More Comments from Readers – Part II

Here are more comments that we have received from readers of this website blog:
Comment #1: “I just completed the lengthy job of reading all your blog from beginning to now. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciated the information and the marvelous education it gave me on the Book of Mormon. Thank you very much. Next, I’ll tackle your books” Chuck G.
Response: Thank you for your kind words. There is much to learn in this never-ending process of seeking knowledge.
Comment #2: “Hi Del, in certain circles this would be considered "plagiarism". You need to attribute the content of this post to the original author, and that isn't you” David P.
Response: That is correct, we did not write it nor did we take any credit for it, post it under the name of anyone in our organization, or who send us information. In fact, much of the technical information we use in our blog comes from other sources, many of them, like this article, “Thinking in Eastern Concrete Terms, or Western Abstract Terms?” appeared on a website “Ancient Hebrew Research Center, Plowing through history, from Aleph to Tav,” and contained information regarding the Hebrew language, regarding the question “Does the English translation of the Bible accurately reflect the Hebrew?” and allows for free use, copy or distribution, by Jeff Benner, who we have credited in the past when referencing Hebrew language. For whatever its worth, this is not a new subject—I have been teaching it Sunday School classes on Old Testament since back in the 1970s, though I am no expert on the subject, which is why we relied on Benner's view in the blog.
Comment #3: “Radiometric dating, which you wrote critically about is the process of determining the age of rocks from the decay of their radioactive elements. You neglected to mention this has been around and much in use for over fifty years. There are also more than 40 other like techniques, though each used a different radioactive element or a different way of measuring them. It all sounds pretty solid to me” Granger L.

Precambrian shield at Godthåbsfjorden, West Greenland consists dominantly of crystalline gneiss basement, formed during several periods of mountain building, and welded together. The oldest rocks about 3.9 billion years old occur in the Isua region to the south, whereas the area around Ilulissat is formed by younger rocks about 1.8-1.6 billion years old

Response: Located on the west coast of Greenland, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, Greenland's Ilulissat Icefjord is a tidal fjord covered with floating brash and massive ice, as it is situated where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calves ice into the sea. In winter, the area is frozen solid.
    Issua fjord in Greenland, Located on the west coast of Greenland, 155-miles north of the Arctic Circle, Greenland's Ilulissat Icefjord is a tidal fjord covered with floating brash and massive ice, as it is situated where the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier calves ice into the sea. In winter, the area is frozen solid. Here the oldest rocks about 3.9 billion years old occur in the Isua region to the south, whereas the area around Ilulissat is formed by younger rocks about 1.8-1.6 billion years old. This Precambrian shield is dominated by pale grey, folded, gneisses and granites, with bands and enclaves of mica schist and dark basic rocks.
    It should also be noted that just because a method has a long history, or is popular, or gives consistent information does not mean it is true. After all, similar claims were made about spontaneous generation, though now it is an obsolete body of thought on the ordinary formation of living organisms without descent from similar organisms (it was originally thought that maggots could arise from dead flesh). Similar claims were once made about phlogiston, which now is an obsolete scientific theory that postulated a fire-like element called phlogiston, contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek phlogistón (burning up), from phlóx (flame).
Comment #4: “Excellent posts about the age of the earth, carbon dating, etc. Clears up a lot of questions I have had over the years about why dates of carbon dating do not line up with scripture. Thank you Del” David K.
Response: Again, thank you for your kind words. It is nice to know how people feel about what we post. We receive far more accolades than we post in these comments, but once in a while we put one in. Another good source, though far more technical, is our book Scientific Fallacies & Other Myths.
Comment #5: “Whatever exact and clear glimpse of the Land of Promise the Book of Mormon gives us is more than obfuscated by the writer of this review, who never quite gets beyond his criticisms to show us the error of the Mesoamerican theory or the more compelling theory he/she may hold to” John R.

