Yes. And use evidence to support it that isn't really evidence at all, by taking it out of context.

That's the whole thing. A paradigm "prefigures the field," as Hayden White put it, by designating what methods are to be used, what counts as evidence, and so on. So, if your current paradigm isn't getting the results you want, you find a new one that changes the methods and evidentiary standards.

Thank you for typing all that up for us, grindael. It's awesome!

I was really upset at the time, Shades with how these Apologists were denigrating Jeremy. It was one after another, spouting lies and propaganda, and making him out to be something he definitely was not. (A scheming apostate). His honest frustrations and quest for answers are ignored, replaced with their made up narrative of him as some kind of sock-puppet of Satan. Christensen's lack of knowledge about basic Mormon history is astounding. His approach is disingenuous and deceptive. And his criticisms of Jeremy are misconstrued and phony. The Critics are wrong, because they don't take Apologist offerings seriously. But who can, when they are filled with errors, omissions and deceptions? He wanted to crucify me with David Whitmer, but as I showed, he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. They still don't.

Having been raised as a believer under the hemispheric model for the Book of Mormon and only being introduce to the limited geography model during my faith crisis while I was diving down the rabbit hole, I will have to agree with your premise. The greatest hurdle for the limited geography model is the Book of Mormon itself. The book screams hemispheric...but because of the difficulties with this model in that there is no supporting evidence, apologist had to make up a plausible explanation that they could shift attention AKA misdirection to, ergo the Limited Geography model. They did this knowing that in doing so that they would be sacrificing generations of LDS prophets and their prophetic pronouncements not to mention the D&C Moroni and the bull ____ Zelph story all which supported and bolstered the Hemispheric model. But apologists know that its ok to throw a prophet or two under the bus if by doing so it provides a protective harbor for the Book of Mormon to moore in.

I've had nothing but positive interactions with Jeremy. He's a nice guy, and very sincere, and he doesn't deserve the vilification he's had from those folks.

I thought I would read Christenson, and then your response, but i only got to Christensen's third paragraph:


If so, then that should also "demonstrate that neither the issues that [Lindsay responds to] nor the information he provides is the real cause of his [illusion], right?

Somebody should really proof these Interpreter articles for logic.

That's pretty much the standard apologetic refrain: the evidence doesn't matter, just the response to it. In short, if you lose your faith, you're the one who did wrong. End of story.

It's very annoying.

Hmm, my specific response to simons opening post seems to have been caught up in the "leftovers " sweep ( is that a euphemism for something?) . Anyway, here it is:

Bernard Gui's parallelomania quotes aside (and from an 11- year- old book which he explicitly states proves nothing about historicity, if I am reading him correctly), i thought Simon made a significant point in the opening post:
So this new and quite different interpretation of Nephi's journey came about, not out of inspired research or divine interpretation, but solely as an expediency necessary to attempt to match up with some actual archeological data the authors have currently latched onto? What happens when the next discovery has some different aspects, will the Book of Mormon story change again?

I can't remember if this was posted begore, but thanks to runtu's questions, brant responded further about how he sees, today, the opening post video:

Thanks for posting. Just as I suspected, 90+ year old Sorenson rules the roost in the exFARMs chook house. The doco was filmed 4-5 years ago and Gardner is already retreating.

More of Horton hears a Nephite.

These guys find "hebrewisms", or possible Egyptian names Pahoran and such in the Book of Mormon, paint a circle around it and claim a bullseye.

Show that these names were actually in use amongst the populace then you might have something, else wise it is like looking for hebrewisms in Tolkien, and claiming that dwarves are real because Gimli is ancient summerian.

In reading a comment elsewhere by Tom, I was reminded that Phillip Jenkins, in the course of responding to Hamblin and Rappleye, had made some hilarious filming recommendations that might improve the opening post video here:

This thread is so critically important and fascinating in so many ways! THANKS to all who have shared their knowledge. I am SOOOOOOOOOOO glad to have this board to learn from!

Here's the gripe I have with this thread: even the most trenchant criticism levied so far doesn't do justice to the rampant idiocy that is the notion---it's not a theory, it's not even an idea---propounded by Mopologists in the opening post. Like mighty Nephi, we should delight in plainness. As in, talking plainly about the degree of utter lunacy it takes for an otherwise functional adult to spout such an exquisite degree of nonsense that you're willing to posit with a straight face that a handful of Hebrew refugees staged a silent coup and took over the Mayan civilization.

It's like Mopologists and their patrons have some kind of intellectual autoimmune disease, where the mind's defenses against even the most pernicious ____ have been weakened so much by constant autophagy that it's too weak to fight off the infection when it comes. The constant stream of non-theories and ad hoc speculation and ass-pulls just wear down whatever the psyche's version of T-cells are, and then, one day, you can't resist anything anymore and you're publicly appearing in a video saying without irony that you think Nephi was the king of the ____ Mayans.

