From The Desk Of An Intellectually Bankrupt Mopologist

Comic conventioneers — A photograph taken of revelers at the 2025 Interpreter Foundation birthday party? (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Up today on the immutable and unchanging website of the Interpreter Foundation: “The Interpreter Foundation Podcast — August 14, 2025: Plausibility Structures, Intellectuals, and the Church’s Truth Claims; The Interpreter Foundation Birthday Party

During the 14 August 2025 episode of the Interpreter Foundation Podcast, our hosts Terry Hutchinson, Kevin Christensen, and Mark Johnson discussed an article on plausibility on the Times and Seasons blog (https://timesandseasons.org/ and the 13th annual Interpreter Foundation Birthday Party. The audio track is also included in our podcast feed (https://interpreterfoundation.org/feeds/podcast).

Mesomerican geography — Book of Mormon lands? An image from Utto at the English-language Wikipedia, posted here as an act of defiance to those who would like to define me as a quasi-apostate because I don’t share their opinions on the geography of the Book of Mormon.

I came across the claim today — far and away not for the first time, but I was reminded of it yet again this morning — that “intellectually bankrupt Mopologists” such as I, with our notions of a relatively small (i.e., non-hemispheric and not even continental) geography for the Book of Mormon and of a relatively small population of Jaredites, Nephites, and Lamanites surrounded by other peoples, have redefined the Book of Mormon. We’ve made it a lineage history, although supposedly not a single apostle or prophet has ever defined it that way — nor, for that matter, has the Book of Mormon itself. Thus, we’ve clumsily destroyed the Book of Mormon in our hopeless and desperate attempt to save it.

However, as William James used to say, the only thing needed to disprove the claim that all crows are black is one white crow. Accordingly, I give you President Anthony W. Ivins, First Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaking in the Church’s April 1929 General Conference:

So I say one by one criticisms which have been made regarding the Book of Mormon are falling by the way through the investigation of scientists who understand their business. I thank the Lord for them and that which they are undertaking to do. I have never had any fear that a thing would be discovered to disprove the truths contained in this book.

We must be careful in the conclusions that we reach. The Book of Mormon teaches the history of three distinct peoples, or two peoples and three different colonies of people, who came from the old world to this continent. It does not tell us that there was no one here before them. It does not tell us that people did not come after. And so if discoveries are made which suggest differences in race origins, it can very easily be accounted for, and reasonably, for we do believe that other people came to this continent.

There is a great deal of talk about the geography of the Book of Mormon. Where was the land of Zarahemla? Where was the City of Zarahemla? and other geographic matters. It does not make any difference to us. There has never been anything yet set forth that definitely settles that question. So the Church says we are just waiting until we discover the truth. All kinds of theories have been advanced. I have talked with at least half a dozen men that have found the very place where the City of Zarahemla stood, and notwithstanding the fact that they profess to be Book of Mormon students, they vary a thousand miles apart in the places they have located. We do not offer any definite solution. As you study the Book of Mormon keep these things in mind and do not make definite statements concerning things that have not been proven in advance to be true. (Anthony W. Ivins, Conference Report [April 1929], 16.)

So much for the claim that not a single apostle or prophet has ever viewed the Book of Mormon in such a way. One white crow.

And what about the allegation that the Book of Mormon doesn’t support the idea of a limited geography that is contained within, but is not identical to, the Americas? For that, I refer you to the opening pages of John L. Sorenson’s 1986 classic An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, where Professor Sorenson systematically examines the geographical indicia — e.g. the distances and directions — given within the text. He demonstrates that a limited geographical model is not only permitted by the Book of Mormon but, in fact, demanded by it.

Professor Sorenson published An Ancient American Setting nearly four decades ago. President Ivins delivered his Conference address more than ninety-six years ago. I think that enough time has elapsed that critics of the Church should up their game. They should no longer get away with alleging that not a single apostle or prophet has ever claimed that there might have been peoples in the New World other than those who figure prominently in the Book of Mormon. Enough time has passed that detractors who flatly declare that the Book of Mormon text does not admit of a limited-geographical reading should be called on it.