This is a resource you can use and refer people to.

You can see the pages on the upper right of the main page on your computer screen.

The mobile version requires you to click on Home to see all the pages (or go to web version).

Here are the direct links that you can share:

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/p/psychology-of-central-american-theory.html

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/p/confirmation-bias-and-evidence.html

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/p/where-bias-originates.html

http://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/p/curing-confirmation-bias.html

If you missed it, the presentations should be available in the near future. I highly recommend them.

I made some announcements at the conference that I’ll cover eventually on this blog. Exciting stuff.

There was some discussion about the M2C hoax (M2C being the acronym for the Mesoamerican/Two Cumorahs theory of Book of Mormon geography).

Because M2C is a hoax, one of the attendees suggested a new logo for M2C. It was a fun idea, so here it is.

President Oaks asked a thought-provoking question.

“As we make current decisions, we should always be asking, ‘Where will this lead?'”

As we think about this in the context of Book of Mormon studies, we can ask ourselves a related question:

What is the inevitable long-term consequence of teaching the youth of the Church that the best way to understand the Book of Mormon setting is by putting it an imaginary, fantasy world of mythology?

The map is designed to teach the M2C interpretation of the text.

It seems to me that as CES and BYU imprint this fantasy map on the minds of the youth, the youth (and new converts) will think of the Book of Mormon in such terms.

It’s no wonder that millennials report a decreasing belief that the Book of Mormon is actual history.

We can also ask “Where will this lead?” in the context of Church history.

The Saints book deliberately changed Church history regarding the Hill Cumorah to accommodate M2C.

Eventually, Church members will learn what the prophets have taught about the New York Cumorah. But they won’t learn it in Church settings, which will cause them to become confused and disturbed in their faith.

Think of how much better it would be for members of the Church to learn what the prophets have taught in the first place. But instead, those teachings are being censored, solely to accommodate M2C.

Where will this lead? 

It’s nice to see a sort of olive branch extended just before General Conference, so I wanted to recognize it and remind readers here that I like and respect the people affiliated with BMAF and its subsidiaries and affiliates. Everyone has good intentions and wants to share the Book of Mormon.

I think we can all work together. All it takes is a mutual commitment to full disclosure and tolerance of others’ views.

Maybe we can all remember what President Nelson said about how good inspiration is based upon good information–a powerful indictment of censorship.

https://presidentnelsonspeaks.blogspot.com/2018/11/good-inspiration-and-good-information.html
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Before we look at the change at BMAF (in the table below), we need to consider some context.
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Despite what this logo claims, Book of Mormon Central is a subsidiary of BMAF (Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum). BMAF.org has long been a promoter of M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory) and their web page still archives some of the articles that attracted my attention to this topic in the first place.

Years ago, I was a strong believer and supporter of M2C. After all, I had been educated by CES and BYU, which means I didn’t know what the prophets had taught about the New York Cumorah.

Just like today’s youth in the Church, I was a victim of M2C censorship.

Just like today’s fine young scholars employed by Book of Mormon Central, I trusted my mentors and BYU professors who taught M2C as the only possible explanation for the Book of Mormon.

I used to read all the FARMS materials. I attended conferences and lectures. I viewed everything through the M2C filter and confirmed all my biases. I worked with an archaeologist who did early peer reviews of John Sorenson’s book, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. I visited sites in Mesoamerica. I was “all in” on M2C.

Then I noticed that FARMS was resorting to logical fallacies, such as ad hominem attacks on critics, including critics of M2C who were good members of the Church. I read some of the articles (they are still archived on bmaf.org) and thought to myself, “this is nonsense.”

It struck me that FARMS had devolved into pure advocacy. It was anti-scientific. The more I re-examined the material, the more I realized I had been duped by a hoax. The M2C hoax.
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FARMS was eventually merged into the Maxwell Institute, where it was defanged. But the principles just changed venue. They formed new organizations: the Interpreter Foundation, which publishes the Interpreter journal and Book of Mormon Central, a multi-million dollar organization that operates the web page and spreads M2C on social media.

Book of Mormon Central still uses the old FARMS logo that incorporates M2C (a Mayan glyph).

