Author: Jonathan Neville

One obstacle to consensus is lack of awareness of bias.

M2C is so pervasive that most LDS scholars don’t even realize how deeply it has permeated their worldview. Like a fish that doesn’t know what water is until it is caught and yanked into the atmosphere, LDS scholars take M2C for granted and never challenge their assumptions.

I’ve shown examples of this from the Joseph Smith Papers before, but it’s been a while so it’s time to look at them again, along with some new examples.

The first one is a map. You can see it here:

http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/media/maps

This is the map and explanation:

Notice the heading: “Mission to the Indians.”

The headings to D&C 28, 30, and 32, which were the revelations calling these brethren on their mission, reflect the language used in the revelations.

We don’t read about a mission to the Indians. Instead, we read this:

D&C 28 –  8–10, Oliver Cowdery is to preach to the Lamanites;

D&C 30 – 5–8, Peter Whitmer Jr. is to accompany Oliver Cowdery on a mission to the Lamanites

D&C 32 – 1–3, Parley P. Pratt and Ziba Peterson are called to preach to the Lamanites and to accompany Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer Jr.

The heading to D&C 32 even says this:

Great interest and desires were felt by the elders respecting the Lamanites, of whose predicted blessings the Church had learned from the Book of Mormon. 

According to M2C, the “real” Lamanites are the Mayans, who have little genetic or anthropological connection to the tribes in the Northeastern U.S.

Yet the Lord designated the tribes in New York, Ohio and the Midwest as Lamanites. To this day, these are the only people formally designated by revelation as Lamanites.

Notice how, in the explanation of the map, the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers decided to put the scriptural language in quotations. This frames it as a folk tradition, as if to say, the so-called Lamanites. Meanwhile, the heading, in much larger print, identifies the people simply as Indians.

I realize this may seem a subtle, nit-picking complaint, but it is typical of how the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers are rewriting Church history to accommodate M2C.

I still hear people say that Book of Mormon geography doesn’t matter.

What they’re really saying is it doesn’t matter to them. But they’re saying that because they have a spiritual gift that others don’t have, and we can’t legitimately expect everyone to have the same spiritual gifts (as Moroni explained in Moroni 10).

The teachings in the Book of Mormon are powerful. Even people who don’t accept the book as divine recognize this. (The same is true of the Bible; even nonbelievers recognize the power of Christ’s teachings.) But many books contain teachings powerful enough to change lives. What makes the Book of Mormon unique is its provenance; i.e., if it relates an authentic history of real ancient people, it could only have come to us through the power of God.

Living here in Africa (Mauritius), we are surrounded by people of many faiths and no faith. Statistically, the majority of people are Hindu. There are about an equal number of Christians and Muslims, plus lots of other faiths.

Every religious believer has good reason to believe his/her faith. After all, God loves all His children and blesses their lives in untold ways. Religious believers recognize God’s involvement and consider it confirmation of their beliefs–confirmation of the biases they inherited from their parents and their culture.

They all have religious leaders and holy books. They have holy buildings and ceremonies, rituals, commemorations, etc. All of these frame their interactions with God and contribute to their confirmation bias.

The Book of Mormon was uniquely designed by God to break through the confirmation bias because, if authentic, it is the sole book that could only have come from God. It is a tangible miracle. 

The prophets specifically tied the Book of Mormon to the real world through the New York Cumorah as evidence of its divine authenticity.

But now that the M2C intellectuals have repudiated the prophets and severed that tie to the New York Cumorah, they have created a serious obstacle for people who seek the truth. 
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We can all stipulate that Book of Mormon geography doesn’t matter to some people, but that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t (or even shouldn’t) matter to anyone. And, as we’ll see, the percentage of people to whom geography doesn’t matter is minuscule compared with the percentage of people to whom it matters a lot.

This post makes two assertions:

1. Establishing divine authenticity is fundamental for widespread acceptance of the Book of Mormon.

2. M2C has debilitated the effort to establish divine authenticity. (I’ll explain this in the second part, tomorrow.)
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The divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon is what distinguishes it from every other evidence of God known to humanity. If the Book of Mormon is an authentic history of real people, then it could only have been revealed by God to Joseph Smith. There is no other coherent explanation.

Early detractors recognized this and tried to persuade people that Joseph Smith, alone or with the aid of others, composed the Book of Mormon or copied it from another source; i.e., that it was fiction.

In response, Joseph Smith recognized that divine authenticity is essential.* He taught his fellow travelers during Zion’s Camp that the Hopewell mounds and artifacts they contained were evidence of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. He and Oliver Cowdery wrote Letter VII to firmly anchor the Hill Cumorah to real-world New York.

Divine authenticity was an important element in the success of the British Mission in the 1840s. It has been an important element in the growth of the Church ever since–that is, until M2C prevailed.
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People who say the geography doesn’t matter come from one of the following two perspectives:

1. Those who claim the Book of Mormon is true regardless of whatever evidence of its authenticity can be demonstrated. They accept the Book of Mormon purely on their faith that it is true.

2. Those who claim the Book of Mormon is false regardless of whatever evidence of its authenticity can be demonstrated. They reject the Book of Mormon purely on their faith that it is false.

The second group is a topic for another day. In this post, I’ll address the first group.
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Those who believe the Book of Mormon and who say the geography doesn’t matter claim to have a spiritual testimony given to them by the Holy Ghost as promised in Moroni 10:4-5. That’s awesome. Good for them.

