The comical search for Cumorah in Mexico

One obstacle to reaching consensus is absurdity.

For a good example, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKwEeaQ_7gE

We have people wandering through Mesoamerica searching for Cumorah. Seriously. My favorite line in the presentation is, "We're doing all we can while waiting for the Lord to give us more."

These people are rejecting what the Lord already gave us. Why would they think the Lord would give more?

We have a few lines of ambiguous text from the Book of Mormon, granted. It's possible to concoct any number of "requirements" for Cumorah depending on what assumptions we want to make and how far we are willing to "expand" the text.

But we also have the declaration by Joseph and Oliver that it was a fact that the final battles took place in the mile-wide valley west of the hill Cumorah in New York. We have the repository in that same hill.

There is (or should be) no ambiguity about the location of Cumorah in New York.

And yet we have serious people traipsing (to use John Sorenson's term) through the jungles of Mesoamerica searching for a mountain that can "qualify" as the Hill Cumorah. They come up with their list of imaginary criteria or requirements based on a few vague passages and a whole lot of speculation. The most fun speculation is that Cumorah has to be near volcanoes, but not active ones that might have buried the site in ash. Plus, they need 2,000 hectares of land, and the hill Cumorah has to be smaller than the hill Riplah because of what the Onomasticon says about the word Riplah, etc. This sort of cascading series of assumptions moves the endeavor beyond absurdity.

There is also a "Hill Cumorah Expedition Team" from the Community of Christ, competing with LDS scholars to be the first to locate the hill Cumorah.

It is difficult to conceive of a more absurd pursuit than this.

Here is Team B's website.

http://www.hillcumorahexpeditionteam.com/

Here is Team A's website (with links to all its affiliates):

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/
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One thing they don't explain is why they are looking in Mesoamerica. If it's not because of the anonymous Times and Seasons articles, why limit the search to Mesoamerica? Why exclude Peru, Chile, Panama, Baja?

For that matter, why exclude the actual Hill Cumorah in New York?
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For bonus laughs, check out the comments.

Didn't everything Joseph Smith show through vision, personal walkabouts and such reveal everything happening in America.  Adam Andi Amon, Zelf, mounds, and now many artifacts seem to indicate a relationship with those in Central and South America but the nations they set up were not anywhere else accept the North American Continent.

  

 

Fair Mormon1 week ago

While he did make the above references you cited, he also made many other statements that placed The Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica, South America, Canada and the western US. This video we put together may help answer your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rsyAExrNNc&t=813s

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That FairMormon video is every bit as ridiculous as the comical search for Cumorah in Mesoamerica.

Blogs are higher quality than journal articles

Daniel Lakens, an experimental psychologist at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, offers five reasons why blog posts are of higher scientific quality than journal articles.

Here is the link:

http://daniellakens.blogspot.nl/2017/04/five-reasons-blog-posts-are-of-higher.html

I agree with all of his points, and I think they apply to LDS topics as well. Here is a summary:

1. Blogs have Open Data, Code, and Materials [This is important for scientific topics, but it should also be important for LDS topics when relevant. The most notorious example I'm aware of are the so-called "stylometry" studies published in the Interpreter, in which the authors give no data, code, or assumptions. That kind of "black box" study is worse than no study at all, IMO, because it opens the door for anyone to publish anything that confirms their biases, without any possibility of analysis or replication.]

2. Blogs have Open Peer Review [This alludes to the practice of using "peer review" as a sham appeal to authority as well as to the practice of using phony peer reviews, both of which I think occur in many LDS academic journals. As Lakens explains, "Scientific journal articles use peer review as quality control. The quality of the peer review process is as high as the quality of the peers that were involved in the review process. The peer review process was as biased as the biases of the peers that were involved in the review process." These points apply to the publications of the LDS citation cartel, which never disclose the identity of peer reviewers or even whether the material was actually peer reviewed. Of course, a "peer" is someone who shares the same assumptions, so peer review is illusory in most cases. At best, it is really nothing more than "peer approval," as I've noted many times. Blogs tend to be more honest about peer review. My blog, for example, is not peer reviewed at all, so I don't use "peer review" as a phony appeal to authority. You can accept, modify, or reject my ideas and the facts I offer, but I'm not going to try to persuade you with a fake appeal to the authority of some anonymous "peer review" process.]

3. Blogs have no Eminence Filter [This alludes to the elitism characteristic of scientific publications, which also exists in the world of LDS intellectuals. The citation cartel that controls LDS publications filters out alternative voices to maintain their dogmatic hold on their own ideas.]

