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New evidence that Joseph Smith taught a Mesoamerican setting for the BOM


livy111us

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I think if you tried to preach the Hemispherical Geography or Meldrum's in Sacrament meeting that you would get the same response from any Bishop. the Church has disowned the hemispherical theory, and now the official position is no position. There is no "orthodoxy" about it any more than preaching polygamy from the pulpit, because of the fact that it has been disowned and stopped officially. You would certainly get reprimanded for preaching polygamy, even though it was once very "orthodox."

Ed Goble

I don't expect you to follow with baited breath every post I make, but I have suggested that Meldrum's view is even more heretical as the LGT view. But I know darn well that if I preached that the Hill Cumorah in New York is the same place where the final Nephite battle occurred, there'd be nothing to stop me from doing so as I have the sanction of every single General Authority who has ever remarked on the subject in General Conference.

And, I suspect, that if I preached your view, or Brant's view, of the two Cumorahs theory I'd be counseled to stop. There is not a single general authority who has ever supported that view in General Conference or any published book. It may be suitable for speculation in church firesides, I suppose, but not in Sacrament meeting. It would likely be considered heretical. And, it does seem to me to be heresy. At least it isn't real important heresy, but it can lead folks astray from the Book of Mormon. Witness Thomas Stuart Ferguson.

Regarding Brant's view, which now I think I've read three times, that he has it on good authority that apostles privately agree with him but he is not at liberty to discuss it, well, the lawyer in me takes an extremely dim view of such claims and purported evidence for a number of critical reasons, but I don't want to say things to offend. I don't buy secret undisclosed knowledge; I didn't buy the legends I heard on my mission, either, about Mission Presidents restoring severed limbs, etc.

I note repeated comments about my refusal to reconcile the internal mapping of the Book of Mormon with the location of the Hill Cumorah in New York. I think Pahoran favors this particular condemnation of me. This is the "Does the Shoe Fit?" doctrine. You're trying to shoehorn vague and uncertain discussions of distances and times in the Book of Mormon to fit reality, when the Book of Mormon makes no claim that it is a guidebook to the real world. But that shoe isn't going to fit. It is hard enough to do that with the Bible, but as far as I know they still haven't found Goshen, and the the academic pursuit of the LGT is as fruitless and pointless as the academic study of whether St. Helena really found the True Cross.

This is a matter of faith, study, prayer and reliance upon the Brethren, and not cartography. In my view.

Let me put a P.S. on all of this. I don't think this is a very important dispute. I feel sorry for those academics who spend so much time pursuing such a pointless topic, as even their own characterization of the matter is that the Church takes no position. To me it would be like spending time in the Maxwell Institute publishing piece after piece supporting creationism (or evolution) while, at the same time, pointing out the Church takes no position on the issue. Pointless. There are lots of interesting y fruitful topics relating to the Book of Mormon, but the shoe does not fit geography.

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I think that your point doesn't mean anything because it is out of order in the first place to be preaching speculative crap in Church. Nobody has any business teaching speculative stuff in Church, regardless of what theory it is.

I don't expect you to follow with baited breath every post I make, but I have suggested that Meldrum's view is even more heretical as the LGT view. But I know darn well that if I preached that the Hill Cumorah in New York is the same place where the final Nephite battle occurred, there'd be nothing to stop me from doing so as I have the sanction of every single General Authority who has ever remarked on the subject in General Conference.

And, I suspect, that if I preached your view, or Brant's view, of the two Cumorahs theory I'd be counseled to stop. There is not a single general authority who has ever supported that view in General Conference or any published book. It may be suitable for speculation in church firesides, I suppose, but not in Sacrament meeting. It would likely be considered heretical. And, it does seem to me to be heresy. At least it isn't real important heresy, but it can lead folks astray from the Book of Mormon. Witness Thomas Stuart Ferguson.

Regarding Brant's view, which now I think I've read three times, that he has it on good authority that apostles privately agree with him but he is not at liberty to discuss it, well, the lawyer in me takes an extremely dim view of such claims and purported evidence for a number of critical reasons, but I don't want to say things to offend. I don't buy secret undisclosed knowledge; I didn't buy the legends I heard on my mission, either, about Mission Presidents restoring severed limbs, etc.