But what these people seem to forget is they are the recipients of a spiritual gift of exceedingly great faith (Moroni 10:11).

Not everyone has that same gift.

In fact, most people apparently don’t have that gift, at least not with respect to the Book of Mormon.

Most Mormons know people who have read the Book of Mormon and have prayed about it but have not received a witness that it is true. I know several such people myself. Yet others gain such a spiritual witness from reading just the first verse, or a few chapters. How can that be?

I think it’s because people have different spiritual gifts.

Moroni himself warns us against assuming everyone has the same spiritual gifts. Moroni 10:6-18.

The Holy Ghost can make the truth of all things known to people through whichever gift they have, but the spiritual gifts of wisdom and knowledge seem to be more widely available than the gift of exceedingly great faith.

For this reason, the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon, established by actual physical evidence, matters to most people.

Because the prophets have consistently and persistently taught the New York Cumorah, that tie to the real world is essential for establishing the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

[Note: Even the spiritual witness approach has problems. I have a Christian friend who read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it. He said he received a spiritual witness that it was true, but, he said, that was only to be expected because the Book of Mormon contains so many passages from the Bible. He felt the Spirit witnessed the truth of the Bible, not the truth of the non-Biblical passages in the Book of Mormon.]
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This seems obvious when we realize that there are maybe 10 million people out of 7,400 million in the world who have the gift of accepting the Book of Mormon on faith alone. (10 million is an estimate of the number of LDS who actually accept the Book of Mormon as authentic.) This means only 1 out of 740 people in the world have the spiritual gift of exceedingly great faith in the Book of Mormon, an obviously very rough estimate.**

As mentioned previously, Joseph Smith himself pointed to the mounds and artifacts in the Midwestern United States–Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois–as evidence of its divine authenticity. He never once directly or indirectly linked anywhere outside North America to the lands of the Book of Mormon. (True, some of his associates did, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Without the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon, demonstrated by actual artifacts and the ruins of the Nephite and Jaredite culture right where Joseph identified them, there’s not a lot left for people to believe in if they don’t have the specific gift of exceedingly great faith.

Therefore, the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon is the key feature that differentiates Mormonism from all other religions.***

Consequently, when we promote M2C, we’re going to have a problem because we are contradicting the prophets, and we’re assembling a list of “correspondences” that are, at best, illusory. That’s what we’ll discuss tomorrow.

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*Joseph himself recognized the importance of evidence when he explained that the mounds and artifacts in Ohio were evidence of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. He wrote to Emma about this and discussed it with his companions on Zions Camp. About a year later, Joseph and Oliver Cowdery reiterated this point when they wrote Letter VII to explain the literal reality of the final battles taking place at, and the depository of records being concealed within, the Hill Cumorah in New York. Letter VII was republished many times during Joseph’s lifetime, including in New York City just two days after he was killed in Carthage. His successors have reiterated the New York Cumorah ever since.

**1 out of 740 is accurate, but misleading because the vast majority of the 740 have never even heard of the Book of Mormon. How could they have faith in something they’ve never heard of?

Here in Mauritius, there are about 150 active members in a population of 1.2 million. That’s an even lower percentage than Mormons in the world as a whole.

I think it’s fair to say that most people in the Americas and Europe have heard of the Mormons. Same with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Oceana overall. That’s over 2 billion people. Even if we consider that about 10 million out of 2,000 million have accepted the Book of Mormon after having at least heard about it, that’s an amazingly small percentage.

***
Scott Adams explains the dilemma of religious belief in the context of Q. One factor he doesn’t list is when there is a tangible miracle–the Book of Mormon.

If you watch the video, think of M2C whenever he says Q.

https://www.pscp.tv/w/1ypKdYXbRlgGW

Here’s another of the signs on the memorial in Palmyra, New York. I’d like to see all of these statements on display in the Hill Cumorah visitors center. Even better, they should be mounted along the path between the parking lot on the top of the Hill Cumorah and the statue of Moroni.

In the meantime, every visitor to the Palmyra area who drives between the Sacred Grove and the Hill Cumorah passes by this memorial and at least has one chance to learn what the prophets have taught about the Hill Cumorah in New York.

Any day now, or perhaps not until the October General Conference, the Church is going to announce a 14th Article of Faith:

“We believe that scholars at BYU and CES have been hired by modern prophets to guide the Church; that the teachings of said scholars are not to be questioned or challenged; and that said scholars are empowered by God to declare that the teachings of dead prophets were merely their own opinions and were false, inasmuch as they contradict the teachings of said scholars.”
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Our M2C intellectuals haven’t waited for the formal announcement. They’ve been teaching this new Article of Faith to their students for decades.

One absurd result surfaced within the last few days. A couple of bright M2C intellectuals claimed the North American setting of the Book of Mormon is fraudulent and that all of the artifacts used to support that setting have been proven to be frauds.

In reality, federal and state museums across the United States are filled with authentic artifacts taken from the very mounds that Joseph Smith himself said contained proof of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.

Visitors today observe headplates, breastplates, woven textiles, pearls, copper, gold and silver artifacts, barley, and other items just as described in the text.

But the followers of the M2C intellectuals know nothing of this because they have been deliberately misled.

Instead, they are firm in their faith in their M2C leaders. They believe the only evidence of the Book of Mormon is in Mesoamerica. They have Mesomania because this is what they’ve been taught by their BYU/CES professors and the members of the M2C citation cartel, particularly those involved with Book of Mormon Central Censor.
http://bookofmormoncensor.blogspot.com/
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Book of Mormon Censor has a curated archive of material related to the Book of Mormon. The curators studiously enforce M2C by censoring any material that contradicts M2C and making sure to include articles that criticize non-M2C theories.