Maybe we're part of the problem. Maybe we're like hospice workers who have watched so many people die from pneumonia or the common cold that we don't even understand anymore how remarkable it is that there are healthy people around who can resist this ____ with no conscious effort. We sit on this board, or some other board, or go out and have drinks, or whatever, and think nothing of the fact that THERE ARE GROWN MEN WITH A SIDE HUSTLE OF TELLING PEOPLE THERE WERE CHRISTIAN HEBREW TAPIR RANCHERS IN PRE-COLUMBIAN MEXICO. It's just like, "Yeah, some people like Led Zeppelin, some people like to go fishing, AND SOME PEOPLE THINK AN UNDEAD NATIVE AMERICAN TELEPORTED INTO THE VILLAGE MAGICIAN'S LOG CABIN TO TELL HIM ABOUT THE BURIED TREASURE THAT TELLS ABOUT PRE-COLUMBIAN HEBREWS WHO SILENTLY TOOK OVER THE MAYAN EMPIRE FROM WITHIN. Different strokes for different folks, right?"

This isn't normal human behavior. This isn't like how all of us have some quirky or stupid ideas, or how it's common that people believe in the supernatural, or funny little superstitions, or what have you. This is a willingness to believe unspeakably stupid things about the tangible, physical world. And all of us are too comfortable with it. It's a kind of provincialism in itself to think this kind of insanity is within the normal range of what religious people might believe.

Imagine this kind of stupidity in any other context. Imagine that a grown man who has no other apparent signs of being completely ____ insane came up to you and said, in the most maudlin sincerity, that his scholarship and faith have led him to conclude that the Norman invasion of England in C.E. 1066 is evidence that The Return of the King is a true story, the Normans were the Numenor, and William the Conqueror was Aragorn.

How much time would you spend working on a rebuttal to this? Because this hypothetical is not different in any way at all from the indescribable gibberish set forth in the opening post. And sometimes we actually take a moment to entertain this nonsense.

On second thought, let me walk that back a little bit. It really is an apples and oranges comparison to talk about The Book of Mormon and The Lord of the Rings in the same breath. One of them is a serious work about fundamental questions about faith, cosmology, salvation, and good and evil, set against a backdrop of compelling military conquests, difficult journeys, and divine intervention, in an internally consistent and rich narrative that no uneducated person could have produced.

The other is the Book of Mormon.

I worry that at best, we're getting numb to watching this slow and unrelenting death from things a healthy person would shrug off. And at worst, maybe we're not baffled enough because you can only be around contagion so much before it gets on you, too. Not that you even momentarily consider this idiocy. But that you get used to it.

Earlier this year I found myself, on a flight from Denver to DC, sitting next to a talkative historian. He was a specialist in transAtlantic commodities and we talked for a good hour. I did mention the Book of Mormon and some details and he was amused. Never had it been so clear how ridiculous it is from the outset.

This is exactly why we can get stuck in the cycles of rehashing, because it's only a rare nonMormon who understands the power of indoctrination, who doesn't just dismiss the truth crisis and faith trauma experience. So we go back where we're understood.

That conversation on the airplane was very gratifying, it was a real-world expert affirmation of verifiable fact. I feel very little need to rehash the Book of Mormon. I have, however, chosen to focus on today's church and the most urgent necessary repairs it is morally obligated to make. Nephi is symbolic of the complete abdication we're asked to make in the church, of our personal moral codes. His story is still damaging and for me, that is why he is still relevant.

(How's that for a paradoxical post?)

I think there's something to this. The other day two apologists said to me on the other board that steel/metal was one of the "last" unresolved issues or anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. I was respectful, but I don't know how anyone could say such an absurd thing with a straight face. How are you supposed to respond to that?

Sometimes I think apologetics is more about the apologist's desperate need to believe his or her faith in the Book of Mormon isn't irrational. It's driven more by fear than anything else.

Darth J,

Holy slippery treasures, Batman! You said,



I can. Trumpism. It's like he's been possessed by the ghost of Jo Smith, but without all the religious baggage. I mean, men on the moon dressed like Quakers? Really? The "lost" 10 Tribes are on a broken off piece of the earth circling around and around and will someday land that huge rock and be welcomed back with their "great prophets" along with John the Revelator? Wives? Really? Wives? l look around and can see only one. Damn the Expositor to hell, it's all FAKE ____ NEWS. No collusion, no collusion, no collusion... And who the hell is Stormy Daniels? I didn't pay her off... oh wait, yes I did. Brigham Young to one of his wives: "Don't be alone in a room with Smitty". Or the master groper Trump.

Do ya think Smitty could have said that he could shoot someone on Main Street in Nauvoo and it wouldn't make a tittle of difference to his followers? I can picture that. The Book of Mormon or the Art of the Deal? Both fiction. Like Smitty & ancient languages, Trump wouldn't know how to "deal" if his life depended on it. Just promise a bunch of ____ and then don't pay them. Bank scandals and Tax evasion and bankruptcies.

I am baffled and incredulous that there are "Trumpites" that defend this turd. Yet, here we are. They sure mimic the Book of Mormon defenders with their continual BS and dogged loyalty to alternative facts. Imagine if Smith had lived and became President! We're seeing it now. Ship all the blacks to Mexico and close up the borders to those brown skinned cockroaches. We don't want to mingle with them, we'll lose our precious WHITE identity! They all have the curse of the black skin, so send 'em to Mexico where all colors are alike. Wanna be autocrats.

And the press. The enemy of the state. Burn it down. Lock up the reporters. The Expositor or the New York Times... all fake news and they must be destroyed. Vilify any competition... It's all THEIR fault, I'm squeaky clean and it's all a plot to destroy me because I'm so PURE.

Putin's puppet or the puppet of "Jehovah". The secular and the religious sides of the same coin. We're in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Please tell me it's all a dream.