I note repeated comments about my refusal to reconcile the internal mapping of the Book of Mormon with the location of the Hill Cumorah in New York. I think Pahoran favors this particular condemnation of me. This is the "Does the Shoe Fit?" doctrine. You're trying to shoehorn vague and uncertain discussions of distances and times in the Book of Mormon to fit reality, when the Book of Mormon makes no claim that it is a guidebook to the real world. But that shoe isn't going to fit. It is hard enough to do that with the Bible, but as far as I know they still haven't found Goshen, and the the academic pursuit of the LGT is as fruitless and pointless as the academic study of whether St. Helena really found the True Cross.

This is a matter of faith, study, prayer and reliance upon the Brethren, and not cartography. In my view.

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I think that your point doesn't mean anything because it is out of order in the first place to be preaching speculative crap in Church. Nobody has any business teaching speculative crap in Church, regardless of what theory it is. I don't give a rat's what general authorities agree with Brant. Everybody plays these general authorities cards as if they are somehow significant, and now you are playing some psuedo-heretical bull garbage. Again, who gives a flying rat's about whether you can preach your crap and get away with it? If I were your bishop, I would know better and call YOU in for it, or anybody else preaching geography in Church, regardless of what it is. Stick your head in a hole and don't reconcile anything then. its not my problem that you can live with the Hemispherical theory in your brain, and that you can just do your feel good thing in your own prayers, as if you think that this is all about feel-good stuff in prayers. this is about serious pondering, serious reflection, serious reasoning. NOBODY can expect good answers to prayers and get the right answers until a good amount of pondering and reasoning has been done on this thing. Good luck with whatever you think your methods of doing things will accomplish. for me, after all the struggling and heartache over Mesoamericanist rhetoric and nutball crap, I have finally gotten to the bottom of what I feel good about in this thing. Any of you that feel to find fault with what I've come up with, chew on it, have at it. I have struggled and I have come to where I am now solid in what I feel good about and believe, and where I finally feel that my reasoning is in line with what I feel in my heart, and that my reasoning is not guilty of serious fallacies.

Ed Goble

Perhaps a separate question which might be asked is why hostility and euphemistic vulgarities are in order for this topic.

Again, I can assure you that if I were to go to virtually any sacrament meeting in this Church and give a talk about Joseph Smith finding the plates in the same hill where the Nephites died, there wouldn't be any authority gainsaying me. Just sayin'. I would be careful characterizing Talmage's views in Articles of Faith on this subject as "nutball crap."

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Perhaps a separate question which might be asked is why hostility and euphemistic vulgarities are in order for this topic.

Again, I can assure you that if I were to go to virtually any sacrament meeting in this Church and give a talk about Joseph Smith finding the plates in the same hill where the Nephites died, there wouldn't be any authority gainsaying me. Just sayin'. I would be careful characterizing Talmage's views in Articles of Faith on this subject as "nutball crap."

Because I'm tired of people like you playing games.

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Brant, I fundamentally challenge that assertion about Ramah. Ramah most certainly is an exceedingly great distance from the Narrow Neck according to a reasonable reading of the Book of Mormon text. Just because you don't agree with that reading doesn't make it unreasonable.

Ed Goble

You might want to have a look at a plausible and sustained argument based on primary sources -- Matt Roper, "Plausibility, Probability, and the Cumorah Question," The Religious Educator, 10/2 (2009), 135-158.

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Perhaps a separate question which might be asked is why hostility and euphemistic vulgarities are in order for this topic.

Again, I can assure you that if I were to go to virtually any sacrament meeting in this Church and give a talk about Joseph Smith finding the plates in the same hill where the Nephites died, there wouldn't be any authority gainsaying me. Just sayin'. I would be careful characterizing Talmage's views in Articles of Faith on this subject as "nutball crap."

Hey, counselor,

It may well be that Ed is simply exasperated with Mormon folklore masquerading as reasoned argument.

However, he is out of line, but please forgive him anyhow -- and note that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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Both the traditionalist and LGT "sides" are approaching this from the position of belief that Joseph Smith miraculously translated an ancient record. That is why the facts of the matter get interpreted by anything but a simple theory.

I have this razor that was "given" to me: It's useful for paring away the non essentials, in order to arrive at only the facts pertaining to an explanation about what the BofM is and how it got here. The facts in simple order are these:

1) Everything in the BofM can be shown to originate from early 19th century source material available to Joseph Smith.