They also promote the idea that the North American setting is based on fraudulent artifacts. At or near the top of their most popular items is an article on the Michigan relics. Another is an article that seeks to relegate the Zelph revelation to an odd folk tradition. They teach their followers that the prophets were wrong about the New York Cumorah, that the only evidence of the Book of Mormon is fraudulent, and that anyone who contradicts M2C is uneducated, ignorant, and disreputable.

As BYU Professor John L. Sorenson, a leading M2C scholar, wrote in Mormon’s Codex (Deseret Book, 2015), p. 688:

“There remain Latter-day Saints who insist that the final destruction of the Nephites took place in New York, but any such idea is manifestly absurd. Hundreds of thousands of Nephites traipsing across the Mississippi Valley to New York, pursued (why?) by hundreds of thousands of Lamanites, is a scenario worthy only of a witless sci-fi movie, not of history.”

Among these “Latter-day Saints who insist that the final destruction of the Nephites took place in New York” are President Marion G. Romney, Elder James E. Talmage, Elder LeGrand Richards, and many others who declared, in their writings and in General Conference, this “idea” that our M2C scholars have denounced as “manifestly absurd.”  

Now, with the 14th Article of Faith, our M2C intellectuals are setting the Church straight.
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No doubt, Book of Mormon Censor has a “Kno-Why” prepared in advance and ready to publish that will explain the 14th Article of Faith to members everywhere.
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The 14th Article of Faith should come as no surprise. The M2C intellectuals have already edited the Wentworth letter (the source of the original 13 Articles of Faith), so how difficult would it be to edit it a little more by simply adding a 14th Article of Faith?

You can see their handiwork here:

https://www.lds.org/topics/articles-of-faith?lang=eng

Part way down the page, you will see this:

Click on it that link and it will take you here:

https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-joseph-smith/chapter-38?lang=eng&_r=1

In the fourth paragraph from the top you’ll see what Joseph asked:

Notice: Joseph said he translated the record “through the medium of the Urim and Thummim.” He didn’t say he translated it with a stone in a hat.

We’ll discuss this again in the upcoming post, “The Tragedy of Saints.”

In today’s post, we’ll discuss how, IMO, the M2C intellectuals have misled Church leaders by censoring Letter VII and related material that supports the New York Cumorah.
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First, though, I wanted to mention that we’ve moved to Africa. I have a separate blog about what we’re doing: https://mormoninmauritius.blogspot.com/
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A few months ago, I met someone in downtown Salt Lake City. When we exchanged names, he said, “Oh, you’re the Letter VII guy.”

His comment reflects the tragic reality that, until recently, hardly anyone in the Church today had ever heard of Letter VII–or any of President Oliver Cowdery’s other important essays on Church doctrine and history. (I call these the original Gospel Topics Essays, as I’ll explain in an upcoming post.) This is a big change from the first one hundred years of the Church. President Cowdery’s letters were well known because they were often republished and quoted, as I’ve shown on my other blog,
http://www.lettervii.com/.

The censorship of Letter VII and related material has been gradual, but effective.

In the last few years as I’ve been writing and speaking about Letter VII and related issues, I have yet to meet a single audience member or reader who had ever heard of Letter VII previously, apart from a handful of LDS scholars in the citation cartel who would prefer that these letters remain obscure and unknown. In fact, one well-known LDS author told me he had seen a quotation from Letter VII regarding Cumorah, accompanied by this attribution: “author unknown.”

Until recently, no Church leader I’m aware of, local or general, had ever heard of Letter VII. This includes Stake Presidents, Temple Presidents, and General Authorities. Most of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency had never heard of Letter VII.

Now, they have.

To paraphrase one of our hymns, “The veil over Letter VII is beginning to burst.” 
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Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh as Othello and Iago respectively, from the 1995 film version of Othello.

The M2C intellectuals remind me of Iago, the great Shakespearean character. If you’re unfamiliar with him, look him up.

Here are some of the things our M2C intellectuals are whispering in the ears of the youth of the Church.

For decades, they’ve been whispering these same things in the ears of the leaders of the Church and in the ears of the Saints generally. You can read most of this in the literature of the M2C citation cartel. The rest you’ll see on their blogs and in their conversations.

– “Joseph Smith was confused, naive, and ignorant.”
– “President Cowdery was speculating when he wrote it was a fact that the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites took place in the mile-wide valley west of the hill Cumorah in New York.”
– “Joseph Smith speculated about Book of Mormon geography and adopted a false tradition about the New York Cumorah.”
– “Joseph Smith misled the Church by having Letter VII republished in every Church newspaper during his lifetime,” or, the corollary, “Joseph Smith had no idea what President Cowdery wrote, what was in his own journal, what his brothers were publishing, or what Benjamin Winchester and Parley P. Pratt were publishing.”
– “In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith learned about Book of Mormon geography from a popular travel book that caused him to change his mind from what Moroni told him.”
– “All the prophets who have affirmed the New York Cumorah, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference, were merely expressing their own opinions and they were wrong.”
– “Contrary to the teachings of the prophets, there are actually two Cumorahs; i.e., the false one in New York and the real one somewhere in Mexico.”
– “Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, Heber C. Kimball and others were wrong about Joseph and Oliver and others visiting Mormon’s depository in the hill Cumorah.”
– “David Whitmer was wrong about meeting one of the three Nephites who said he was taking the Harmony plates to Cumorah.”
– “Lucy Mack Smith was wrong when she quoted Joseph referring to Cumorah even before he obtained the plates.”
– “Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery were wrong when they reported that Moroni himself said the hill in New York was named Cumorah anciently.”
– “The ‘hill in New York’ cannot be the hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 because [insert any of the reasons here, including such gems as “because it’s not near volcanoes,” “because it’s too cold there,” “because it’s too far from Mesoamerica,” and “because the hill in New York cannot contain a chamber for the depository of Nephite records.”]
– “Don’t read the writings of the prophets about Cumorah. They will only confuse you. Instead, rely on the work of the qualified intellectuals. They are hired by the modern prophets to guide the Church. You cannot question what these intellectuals teach because they speak for God, especially when they teach that the ‘dead prophets’ are wrong.”
– “The best way to understand the Book of Mormon is by referring to a fantasy map prepared by CES or BYU.”
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Iago was successful because he was so deeply trusted by Othello.