Response: Perhaps you would care to read more of our comments about Mesoamerica, for in them we have taken every single point about Mesoamerica and compared it with scripture in order to show that their model simply does not agree with Mormon's many descriptions. It is not that we are critical of Mesoamerica, we are critical of those who misuse, misinterpret, change or alter the scriptural record in order to promote their pre-determined location and view. We also recommend you to the book "Inaccuracies of Mesoamerican and other Theorists" for a complete coverage of several Mesoamerican theorists writings and claims and comparing them to the scriptural record. We might also add that we have written this blog for almost ten years with over 4000 posts covering a very wide variety of issues about the Land of Promise. We do not center on criticism of Mesoamerica, but do write about scholars who place the Land of Promise in areas not consistent with Mormon’s descriptions. Perhaps you would want to read our descriptions of the Land of Promise before commenting about our narrow view and “never quite gets beyond his criticism” to see what else is covered very extensively throughout the ten plus years of our blog.
Comment #6: “I find it odd that in Alma 2:24 it mentions the Nephite city of Minon being “above the land of Zarahemla,” which places Minon north of Zarahemla, however, Minon was on the way to the Land of Nephi. Why did they have to go north to go south to Nephi?” Toby R.
Response: In the 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the word “above” is defined as “literally, higher in place” and “overhead, in a higher place.” In fact, there are numerous meanings of the word “above,” but in geography, it means only above (higher in elevation)—it does not mean north. Consequently, when comparing this to other scripture showing that the Land of Nephi was “above” or at a higher elevation, than the Land of Zarahemla, we see that the scripture being referred to reads: “Behold, we followed the camp of the Amlicites, and to our great astonishment, in the land of Minon, above the land of Zarahemla, in the course of the land of Nephi, we saw a numerous host of the Lamanites; and behold, the Amlicites have joined them” (Alma 2:24). That is, Alma was pursuing the Amlicites but when it got dark and he could follow them no longer, he sent out Zeram, Amno, Manti and Limher to keep track of the Amlicites, and in the morning they returned “in great haste, being greatly astonished, and struck with much fear (Alma 2:23), saying that the Lamanites were hurrying down to attack Zarahemla.
What you quote seems to be taken from Geography—Book of Mormon.com, “Why is There So Much Geography in The Book of Mormon That Relates to War?” by Steven Nelson, who seems to have his geography all screwed up with the Lamanites “have to go north to get to Zarahemla though it was south, and had to go around an inland sea.”
Comment #7: I agree with James Lee Warr and his Costa Rica land of promise, about which he said among other things, “It was an area where tropical diseases (i.e. fevers) and their remedies were present” (Alma 46:40)” Ralph L.

The malaria treating drug quinine comes from the bark of the ‘cinchona’ tree, which grows only in Andean Peru, was discovered by the Quechua people of Peru and Bolivia and later brought to Europe by the Jesuits

Response: There was only one true cure for fevers anciently, especially for malaria which killed so many people throughout the world, and that was quinine, which was found only in Andean Peru until the Dutch transplanted it into what is now Indonesia in the 16^th century. The actual scripture referenced is: “And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land –  but not so much so with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the cause of diseases” (Alma 46:40). It is interesting of all the malady treatments for fevers found all over the world, only quinine was effective. They did not have quinine in Central America, in Mesoamerica, in the Heartland, Great Lakes, or eastern U.S., so we can simply conclude that quinine, being the only cure for deadly fevers in ancient times, locates the Land of Promise in Andean Peru.
Comment #8: “Do you have a place where you think Nephi’s brothers were going to cast him into the depths of the sea?” Marlene A.
Response: Guarding both sides of the entry to the Khor Rori inlet are great granite cliffs. The cliffs reach a height of 100 feet and project out into the deep water a length about 200 feet, thus providing a natural breakwater for a safe passage to the sea far beyond the breaking surf zone. Phillips describes this remarkable passage into the deep water: “at Khor Rori two elongated monoliths of rock flank the entrance to the khor and defy an obvious geological explanation. We can also suggest that these cliffs make a perfect “mountain” from which Laman and Lemuel threatened to cast Nephi into the depths of the sea
Comment #9: “Thank you for your work Del. I am finding your blog to be fascinating and compelling. I have studied many of the mesoamerica books and thought that was likely the promised land but struggled with some aspects of the model like the sea east and west being north and south— and the narrow pass being a flood zone, etc. I was quite impressed with George Potter's work on Lehi's trail in Saudi Arabia, but did not find his initial reasons for the promised land being in Peru to be very compelling –  but as his work continued I found it more compelling and then I found your site which I am impressed with. I am reading your blog from the oldest post first as well as all comments” David K.
Response: Thank you for your positive comment.