M2C still ongoing

It's easy to spot the parallels between M2C and the Russia collusion hoax.

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Benny Johnson

@bennyjohnson

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8h

SCARY: Tulsi Gabbard CONFIRMS That ‘Operation Mockingbird’ is STILL Ongoing inside the CIA and she is actively trying to Shut it Down. Tulsi says Deep State intel agents are still actively colluding with left-wing media outlets to attack President Trump from within: “There are people in the intelligence community who believe their will is more important than the will of the American people.” “They weaponize intelligence by leaking it to their friends in the media with the intent of undermining President Trump’s agenda.” Operation Mockingbird was a covert CIA program aimed at influencing U.S. media to shape public opinion. Declassified in 1977 through FOIA requests and detailed in a congressional report, it involved infiltrating newsrooms, planting stories, and recruiting journalists—some knowingly, others not—at major outlets like The New York Times, Time, and CBS.

BMAF retrospective

One of our favorite M2C organizations was the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum, or BMAF. 

They were a delightful group of hard-core M2Cers whose logo depicted M2C:

Their website has been scrubbed (the link bmaf.org now goes to Scripture Central, of all things), but of course it is archived.

And their google group is still available. They will probably delete it after this post, but it is all archived already. If they delete it, we'll post their articles here anyway.

The BMAF google group introduction is a good summary of how they saw the world. Original in blue, my comments in red, emphasis added.

We hope you will enjoy becoming a member of BMAF (Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum)  a not-for-profit organization dedicated as an open forum for research and evidences regarding Book of Mormon archaeology, anthropology, geography and culture within a Mesoamerican context.   

(click to enlarge)

This exclusive focus on Mesoamerica was also in their official purpose statement, as we can see in their website from 20 years ago. 

After I emphasized that point a few years ago, they edited their statement to make it more general, but they forgot about their google group, which makes their obsession with Mesoamerica even more explicit (see below).

While not associated with the LDS Church, we espouse it's doctrine and scriptures and all our content is pro-Mormon.  

Our website (www.bmaf.org) is one of the most-visited Book of Mormon apologetic sites on the internet with over 300 scholarly articles.  

Whether they are scholarly is obviously debatable, but it probably was one of the most visited sites, given the participation of various BYU scholars and even emeritus General Authorities, all trying to persuade Latter-day Saints to reject what Joseph, Oliver, their contemporaries and successors taught about the New York Cumorah.

Our contributors range from ordinary people who love and study the Book of Mormon to PhD's and university professors.  We also post articles from current and former members of the RLDS church.  

We maintain a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/groups/bmaf.org/?fref=ts

as well as many You Tube videos of presentations at our conferences at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bmaforg&oq=bmaforg&gs.

Unfortunately, much if not all of that material has been purged from the Internet, except what is still in the archives at Scripture Central.

Though we edit all material before we present it to the public, we do not require that it conforms to our ideas.  You will often read articles from several points of view.  

Such openness is rare among academics.

Our only absolute criteria is that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica.  

Oops! Their "only absolute criteria" is intolerance of the views of faithful Latter-day Saints--including what Joseph and Oliver taught. So much for academic freedom, inquiry curiosity, transparency, etc.

We encourage comments and feedback from our members and often put them on our website. You may quote any material on this site as long as you give attribution.

Given this "absolute criteria," it is useful to see who was involved with BMAF.

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10 years ago, BMAF sent this invitation:

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BMAF's 2016 conference featured some of the usual suspects, including Brant Gardner whose recent series in the Interpreter and Meridian Magazine continues to promote M2C:

Finally, all the way back in 2008, they reported on their Book of Mormon tours and the speakers at their annual gathering:

2008 BMAF CONFERENCE SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18TH
at the Red Lion Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah

MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW! CHECK SOON FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS WEBSITE.

Spring 2008 BMAF Book of Mormon tour

Every Spring BMAF sponsors a one-week tour with an LDS scholar to Book of Mormon lands. Each year a different area of Mesoamerica is explored. Past tours have included most of the proposed Book of Mormon sites.

Since BMAF is a non-profit organization it is able to provide the best possible study/touring experience at the lowest possible prices.

On February 11th, 2008, BMAF tour members visited the famous archaeological site of Copan in Honduras and Quirigua in Guatemala and explored the Lago de Izabel area on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala by boat.

The BMAF tour in 2007 visited many of the famous Olmec (possibly Jaredite) sites along the Gulf of Mexico.

5th annual BMAF conference a huge success!

