Informed Saints: My lowest priority is the prophetic evidence

Recently the Stick of Joseph and Informed Saints joined up to persuade Latter-day Saints to reject what President Oliver Cowdery taught about the New York Cumorah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUI80ccJ9wc

As I frequently reiterate, I pursue clarity, charity and understanding with the objective of no more contention (Mosiah 1:1). 

I also embrace the concept of multiple working hypotheses, pending more information. I don't exclude any hypothesis on its face, and I'm always interested to see what ideas people come up with.

Charity means we assume everyone is acting in good faith. Understanding means we seek first to understand, then to be understood, but we have no compulsion to have others agree or even to develop a consensus. People will believe whatever they want and that's all good. We just want people to make informed decisions.

And that leads to the first element, clarity.

Neither charity nor understanding requires us to ignore factual and logical fallacies; to the contrary, clarity requires us all to point them out when we see them.

With all that in mind, let's look at this podcast.

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They described different ways to approach the setting of the Book of Mormon.

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They frame it as "geographic priority," "anthropological priority," and "prophetic priority." Conceptually, that's a rational way to look at the issues.

At 19:28, Neal Rappleye explains that "kind of my lowest priority is the prophetic evidence." 

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Here's what he lists as "prophetic evidence."

Each of those three categories is subject to a variety of interpretations depending on one's own assumptions, inferences and theories. That's why he listed those. And I completely agree with his point that these are matters of bias confirmation; i.e., whatever you want to believe, you can interpret these three categories to confirm your bias.

What Neal omitted is what is not a matter of interpretation: the teachings of the prophets about the New York Cumorah, which is an explicit, unambiguous fact.

The Gospel Topics entry on Book of Mormon Geography does not mention Cumorah because it focuses on the speculative elements of that topic. But the M2Cers always ignore that point.

Because the fact of Cumorah makes Neal's theory untenable, he ignores the fact completely in his list of priorities. 

Now, look at what Neal describes as "Geographic evidence."

Geography and geology are facts of science that everyone agrees upon. But they are only "evidence" of the setting of the Book of Mormon in the sense of bias confirmation.

IOW, whatever you want to believe about the setting of the Book of Mormon, you can cite geography and geology to confirm your bias.

This is axiomatic. 

The "geographical evidence" is purely a matter of interpretation (assumption and inferences), not of fact, as you'll see if you watch the entire podcast.

That's what I refer to as the "delusion of basing beliefs on "evidence" and/or "the text."

https://www.bookofmormoncentralamerica.com/p/delusion-of-basing-beliefs-on-evidence.html

At one point, the podcasters address their Cumorah problem.

20:14 So, one thing one thing that uh David did on our last episode I think we did with him is um because he got attacked heavily by the uh the Heartlander crew in regard like you disregard the prophets. 

Which David did, explicitly. He not only rejected what the prophets have said about Cumorah, he created a false quotation and edited out what President Cowdery actually taught.

Here, David inserted Oliver's name in the reference to Chile because the original did not attribute this statement to Oliver:

In this slide, David replaced Oliver's statement of fact about Cumorah with ellipses so his audience would not know what Oliver actually taught:

We discussed this here:

https://www.lettervii.com/2026/08/baja-sophistry-cumorah-and-baja_0524624390.html

And so what David did, which I really appreciated in that last episode we did on on Cumorah, the idea of of Cumorah, is he he took all of the um statements from prophets and apostles that he could find on Book of Mormon geography and he categorized them all and then he put them on maps. 

First, David did not include all the statements about Cumorah. Instead he ignored those and even edited out what President Cowdery said, as we can see above.

Second, David and the Stick of Joseph used a sleight of hand maneuver to change the subject to overall geography without the audience realizing what happened. 

Speculation about overall geography has nothing to do with the fact of the New York Cumorah. Even Orson Pratt's footnotes in the 1879 Book of Mormon made the distinction clear, as anyone can see.

https://www.mobom.org/orson-pratts-1879-footnotes

Having fooled their audience into thinking the fact of Cumorah is part of the speculation about the overall geography, they continue.

And he once you see that like visually you realize that the the model that is has been put forth uh starts in New York and goes all the way down to down to Chile. You know what I mean? Big diversity actually said about geography. 

And all speculative, as Orson Pratt and other Church leaders have emphasized. And I'm fully on board with framing the overall geography issue as speculative.

And so I think I don't think the prophets ever would hold it over your head like, "Hey, your membership and your faithfulness depends on our opinion of where Book of Mormon geography happens." 

An obvious straw man logical fallacy because literally no one says this.

But a corollary can be true. Why would the Lord reveal anything more about the setting of the Book of Mormon when so many leading LDS scholars and their followers (such as these podcasters) have rejected the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah?

If we sincerely want more information about the setting, we ought to at least accept what the prophets have already given us. But instead these podcasters (and their mentors and others) work hard to persuade Latter-day Saints to reject the teachings of the prophets, even when they have been set before us as plain as word can be.

And and often times people will they'll cherrypick and everyone cherry picks to a certain degree. You know what I mean? Because you have to make decisions.

