Tobin wrote:Darth J wrote:...
You are dealing with a lot of misconceptions and fictions:
1) You are assuming incorrectly that the civilization the Spanish encountered had anything to do with the Nephite civilization a 1000 years before. This is basically like studying modern muslim societies and trying to develop a picture of ancient Egypt. It is completely fallacious.
No, I'm quite obviously stating that the civilizations the Spanish encountered had nothing to do with a proposed Nephite civilization, and that it is completely fallacious to assert that evidence of completely unrelated civilizations in Mesoamerica have any relevance to the Book of Mormon.
2) You have created this fiction that there has been continual study and a fixed understanding over the past 182 years that you can point out. In fact, prior to the breaking of the Mayan code (understanding their language) and what has been discovered in the past 40 years, there is little useful information to be gathered from the prior 142 years of supposed scholarship before that.
Yes, because it wasn't until Mayan writings could be interpreted that we became aware that steel swords, chariots, horses, etc. did not exist in the pre-Columbian Americas.
So, was there maybe a period of time during the last 182 years or so when people just stopped noticing all those temples and buildings and artifacts that ancient civilizations left behind in Mesoamerica? When I was a kid, I went on a trip to Mexico with my dad and climbed the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan. I'm glad that the Mayan code had been cracked by that point---otherwise, I wouldn't have even noticed that the Pyramid of the Sun was there.
3) There is another fiction you have in your head about the kinds of resources dedicated to this field. The fact is there just hasn't been a lot of study in this field nor resources dedicated to it. Certainly not on the scale of ancient Egypt or in other parts of the world and the reason for this is simple: Most of the ruins are located in wet, damp jungles with lots of diseases and other nasty surprises. And until relatively recently, they couldn't even read the inscriptions on some of the buildings and stela.
Kind of makes one wonder what the basis is for your assertion that the Book of Mormon narrative happened in Mesoamerica, what with the dearth of knowledge about the place.
What was that factual basis, again? I keep forgetting.
So based on false understandings of what has been going on and the distinct lack of resources, study, and scholarship, you have determined there is no evidence for Book of Mormon societies 1700 years ago. What a huge surprise...
That's a really compelling argument, Tobin. I mean, we know about and can identify the Toltecs, the Olmecs, the Aztecs, and the Mayans, even with this pitiful lack of knowledge or resources about ancient Mesoamerica, but nobody can find one single thing to substantiate 1,000 years of Nephite civilization, to say nothing of the Jaredites. I wonder why that is. It sure is a head-scratcher!