Difference between revisions of "Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church/Chapter 12"

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*Michael D. Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," ''Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought'' 8:40-48 (1973).
 
*Michael D. Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," ''Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought'' 8:40-48 (1973).
 
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====170 - Thomas Ferguson was one of the better known early "Mormon archaeologists"====
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|title=Losing a Lost Tribe
 
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* Thomas Ferguson was one of the better known early "Mormon archaeologists"
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Thomas Ferguson was one of the better known early "Mormon archaeologists"
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* Ferguson was not an archaeologist.  He was an amateur, with an unrealistic idea of what constituted archaeological proof, and what help archaeology would be.
 
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* [[Book_of_Mormon/Archaeology/Thomas_Stuart_Ferguson|Thomas Stuart Ferguson]]
 
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* [[Book_of_Mormon/Archaeology|Book of Mormon archaeology]]
 
 
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* No source given.
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No source given.
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* {{CrossRef:Abanes:Becoming Gods|pages=77 368n145-147}}
 
 
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{{CrossRef:Abanes:Becoming Gods|pages=77 368n145-147}}
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{{:Question: Was Thomas Stuart Ferguson an archaeologist?}}
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{{:Source:Peterson and Roper:FR 16:1:We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists}}
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{{:Source:Peterson:FR 16:1:makes every effort to portray Ferguson's apparent eventual loss of faith as a failure for 'LDS archaeology'}}
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{{:Source:Gee:FR 10:2:Ferguson is largely unknown to the vast majority of Latter-day Saints; his impact on Book of Mormon studies is minimal}}
  
 
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Revision as of 00:02, 15 November 2014

  1. REDIRECTTemplate:Test3

Contents

Response to claims made in "Chapter 12: Faith Promoting Science"


Chapter 11
A work by author: Simon G. Southerton
 Chapter 13

168

Claim
  • LDS scholars believe that Mayan cities are prime candidates for where Lehi's people lived.

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response

168

Claim
  • The Jaredites are usually identified as the Olmec

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response

168

Claim
  • Joseph Smith declared the city of Palenque was a Nephite city, but modern scholarship indicates this city wasn't built until 600 A.D.

Author's source(s)
  • No source given by the author.
  • The statement made by the author about Palenque is incorrect. The earliest recorded ruler was K'uk Balam (Quetzal Jaguar), who governed Palenque for four years starting in the year 431 A.D.
  • Pottery shards show that Palenque was occupied as early as 300 B.C.
  • If one assumes, as Joseph apparently did, that Palenque was indeed a Nephite city, and knowing as we do now the tendency for Mesoamerican conquering rulers to destroy the monuments or records of previous ones, it would not at all be surprising to see the record go back only to the time that the Lamanites conquered the Nephites (approximately 400 - 420 A.D.).
  • A known reference to Joseph's statement about Palenque is Joseph Smith (editor), "Extract from Stephens' 'Incidents of Travel in Central America'," Times and Seasons 3 no. 22 (15 September 1842), 915. off-site GospeLink
Response

168

Claim
  • The history of Book of Mormon archaeology is "littered with apostacy"

Author's source(s)
  • Michael D. Coe, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8:40-48 (1973).
Response

170 - Thomas Ferguson was one of the better known early "Mormon archaeologists"

The author(s) of Losing a Lost Tribe make(s) the following claim:

Thomas Ferguson was one of the better known early "Mormon archaeologists"

Author's sources: No source given.

FAIR's Response

This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 77 368n145-147

Question: Was Thomas Stuart Ferguson an archaeologist?

Ferguson never studied archaeology at a professional level - he was self-educated in that area

As John Sorensen, who worked with Ferguson, recalled:

[Stan] Larson implies that Ferguson was one of the "scholars and intellectuals in the Church" and that "his study" was conducted along the lines of reliable scholarship in the "field of archaeology." Those of us with personal experience with Ferguson and his thinking knew differently. He held an undergraduate law degree but never studied archaeology or related disciplines at a professional level, although he was self-educated in some of the literature of American archaeology. He held a naive view of "proof," perhaps related to his law practice where one either "proved" his case or lost the decision; compare the approach he used in his simplistic lawyerly book One Fold and One Shepherd. His associates with scientific training and thus more sophistication in the pitfalls involving intellectual matters could never draw him away from his narrow view of "research." (For example, in April 1953, when he and I did the first archaeological reconnaissance of central Chiapas, which defined the Foundation's work for the next twenty years, his concern was to ask if local people had found any figurines of "horses," rather than to document the scores of sites we discovered and put on record for the first time.) His role in "Mormon scholarship" was largely that of enthusiast and publicist, for which we can be grateful, but he was neither scholar nor analyst.

Ferguson was never an expert on archaeology and the Book of Mormon (let alone on the book of Abraham, about which his knowledge was superficial). He was not one whose careful "study" led him to see greater light, light that would free him from Latter-day Saint dogma, as Larson represents. Instead he was just a layman, initially enthusiastic and hopeful but eventually trapped by his unjustified expectations, flawed logic, limited information, perhaps offended pride, and lack of faith in the tedious research that real scholarship requires. The negative arguments he used against the Latter-day Saint scriptures in his last years display all these weaknesses.