Both organizations started with lofty promises of openness and diversity, but like FARMS, both devolved quickly into advocacy organizations. They promoted M2C exclusively–and still do. They still resort to the same logical fallacies. They claim their work is “peer reviewed” but both terms are misleading. The only “peers” they run the material by are like-minded M2C advocates, and the only “review” they conduct is to assure compliance with the M2C orthodoxy. For examples, you can see my blog that looks at a few.
http://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/

Except now they raise and spend millions of dollars to promote M2C. Their employees are active on social media. They claim the support of the prophets and the Church, in direct violation of the Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon Geography. They coordinate with BYU Studies and Meridian Magazine, the Maxwell Institute, and other organizations to promote M2C and enforce censorship of alternatives, including (especially) the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.
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There have been moments of hope, however. Early on, I offered to let Book of Mormon Central put the first edition of my book, Letter VII, on its web page for free. They accepted because they recognized it was accurate Church history. Of course, Letter VII establishes the New York Cumorah as a fact, which contradicts that basic premise of M2C. By including the book in their archive, they took a step towards openness and diversity of thought.

But after a while, Book of Mormon Central removed Letter VII from its archive. They replaced it with a “Kno-Why” telling readers why they should distrust Oliver Cowdery and all the prophets and apostles who have reaffirmed the New York Cumorah.

It’s the worst of FARMS all over again.

Years ago, I agreed with the M2C scholars that, in the interests of harmony, I would delete this blog if they would stop their censorship and remove their material that attacked alternatives to M2C. My offer remains open. I like and respect the M2C scholars. They are great people. I admire all their work apart from M2C advocacy.

About 90% of what is on the Book of Mormon Central web page is great material. I use their archive material all the time and I encourage others to use it.

(The Interpreter, by contrast, is hopeless. The name itself gives away the editorial conceit; i.e., the intellectuals there purport to interpret everything for their readers. There are very few Interpreter articles that I could recommend, which is a shame because with a little legitimate peer review, much of that material could be salvaged and become useful.)

However, the M2C advocates at Book of Mormon Central have doubled down on the M2C hoax, as we all see when we look at their web page. They could easily add some comparison tables, such as the one at the end of this post. They could put material in their archives that supports, instead of repudiates, the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

So far, they’ve refused. But maybe they’re getting the message that insisting on M2C to the exclusion of everything else is not the best way to share the Book of Mormon.

Maybe they will decide to trust members of the Church to make informed decisions.

Maybe they’ll recognize President Nelson’s message that good inspiration is based upon good information.

I hope so.
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Which brings us to the change at BMAF.org.

They recently modified their Mission Statement page to portray an image of openness and diversity.

It’s not much, but it is a step in the right direction. Whether it will produce any substantive changes remains to be seen.

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The comparison charts below allow readers to decide which approach aligns with their personal beliefs. Such a chart avoids the problem of censorship. By enabling informed decisions, the charts fulfill the purpose of the Church’s position of neutrality that recognizes individual freedom to choose what to believe.

When I posted this in August 2016, I tried to make it completely neutral and accurate, and I solicited comment. No one offered any corrections or changes, so I assume it remains valid. Of course, both sides could edit it as they see fit.

Publishing this would reflect the intellectual honesty, openness and cooperation that ought to prevail at Book of Mormon Central. Let me know if you see it posted there. 
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Agree and Agree-to-Disagree lists

There’s also a useful decision tree here:

http://bookofmormonconsensus.blogspot.com/2017/02/cumorah-decision-tree-for-book-of.html

Months ago I wrote a series of posts about the Early Modern English theory in which I observed the intersection between M2C and revisionist Church history. This post updates one of those posts.

As we saw in the Saints book, Church historians seek to accommodate M2C by actually changing Church history. Readers of Saints have no idea that Joseph Smith’s closest associates all accepted the fact, established in Letter VII, that the Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is in western New York.

The beauty of censorship is that readers have no idea what is missing.

The youth of the Church will never learn what the prophets have taught about the New York Cumorah. Nor will the millions of people who join the Church in coming years. That part of history will simply not exist for them. That ignorance allows the M2C hoax to thrive.

We saw how the editors of Saints tried to justify their censorship. They posted an explanatory FAQ right on lds.org. You can read about it here: 
https://saintsreview.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-historians-explain-censorship-in.html

Surely, in their minds, these historians thought were doing the right thing when they imposed modern ideas about Book of Mormon geography onto Joseph’s contemporaries.

But it’s still phony history. And the historians know it.

It is astonishing that historians would deliberately change Church history to accommodate the M2C hoax. 

But what is more astonishing is how many other ways the historians are changing Church history to accommodate M2C.

