A few months ago, I sent a suggestion for a comic to Scott Adams, who writes Dilbert. The comic came out last Sunday.
You can see it here:
https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-02
The comic explains how employees control organizations by limiting the options presented to the decisionmakers.
I think this comic explains why M2C* is so prevalent throughout the Church.
The New York Cumorah has been effectively censored for so long, it never merits consideration any more.
The book Saints is the latest expression of M2C.
The authors explained they censored Cumorah to create a false historical narrative present (i.e., characters in Church history who never heard of Cumorah in New York) specifically to promote modern ideas about Book of Mormon geography (i.e., M2C, framed as "neutrality").
The authors also claimed that the question of Cumorah never even came up in the years of writing and editing Saints. Supposedly no one even thought to accurately portray what early members of the Church believed about the New York Cumorah.
Just like in the Dilbert cartoon, decisionmakers involved with Saints were shown alternative drafts that all censored the New York Cumorah.
As a result, Saints insures that current and future generations will never learn what the prophets and apostles have actually taught about the New York Cumorah.
_____
Two facts exist:
1. The prophets and apostles have consistently and persistently taught that Cumorah is in New York. No prophet or apostle has ever rejected that teaching.
2. Most current LDS intellectuals and educators have rejected the teachings of the prophets and apostles about Cumorah in New York.
Instead, these intellectuals and educators teach that Cumorah is in Southern Mexico, or else in a Mexico-like fantasy land (BYU and CES maps).
Recently, some LDS scholars have claimed that the modern prophets have hired them to guide the Church. They seem to think that justifies them in censoring the historical accounts so that Church members generally, like the decisionmakers involved with Saints, don't even have the option to make informed decisions.
In my view, it doesn't take an expert (or a PhD) to read and understand the teachings of the Book of Mormon and the latter-day prophets.
What requires expertise is to use sophistry and semantics to repudiate the teachings of the prophets while claiming to sustain them.
Fortunately, efforts to censor the teachings of the prophets won't succeed. We can still read about the New York Cumorah in the Joseph Smith papers, in the reports of General Conference, and in the writings of the prophets and apostles.
The problem is, most people who have been taught M2C accept it at face value because they trust the employees to accurately convey the teachings of the prophets and apostles. Most people are shocked when they discover the degree of censorship that has been taking place.
I'm still hopeful that this will change. Eventually, people throughout the Church will learn what the prophets and apostles have taught about the New York Cumorah.
_____
*M2C is the acronym for the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory. M2C advocates and their followers have created a citation cartel (BYU Studies, Book of MormonCentral Censor, FairlyMormon, the Interpreter, Meridian Magazine, the old FARMS, etc.) that censors the teachings about the New York Cumorah. M2C is now being taught widely, including at the Temple Square Visitors Center, at the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center in New York, in the missionary editions of the Book of Mormon, by the fantasy maps taught by BYU/CES, etc.
You can see it here:
https://dilbert.com/strip/2018-12-02
The comic explains how employees control organizations by limiting the options presented to the decisionmakers.I think this comic explains why M2C* is so prevalent throughout the Church.
The New York Cumorah has been effectively censored for so long, it never merits consideration any more.
The authors explained they censored Cumorah to create a false historical narrative present (i.e., characters in Church history who never heard of Cumorah in New York) specifically to promote modern ideas about Book of Mormon geography (i.e., M2C, framed as "neutrality").
The authors also claimed that the question of Cumorah never even came up in the years of writing and editing Saints. Supposedly no one even thought to accurately portray what early members of the Church believed about the New York Cumorah.
Just like in the Dilbert cartoon, decisionmakers involved with Saints were shown alternative drafts that all censored the New York Cumorah.
As a result, Saints insures that current and future generations will never learn what the prophets and apostles have actually taught about the New York Cumorah.
_____
Two facts exist:
1. The prophets and apostles have consistently and persistently taught that Cumorah is in New York. No prophet or apostle has ever rejected that teaching.
2. Most current LDS intellectuals and educators have rejected the teachings of the prophets and apostles about Cumorah in New York.
 |
| BYU fantasy map of Cumorah |
 |
| M2C map of Cumorah in Mexico |
Recently, some LDS scholars have claimed that the modern prophets have hired them to guide the Church. They seem to think that justifies them in censoring the historical accounts so that Church members generally, like the decisionmakers involved with Saints, don't even have the option to make informed decisions.
In my view, it doesn't take an expert (or a PhD) to read and understand the teachings of the Book of Mormon and the latter-day prophets.
What requires expertise is to use sophistry and semantics to repudiate the teachings of the prophets while claiming to sustain them.
Fortunately, efforts to censor the teachings of the prophets won't succeed. We can still read about the New York Cumorah in the Joseph Smith papers, in the reports of General Conference, and in the writings of the prophets and apostles.
The problem is, most people who have been taught M2C accept it at face value because they trust the employees to accurately convey the teachings of the prophets and apostles. Most people are shocked when they discover the degree of censorship that has been taking place.
I'm still hopeful that this will change. Eventually, people throughout the Church will learn what the prophets and apostles have taught about the New York Cumorah.
_____
*M2C is the acronym for the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory. M2C advocates and their followers have created a citation cartel (BYU Studies, Book of Mormon
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