The M2C intellectuals have also successfully promulgated M2C because they are so deeply trusted by their students, by Church members generally, and by Church leaders.

I know because I trusted these M2C intellectuals myself for decades.

I’ve said many times that I think the M2C intellectuals have good intentions. They honestly believe that Joseph Smith taught the Mesoamerican theory through anonymous articles in the Times and Seasons. Because New York is so far from Mesoamerica, they concluded that Joseph either never believed Cumorah was in New York or was wrong about that, as have been all the other prophets. The M2C intellectuals still think they are dong the right thing by changing Church history and censoring the early references to Cumorah. Because they honestly believe their M2C bias is correct, they have convinced themselves that they are justified in confirming that bias by citing illusory “correspondences” between Mesoamerican and Nephite culture and teaching M2C to their students.

All of this is basic human psychology, completely understandable. But IMO, it’s not excusable because they are teaching that the prophets were wrong and they are not giving the youth, the leaders, or the Saints generally both sides of the story, including all the facts to let them make informed decisions.

Next, let’s look at how this all works.
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People constantly ask me, “Why don’t the Brethren either affirm or repudiate the New York Cumorah? Why are we left to choose between the M2C scholars and the teachings of the past prophets?”

Let’s frame those questions by considering how the Church operates.

The prophets (members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve) are incredibly busy. One of them told me not long ago that he “lives on an airplane.” They don’t have enough time to read everything they’re supposed to read, let alone things they would like to read. They rely on their staff to filter the important from the unimportant.

All organizations operate this way. Lower-level people and groups necessarily make filtering decisions in the process of accomplishing their tasks. They don’t present all the facts and all the possible decisions to their superiors because their job is to filter out unimportant or irrelevant facts, proposals and considerations.

The risk is that they end up making decisions on behalf of their superiors because they filter out facts that they deem insignificant or erroneous, but that their superiors would find important if they learned about them. IOW, the staff constrains and guides the options for their superiors, preventing their superiors from making fully informed decisions.

That’s what the M2C scholars do to their students in CES and BYU, and that’s what the M2C employees do to Church leaders.

It turns out that there are several checkpoints in the Church hierarchy that filter out material that contradicts M2C.
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One of the best examples was the censorship of a key portion of the Wentworth letter in the Joseph Smith manual, which we discussed here.

In that case, there was a leader of the committee who decided to censor the passage, despite Joseph Smith’s express request at the beginning of the letter that it be published “entire, ungarnished, and without misrepresentation.”

As I pointed out, Joseph didn’t need to worry about Mr. Wentworth. He needed to worry about the M2C Correlation Department. I’m told this edited version was presented for approval with no discussion of the significance of disregarding Joseph’s specific directions regarding its publication. Busy Church leaders reviewing the manual hardly have time to examine every ellipsis and citation.

Here’s another example. Some months ago a committee was working on a formal position paper about Book of Mormon geography. The wording included a statement that the Church has never taken a position on Book of Mormon geography. When we pointed out that, to be accurate, the statement should read, “Except for the New York Cumorah, the Church has never taken a position on Book of Mormon geography,” the Seventy in charge laughed and said he would never propose such a thing to the Brethren.

In both cases, important decisions were made at lower levels. I could give more examples specifically related to the geography issue, but those two suffice to illustrate how effectively the M2C intellectuals have “guided” the Church by presenting only one side of the question, by presenting only M2C artwork for approval, M2C displays in the visitors centers, etc.

Now you know why you never see the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah on display in the visitors centers–not even in the Hill Cumorah visitors center in New York.

All the prophets’ teachings about Cumorah have been censored.
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Some time ago President Oaks addressed Church employees and made the point that there have been problems with staff preparing proposals ready for implementation without counseling with their file leaders or providing all perspectives, including pro and con views, to educate the decision makers.

It is difficult for me to imagine one of the Twelve or the First Presidency formally repudiating their predecessors regarding the New York Cumorah–assuming they know what their predecessors have taught.

However, recall my post when I showed how the Correlation Department tells inquirers that the Brethren have never taken a position on Book of Mormon geography. The form letter they send intentionally conflates the separate issues of Cumorah and the rest of the geography, as we discussed here:
http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-correlation-department-promotes-m2c.html

If the only thing the Brethren are ever told about this issue is that all of their predecessors have merely speculated about the geography issues, and if they are never told about Letter VII and the other specific prophetic affirmations of the New York Cumorah (let along the scientific facts that corroborate what the prophets have taught), we can’t expect them to do their own independent research.