It is important to clarify that nothing in this post claims prophetic or Church support for any particular theory of Book of Mormon geography. Instead, it is exactly the opposite; i.e., this post seeks to support what the prophets have taught.
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BYU’s infamous fantasy map of the Book of Mormon that teaches students the prophets are wrong

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Naturally, critics of the Book of Mormon have always sought to discredit its divine authenticity. They say it is fictional because Joseph (and/or others) wrote it and/or copied it from one or more sources.

Faithful LDS refute those claims with semantic arguments. They write blogs, post comments on Facebook and other social media, read and write books and articles, etc., all focusing on semantics, word choice, statistical analysis, etc.

KEY POINT: The intellectual debate over the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon is essentially an exercise in confirmation bias. There is “evidence” to support whatever you want to believe. 

Most participants in these discussions forget this key point. Their own confirmation bias blinds them to others’ perspectives. Anyone who wants to understand the issues thoroughly should be able to at least articulate contrary positions, using the facts and arguments of the various proponents.

Lawyers learn this in their first year at law school, but anyone who analytically observes the world realizes that those with whom we disagree are not merely ignorant or stupid. Everyone has different biochemistry and brain structure, different family and religious and social backgrounds, all of which (and more) lead to different biases we seek to confirm.

That said, I think it’s possible to break through confirmation bias if we heed the words of the prophets and the scriptures. That’s why we have prophets, after all.

In my view, these prophetic sources explain the evidence in such a way as to corroborate what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery said all along.

This is why it is so destructive to have M2C intellectuals teaching the world (including LDS youth) that the prophets are wrong about the New York Cumorah–and all the other things I listed above.
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None of this is surprising.

In fact, prophets have warned that this would happen, but their warnings have gone unheeded.*

Younger generations of Church members have never heard what the prophets have taught about the Hill Cumorah. Those teachings have been censored by CES and BYU. They are censored in the Saints book. They are censored in the visitors centers.

BYU fantasy map of the Book of Mormon – no wonder only 50% of Millennials think the Book of Mormon is a literal, historical account

Instead, the youth learn the BYU/CES fantasy map and the M2C hoax (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory). Even visitors to the “Hill Cumorah” Visitors Center learn M2C.

(Actually, they don’t even learn M2C. They are taught there is only one Cumorah, and it is in Mexico.)

The only place where visitors to Palmyra can see the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah is at the Oliver Cowdery Memorial about one mile north of the Hill Cumorah.

(BTW, the “Hill Cumorah” Visitors Center is scheduled for remodeling. It probably will no longer even be called the Hill Cumorah visitors center.)

All of this confusion is the inevitable result of censoring the teachings of the prophets, and for those few students who discover the teachings of the prophets on their own, teaching them that they should believe the M2C intellectuals instead of the prophets.

M2C represents a repudiation of the teachings of the prophets in favor of the teachings of the intellectuals. Today we’ll look at when and how this transition occurred.
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It’s a simple fact, verifiable by anyone, that the prophets and apostles have long taught two things about Book of Mormon geography:

1. The Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is in New York.
2. We don’t know for sure where the rest of the Book of Mormon events took place.

Anyone who questions these facts can read the reports of General Conference, as we’ve discussed before, such as here. 

Nevertheless, a lot of people try to conflate (mix up) the two points because they don’t believe what the prophets have taught about the New York Cumorah.
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We’ve seen how the Cumorah question arose as a contest between RLDS and LDS teachings around the turn of the century. Although LDS leaders, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference, repeatedly reaffirmed Letter VII’s teaching about the New York Cumorah, LDS intellectuals sided with the RLDS intellectuals.

M2C became the default position of the Church because employees at CES, BYU and COB (Church Office Building) rejected what the prophets taught.

In the 1980s, M2C went mainstream with two 1984 articles in the Ensign by John L. Sorenson titled “Digging into the Book of Mormon.” You can red them here:

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1984/09/digging-into-the-book-of-mormon-our-changing-understanding-of-ancient-america-and-its-scripture?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/study/ensign/1984/10/digging-into-the-book-of-mormon-our-changing-understanding-of-ancient-america-and-its-scripture-part-2?lang=eng

The articles were republished in the Liahona in 1985.

The Editor of the Ensign at the time, Jay M. Todd, was fascinated with the Mesoamerican theory. The articles were illustrated with photos of Mesoamerican sites and artifacts, as well as this map:

This map, of course, represents the M2C interpretation of the Book of Mormon that has become the default “official” interpretation of the text, with one “narrow neck” in Mesoamerica.

