon, all except the original, cause more questions than they answer. It isn't enough just to speculate that Joseph Smith was a con artist. Being a con artist does not make one an expert historian.

Take for example the Formosian Hoax. A man wrote about a place he had never been, and made up customs, dress, politics and religion, and people believed him until more information starting coming in about Formosa (Taiwan). Then it became apparent that he was wrong on all counts. He didn't get one thing right, as far as I can determine. This is the classic hoax to which to compare the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon made hundreds of very specific claims. The ability to cast doubt on any particular claim doesn't disprove the Book of Mormon. All the claims have to be examined and rated. We couldn't expect more than a 5% plausibility, if the Book of Mormon is a hoax. Joseph Smith was a poorly educated backwoods farmer, and the process of transmission was fairly public. Once a verse was dictated, it was recorded, and never thereafter edited until after the first publication. There is zero evidence in the eye witness statements of any kind of planning on the part of Joseph Smith. For all intents and purposes it was a stream of consciousness creative event with no planning what so ever. 5% reliability is almost an impossibility. That is the crux of the issue, because one only has to read it to see that the reliability or plausibility seems much higher than 5%.

Hugh Nibley argued that Arabia hasn't changed much in two thousand years, and that the first 40 pages of the Book of Mormon were the easiest to judge. Joseph Smith didn't know anything about Arabia. How much did he get right? He got everything right. The plausibility, by my estimation, is around 95%. That would make him the world's foremost Western authority on Arabia, for 1830, despite it being a place he had never been.

The lack of an exact geographic key makes New World claims difficult to evaluate, at least in respect to geography. So a reverse evaluation is necessary; the odds that Joseph Smith's narrative could fit any particular place with more than a 5% plausibility are slim, to say the least, particularly if it wasn't local to his immediate environment. Maybe a backwoods farmer is the perfect expert for the backwoods. Maybe he heard indian legends or something. If the narrative fit his backyard more than any other geographic location, it would make the claims suspect. But that hasn't happened. The plausibility of the Book of Mormon history being a history of precolumbian New York is no more than 10% in my estimation. Currently, the plausibility for somewhere in Mesoamerica is about 85% to 95%, by my calculation. You can question the 5% to 15% all day long and not convince me that it wasn't Mesoamerica. 15% plausibility is a complete impossibility for someone who has never been there, much less 85%. The culture, building practices, textiles, weapons and battle tactics are quite unexpected in Mesoamerica, even bizarre in some cases. Who would ever consider that armor should be made from cotton? Yet it was, and Cortez bought this armor for his men. But there doesn't appear to be any way for Joseph Smith to have known that that native armor was made from thick linen. The average college graduate today doesn't know that. The Book of Mormon is filled with little tiny details like that, and they are easy to miss. But they are there.

I believe I can prove 85% plausibility. At the very least, that should give someone pause before making claims against the historicity of the Book of Mormon.