Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser

Abstract: Dr. Michael Coe is a prominent Mesoamerican scholar and author of a synthesis and review of ancient Mesoamerican Indian cultures entitled The Maya. Dr. Coe is a prominent skeptic of the Book of Mormon, but there is in his book strong evidence that favors the Book of Mormon, which Dr. Coe has not taken into account. This article analyzes that evidence using Bayesian statistics. We compare positive and negative correspondences or points of evidence between the Book of Mormon and Dr. Coe’s book, a 1973 Dialogue article written by Dr. Coe, and and a series of Mormon Stories podcast interviews given by Dr. Coe to Dr. John Dehlin. There is overwhelming evidence that the Book of Mormon has physical, political, geographical, religious, military, technological, and cultural roots in ancient Mesoamerica. As a control, we have also analyzed two other books dealing with ancient American Indians.