AN EVENING WITH RODNEY MELDRUM (Warning: *LONG*)

[_Yoda]

Active Mormons know these "fruits, nuts, and flakes" as "apostles, prophets, and God."

ROTFLMAO!

[_Sethbag]

I think so many critics and apostates like Meldrum precisely because he helps put the lie to what the FARMS/MI crowd does time after time after time, which is the invention of some theoretical Mormonism that they can defend, but which is not an accurate description of the church as believed and practiced by the overwhelming majority of its several million active members, including the overwhelming majority of its leadership.

Or in other words, there are a lot of critics and apostates who love Meldrum because Meldrum's research, together with his version of Mormonism, is so damn easy to refute.

His version of Mormonism is Mormonism, and yes, it's insanely damn easy to refute.

The theoretical Mormonism of the MI crowd, and of you yourself, doesn't really exist, outside the minds of some fairly small subset of Mormons who have realized the problems with their faith, and, in your words, "adjust their paradigm" or whatever to define a theoretical, personal Mormonism which they think overcomes some of the difficulties. But that's not the church Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and the other Prophets, Seers, and Revelators have given us over the last 180 years, ostensibly with the personal and direct leadership of Jesus Christ.

I suspect this is one of the same reasons Meldrum is not very popular with the FAIR/MI crowd.

He's not very popular with them because he helps put the lie to this smoke screen version of Mormonism that they create, because they think it's easier to defend than the Mormonism practiced in the chapels and homes around the world by the overwhelming majority of active members and leadership.

Meldrum's perspective also reflects the black and white mentality that most apostates once held regarding their faith, which is precisely why when confronted with evidence that negated their approach to Mormonism, they simply abandoned their religious convictions. Unlike someone who does not adhere to a fundamentalist mindset, Meldrum is a person with whom the apostate can clearly identify.

I will not fight your assertion of "black and white mentality" here. I think it's perfectly fine. The LDS Church either really is what it claims to be, or it is not. This is black and white. I believe the LDS church cannot be "sort of" true anymore than a woman can be "sort of" pregnant.

EE, this world is chock full of manmade religions. There are probably many thousands of them, and variants of them, practiced by individuals and groups around the world. You can hardly throw a stick without hitting a manmade church. Within this context, just through random statistics I'd have no trouble believing that the LDS church was likewise almost certainly manmade, but given the evidence of so many ways in which the church is not what it claimed to be, this overwhelming statistical probability I see as turning into virtual certainty.

I am as "black and white" sure that the LDS church is manmade as the overwhelming majority of LDS are "black and white" sure that the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Southern Baptists, and all the rest are manmade.

[_Enuma Elish]

You believe that Meldrum is "attacking" anyone? What on earth makes you believe that? The only time he ever mentions FAIR/FARMS/MI is in response to their attacks against him.

Wow.

Absolutely, Shades! Where in the world have you been?!!! Aside from the explicit references calling FAIR and the MI scholars apostates, Meldrum's work and website is full of statements like the following attack in Bruce Porter's testimonial of support:

"It will be a long and tedious fight to get those who have spent, and earned so much money on the Central America theories as well as their reputations and books, to give credit to Joseph Smith and the DNA evidence."

So scholars such as John Sorenson have "earned so much money" advancing his view of a Mesoamerican geographic model that he refuses to give "credit" to the Prophet of the Restoration. Precisely how many examples such as this do I need to provide before you recognize that Meldrum has a propensity towards attacking the religious devotion of fellow believers who reject his approach to the Book of Mormon?

We've all seen this pattern before. Mark my words, Meldrum is another Paul Osborn in the making! Meldrum is to Book of Mormon geography what Osborn was to the Book of Abraham.

[_Dr. Shades]

It appears that I must stand corrected.

Aside from the explicit references calling FAIR and the MI scholars apostates, . . .

"Explicit?" Are you sure?

If you can copy-and-paste one or two examples of that, I'd very much appreciate it.

[_Trevor]

I certainly can sympathize with Americans who desire to connect with Book of Mormon sacred geography. I don’t believe, however, that their desire is in anyway more authentic than those Latter-day Saints from Central and South America who hold a similar yearning to connect with Mesoamerican sacred geography.