It is this interpretation that the intellectuals used to generate the fantasy maps taught by CES and BYU.

The articles did not directly articulate the M2C theory, but they laid the groundwork. It’s very interesting how Brother Sorenson framed the discussion.

First, he established that the teachings of the prophets are irrelevant.

He didn’t even cite a single one of them.

Instead, he claimed this: The issue is not one of intentions, beliefs, or testimony; it is one of scholarship. To compare the Book of Mormon with the findings of archaeology and related fields is a scholarly, intellectual activity. When anyone, Latter-day Saint or not, sets out to work in that domain, he must operate according to the rules which govern there.

Recall, this was published in the Ensign. So far as I know, this was the inflection point. This is where science replaced the prophets. 

This is also when the censorship began.

In the left column below, I show some of the Ensign covers that depict M2C. It is fascinating to me because not one Ensign cover has ever depicted the New York Cumorah, not even when it was taught in General Conference. There has been zero effort to be “neutral” about Book of Mormon geography. It is all M2C, all the time.

The Ensign has never published Letter VII, either, even though all prior Church magazines did, including the Improvement Era. But now that M2C is the default position, Letter VII is censored.

(Fortunately, Joseph Smith had his scribes copy it into his journal, where anyone can read it in the Joseph Smith Papers. Otherwise, it would have been completely erased from accessible Church history. You can read about Letter VII here: http://www.lettervii.com/)

In 1975 and 1978, the New York Cumorah was reaffirmed in General Conference. Brother Sorenson didn’t mention that. Today, hardly anyone even knows that.

Now, I agree with Brother Sorenson that the issue is not one of intentions, beliefs or testimony. But I don’t agree it is an issue of scholarship exclusively. When the prophets have consistently and persistently taught that it is a fact that the Hill Cumorah of Mormon 6:6 is in New York, we don’t cavalierly reject their teachings solely because we disagree with them.

But that’s what Brother Sorenson and all his followers have done.

In my view, scientific analysis is useful and important, especially when, as in this case, it supports the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah.

Intellectual honesty requires that the M2C intellectuals (and CES and BYU teachers) at least acknowledge the teachings of the prophets and explain why they reject those teachings.

It’s not surprising that an article in the Ensign would avoid that topic, but to discerning readers the censorship is apparent–and it is just as apparent now in the Visitors Centers, curriculum, etc.
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The second framing Brother Sorenson used to lay the groundwork for M2C appears here:

A substantive discussion of geography cannot be given in these limited pages. However, for at least the past forty years, many students of the subject who have studied it in depth have reached similar basic conclusions: (1) the events reported by Nephite and Jaredite scribes evidently covered only a limited territory in the New World “land of promise,” and (2) there is presently known only one location in the Western Hemisphere that seems qualify as that scene.6

Notice how the article ignores the origins of M2C (the RLDS scholars who developed it in the late 1800s and early 1900 as part of their intellectual battle with LDS leaders). Instead, it frames M2C as something that originated in the 1940s among LDS scholars.

Notice also how the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah are both censored and repudiated. Brother Sorenson (and all of his M2C followers) don’t even acknowledge alternatives to M2C; they insist Mesoamerica is the “only” location that “seems to qualify.”

Of course, this is the inevitable result of their circular reasoning. They simply interpreted the text to match Mesoamerica, and then claimed only Mesoamerica “qualifies” according to their interpretation. 

We admire the audacity of this sophistry, but we recognize it for what it is.

Footnote 6 is awesome. The article never mentions the term “Cumorah” but the footnote does. It cites books that established M2C by saying the prophets were wrong. Here are two of my favorites:

Cumorah – Where? by Thomas Stuart Ferguson (Zion’s Printing and Publishing Co.: Independence, Missouri, 1947)

In Search of Cumorah: New Evidences for the Book of Mormon from Ancient Mexico, by David A. Palmer (Bountiful, Ut.” Horizon Publishers, 1981).
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We don’t have time to go through the entire Ensign articles, but I recommend that you do so. It’s astonishing to see how M2C became established.

However, we do need to look one paragraph that was crucial to the foundation of M2C. (My comment in red.)

Of course, placing the Book of Mormon lands within a limited region like Mesoamerica requires that we take a fresh look at some of the long-standing questions that have been of interest to Book of Mormon readers. For example, how did the plates of Nephi get from the final battlefield near the “narrow neck of land”11 to where Joseph Smith obtained them in New York? 

[This has never been a question for those who accept what the prophets have taught. It’s only a question for those who reject those teachings. Footnote 11 explains how the intellectuals turned a fact into a question.]