4. Blogs have Better Error Correction [This one refers to the comments feature that allows readers to point out mistakes within a matter of minutes in many cases. When I started my blogs, I left them open for comments. But as readership increased, I started getting a lot of spam (people selling junk) that I didn't have time to delete, so I had to close comments. It's unfortunate. Some of the most productive interactions were with people who disagree with points I've made. Now people contact me by email to point out errors, which I then promptly correct or address one way or another. I welcome any and all relevant comments on my blogs, books, presentations, etc. I just want to get things right, using accurate and complete data and rational analysis. Lately, the citation cartel has published a lot of stuff that is easily rebutted, but they don't allow comment or rebuttal, which suggests they aren't confident about what they're publishing. I may open the blogs to comments again and see if the spam has been blocked by Google.]

5. Blogs are Open Access (and might be read more). [With no paywalls, blogs have broader distribution. Most LDS material doesn't have paywalls anyway, so it's not a big issue in this community. But it's not the paywall that is the biggest impediment to distribution, anyway. It's people's time, and the long-held, well-established dogma drive by Mesomania. The promoters of the Mesoamerican geography and related Church history lore have cleverly (but falsely) framed their position as the position of the Church. This makes Church members feel guilty of questioning the scholars and educators. That's the paywall that needs to be broken down more than it has so far. It could easily be remedied if the citation cartel offered more open access. To be specific, if the Interpreter, Book of Mormon Central, BYU Studies, etc., were willing to publish articles about the new paradigms in Church history and Book of Mormon geography, they would have more credibility and, I think, long-term viability. But because they refuse, the Internet is the place for open access.]

Someone is wrong on the Internet

Is it possible to resolve anything on the Internet?

Probably not.

Is it possible to reach a consensus on the Internet?

Almost surely not.

Then why write and read blogs?

For me, blogs are useful records of the things I'm working on, what I read, and my thoughts, a sort of easily accessible journal that, apparently, other people are interested in. So far, there have been about 150,000 hits on my blogs and hundreds of people read them every day, mostly from the U.S. but also from many other countries around the world.

Marketing experts know it takes many impressions to influence thinking and behavior. Most people are not going to change their minds even in the face of new information, but a few do. Impressions can accumulate until a tipping point can be reached. One blog post might make the difference, like the last snowflake that causes an avalanche.

There's a clever post about the challenge of persuasion on another blog, here. Ardis Parshall writes:

"This classic xkcd webcomic (#386, Duty Calls) captures the common online absurdity of exerting great effort to prove to a stranger that he is wrong and you are right about something that doesn’t matter to anyone. I mean, who would do something like that?"

So is there a reason to blog other than journaling?

I think so.
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As I've discussed many times, one of the biggest obstacles to reaching consensus in any field is lack of open communication and exchange of ideas. Whenever possible, people tend to prefer confirming their biases as opposed to changing their minds. This may be even more true of scholars, academics and educators than of the general public, for the obvious reason that the intellectuals have much more invested in their beliefs.

To confirm their biases, scholars, academics and educators tend to establish and perpetuate closed systems. A college campus, for example, is a closed system; faculty are hired based on shared academic assumptions and credentials, and students are admitted based on shared objectives and beliefs in the value of the established academic assumptions and credentials.

The LDS citation cartel is a prime example, of course, since the cartel's concept of "peer review" is essentially "peer approval" by a small group of like-minded academics who resist intrusion (or even participation) by outsiders who challenge their shared assumptions.  

Because the academic citation cartel exists to confirm the shared biases of cartel members, the cartel is able to impose their assumptions and beliefs on others through the educational system. Their assumptions about Church history (i.e., that Joseph and Oliver were confused speculators who misled the Church about the New York Cumorah) and about Book of Mormon geography (i.e., that Mesoamerica is the only viable setting) have come to dominate LDS thought because the cartel members have successfully excluded alternative assumptions from BYU and CES. Consequently, everyone is taught the same assumptions, and they continue ad infinitum.

The Internet is one of the only ways to bypass the cartel and communicate new ideas. Cartel members understand this, which is why the citation cartel exists in the first place. They know that most members of the Church, when faced with a choice between the academics on one hand and Joseph and Oliver on the other, will choose Joseph and Oliver.

Given a choice, most members of the Church would reject the two-Cumorahs theory. For that reason, the citation cartel relegates the two-Cumorahs theory to isolated comments in academic writings and subliminal teaching such as the display on Temple Square and the images in the missionary editions of the Book of Mormon.

In Joseph Smith's day, everyone knew there was one Cumorah and it was in New York.

In our day, LDS academics reject what Joseph and Oliver said, replacing it with the idea that there are two Cumorahs; Mormon's Cumorah is in Mesoamerica, and Moroni's Cumorah in New York.

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I doubt this post will be the snowflake that causes an avalanche, but hopefully it will add to the accumulation of ideas that weighs on the citation cartel. Eventually, I trust, a consensus about Church history and Book of Mormon geography will develop.