Nor would I suggest such a thing, but what does LGT as it is currently formulated really offer? And how does it come anywhere close to offering the kind of tangibility that the hill Cumorah, the bones of Zelph, and Adam-ondi-Ahman provide? What LGT essentially says is that your people, somehow, in some way, in some place in this general region, were connected to this ancient narrative. I don't find that anywhere close to as concrete or immediately appealing as the unambiguous identification of specific sites as sacred in the early LDS Church.

Also, what about Native Americans in North America? Are the claims of native populations in Central America any more important than theirs? Remember, it is not simply the white man who is potentially interested in the implications of a North American context.

Many Latin-American members of the Church view the Mesoamerican geographical model as an essential reflection of their spiritual and cultural heritage. Personally, I find the idea that only the United States of America encompasses the Promised Land mentioned in the Book of Mormon a bit offensive.

I understand your feelings about the US-centrism that probably satisfies the ideological inclinations and bigotry of certain people. At the same time, when such US folks (both "white" and "native") look around, they are likely to conclude that Book of Mormon prophecy about a promised land has, to this point at least, most obviously been fulfilled in the US. This provides them yet another strong connection to the text. Whatever the other unpleasant implications, I don't think the fact of the power of this connection can be gainsaid.

My main problem, if you will, however, with those who feel threatened by a non-traditional model for the Book of Mormon occurs only when those believers attempt to use bad science to support their religious convictions. If a traditional believer rejects the LGT in Mesoamerica approach to the Book of Mormon advocated by many of the scholars at the MI, it would be better, in my opinion, for the individual to simply ignore science altogether, rather than suggest that spurious scientific proposals somehow support and/or prove a North American only geographic model.

I agree that bad arguments based on flawed methodology deserve a sound critique, and I welcome any sound critique of any argument. What I am trying to communicate here is that, no matter how sound you find the methodology supporting LGT, the Mesoamerican setting, etc., there are solid and understandable reasons why these arguments fail to satisfy. LDS scholars, correctly or incorrectly, have gone from looking for Nephite and Lamanite artifacts in Mesoamerica, to, in some cases, telling people that no one should expect to find such artifacts. When an absence of any clear genetic indicators of a Hebrew population is pointed out, some apologists argue that no evidence of a particular genetic marker should necessarily be expected. No matter how methodologically correct you or anyone else finds that, that can appear tantamount to making the Lamanites disappear into the ectoplasm.

My statements here are not intended to attack apologetics, but to point out what I think are some of the likely interpretations and results of this collection of arguments. From one point of view, and really the easiest one for the average Joe to grasp, it is as though apologists are saying that the absence of evidence suggests the existence of Lamanites in Mesoamerica, when the easier conclusion to draw by far is that they have evaporated from reality altogether. If I don't happen to find that particularly faith promoting, you tell me what I am likely to gravitate toward, "this is Cumorah" or "well, no, this is not Cumorah; Joseph Smith and other Mormons simply called it Cumorah by convention, and Moroni wandered around from some unspecified location in Mesoamerica, in which a small, but unlocated minority of Lamanites were mixed among this large population of natives of Asian origins, although they wrote a theological, not-history in the technical sense, but really ancient narrative that made it seem like they were the center of the whole civilization"?

In other words, if apologetics is about more than defending the possibility of the Book of Mormon being an ancient text, but about actively promoting belief, I would suggest that this whole concatenation of current apologetic arguments emerging from BYU and the NMI, when taken together, no matter how technically correct it might be, may be a strategic flop of Biblical proportions. In defending the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites and their significance as a people have arguably been all but lost in the shuffle.

[_Enuma Elish]

It appears that I must stand corrected.

Aside from the explicit references calling FAIR and the MI scholars apostates, . . .

"Explicit?" Are you sure?

If you can copy-and-paste one or two examples of that, I'd very much appreciate it.

