In between your sarcasm, it does not seem that you have paid very close attention to the discussion up to now. Since you are coming in late, hopefully we can make some things clear.

1) In the first place, FAIR does not hold the positions which you attribute to it.

FAIR endorses no geographical model of the Book of Mormon. There are members of FAIR who hold a North American model, some hold a continental model, some favor a Mesoamerican model, and a sizeable chunk don’t care and have no real opinion on the matter at all.

This is made very clear at the beginning of each section of the review listed here.

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2) In the second place, Joseph Smith made several statements about Book of Mormon geography. These statements changed over time–indicating that either he got revelation later in the process OR that he was speaking of his own best assessment of the evidence, and this changed as he learned more.

You can see all statements made by the prophet Joseph Smith here.

You can read about this and treatment of the evidence in our review of Rod Meldrum’s material here. You will note he both ignored evidence which did not fit his model, and distorted some which he did cite.

3) FAIR is not making the statement that prophets do not automatically know everything, especially peripheral details. FAIR has drawn that conclusion via numerous scriptures and statements of the modern prophets and apostles.

Joseph Smith himself said that a prophet was only a prophet “when he was acting as such.” Scripture makes it clear that even serious matters affecting the progress of the Church were not always revealed to Joseph (D&C 10:37).

In the LDS tradition, prophets are not omniscient, nor are they infallible

As George Q. Cannon explained:

The Presidency of the Church have to walk just as you walk. They have to take steps just as you take steps. They have to depend upon the revelations of God as they come to them. They cannot see the end from the beginning, as the Lord does. They have their faith tested as you have your faith tested. So with the Twelve Apostles. All that we can do is to seek the mind and will of God, and when that comes to us, though it may come in contact [conflict?] with every feeling that we have previously entertained, we have no option but to take the step that God points out, and to trust to Him… [George Q. Cannon, “Enduring to the End,” 5 October 1890; reported in ''Collected Discourses: delivered by Wilford Woodruff, his two counselors, the twelve apostles, and others'', Vol. 2, edited and compiled by Brian H. Stuy, (Woodland Hills, Utah: B. H. S. Publishing, 1988), 115–116.]

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Finally, leaders of the Church have repeatedly been clear that there is no revealed location for Book of Mormon geography.

FAIR aims to support and defend the leaders of the Church. And our review used their words on this point.

If you are convinced that the Church and its leaders are neglecting a revelation to the prophet Joseph Smith on Book of Mormon geography, and not teaching it, perhaps you should make your concern known by writing to:

President Boyd K. Packer
President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
50 E. North Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah 84150

You should explain to him how he and the other prophets and apostles are ignoring a revelation to Joseph Smith. You may even with to point out how FAIR members are also guilty of “heresy” on this point, as you put it, and that many employees of the Church’s flagship university (BYU, in Provo) have published and taught the same thing for over fifty years. You should also point out that Rod Meldrum is trying to correct this matter.

Please let us know how he replies.

Your recent comment on this and other blog threads (making essentially the same claims) are, unfortunately, why FAIR believed it was necessary to respond to the material and claims made by Rod Meldrum which are at variance with the teachings of the living prophets and the historical record.

I hope you will examine the evidence and refrain from charging members of the Church (including the prophets and apostles) who do not agree with you with heresy or a rejection of Joseph Smith’s or Brigham Young’s prophetic role.

Best wishes,

Greg Smith

Oh yeah, that’s right we don’t need to know because we’re meant to believe in something without any physical proof. But wait, don’t all religions want us to believe in their truth without any physical proof? So doesn’t that leave us in the same boat as all other fairytale religions? Full of myth and fantasy? Let’s all just believe in fairies …

Seriously. Our prophets have said that if the Book of Mormon is false, our church is false. A fairytale. It doesn’t matter how much “spirit” we’re feeling about something if it just plain isn’t true. If the Book of Mormon Lands never existed, then the Church is false.

This issue is pivotal. It’s enormous.

This is what I think has happened over the last couple hundred years or so:

We as a people were drawn in to the mystery behind the massive and beautiful Mayan/Olmec/Toltec cities and culture. They were fascinating and we thought they fit the Nephite lands perfectly. They had writing systems, gold, silver and their feathered serpent god (which seemed to resemble Christ so well). We had enough mystery to hide our beliefs and theories behind for a while so we began researching, digging and building up our framework of theories based on Meso-America.

Then as time went by, we learned that the Mayan and Olmec writing systems had nothing whatsoever to do with Egyptian and Hebrew.

We realized the orientation of North had to be changed to West(or North West) for Meso-America to fit the topography in the Book of Mormon — making the Nephites look so stupid that they couldn’t tell which direction is North.

Then as we found less and less Nephite evidence (ie manuscripts/language/religion) we began theorizing that the Nephites had been absorbed by some unknown culture that was already there (like the Mayans), thus we have no trace of the Nephite culture. The Nephites were made more vague. More ambiguous.