They are too busy.

And they trust their staff.

M2C academic cycle

This is why the academic cycle is so dangerous, IMO. Thanks to the prevalence of M2C within CES and BYU, most Church employees assume M2C is correct and the prophets are wrong about the New York Cumorah. Naturally, they confirm their M2C bias when they prepare materials for the Brethren.

[Note: This is not a new problem. Back in 1842 Nauvoo, Wilford Woodruff observed that Joseph Smith barely had time to sign his name to documents others prepared for him. Yet now everyone assumes Joseph approved not only of things he actually signed (which he apparently didn’t have time to read), but he approved of anonymous writings, merely because they appeared in the Times and Seasons. The press of events that left Joseph with so little time is is one reason why the traditional belief that Joseph actually edited the Times and Seasons–the belief at the core of M2C–is ludicrous.]

The examples I cited above and many others show that the citation cartel is not confined to academic publications such as BYU Studies and web pages such as FairMormon, although those are two of the principal promoters of M2C. The M2C citation cartel has educated most, if not all, Church employees and leaders. Combined with the claim by the M2C intellectuals that they have been hired to “guide the Church,” it’s no wonder that M2C has permeated BYU, CES, and COB.

But that’s not enough for them. As recently as yesterday, members and supporters of the M2C citation cartel continue to misrepresent the views of those who still believe the prophets’ teachings about the New York Cumorah and the scientific evidence that supports the prophets.

That’s why I think it is even more important today than it was when Joseph Smith was alive for members of the Church to educate themselves about Letter VII and the teachings of the prophets. 

Unless something changes, Church members are not going to learn about those teachings from the M2C citation cartel or the materials produced by the Church departments that are staffed by M2C followers.
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None of this is intended to criticize Church leaders or employees. As I said, it’s basic human psychology and organizational behavior.

I’m writing about this to call attention to a serious problem.

The solution is easy: refocus on the teachings of the prophets instead of the teachings of the M2C intellectuals.

But that’s only easy in theory. In the real world, people must educate themselves and those around them.

We all know the Church operates through councils on local, stake, regional and general levels. Decisions are made at the lowest level possible; e.g., a ward council doesn’t ask the Stake President which families to visit. Also, at each level there are committees that report to Church leaders. For example, a ward council, led by the Bishop, has committees responsible for specific tasks. Each task involves numerous decisions based on specific facts and priorities. Committees report back to the ward council, especially when the Bishop needs to make a decision. Such reports are brief summaries of the work of the committee. Because of constraints in time, the committee filters out everything that isn’t important.

At the general level, the Church is managed the same way. In the Church Office Building (COB), there are various Departments (Missionary, Family History, Church History, etc.) that are staffed with full-time employees, as well as volunteers and missionaries. Within and among the departments committees are formed to accomplish specific tasks. Committees are led by Church leaders, including Seventies and Apostles.

Most of the work of these Departments and committees is done by the staff. As an example, let’s say Church leaders decide the curriculum needs to be changed or updated. They don’t assign an Apostle to rewrite the material. Instead, they create a committee to manage the process. There will be staff assigned, missionaries called, volunteers organized, etc. These people will study the topics, assemble resources, create drafts, etc. Eventually, proposed lessons will be presented to the committee for review. When someone in charge of one of these committees, even at a low level, wants to censor references to Cumorah, it happens, precluding consideration at higher levels.

It’s the same with construction projects (temples, chapels, etc.), technology projects, management of the missionary program, etc.

Every large organization necessarily operates this way.

At each level of the organization, people work with details that are filtered out from reports and proposed actions that require approval or decision making by higher authorities.

That’s why it’s up to us to educate ourselves and to not expect our Church teachers and professors to tell us both sides of every issue.

That said, for me, the question of whether to follow the prophets or the M2C intellectuals is an easy one. I choose to follow the prophets.

And I think most members of the Church, if given a choice through full disclosure, would do likewise.
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Today in Sunday School we discussed Elijah and the famous verse, 1 Kings 18:21. This chapter relates the way in which Elijah generated a consensus among the people of Israel regarding the truthfulness of what the prophet Elijah taught.

The verse reads:

“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”

Isaiah and the priests of Baal

That led to the famous showdown between Elijah and the priests of Baal.
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One of the most fascinating elements of this passage is that the people had no answer. They didn’t know whom to follow.

Why were they so confused?

On the one hand, they had the prophet of God.

But on the other hand, they had the popular leaders, the priests of Baal who purported to speak for God, who taught the people that the prophets were wrong, just as the M2C scholars are doing today.
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The verse could be rephrased this way:

“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the prophets be true, follow them: but if the M2C scholars [be true], then follow them. And the people answered him not a word.”

We each get to choose.

We each must choose.

[Note: the M2C intellectuals will object that I’m comparing them to the priests of Baal because they’re entire approach depends on obfuscation and confusion. True, I am comparing them to the priests of Baal, but only in a limited sense. That’s how we always apply the scriptures to our own circumstances. Here, I’m limiting the comparison to the question of whether to follow the prophets or to repudiate the prophets. I’m not comparing M2C to all the things the priests of Baal taught and practiced, but the M2C intellectuals openly try to get members of the Church to reject what the prophets have taught about the New York Cumorah.]
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How long will members of the Church continue to halt between the two geographical models?

It’s not a difficult choice. Whichever model you choose, you can confirm your bias by interpreting the text to match your model and by considering relevant archaeology, anthropology, geology, geography, etc. that confirms your bias.