Here the Book of Mormon sheds no light. 

[But the prophets not only share light, they declare it as a fact that the final battles took place in the valley west of the “hill in New York.” Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith visited the depository of Nephite records in the hill Cumorah in New York. That alone justifies their teaching that this is the hill of Mormon 6:6.]

One obvious possibility is that Moroni himself may have carried the records to New York during his thirty-six years of wandering between the extermination of the Nephites and when he last wrote on the plates. (See Morm. 6:6; Moro. 1:1–4; Moro. 10:1.) Or he may have taken them there as a resurrected being. We only know that, whatever the means, in 1827 the plates were in the “hill of considerable size” near young Joseph Smith’s home at Palmyra, New York, where Moroni delivered the sacred record to him.

Notice how the teaching of the prophets–that the final battles of the Jaredites and Nephites took place in western New York–is nowhere considered even as a possibility. It is completely censored. 

Also notice the rhetorical trick of referring to the “hill in New York” as a generic hill and not as the Hill Cumorah.

This is footnote 11.


Consider the following reasoning: (1) The Cumorah of the Nephites and the Ramah of the Jaredites were the same hill (Ether 15:11). (2) This area, covered with bones (Omni 1:22; Mosiah 8:8; Mosiah 21:26–27; etc.) and also a “land of many waters, rivers, and fountains” (Morm. 6:4; Ether 15:8), was in the land of Desolation, which bordered on the land Bountiful at the narrow neck of land (Alma 22:29–32). 

[Here is one of the circular reasoning interpretations. The M2C interpretation conflates the “narrow neck of land” (Ether 10:20) with the “narrow neck” of Alma 63:5, as if these different terms hundreds of years apart referred to the identical geographical feature. Then they insert the “narrow neck” into Alma 22, where it doesn’t actually exist in the text.] 

(3) In Mormon 3 through 6, it becomes clear that the final battles of the Nephites were localized, centering largely in the general area of the city of Desolation, which was in the land of Desolation “by the narrow pass which led into the land southward” (Morm. 3:5, 7). 

[Here they conflate “narrow pass” with “narrow neck of land” and “narrow neck.” All of this also assumes that “land southward” and “land northward” are proper nouns instead of relative terms, relative to the specific location and time involved in the narrative. These assumptions are not necessarily unreasonable, but they are not mandatory and, IMO, contradict a basic rule of interpretation, that different terms refer to different things. But for M2C intellectuals, the conclusion that the prophets are wrong about Cumorah is fundamental. It’s a starting point. For me, just the opposite is the case; i.e., I start with what the prophets have taught and go from there.]

(4) And therefore, according to this reasoning, Cumorah, the final battlefield of the Nephites and Lamanites, was near the narrow neck of land.

The point of this post is not to debate the terminology. That’s a futile endeavor. I’m not interested in a “war of words” which can never be resolved and doesn’t change anyone’s mind anyway.

The point of this post is to show when and how science (as explained by M2C intellectuals) replaced the teachings of the prophets. 

In my view, replacing the prophets with the intellectuals is and has been a huge mistake. 

It’s fine with me if people prefer to believe the M2C intellectuals instead of the prophets, I just think such an important decision should be made with full knowledge of 

(i) what the prophets have taught and 

(ii) what science tells us that affirms and corroborates those teachings.

Currently, most members of the Church are never even exposed to, let alone taught, either category of knowledge.

I hope to see that change. I continue to call upon my friends in the M2C citation cartel to provide their readers and followers with full, complete information. 

I call on them to stop resorting to censorship and obfuscation to maintain M2C.

I call on them to trust their readers to make informed decisions.

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*About the time when President Joseph F. Smith wanted to purchase the Hill Cumorah in New York, RLDS scholars began teaching that the “real” hill Cumorah was in Mexico. Joseph F. Smith had republished Letter VII; for him, the Cumorah question was settled.

His son, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Apostle and Church Historian at the time, warned that the “two-Cumorahs” theory would cause members of the Church to become confused and disturbed in their faith in the Book of Mormon. He reiterated that warning when he was President of the Quorum of the Twelve.

But the intellectuals rejected his warning.

Two months before he died, Brigham Young expressed his serious concern that the teaching about the New York Cumorah would be forgotten. He had good reason to be concerned, as we discussed here:

http://bookofmormonwars.blogspot.com/2017/08/brigham-young-140th-anniversary-of-his.html