And then we (LDS scholars) had to admit that the feathered serpent god turns out to be a Mayan priest that helped spread the murderous religion of human sacrifice to other parts of Meso-America (Definitely not a good match with Christ).

Then we had to make up the 2 Cumorah theory because it seemed improbable for the entire Nephite civilization to march thousands of miles on foot over rivers, mountains and lakes just to arrive in New York for a final battle on a tiny insignificant little hill about 1/100th the size of an average mountain (the 2 Cumorah theory doesn’t exist in the Book of Mormon, we made it up to fit in our Meso-American theory).

Then to top things off, the Meso-American mtDNA comes back as Asiatic instead of Middle Eastern in origins. Dang it. But on the bright side, we helped defend the faith for decades as we continued to battle off the anti-Mormon’s claims.

After a few hundred years of this non-sense, God finally gives us the power to conduct large scale mtDNA testing for the first time. At last the day has come for God to vindicate His prophet. Once the mtDNA testing is complete and we finally find the correct geographical location based on mtDNA evidence, what happens?

We don’t believe it. Even if the geography matches with what Joseph Smith thought. We stomp on the evidence because the man who brought this out wasn’t a scholar. Or maybe we’re too stuck on our own theories to accept anything new.

So let’s go back to Meso-America and keep digging up enormous stone temples and continue imagining they were made by the Lamanites who were “dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins” Because obviously we aren’t ready for the truth yet.

I find this so fascinating and another theory as to these lands of Book Of Mormon promise. I walked away from Rod M. presentation thinking it has great merit, but still many holes as does the conventional thinking of Central America. The presentation of Bruce Porter was absolutely brilliant and using only B of M text and language lends more credibility to these United States being the lands of the B of M than anything else in my humble opinion. I would sincerely hope that everyone can retain an open mind and an air of congeniality will pervade with these discussions. My understanding is that the church makes no official comment as to the exact whereabouts, so in that light, all of this is fair game. The prediction of who might become apostate is way out of line just because another theory is brought forth. Each of the gentlemen began his presentation with his testimony and Rod M. said that if President Monson called him and told him to cease his research, he would do so in a heartbeat.

I certainly do not know what is right or wrong, however it “feels” so much better to me as I read to think that these United States with out freedoms and gentile mothering feelings and tendencies overpowers the thought of Central America being that “Promised Land”. It does bother me that FAIR is rather rigid and closed minded with other presentations, but I also know I don’t have all of the facts from their side. So I encourage more study, research and just plain old getting along and realizing we are in this together for the great cause of this true Church and gospel that we love so dearly.

For the record I am a skeptic, and therefore do necessarily assume that either The Book of Mormon is true, or that Joseph Smith is a Prophet. I do not entirely reject those notions, but suffice it to say I am not convinced sufficiently to make the assumptions you have.

That’s enough about me, my point here was not to debate the truthfulness of the Church’s claims. Rather I am suggesting that neither group is in this race, if you will, for the sake of hobby. Both groups represent efforts of faith confirmation. I am not suggesting that without finding verifiable proof either group will lose faith, but that each is in search of greater verification at some level or another. I would venture that part of this intensity has been fueled in the wake of modern science which largely refutes LDS claims regarding the multiple theories of BOM correlations to ancient American history.

I don’t think it is much different than the efforts of Christian archaeology throughout the holy land and the middle east. These scholars expect to find something which legitimizes Mormon claims.

My apologies, I made an assumption that both sides of this argument began with the presumption that The Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet and any subsequent examination of DNA evidence as it relates to geography were secondary affirmations not determining factors of those truths. That is how I approached the presentation to begin with, how did you?

“We can look at the theories and recognize the study and research that went into them, however, until the prophet tells us, these things are just speculation.”

They should certainly not be accepted as doctrine without support of the Church hierarchy. Even still, if one of these groups where to make a significant discovery we probably wouldn’t need the Prophet to verify it. For example if Zarahemla were discovered with corraborating text evidence verifying Nephi and Lehi, for example, that should stand on it’s own. We do not need a Prophet to point out the obvious.

That is why [the Church] started FARMS through BYU, they are just catious to put an ecclesiastical endorsement on an academic theory.

Just one small correction, Cowboy: The Church didn’t start FARMS. It was started in 1979 as an independent, tax-exempt research group in California. It was not invited to become a part of BYU until 1997. See a portion of the history on the Maxwell Institute site.

-Allen

I would have to disagree with this statement, this debate is exactly about the truthfullness of The Book of Mormon and the validity of it’s translator. What is interesting is that both groups, ultimately have the same agenda to find verifiable proof authenticating The Book of Mormon. The Church has been very active in supporting any evidence demonstrating forensic evidence in support of Book of Mormon Claims. That is why they started FARMS through BYU, they are just catious to put an ecclesiastical endorsement on an academic theory.