These are the attacks I would deem as explicit. As the quote from Bruce Porter illustrates, however, there's a lot more where that came from:

Like Paul Osborn, Rodney Meldrum accuses "the scholarly community of the Church" of "dismissing Joseph Smith" and by so doing helping anti-Mormons. See Rodney Meldrum, DNA Evidence, section 3, "Joseph Smith," 36:18.

Like Osborn, Meldrum also implicitly charges Church leaders with wasting Church funds by supporting the research at the MI (for Meldrum, however, it's specifically in terms of Mesoamerican research). See Rod Meldrum, DNA Evidence, section 17, "Conclusion," 4:20–4:45.

Also, as admitted on his website, Meldrum’s initial DVD production presented current LDS scholar's views as apostate by misusing a quote from President Hinckley in order to portray LDS scholars at the MI as those who "would pluck the fruit from the tree while cutting off the root from which it grows." See here: http://www.bookofmormonevidence.org

Again, we've all see this before.

[_Sethbag]

Many Latin-American members of the Church view the Mesoamerican geographical model as an essential reflection of their spiritual and cultural heritage.

Which is so very sad, really, because if the Book of Mormon is really just a work of fiction, that means these Latin-American members of the church are ignoring their real ancestors, and real cultural origin and heritage, for the Riders of Rohan, or the men of Gondor.

Personally, I find the idea that only the United States of America encompasses the Promised Land mentioned in the Book of Mormon a bit offensive.

I'm curious whether you find equally offensive the notion, held by untold legions of active Mormons, that the Creator of the Universe actually wrote, or caused to be written, the founding document of the United States of America, and apparently not those of every other country on Earth. With such a strong "we are God's country - literally" mentality, can you blame them if they see "this land" spoken of in the Book of Mormon as pertaining to the territory of the US?

My main problem, if you will, however, with those who feel threatened by a non-traditional model for the Book of Mormon occurs only when those believers attempt to use bad science to support their religious convictions. If a traditional believer rejects the LGT in Mesoamerica approach to the Book of Mormon advocated by many of the scholars at the MI, it would be better, in my opinion, for the individual to simply ignore science altogether, rather than suggest that spurious scientific proposals somehow support and/or prove a North American only geographic model.

So, this is interesting. Do you believe that the science currently supports the LGT in Mesoamerica theory of the Book of Mormon? Do you believe that, anytime soon, the legions of non-LDS scientists dealing in one way or another with aspects of this science, will come to agree with this, and recognize the Bookf of Mormon as an authentic record of real ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica?

[_Dr. Shades]

Very interesting quotes, Enuma Elish. Thank you for taking the time to post them.

Even so, let's face it: The things you quoted from both Bruce Porter and Rodney Meldrum are indeed true, are they not?

. . . Meldrum’s initial DVD production presented current LDS scholar's views as apostate by misusing a quote from President Hinckley in order to portray LDS scholars at the MI as those who "would pluck the fruit from the tree while cutting off the root from which it grows."

If the quote was a misuse, then who, specifically, was Hinckley accusing of "pluck[ing] the fruit from the tree while cutting off the root from which it grows[?]"

[_harmony]

Like Osborn, Meldrum also implicitly charges Church leaders with wasting Church funds by supporting the research at the MI (for Meldrum, however, it's specifically in terms of Mesoamerican research). See Rod Meldrum, DNA Evidence, section 17, "Conclusion," 4:20–4:45.

I thought the MI was tasked with the METI? What does that have to do with Mesoamerican research? What Mesoamerican research does MI do? (I don't suppose we can find an annual report, so I'm having to ask you directly).

[Guest]

If the quote was a misuse, then who, specifically, was Hinckley accusing of "pluck[ing] the fruit from the tree while cutting off the root from which it grows[?]"

Here's the entire quote:

It is a constantly recurring mystery to me how some people speak with admiration for the Church and its work while at the same time disdaining [Joseph Smith] through whom, as a servant of the Lord, came the framework of all that the Church is, of all that it teaches, and of all that it stands for. They would pluck the fruit from the tree while cutting off the root from which it grows.

LINK

Since so many of Meldrum's arguments rely on "Joseph Smith said...", I can see why he would think that comment applied to those who seemingly discount Joseph Smith's words in while formulating their Book of Mormon theories.