Saturday, October 20th goes down in history as the most successful conference held by the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum to date. Well over 200 people attended a packed hall at the Red Lion Hotel in Salt Lake City to hear John W. Welch , the keynote speaker; John Bytheway , the featured lunch speaker; Dr. John Lund , Brant Gardner , Dr. F. Richard Hauck , Michael Ash , and Elder Ted E. Brewerton .

[Click on each name for a brief synopsis of their presentation. Complete transcripts of all presentations from this conference as well as prior conferences will appear on this website in the near future. All presentations can be downloaded free of charge from the BMAF website.]

BMAF conducts a Book of Mormon archaeological forum once each year in October.

M2C theme music

 

deadmau5 - Quezacotl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_x3DaZAGAg&list=RDmSXoTWvs-OQ&index=8

Finally figuring it out

Prominent LDS scholars (with credentials, even) have figured out that the Book of Mormon actually talks about jungles, jaguars and jade.

They've also figured out 

- that "horses" are really tapirs, 

- that "towers" built in a day are actually massive stone pyramids built by Mayans, and 

- that Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were merely ignorant speculators who were wrong about Cumorah and thereby misled the Latter-day Saints and the world as a whole--until the scholars corrected the teachings of the prophets.

Now maybe these credentialed scholars can turn their attention to interpreting the Book of Revelation.

Oops. Someone beat them to it.

https://babylonbee.com/news/everyone-was-wrong-god-confirms-book-of-revelation-was-actually-about-the-war-of-1812

M2C scholar reading Book of Mormon

While riding a tapir in the jungle of Mesoamerica during a search for Cumorah.

All because he forgot to read Letter VII first.

Jerry Grover on volcanoes

Brant Gardner is doing a series on M2C that is a lot of fun. But for other commitments, I could write numerous posts about it, as well as the comments. 

From time to time people send me examples of the irrationality and confusion that persists among the M2Cers, such as the one below.

To be sure, Jerry Grover is an awesome guy. I like him a lot, he's smart, etc. But this is an example of how the M2C mindset generates a lot of fun rationalization.

(click to enlarge)

Jerry observes that "the word volcano is not found in Biblical Hebrew or ancient Egyptian." Maybe that's because the people who lived in the Middle-East anciently did not experience volcanoes?

No, that's not it. Volcanoes are well-known in the Middle-East and around the Mediterranean. They are even found along Lehi's journey from Jerusalem.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Figure-1-Regional-map-showing-the-distribution-of-the-volcanic-fields-harrats-across_fig1_259043951

The Bible does not use the Hebrew word for volcano, but it describes volcanic activity, as explained here: https://biblehub.com/topical/naves/v/volcanoes--general_scriptures_concerning.htm

E.g., Nahum 1:5-6: "The mountains quake before Him, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles at His presence—the world and all its dwellers. Who can withstand His indignation? Who can endure His burning anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are shattered before Him."

If the Nephites had actually experienced volcanoes, they could have described it the way Nahum did. After all, Joseph Smith used biblical imagery and language throughout the text.

Jerry then proposes that "great storm" is equivalent to a volcano.

Here is how that phrase is used in the scriptures:

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. (Mark 4:37)

13 Wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three days; (1 Nephi 18:13)

5 And it came to pass in the thirty and fourth year, in the first month, on the fourth day of the month, there arose a great storm, such an one as never had been known in all the land. (3 Nephi 8:5)

Jerry wants us to believe that the third instance describes a volcano. Which also means that in the thousand-year history of the Nephites living in Mesoamerica, there was only a single volcanic eruption, that they didn't know the Hebrew word for volcano, and that they could only describe the event using the identical phrase they used for... for what we would normally call a storm.

Then look at the cascading assumptions Jerry makes to come up with a rationale. 

At least we're having fun with M2C.

John Sorenson watches witless sci-fi movie

In his book Mormon's Codex, published by FARMS and Deseret Book, John Sorenson famously wrote, 

"There remain Latter-day Saints who insist that the final destruction of the Nephites took place in New York, but any such idea is manifestly absurd. Hundreds of thousands of Nephites traipsing across the Mississippi Valley to New York, pursued (why?) by hundred of thousands of Lamanites, is a scenario worthy only of a witless sci-fi movie, not of history." 

Mormon's Codex, p. 688.

Because we're not sure what he had in mind, we offer some variations on his theme.

Of course, there are many Latter-day Saints who think M2C is a witless sci-fi narrative, but people can believe whatever they want.