Really, the only difference is whether you agree with or disagree with the prophets.

Either Cumorah is in New York, as the prophets have consistently and persistently taught, or it’s elsewhere, in which case it doesn’t really matter much where it is, does it? 

If the prophets have been wrong all along, we might as well accept the fantasy maps currently being taught to LDS youth by CES and BYU. 

Inevitably and irreversibly, that will lead to the metaphorical interpretation of the Book of Mormon, which seems to be the ultimate objective of the M2C scholars anyway (although they claim otherwise).
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In my view, everyone in the world is searching for the answers provided by the restored gospel–including members of the Church who don’t realize or appreciate the magnitude of the work we’re engaged in.

The Internet is a tremendously important element of bringing the Gospel to the world, but it is just as effective in confusing people and undermining the message of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. The two principle impediments we face are (i) critics from outside who distort and mislead and (ii) intellectuals from inside who assert superiority over the prophets. Think how awesome it would be to eliminate at least the second impediment and the contention it produces.

I write these blogs and books because “it is an imperative duty that we owe to all the rising generation, and to all the pure in heart—For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it—” D&C 123:11-12. I emphasize that I’m not saying I’m “right” about anything; instead, I propose perspectives and interpretations as alternatives to the prevailing M2C ideas that, IMO, are mistakes. I just want everyone to have a chance to consider and compare different ideas.

Notice that Joseph wrote “among all sects… and denominations.” He did not exclude Latter-day Saints from this list.

How are LDS people blinded by the subtle craftiness of men?

One way, IMO, is through M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory). I think M2C, while originally well-intentioned,* has become pernicious because:
(i) it teaches people to disbelieve the prophets, who have consistently and persistently taught that Cumorah is in New York;
(ii) it relies on sophistry, censorship, and presuasion as explained below;
(iii) it causes BYU and CES to teach the youth of the Church that the Book of Mormon took place in a fantasy world, thereby laying the foundation for a shift toward a “metaphorical” understanding of the Book of Mormon instead of a literal, real-world understanding long taught by the prophets. I discussed that here: http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2018/01/getting-real-about-cumorah-part-2.html
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In response to all of this, some big changes are in the works. 

1. Focus. I realize that this blog has too much information for people to sort through. I have addressed every argument put forward by the M2C intellectuals, including my peer reviews of their most well-known articles. If there are any M2C arguments I have not addressed, I ask anyone to let me know about them so I can comment on them.

We’re going to make an announcement in September about a re-organization of the material in my blogs to make it more accessible. For example, we’ll have more comparison material, such as this chart I posted in 2016.
http://bookofmormonconsensus.blogspot.com/2016/08/agree-agree-to-disagree-by-topic.html

2. Africa. We’re moving to Africa tomorrow for the school year (through May 2019). Last night I did my last fireside in Utah for a long time, although I will do some events over the Internet. I have a blog about what we’re doing: http://mormoninmauritius.blogspot.com/

3. Getting real. We try to get real on this blog, but people still ask me what I “really” think. For the rest of this week, I’ll explain what I really think in more detail than I’ve ever done before.

4. Why M2C persists. Readers here know that I think M2C is based on a mistake in Church history.* Because it is based on the premise that the prophets are wrong about the New York Cumorah, M2C exalts the scholars over the prophets. This undermines faith, as warned by past prophets. Nevertheless, M2C intellectuals are influential and persuasive because of sophistry, censorship and presuasion. 

4a. Sophistry. In my blogs, I’ve explained many of the rhetorical tools used by M2C intellectuals in the publications of the M2C citation cartel (BYU Studies, the Interpreter, BMAF.org, FairMormon.org, Book of Mormon Central, Meridian Magazine, etc.). I discuss some of their tactics in this blog as well as in  my peer-review blog:
http://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/

Long-time readers know that I don’t think any of the material published by the M2C citation cartel is truly peer reviewed. It is peer-approved material, designed to enforce the approved M2C dogma and to confirm the shared bias of the reviewers that the Book of Mormon events took place in Mesoamerica. It is phony scholarship, IMO, which is why it is not accepted or even respected outside the M2C citation cartel.

Notice, I am referring to M2C specifically. LDS scholars produce and publish outstanding research on a variety of important topics that helps take the Gospel to the world. It is only M2C advocacy, and material influenced by M2C (such as the M2C-influenced notes in the Joseph Smith Papers), that I consider problematic and counterproductive. 

4b. Censorship. Censorship is a critical tool to enforce ideas that don’t withstand scrutiny. Anyone can persuade others if alternative interpretations (and inconvenient facts) are censored. That’s why the framers of the Constitution added the First Amendment. That’s why our judicial system gives equal voice to plaintiffs and defendants, but in totalitarian regimes, only one side’s position is allowed to be heard. Or, as Joseph Smith put it, “by proving contrarieties, truth is made manifest.”

Censorship is in the news lately. Every generation naturally resists censorship. Today’s young people are no exception. George Orwell’s book 1984 was published in 1949 but remains a bestseller today. People want to make up their minds independently, after considering alternatives.

The M2C citation cartel is a classic case of censorship. They have absolutely refused to allow alternatives to M2C to appear in their publications, except when they misrepresent, ridicule and attack alternatives. They even refuse to allow side-by-side comparisons.

By contrast, I welcome comparisons and full disclosure. I trust people will make good decisions once they have all the relevant information. 

