long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche. Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Magical M2C Mystery Tour

The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour
Recently I've been listening to Paul McCartney's podcasts about his songs. One delightful episode involves the "Magical Mystery Tour" song and its accompanying film.

He explained that the Magical Mystery Tour song and movie were based on "mystery tours" that people took when he was growing up. People would get on a bus, not knowing where they were going. 

Usually the bus just went to Blackpool on the sea. But that was still exciting for the people who had little money but could still pay for the inexpensive "mystery tours."


Ken Kesey's bus with
the Merry Pranksters
For the album and movie, the Beatles combined the idea of the "Mystery tour" from Liverpool with the author Ken Kesey's psychedelic bus ride from the 1960s.

A core group of 14 people joined Kesey and became the 'Merry Band of Pranksters' that drove across the country in 1964.



I was reminded of this when I saw reports about the Interpreter Foundation's "Mesoamerica Tour," which I affectionately think of as the "Magical M2C Mystery Tour."

[As we all know by now, M2C is the acronym for the "Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory" that rejects what the prophets have taught about the hill Cumorah/Ramah in New York.]

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Here's the main website for the Magical M2C Mystery Tour.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/study/study-travel/mesoamerica-2024/

Images from the Magical M2C Mystery Tour

The tour is hosted by Brant Gardner, a great guy, faithful Latter-day Saint, prolific author and careful scholar who is effective at promoting M2C. 

Some of the most prominent M2Cers are participating, including Blake Joseph Allen, Dan Peterson, Steve Densley, and Larry Ainsworth. 

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As I've often repeated, I'm fine with people believing whatever they want. It's cool that people are so passionate about their beliefs. 

I'm not cool when passion leads to censorship, however. I much prefer the pursuit of clarity, charity, and understanding, which, in my view, leads to "no more contention" (Mosiah 1:1).

Unfortunately, the M2Cers disagree about that pursuit.

In the pursuit of clarity, we'll discuss the Magical M2C Mystery Tour in more detail in upcoming posts.




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