Ask: How could God have inspired it?

All Mormon children one time or another get this lesson. As you read the Book of Mormon, ask yourself: How could an uneducated young man, practically a boy, have written the Book of Mormon? 

Then they are given something like this list:

• 1. Could an uneducated boy come up with 531 pages in a few short months?
• 2. Could that boy understand ancient Hebrew literary writing styles?
• 3. Could that boy know so much about the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula?
• 4. Could that boy come up with about 180 new names in the Book of Mormon?
• 5. Could a boy be deceived by the Devil to write a volume that inspires morality?
• 6. Could that boy have accounted for the “Lost Sheep” mentioned in the bible?
• 7. How could that boy know decades before that non-LDS scholars would agree that Christ visited America?
• 8. Could that boy have accounted for the “sticks” referenced in Ezekiel 37:15-20?
• 9. Why would the other 12 witnesses of the gold plates lie or be part of an uncovered conspiracy?
• 10. Could that boy write a complex volume that doesn’t ever contradict itself?
• 11. Could a boy have conceived of the marvelous Moroni 10 promise?
• 12. Would tens of thousands of learned intellectuals follow the book written by that boy?
• 13. Could that boy have convinced an older man to finance the printing of that book?
• 14. Why would that boy, as a man, suffer persecution and eventually die for the book?

These questions give the illusion that Joseph Smith couldn't have written the Book of Mormon by himself without inspiration or God's help, therefore you are constrained to accept that it is a miracle and given by God.

Lists like this have been floating around Mormondom for decades or longer.  You can find arguments like these on many blogs (like this, or this).

Most of these are answered in one place; all of them have been addressed in various places.

I want to turn the tables on this Go-Fish game.

How could the supreme intelligence, God, have inspired prophets to write something as erroneous the Book of Mormon? 

If it were actually God-inspired, consider the following:

• 1. Would God have inspired ancient writers to waste so many engravings of 1,381 “it came to pass” phrases and other wordy words on gold plates swelling the book well past 500 pages when the main part of the story would actually fit in about 60-70% that space if edited by skilled or thoughtful editors, redactors and writers?

• 2. Would God have inspired ancient writers to include Shakespeare, and 15-19th century American style English idioms, including many errors of the KJV bible (1769 A.D. version) in a text purported to be written by ancient Hebrews in America?

• 3. Would God have inspired ancient writers to confuse United States history (including The Book of Napoleon (1809) and The Late War (1816)) and Calvinist doctrines in a supposed 2000 year old Amerindian text allegedly written by ancient Hebrews?

• 4. Would God have inspired ancient writers to use in their ancient America geography the modified names of cities surrounding 19th century Northeast America, confuse the actual location of the hill Cumorah, and lose location on the remains of tens of thousands of dead ancient warriors?

• 5. Would God have inspired ancient writers of 3 Nephi to contradict so much archaeology yet to be discovered (but known by God), leaving no evidence of the 3-day darkness, and the deaths of so many with the destruction of dozens of cities that God angrily smashed, drowned or burned when his son Jesus was crucified an ocean away?

• 6. Would God have inspired ancient writers to confuse the meaning of ‘horse’, ‘sheep’, ‘wheat’, ‘barely’, ‘elephants’, ‘cow/cattle’, ‘goats’, ‘honey bees’, ‘steel’, ‘coins’, the ‘wheel’, ‘silk’, ‘chariots’, ‘cimeters’, ‘bellows’,  and more from 2000 years ago in America?

• 7. Would God have inspired ancient writers to claim Jesus appeared in ancient America and transformed the culture so much that it spread across the land into a vast 200-year long Christian, industrious, peaceful society that eliminated sacrifice and racism, yet left not even a single smidgen of evidence of such unheard peaceful expansion?

• 8. Would God have inspired ancient writers to prophesy many times about the coming forth of the record to the indigenous descendants (Lamanites) of the book, and yet in modern times not a single tribe, clan or even DNA strand can be found from those descendants?

• 9. Would God have inspired ancient writers to put so many erroneous claims, anachronistic mistakes, and miscalculations about ancient America that dozens of Mesoamerican and Amerindian scholars come forward to witness that it is just imaginative fiction with no basis in real science?

• 10. Would God have inspired ancient writers to be so mistaken on ancient American populations of ‘Hebrews’, on technology like ‘submarines’traveling to ancient America, on mistakes about Hebrew temples, on Shiz's headless body and more impossible events?

• 11. Would God have inspired ancient writers to introduce so many linguistic issues into an ancient America text, including adding Deutero and Trito Isaiah texts into plates purported to be about 2600 years old, when the Deutero and Trito Isaiah texts weren’t actually written until 100-200 years later (2400y.a. (trito) or 2500y.a. (deutero))?

• 12. Would God have inspired ancient writers to create an ancient American work so dull that one of modern America’s foremost writers (Mark Twain) would call it “chloroform in print”?

• 13. Would God have inspired the “translator” of the ancient record to endeavor to sell its copyright and all rights to the book in Canada, yet fail to get anyone truly interested in the book because it was fraught with grammar issues and boring stories?

• 14. Would God have inspired the ‘translator’ of this ancient record to rarely quote from the book in his many hundreds of lectures, and when he was imprisoned over charges of polygamy or of treason against the state, instead of using the ancient text to convince his imprisoners, he stealthily snuck in a gun and fired shots at his enemies?

Anyone giving me their list of "Could a boy have written it" needs to explain away my list.

You can also ask, how could an educated person have made so many mistakes writing the Book of Mormon and attempt to pass it off as a true history?

And so the argument falls...