SITH videos and "You get what you pay for"

You get what you pay for.

A recent post on X summarized the ongoing prevalence of racism in society:

If your job is to 'find racism', you'll eventually become a race alchemist who creates racism out of thin air.

Likewise,  "if your job is to "find Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon, you'll eventually become an M2C alchemist who creates the Mesoamerican setting out of thin air."

Because Scripture Central has become the predominant, if not the exclusive, source of funding for LDS students and graduates who want to pursue Book of Mormon studies and apologetics, and because Scripture Central requires employees, volunteers, and recipients of funding to promote M2C and SITH, we have a generation of M2C and SITH alchemists who create "evidence" for M2C and SITH.

SITH videos.

The M2C and SITH alchemists are omnipresent on social media. They seem to get zero pushback from the hosts, which is amazing. Instead, the hosts defer to and promote the M2C and SITH narratives. 

Lots of people have asked me to respond to these, to at least provide an alternative narrative that corroborates and supports the teachings of the prophets about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.

For fun, as an experiment, I posted a draft video recently to elicit feedback. The feedback has been helpful, but because I'm traveling I can't make changes for a while, nor can I post additional episodes. But rather than wait until I've done all of that, I thought readers here might be interested to see what is coming.

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

Email comments to lostzarahemla@gmail.com

The Scripture Central problem

Obviously, I'd prefer to have an open dialog with the M2C and SITH proponents. All of these podcasters and content producers owe it to their viewers and followers to facilitate such dialog and conversation, but with few exceptions, they refuse.

From my perspective, the main obstacle to open dialog is Scripture Central. 

Scripture Central directly funds some podcasters and creates its own content. They host seminars and meetings with podcasters and influencers. 

But Scripture Central management is adamantly opposed to open dialog and diversity of opinions.

In the pursuit of clarity, charity, and understanding, we cannot avoid discussing an obvious point about the current state of Book of Mormon studies.

Scripture Central continues to spend millions of dollars annually, partly to promote awareness of the Book of Mormon and other scriptures (which is productive), but also partly to promote the personal opinions of the organization's founders and management; i.e., M2C (the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory) and SITH (the stone-in-the-hat theory).

Both M2C and SITH explicit reject what Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery taught about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon.

There are few Latter-day Saints who, when they learn what the prophets have taught about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon, immediately conclude that the prophets were wrong.

It takes a lot of effort to persuade Latter-day Saints that the prophets were wrong. It requires persuading Latter-day Saints that modern scholars know more about the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon than Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery did.

It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

_____

Here's the post that prompted this post:

Eric Abbenante

@EricAbbenante

Coleman Hughes brilliantly depicts how DEI programs do not reduce but exacerbate racism: Coleman Hughes: "They decided to give a cash reward for every person who brought in a dead snake, thinking that, you know, two plus two equals four, all the dead snakes will be gone. Turns out if you give a cash reward for dead snakes, people will breed snakes and kill them and start snake farms. There are way more snakes at the end of this dumb program than there were at the beginning. That's kind of like what DEI Bureaucracies are. So everything that seems like it's tamping down on the problem is actually exacerbating it." If your job is to 'find racism', you'll eventually become a race alchemist who creates racism out of thin air.

https://x.com/EricAbbenante/status/1892358714864390464

Perplexity AI explains two sets of plates

We still need to work on SITH, but at least Perplexity AI understands there were two separate sets of plates that Joseph translated.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-many-sets-of-plates-did-jo-MNleUGssR0.L35LU06oUcQ

How did Joseph Smith's translation process differ between the two sets of plates

Answer

Historical accounts suggest the translation process for the Book of Mormon involved Joseph Smith using seer stones and dictating the text to scribes14. Smith would put a seer stone in his hat, place his face in the hat to exclude the light, and then read off the characters as he claimed to see them2. The scribe would repeat the words back as they were written, and if they were correct, the stone would change to the next word or line of text2. The gold plates were not used during the translation process2.

There were two sets of plates translated5:

•  These plates contained an abridgment of the large plates of Nephi5. Joseph Smith translated all of these plates (except the sealed portion) in Harmony, PA, with Oliver Cowdery as the scribe5.

•  A messenger brought the Small Plates of Nephi from the repository in the Hill Cumorah to Fayette, NY5. Joseph then translated 1 Nephi through Words of Mormon5.

Some accounts indicate that the Urim and Thummim were used for the first part of the translation, but after the loss of the original manuscript, Smith used a small, dark-colored stone1. Still, the Lord states that Joseph Smith translated by the means of the Urim and Thummim7.

The accounts vary, but a common description is that Joseph Smith placed his seer stone in a hat, stuck his face in the hat, and read off the characters as he claimed to see them2. Some believe the process differed slightly from scribe to scribe4.