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.

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Recent claims about chiasmus

The story of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon is well known by most people who study the Book of Mormon, including both believers and critics.

For a summary, see the articles here:

https://scripturecentral.org/search?q=chiasmus

Critics have a variety of responses, but one of the most creative is being promoted by Randy Bell. 

Randy is known for his obsession with Hyrum Smith's alleged connection with Dartmouth. Lately he has extended his Dartmouth conspiracy theory to include chiasmus.

He finally found a podcaster to promote his bizarre claims about Dartmouth, hyped by click-bait.  

Although he was not on Mormon Stories, I commented on the podcast here:

https://mormonstoriesreviewed.blogspot.com/2026/03/randy-bells-delusional-dartmouth.html

Even more interesting than Randy's conspiracy theory is the psychology that drives people to develop such theories. That might make for an interesting topic some day.

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