An apparently atheistic (or, at least, agnostic) online critic of the claims of the Restoration—for reasons of my own, I’ll call him Isaac—makes the following argument in the form of a logical syllogism:

Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.

Of course, what Isaac is implicitly suggesting, is that the testimony of the Book of Mormon witnesses is of little or no real value.  If we buy his argument, the witnesses provide no real evidence for the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  Nor do they offer any real support for the existence of the plates from which it was supposedly translated.

Isaac’s syllogism is logically valid, which means that its conclusion really does follow from its premises.  Still, I reject the conclusion of his argument, and I think that others should reject it, too.  If you don’t already sense that something is wrong with Isaac’s reasoning, please permit me to offer some analogous arguments for the sake of discussion and to help to illustrate the problem:

Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence that Frankie stole Johnny’s bicycle is that three eyewitnesses testify to having seen him do it.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence that Frankie stole Johnny’s bicycle is notoriously unreliable.

So, in this instance, a critic might claim that the jury must acquit.  But wouldn’t we rebel at such a claim?  If three solid and sane observers who are possessed of normally functioning senses saw Frankie steal Johnny’s bicycle, isn’t that pretty strong evidence that Frankie did, in fact, steal the bike?  Barring some powerful reason to the contrary, doesn’t it seem sufficient to warrant a conviction?

Now, obviously, I had the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon in mind when I referred here to three eyewitnesses in the case of Frankie versus Johnny.  But, of course, there were actually eleven official witnesses of the Book of Mormon plates.  So let’s try another example:

Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence that Jones set fire to Brown’s car is that eleven eyewitnesses say that they saw him do precisely that.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence that Jones set fire to Brown’s car is notoriously unreliable.

Confronted with such a defense argument, would many jurors agree that there is no serious evidence for the accusation that Jones set fire to Brown’s car?  I doubt it.  Eleven eyewitnesses would seem to be quite convincing evidence.  More than enough to make the case.

But the eleven official Book of Mormon witnesses weren’t alone.  For my purposes here, I won’t count Joseph Smith as a witness, although he could be regarded as one.  (With the eleven others, that would make twelve official witnesses altogether, which may be a significant number.)  But we should definitely take note of such unofficial or informal witnesses as Emma Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, Katharine Smith Salisbury, William Smith, Mary Whitmer, and Josiah Stowell.  So let’s construct another argument that is analogous to the one from Isaac with which we began:

Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence that Elmo wore a propeller beanie and leopard-skin pants to the board meeting is that seventeen eyewitnesses say that they saw him at the board meeting wearing a propeller beanie and leopard-skin pants.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence that Elmo wore a propeller beanie and leopard-skin pants to the board meeting is notoriously unreliable.

It may seem very unlikely that anybody would attend a board meeting in such strange clothing.  Still, I can’t imagine that many people would flatly dismiss the testimony of seventeen eyewitnesses in the board meeting who saw Elmo there, wearing a propeller beanie and leopard-skin pants.  I can’t imagine anyone saying that there was simply no good reason to believe that he did it.

Still, every one of the sample arguments given above is logically valid.  So how can we justify rejecting a valid argument?  Just because we don’t like the conclusion?  Not at all:  In logic, the validity of a syllogism doesn’t make its argument sound or its conclusion true.  Logical validity alone doesn’t guarantee the truth of a syllogism.  To be sound, the conclusion not only needs to flow from the premises but the premises must both be true.  Consider this obviously unsound argument:

Premise 1. All mountains are in Switzerland.
Premise 2. Mount Everest is a mountain.
Conclusion. Therefore, Mount Everest is in Switzerland.

The argument is logically valid, but the conclusion is plainly false.  How can that be?  In this case, the conclusion is false because the first premise is not true.  Many mountains are undeniably located outside of Switzerland.

Let’s return now to Isaac’s contention that the witness testimonies fail to provide solid evidence for the Book of Mormon.  It went as follows:

Premise 1. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Premise 2. The best evidence for the Book of Mormon is eyewitness testimony.
Conclusion. Therefore, the best evidence for the Book of Mormon is notoriously unreliable.

Now, it so happens that I’m inclined to agree with Premise 2.  I certainly think that the testimonies of the Book of Mormon witnesses constitute very strong evidence.  And yet I object to Isaac’s conclusion.  But how can I object if his syllogism is valid?

The problem with Isaac’s argument lies in its first premise.  Am I saying that eyewitness testimony is always dependable?  Of course not.  But Isaac’s description of it as “notoriously unreliable” is unnuanced and overly broad, and Isaac himself would surely reject such a dismissal if he had no personal interest or agenda at stake.

I think that we can readily see that if we imagine a situation to which Isaac’s religious opinion is irrelevant.  Let’s say that, instead of setting Brown’s car on fire, Jones has taken a sledgehammer to Isaac’s own car—and that not only Isaac but seventeen of Isaac’s neighbors have watched Jones as he methodically smashes its windows, destroys its radiator, and, in a final burst of enthusiasm, slits its tires.  An investigating policeman comes and takes careful notes from all eighteen eyewitnesses.  They are clearly intelligent observers.  They all agree on what they saw.  Then, announcing that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, the policeman declines to arrest Jones.  There is, he says, no credible evidence that Jones destroyed Isaac’s car.  How patient would Isaac be with that?  How would you react?