I encourage members of the Church to compare M2C to the alternatives, as I’ve explained over and over on this and other blogs. I hope Church members will become familiar with FairMormon and Book of Mormon Central and the fantasy maps being used by BYU and CES to teach that the prophets are wrong. I endorse the idea of teaching people correct principles (and giving them all the facts) and then letting them govern themselves.

My new nick-name for Book of Mormon Central is Book of Mormon Censor. I’ve started a new blog to explain how the censorship works: http://bookofmormoncensor.blogspot.com/

I’ll also continue to point it out as it is used by other members of the M2C citation cartel, such as FairMormon: http://fairlymormon.blogspot.com/

4c. Presuasion. The M2C intellectuals have been teaching their theories at BYU and CES for around 40 years. (Prior to that, other intellectuals promoted Central and South America as settings for the Book of Mormon, all in reliance on a mistake in Church history.*)

How the Academic Cycle perpetuates M2C

The academic cycle has effectively infused M2C throughout the Church, with artwork, videos, and innumerable articles, presentations, and lessons.

Consequently, M2C has been imprinted on the minds of Latter-day Saints beginning in Primary. M2C is imprinted almost from the moment they meet the missionaries.

A term for this technique is presuasion, a term coined by Robert Cialdini. This is the technique of preparing the minds of others to be receptive to one’s message.

The technique is explained pretty well in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HctZg2aOPMw

I discussed this as it applies to M2C here:
http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2018/03/m2c-technique-4-noahs-flood-imprinting.html

and here:
http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2018/06/correlation-department-uses-two-m2c.html
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Already this post is longer than I planned, so I’ll stop here. But stay tuned.

🙂
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*M2C originated as a well-intentioned effort to vindicate what scholars thought Joseph Smith taught, based on anonymous articles in the 1842 Times and Seasons. These articles linked the Book of Mormon to discoveries of ancient ruins in Central America. The boilerplate at the end of each issue of the newspaper said the paper was printed, edited, and published by Joseph Smith. From this, scholars inferred that Joseph actually edited the paper. And yet, no one believes he actually printed the paper.

There is zero historical evidence that Joseph actually edited anything, apart from the Wentworth letter that appears to have been taken from a prior Orson Pratt pamphlet and heavily edited. In fact, the Wentworth letter edits out all of Pratt’s “hemispheric” ideas about Book of Mormon geography. But then today’s Correlation Department edited the Wentworth letter to omit Joseph’s teachings about the Lamanites, a topic I’ll discuss later this week in this blog.

The point is, Joseph was merely the nominal editor, just as he was merely the nominal printer and publisher. He had nothing to do with anonymous articles. He had nothing to do with any link between the Book of Mormon and either Central or South America.

Those interested in more detail about this can read my books on the topic and my reviews of others’ articles that seek to tie Joseph to Mesoamerica.

As always, I emphasize that I admire and respect all the LDS scholars and intellectuals, including those who continue to promote M2C. I think they’re all great people with good intentions, etc. I attribute their obsession with M2C to Mesomania, a term I use to describe the powerful psychological effects of confirmation bias. I continue to hope that they will break free, but I recognize the reality that this may be nearly impossible for some of them.

The most I can realistically expect is that some of them, at least, will recognize what they’ve been doing and will decide to be intellectually honest enough to open up the citation cartel to alternative views and interpretations. A good start would be a comparison chart similar to the decision tree I posted here:
http://bookofmormonconsensus.blogspot.com/2017/02/cumorah-decision-tree-for-book-of.html

Today I realized that M2C is purely metaphorical.

Think about it.

M2C is founded on two premises:

(i) we cannot take the teachings of the prophets literally and

(ii) there are “similarities” between the Nephites/Lamanites and the Mayans, which they call “correspondences.”

These similarities or correspondences are the sum total of the evidence for M2C, but of course similarities are not actually evidence. 
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Thinking of M2C as a metaphor has all kinds of benefits. People don’t have to infer volcanoes (or what I like to call the three Js-jungle, jade, and jaguars). They don’t have to change the text to fit. Best of all, they don’t have to repudiate the prophets.

But we can learn useful things from the M2C metaphor, such as how ancient people actually lived. This helps give context and meaning to the text, whether we are studying ancient Mayans, Chinese, or Egyptians.

Maybe this is the best way to salvage what is useful from M2C.
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To understand M2C as a metaphor, take a common example of a metaphor: “the city is a jungle.” Would anyone understand such a statement to mean that a city is literally a jungle? Of course not. Would any court accept such a statement as evidence that a city is actually a jungle? No.

But the metaphor helps us understand attributes of a city, such as a functioning chaos, fierce competition, domination by certain people (who are compared with dominant species), etc.

In the same way, M2C simply compares similarities between different things–the Mayans and the Nephites. This is the definition of a metaphor.

In this sense, M2C is a useful metaphor. We could have used ancient Chinese society as well, but the metaphor helps us recognize characteristics of ancient societies that were also found among the Nephites and Lamanites.

An elaborate metaphor

This has always been the great contribution of John Sorenson, as I recognized in my book Moroni’s America years ago. What we learn about the Mayans (or the ancient Chinese, or ancient Egyptians, or any other ancient culture) helps us learn about the Nephites.

Not because the Nephites were Mayans or Chinese, but because they had similar levels of technology, similar principles of organizing, similar agricultural practices, etc.

It should be obvious that such metaphors do not mean the Nephites lived among the Mayans, Chinese or Egyptians.

