More Comments from Readers Part II

Following are more comments and questions from our readers:
Comment #1: “The comment in Alma 22:32 of it being defensive lines of a day and a half’s journey, and a day’s journey in Helaman 4:7 must be located outside the Isthmus or narrow neck because of the phrasing “from the east unto the west sea” and “from the west sea, even unto the east.” Thus, these defensive lines must be outside the narrow neck of land but also must be in the vicinity of the south side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (narrow neck of land) and must relate directly with the Pacific Ocean (west sea)” Wes B.

The two lines mentioned in the scriptural record

Response: It is unclear what you think the word “unto” means. In 1828, the word was considered “obsolete’ since “it expresses no more than to.” It is not found in the Mother Tongue, according to Noah Webster, “nor used in popular discourse.” Even today, the word is defined as “archaic term for to,” and “archaic term for until.” Even checking with the English Language & Usage, which sometimes goes far afield to find an answer, it merely states: “What are the differences between "unto" and "to"? It seems that in many contexts where the word "unto" is used, "to" could be substituted and would be perfectly correct.”
    Thus, the two statements you quote should read: “from the east to the west sea,” and “from the west sea, even to the east.” Therefore, nothing changes.
    Nor, by the way, are these two statements connected in any way, one being used to describe the width of the narrow neck of land (Alma 22:32) and the other used to describe the length of a defensive wall that the Nephites built to stop the northern advances of the Lamanite armies (Helaman 4:7). The first is definitely within the narrow neck of land, and the latter is obviously not.
Comment #2: “You talk about Quechua as the original language of the Nephites. Does it still exist?” Mikki T.
Response: Yes. The other language was Aymara. However, today Quechua is considered to be a group of at least seven languages with about 46 distinct dialects between them. But it wasn’t always like that. Just as Latin in Europe became Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian among others, over the past centuries Quechua too has adapted and changed—something that happens in just about all languages. Just like Latin, at one time in the past there was a single Original Quechua from which the modern varieties evolved. Today, 10 million people speak Quechua, which includes 13% of the total population of Peru. About 2.8 million people speak Aymara today.
    It might be of interest to know that the fictional language called Huttese used in the Star Wars movies is largely based on Quechua.
Comment #3: “I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but all your talk about Sorenson has caused me to look more critically at his Mesoamerican theory and to the specific areas of his city placement. And illogically, I found he places the location of the east-seashore cities of Bountiful, Mulek, Gid, Omner, Jershon, Morianton, Lehi, Nephihah, and Moroni near the top of the narrow neck of land. The result is that he positions these cities over the top of or in the middle of cities located in Olmec/Jaredite territory—locations that are not supported by the Mesoamerica archaeological and historical records of the first century BC.” Dixon M.
Response: Excellent point. Thank you. Mesoamericanists have an interesting of placing cities, not based on the scriptural record, but on where cities are now found in Mesoamerica.
Comment #4: “You write about science, yet every time you do, you are on the opposite side of all accepted science. Take this which I retrieved from PBS website: “The Colorado has dramatically changed the role the river plays in a task begun millions of years ago: dredging the Grand Canyon." (Nature Series, "Grand Canyon: The Colorado River”), PBS, [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/grand-canyon/the-colorado-river/2283/]. Also, in “General Science” (Prentice Hall, 1998, p 174): “Over millions of years, the Colorado River has carved out the Grand Canyon from solid rock.” And on p 279 “The Colorado River flowing along the bottom of the Grand Canyon, has cut through layer upon layer of rock over millions of years exposing fossils long buried in sedimentary rock.” Now you are writing about the Grand Canyon being made in a very short time, which everyone knows was a feature that took millions of years to form, cut by the Colorado River” Joanne N.

The Grand Canyon

 

Response: It is interesting you quoted from these two sources—far more authentic and scientific quotes on this subject could have easily been found and listed. However, the overall point is a rather simple one.
    Perhaps you learned something differently in school, but all the science courses taught us shows that water does not naturally flow uphill. Consider the fact that the Colorado River travels through the Rocky Mountains and enters the Grand Canyon at 2800 feet, flows downhill for 270 miles and exists the canyon at 1800 feet; yet, along that course, the Kaibab Uplift—the highest points of the mountains the river is supposed to have cut through—is 6900 to 8500 feet high. In other words, the river would have had to run uphill 4000 feet to then cut downward to the level it now is.
    Considering these different altitudes, we should notice the following points:
1. The top of Grand Canyon is higher than the bottom;
2. The river only runs through the bottom;
3. The Rocky Mountains are higher than where the river enters the canyon by over 4000 feet;
4. Rivers do not flow uphill.
    Unless the Colorado River in nature can be shown to flow uphill against gravity, there is no way that the river made that canyon. In all respects, that leaves the Grand Canyon formed via a breached damn on much larger proportions than we are used to seeing.
    To better understand this, take the Teton Dam in Idaho, in which engineers noticed a small leak at approximately 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., Saturday, June 5, 1976, along the 305-foot-high, 3,200-foot-long earthen dam, just after completion and when it was first being filled, foolishly built in a valley of porous clay by the Bureau of Reclamation, one of the eight federal agencies authorized to construct dams.

The break in Teton Dam in Idaho. The force of 251,000 acre feet of water moving at 2,000,000 cubic feet per second, has such tremendous force to have cut a wide swatch through an already existing canyon at Teton Dam

Between four and five hours later, at 11:57 am, the breach could not be stopped and the crest of the embankment fell into the enlarging hole and 80-billion gallons of water, at over 2,000,000 cubic feet per second, surged in a solid wall from the 251,000 acre feet of water behind the dam as it was just reaching full capacity. The wall of water flowed down the valley of eastern Idaho for approximately eight straight hours, though the main part of the reservoir emptied in about five hours, reaching a height of 30-feet, wiping out farming towns and carving a new canyon through the six miles before spreading out and shallowing on the Snake River Plain in a matter of hours, causing numerous landslides from banks caving in, as it moved at 15 miles an hour, killing 11 people and swallowing hundreds of homes and 18,000 head of livestock, as it carved and widened the Teton River Canyon.
    While evolutionists teach that canyons form with a little bit of water, and a lot of time, an assumption that cannot be verified in the lifetime of science, the reality of what we see in the world is that an enormous canyon forming very rapidly with a lot of water and little bit of time. We cannot observe the evolutionists' explanation because it would take far too long, and therefore becomes part of what they believe, not scientific observation. However, a rapid formation explanation from a breached dam can be observed naturally, and is scientific observation. 

The Marineris Canyon on Mars runs across the landscape and is the largest and deepest canyon at in the solar system at 2,485 miles long, 124 miles wide and up to 6.8 miles p (by comparison, Earth’s Grand Canyon is 1.25 miles deep

As an example, when evolutionary geologists look at the photos of Mars and see giant canyons, far greater in size than the Grand Canyon, they conclude there must have been an enormous amount of water in a short amount of time to create that canyon. However, they deny the same conclusion when they can stand face-to-face with the Grand Canyon because in interpretation of a lot of water and a little time matches too closely with the Biblical explanation.

    You may call that a scientific approach, but we do not.