There are, indeed, factors that can influence a witness’s ability to accurately describe a situation or to identify a suspect.  Was the witness under extreme stress?  For example, was a weapon involved?  A menacing gun or a knife might have distracted the witness’s attention.  If a mugger holds a pistol to your nose, you may well fail to notice the color of your assailant’s shirt or whether his hair was brown or black.  You’re focused on the gun.

Was the lighting poor?  Did the event happen quickly?  Did a witness have only a few seconds to observe what happened?  If the crime occurred in a poorly-lit area, happened very quickly, involved a gun, and even if it was committed by an individual of a different race than the witness, the value of eyewitness testimony may be compromised.  And how long has it been since the incident occurred about which the witness is testifying?  Human memory is fallible and, over time, it fades.  Sometimes, it even begins to “recall” things that didn’t happen at all.  This is especially obvious with children.  For example, my maternal grandmother lived in a different state and died when I was very young; I’m unsure whether I actually remember her or am just picturing her from a familiar photograph that I’ve seen all of my life.

And, in a criminal case, did the police do anything, inadvertently or not, to guide or to prejudice the witness?  Was there, say, an inappropriate suggestion of guilt?  In the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case of Perry v. New Hampshire, for instance, a witness, unsolicited by police, identified the defendant as the man that, from her apartment window, she had seen taking things out of a parked car.  But she made the identification only after she had seen him in police handcuffs.  Later, however, she could neither pick him out of a photo lineup nor describe him to investigators.  Although the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the defendant’s appeal, such an instance surely raises legitimate questions that must be considered.

In recent decades, a great deal of research has been conducted on the limitations of human perception and memory, and this has, quite properly, made us wary of the fallibility of witnesses.  But courts have never accepted eyewitness testimony without challenges and cross-examination.  No competent court or historian has ever simply assumed that eyewitness testimony is correct—not even in cases where the sanity, honesty, and sincerity of a witness is beyond reasonable dispute.  Rather, such testimony must be evaluated with caution.  And this is all the more obviously necessary when supremely important matters hinge upon it (e.g., the life of a defendant or the choice of a religious faith and worldview).  But the blanket dismissal of eyewitness testimony is every bit as incautious and extreme as the uncritical acceptance of it.

In the case of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, they have been subjected to very careful scholarly scrutiny over many decades.  Such evaluation extends back at least to Richard L. Anderson’s 1989 book “Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses,” which remains fundamentally important for any serious study of the subject.

Were they sane?  Plainly, yes.  Were they of sound character?  The historical record says that they were.  Were they threatened with a weapon?  No.  Did they have difficulty seeing the plates or the angel?  According to their repeated declarations, they did not.  Was their experience a mere flash, finished in seconds, such that they didn’t have a clear view?  No.  Did they wait for decades before relating what they had seen and heard?  No.  Accounts of their experience began to be written down and even published very soon thereafter; testimonies of the official witnesses have been included in every edition of the Book of Mormon since 1830.  Nor were they mere children, struggling to recall an incident from back when they were toddlers.  They cannot be dismissed because of the fragility of human memory, not least because there are so many of them who agree on what they experienced.  Does Isaac really want to argue that the Book of Mormon witnesses—all of them—were merely misremembering?

But can their claims perhaps be brushed aside because they had been “primed” to experience what they did, in the manner of police investigators prejudicing a witness?  This is where the informal or unofficial witnesses perhaps take on special value and importance: These other, additional, witnesses had definitely not been primed for what they encountered.  Katharine Smith hadn’t been expecting the plates to be suddenly handed to her for concealment from an encroaching mob.  Mary Whitmer was rather irritated at the preoccupied and neglectful menfolk at her house whom she was having to feed during the translation of the Book of Mormon.  She didn’t expect a mysterious stranger to show her the plates one day while she was out doing the family’s farmyard chores.  Josiah Stowell wasn’t primed for a glimpse of the plates.  And yet, when they were handed to him through a window and the cloth covering them suddenly fell away, he saw them.  Was Emma Smith in a heightened state of spiritual anticipation when she needed to move the covered plates in order to clean and dust her home?  Probably not.

Blanket dismissals of the Book of Mormon witnesses can claim neither the support of modern psychological science nor even that of common sense.  Plainly, they arise elsewhere.  They reflect resistance to the possibility that Joseph Smith and the witnesses might have been telling the truth.  After all, if accepted, that possibility imposes an obligation on the person who accepts it.

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In the docudrama “Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon,” experts from various backgrounds, including the courtroom, examine the credibility of the witnesses.  Along with a large number of short-video features on closely related topics, “Undaunted” is available for free streaming at “The Witnesses Initiative”.