2) Joseph Smith's imagination and religious background are shown to be sufficient to create the BofM.

3) His religious motivation attracted the aid of others more skilled at writing, who served him as scribes; freeing him to concentrate solely on composition.

4) He brought forth the BofM as proof of his religious calling.

There is no need for two "Cumorah" hills, because the BofM is not ancient history. There is no more need to corroborate the BofM as history of ancient America, than there is need to do the same for Moses, the plagues of Egypt, the Exodus, wilderness exile and conquest of Canaan - or any number of other biblical assertions that have zero empirical evidence outside scripture itself that any of them occurred.

The problem of "knowing" is what powers these kinds of debates. And to "know" means that all conflicting assertions must be false. Yet at most, you (collective) will only "know" to your own satisfaction. There will be no proof that brushes aside all other assertions. Because there is no evidence to be found where none exists....

Of your Four Points, only 3 & 4 have any validity at all. Points 1 & 2 have never been backed up by any hard evidence, and there is a plethora of exceptional evidence to the contrary. Occam's Razor should have helped you to see that.

Moreover, your suggestion that epistemology is of supreme importance is meaningless unless you understand what that means in Humean philosophical as well as modern scientific terms. The question of the authenticity of Bible or Book of Mormon (or of the Iliad for that matter) is well suited to empirico-logical investigation. Deciding such issues apriori is not in keeping with good investigative practice.

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See, here dear readers is an example of those who dislike Sorenson's conclusions being treated quite harshly. The question implies that I am either lying about my original connection with FARMS or that I know the truth but am intentionally being disingenuous. (In reality, other than publishing two large articles on unrelated topics and other than being a financial contributor, I've never had any connection with FARMS. I served as a research assistant for John Welch, in the year he came to BYU to set up FARMS there, who is also a law professor. I think if you check with him he'll vouch for my orthodoxy but will likely also say that I just don't swallow everything offered me.)

But the point remains about my observation about civility in this area. Mainstream orthodox Saints are going to say, like me, "Of course the Hill Cumorah is the hill of the final Nephite battle. Of course, people who say otherwise are not orthodox." Nonetheless, I've been accused of being a secret apostate by Pahoran merely for sticking to the mainstream orthodox position, and now you've made the observation about me I point out above. This particular topic cries out for civility.

I'm sorry that I misunderstood your comment on the Maxwell Institute, but the fact remains that you have not been a part of FARMS or Maxwell Institute research and so could not fairly judge how such work has proceeded nor the attitudes of those anxiously engaged in such a worthy project over the many years of its existence.

No question that your call for civility is germane to this issue, and you may have noted that this Board has changed orientation recently for just such a purpose. I'm not sure, however, that hidebound adherence to a narrow concept of "Mainstream orthodoxy" (whatever that means) is appropriate or called for if it excludes anyone who disagrees with you on such neo-orthodox principles as "semi-canonical" literature being used to determine the "true" location of the Hill Cumorah or anything else. That is a rather novel approach to Mormon doctrine, but one which is not sustainable -- due to internal contradictions.

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You might want to have a look at a plausible and sustained argument based on primary sources -- Matt Roper, "Plausibility, Probability, and the Cumorah Question," The Religious Educator, 10/2 (2009), 135-158.

Bob, I've dealt with your paradigm for years. I understand your paradigm's arguments are plausible. I don't agree with them. My arguments are plausible too. My whole point is that you simply can't discount the plausibility of my arguments just because you disagree with them. Been there, done that.

Ed Goble

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Ed,

Where has your book been published and where can one purchase a copy?

Thanks

If you to to my site http://edwingoble.com you can click either of the two book covers and they take you to the CreateSpace estores for the books. That is the most direct way.

You can also order them off Amazon.com

The FAIR Bookstore will have them within a week or so.

One is "Resurrecting Cumorah" that deals specifically with all this stuff about the Cumorah issue.

The other is "The Nail of Heaven: LDS Cosmology, Metaphysics and Science" which deals with a number of interrelated subjects, Kolob and the Throne of God and the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and the Book of Abraham Cosmology being among them, as a response to Astronomy, Papyrus and Covenant, as well as the Kolob Theorem, and a number of other works out there that in my mind, didn't get it right.

Ed Goble

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