The big mistake of M2C was taking this metaphorical comparison and trying to transform it into factual evidence that the Nephites were literally Mayans (or vice versa). 

To do so, they had to reject Joseph’s translation and supply their own, both by interpreting the language in the text in odd ways (tapirs = horses, west = north, etc.) and by making non-textual inferences such as the presence of volcanoes. Plus, and maybe worse, they had to repudiate the clear, unequivocal, repeated teachings of the prophets that there is one Cumorah and it is in New York.
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In a way, we could say there is a fine line between reality and metaphor. Comparing Thing One to Thing Two would not be a metaphor if both Things were actually the same thing.

But then, of course, it wouldn’t be a comparison. It would be a description.

How does the M2C metaphor far in reality?

Not a single Nephite/Lamanite or even Hebrew artifact dating to Book of Mormon times has ever been found in Mesoamerica.

Every “correspondence” is not only not factual evidence, but the interpretation is highly subjective. M2C is the purest form of confirmation bias possible.

This is also true of the North American setting, as the M2C intellectuals are eager to point out. I readily agree there are plenty of subjective “correspondences” between the Nephites and the archaeology, anthropology, etc. of North America, just as there are correspondences between the Nephites and the Mayans. In both cases, people are confirming their biases when they interpret these correspondences.

But in terms of Book of Mormon historicity, there are some facts. The only definite Nephite artifacts we know of were found in New York:

(i) those in Moroni’s stone box on the Hill Cumorah in New York (the only specimen of Nephite cement we have) and

(ii) those in Mormon’s depository of Nephite records in the same hill.

(Note: If you’re an M2C follower, you’ll object that there was no depository in New York because Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Wilford Woodruff were not speaking literally when they related how Joseph, Oliver and others entered that hill. That’s the first indication that M2C is purely a metaphor; i.e., they don’t take the teachings of the prophets literally.)

Beyond these two facts, there are the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah, which would not satisfy those who don’t believe the prophets. But for those who accept the prophets, the New York Cumorah is a given.
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This may all be obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me until recently, when one of the M2C intellectuals objected to my observation that the Mesoamerican setting is metaphorical. (That’s not even counting the 2C (two-Cumorahs) component, which is even more fanciful and which directly contradicts the teachings of the prophets.)

Actually,*I had been referring to the BYU/CES fantasy map, which may not even rise to the level of metaphorical because it is pure fantasy; i.e., not comparable to any real object.

The M2C scholar insisted “There’s absolutely nothing “metaphorical” about a Mesoamerican setting for the Book of Mormon. The dirt and stones there are as real as they are anywhere else.”

The first sentence struck me as a nonsequitur because of the point made by the second sentence. Here’s how.

Everywhere on the planet we find “dirt and stones” (except on the surface of the sea, but no one thinks the Book of Mormon describes Waterworld.) Consequently, every theory of Book of Mormon geography is “real” in the sense that it ties the Book of Mormon to the real world.

The only exception is the very one I referred to: i.e., the fantasy map being taught by BYU and CES.

Consequently, it could be that this M2C intellectual was distinguishing the BYU map from the Mesoamerican setting, which would be a fascinating separate discussion because the map was developed and is being taught by members of the M2C citation cartel and this particular intellectual has never, so far as I known, objected to the fantasy map.

Come to think of it, why would he object?

BYU fantasy map showing Cumorah anywhere but New York, thereby teaching the students to believe the scholars instead of the prophets.

After all, the fantasy map was developed by using the Sorenson translation and the M2C interpretation of the text and is designed to groom students into accepting M2C once they’re out from under the constraints of the BYU administration which has told the professors to stop teaching M2C (although they continue to do so anyway, according to students who report to me what’s going on in their Book of Mormon classes at BYU).

Look at the fantasy map and you’ll see what the M2C scholars wish Mesoamerica looked like.

Of course, it looks nothing like the real Mesoamerica. It looks nothing like anyplace on the actual planet Earth.

For the “real-world” interpretation, you have to go to BYU Studies, which features a link right on its home page to the “plausible” setting for the Book of Mormon, which, no surprise, is Mesoamerica.

BYU Studies version of Cumorah, designed to teach readers that the prophets are wrong, so students should believe the scholars instead.

BYU Studies gets away with this because… I’m not sure why, apart from pure Groupthink and confirmation bias.

The reason doesn’t matter because everyone who reads BYU Studies, and certainly everyone who contributes to it, is expected to believe M2C.

The map serves to confirm their biases.

It also serves to groom the “seasoned” members of the Church who have never learned the BYU or CES fantasy approach to the Book of Mormon.

But now, thinking of M2C as a metaphor, we don’t have to conclude that the prophets are wrong. We can look at these maps and see how ancient people moved around, what they ate, how they organized, etc. Then we can look for similarities in Nephite culture that help us understand the text.

What we need to stop doing is pretending a metaphor is a reality.
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Those interested can look at the definition of a metaphor and see how it applies. Here’s the Oxford Dictionary definition:

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. ‘when we speak of gene maps and gene mapping, we use a cartographic metaphor’

Grammarly explains it this way:

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison.

Here are the basics:

A metaphor states that one thing is another thing
It equates those two things not because they actually are the same, but for the sake of comparison or symbolism
If you take a metaphor literally, it will probably sound very strange (are there actually any sheep, black or otherwise, in your family?)
Metaphors are used in poetry, literature, and anytime someone wants to add some color to their language

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*I’m not providing the link for several reasons, but mainly because the original conversation is irrelevant to this post, once it provided the seed for this thought.