If people applied the FAITH model of analysis, there would be no cherry picking. Everyone could see all the facts, and then discern the difference between fact and speculation, assumption, inference, opinion, etc. But these podcasters continue to refuse to start with facts. Instead, they conflate fact with opinion and pretend everyone is cherry picking.

But what they'll say is like, "Look at letter seven. Oliver Cowdery says that hill that the plates were taken out of is Cumorah. That has to be Cumorah."

This is the opposite of cherry picking. This is looking at a statement of fact by the Assistant President of the Church, endorsed multiple times by Joseph Smith, and corroborated by other historical documents and subsequent statements by Church leaders, including members of the First Presidency speaking in General Conference. 

The speculative statements about geography share none of these attributes. 

And remember, no Church leader has ever repudiated what President Cowdery taught. Instead, they have consistently made the distinction between Cumorah and speculative geography. Only certain scholars and podcasters, including the ones on this show, have rejected the teachings of the prophets about Cumorah.

You're like, "Okay, so you're going to take Oliver's statement on that. What about where he said Lehi landed, right?

This is the fabricated quotation David showed as we can all see in the image above. Which, by the way, as an unattributed hearsay quotation printed in an antagonistic newspaper hardly rises to the level of official declarations in the Church newspaper by the Assistant President of the Church, which was republished in every Church publication during Joseph's lifetime. 

Where he says he landed in Chile and and so but they'll disregard that one." And so it's like, but the South America guys, they love that. They love that one. [laughter] Maybe not so much. Letter seven.

And so I think the way and the reason why I like the order of precedents that you have here is because if that's the case, then let's start somewhere where there isn't opinion. 

Where is the place "where there isn't opinion" if not Letter VII and the related teachings?

This looks like they are going to finally employ the FAITH model, where they start with facts, which everyone by definition agrees with, and then move on to assumptions, inferences, theories, etc.

But instead, here is the second sleight of hand.

They completely ignore that President Cowdery said the New York Cumorah was a fact. Maybe because they trusted David and the Stick of Joseph when they edited out what President Cowdery said?

Whether they relied on David's deceptive editing or just decided on their own to recategorize a statement of fact as opinion, look at what they do next.

Let's just look at the text and let's just start with the text first and and go there and recognize that people have had opinions on where exactly it's taken place and and and my assumption is that Mormon understands Book of Mormon lands better than Joseph Smith. 

Recall that in the previous sentence, they said "let's start somewhere where there isn't opinion." But now they shift into full opinion and assumption! 

Everyone agrees (I hope) that the existence of the text is a fact. In that sense, we are starting here with the FAITH model. We can all look at the text itself and agree that the words in the text are the words in the text. 

But instead of explaining the difference between fact and opinion, they immediately jump into assumptions, inferences, etc. 

Even if Joseph Smith had a revelation on Book of Mormon geography, I think Mormon probably knew the Book of Mormon lands better. Y and we don't think that Joseph Smith had any revelation. 

The rest of the podcast is nothing but opinion!

They speculate about how certain passages should be interpreted (opinion) and then speculate about which of the various opinions is "better" than others (more opinion).

The entire balance of the podcast is a discussion about various opinions, dressed up to look like an analytical model.

But this analytical model is merely a house of confusion, a strife of words and a contest about opinions.

This is exactly the problem that President Cowdery sought to avoid when he explained it is a fact that Cumorah/Ramah is in New York. 

Because these podcasters and their mentors have repudiated what the prophets have taught about Cumorah, they continue to lead to widespread confusion and doubt about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, just as Joseph Fielding Smith and other warned. 

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To their credit, the podcasters indicated they consulted a variety of books.

But they don't seem to have considered my book on Cumorah (Between these Hills) or on the two sets of plates (Whatever Happened to the Golden Plates?).

In Moroni's America, I emphasized that I was doing an experiment. I take the New York Cumorah as a fact, but the Zarahemla location in D&C 125 is more equivocal. The most literal and plausible reading (IMO) treats the location across from Nauvoo as the site of ancient Zarahemla because the Lord says:

3 Let them build up a city unto my name upon the land opposite the city of Nauvoo, and let the name of Zarahemla be named upon it.

(Doctrine and Covenants 125:3)

The Nephites named their cities after the name of the first settler (or leader of the settlers), so it is consistent that this site be named after Zarahemla if it was the site of ancient Zarahemla. But I recognize that as an interpretation, not a fact.

In Moroni's America, I expressly stated that I wanted to see if the geography fit if that was the site of ancient Zarahemla. I concluded that it does fit. But I never said or implied that this was the only or even best interpretation of the geography passages, given the fact of the New York Cumorah.

As I said at the outset, I endorse the concept of multiple working hypotheses. 

And I'm fine with these podcasters or anyone else believing whatever they want.

I'm just not fine with the rhetorical tricks and sleight of hand they resort to when they realize they need to mislead their audience instead of trusting their audience to make informed decisions.

Let's all hope in the future that these podcasters, and everyone else interested in this topic, will finally set out all the facts and then compare the various assumptions, inferences, etc.