Bayesian Statistical Analysis: The Probability the Book of Mormon Is Fiction Is 1 in 10^111

In 2019, two engineers — Bruce Dale, a University Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering at Michigan State University, and his son Dr. Brian Dale, a biomedical engineer — published a rigorous Bayesian statistical analysis testing the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Their paper, 'Joseph Smith: The World's Greatest Guesser,' was published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (Vol. 31, 2019, pp. 77-186).

The study begins from an unusual starting point: the work of Michael Coe, Yale University's Charles J. MacCurdy Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and one of the most prominent secular skeptics of the Book of Mormon. Coe is the author of 'The Maya,' one of the most widely read books on ancient Mesoamerica (now in its ninth edition), and has publicly stated that the Book of Mormon 'has little to do with early Indian cultures.'

The Dales took Coe's own book as their primary data source — deliberately choosing a work by a skeptic to eliminate any pro-Mormon bias. Using Bayesian statistical methodology, they identified 131 separate positive correspondences between the Book of Mormon and the descriptions of ancient Mesoamerican culture in Coe's book — physical, political, geographical, religious, military, technological, and cultural parallels.

They also systematically catalogued negative correspondences — areas where the Book of Mormon appears to diverge from what Coe describes — drawing not only from his book but from a 1973 Dialogue article and podcast interviews with Coe conducted by a prominent Church critic.

As a control, they applied the identical methodology to two other early 19th-century books that critics have long suggested as Joseph Smith's possible sources: Ethan Smith's 'View of the Hebrews' and Solomon Spalding's 'Manuscript Found.' Both control books were compared to 'The Maya' using the same Bayesian approach.

The results were striking:

- The Books of Mormon's probability of being fictional: approximately 1.03 × 10^-111 — that is, less than one chance in a thousand billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (1 followed by 111 zeros).

To grasp this number: the ratio of the mass of the lightest known particle (the neutrino, ~10^-36 kg) to the mass of the entire observable universe (~10^52 kg) is about 10^-88. That ratio — the neutrino to the universe — is still one hundred thousand billion billion times LARGER than the probability the Book of Mormon is fiction.

- Neither 'View of the Hebrews' nor 'Manuscript Found' showed anything like the Book of Mormon's alignment with Coe's description of ancient Mesoamerica. The two books most often cited as Joseph Smith's alleged sources were statistically disconfirmed as the basis for the Book of Mormon.

The authors posed a pointed question: 'How did Joseph Smith avoid breathing in so much bad air? Wrong guesses about ancient Indian cultures abound in Manuscript Found and View of the Hebrews. How did Joseph Smith manage to avoid making those wrong guesses? And how did Joseph Smith manage to guess so much that was overwhelmingly correct?' Using Coe's own scholarship as the evidentiary standard, the answer that emerges is that the Book of Mormon is not a guess at all.