Larson, like others who now wave Ferguson's example before us as a case of emancipation from benighted Mormon thinking, never faces the question of which Tom Ferguson was the real one. Ought we to respect the hard-driving younger man whose faith-filled efforts led to a valuable major research program, or should we admire the double-acting cynic of later years, embittered because he never hit the jackpot on, as he seems to have considered it, the slot-machine of archaeological research? I personally prefer to recall my bright-eyed, believing friend, not the aging figure Larson recommends as somehow wiser. [1]


Peterson and Roper: "We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists"

Daniel C. Peterson and Matthew Roper: [2]

"Thomas Stuart Ferguson," says Stan Larson in the opening chapter of Quest for the Gold Plates, "is best known among Mormons as a popular fireside lecturer on Book of Mormon archaeology, as well as the author of One Fold and One Shepherd, and coauthor of Ancient America and the Book of Mormon" (p. 1). Actually, though, Ferguson is very little known among Latter-day Saints. He died in 1983, after all, and "he published no new articles or books after 1967" (p. 135). The books that he did publish are long out of print. "His role in 'Mormon scholarship' was," as Professor John L. Sorenson puts it, "largely that of enthusiast and publicist, for which we can be grateful, but he was neither scholar nor analyst." We know of no one who cites Ferguson as an authority, except countercultists, and we suspect that a poll of even those Latter-day Saints most interested in Book of Mormon studies would yield only a small percentage who recognize his name. Indeed, the radical discontinuity between Book of Mormon studies as done by Milton R. Hunter and Thomas Stuart Ferguson in the fifties and those practiced today by, say, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) could hardly be more striking. Ferguson's memory has been kept alive by Stan Larson and certain critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as much as by anyone, and it is tempting to ask why. Why, in fact, is such disproportionate attention being directed to Tom Ferguson, an amateur and a writer of popularizing books, rather than, say, to M. Wells Jakeman, a trained scholar of Mesoamerican studies who served as a member of the advisory committee for the New World Archaeological Foundation?5 Dr. Jakeman retained his faith in the Book of Mormon until his death in 1998, though the fruit of his decades-long work on Book of Mormon geography and archaeology remains unpublished.


Peterson: "Thomas Stuart Ferguson's biographer...makes every effort to portray Ferguson's apparent eventual loss of faith as a failure for 'LDS archaeology'"

Daniel C. Peterson: [3]

In the beginning NWAF was financed by private donations, and it was Thomas Ferguson's responsibility to secure these funds. Devoted to his task, he traveled throughout California, Utah, and Idaho; wrote hundreds of letters; and spoke at firesides, Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, and wherever else he could. After a tremendous amount of dedicated work, he was able to raise about twenty-two thousand dollars, which was enough for the first season of fieldwork in Mexico.

Stan Larson, Thomas Stuart Ferguson's biographer, who himself makes every effort to portray Ferguson's apparent eventual loss of faith as a failure for "LDS archaeology,"22 agrees, saying that, despite Ferguson's own personal Book of Mormon enthusiasms, the policy set out by the professional archaeologists who actually ran the Foundation was quite different: "From its inception NWAF had a firm policy of objectivity. . . . that was the official position of NWAF. . . . all field directors and working archaeologists were explicitly instructed to do their work in a professional manner and make no reference to the Book of Mormon."


Gee: "Ferguson is largely unknown to the vast majority of Latter-day Saints; his impact on Book of Mormon studies is minimal"

John Gee: [4]

Biographies like the book under review are deliberate, intentional acts; they do not occur by accident.4 Ferguson is largely unknown to the vast majority of Latter-day Saints; his impact on Book of Mormon studies is minimal.5 So, of all the lives that could be celebrated, why hold up that of a "double-acting sourpuss?"6 Is there anything admirable, virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy, or Christlike about Thomas Stuart Ferguson's apparent dishonesty or hypocrisy? Larson seems to think so: "I feel confident," Larson writes, "that Ferguson would want his intriguing story to be recounted as honestly and sympathetically as possible" (p. xiv). Why? Do we not have enough doubters? Yet Larson does not even intend to provide the reader with a full or complete biographical sketch of Ferguson's life, since he chose to include "almost nothing . . . concerning his professional career as a lawyer, his various real estate investments, his talent as a singer, his activities as a tennis player, or his family life" (p. xi). In his opening paragraph, Larson warns the reader that he is not interested in a well-rounded portrait of Ferguson. Nevertheless, he finds time to discourse on topics that do not deal with Ferguson's life and only tangentially with his research interest.


172

Claim
  • There is no evidence of iron or steel smelting in the ancient New World

Author's source(s)
  • Michael D. Coe et al., Atlas of Ancient America (1986).
Response
The work repeats itself on p. 8, 172., and 199.

172

Claim
  • There were no wheeled vehicles in ancient America

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response

172

Claim
  • There were no draft animals to pull wheeled vehicles

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response

172

Claim
  • There are no archaeological remains of wheat or barley in Mesoamerica. The barley found in Arizona doesn't count because it was only in a limited region.

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response
  • The fact that barley was unknown in the Americas before the 1980s demonstrates that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Would we want to bet on barley never being found outside that restricted area?
  • Book of Mormon anachronisms—Plants—Barley

173

Claim
  • the author claims that deer or tapir were never ridden by Native Americans, therefore they could not be the "horses" referred to in the Book of Mormon

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response
  • "Horses" are never said to be ridden in the Book of Mormon. They never act like "old world" horses. They are often treated as a foodstuff. This might match some other animal quite well. The author has here proven the Book of Mormon advocates' point.
  • Book of Mormon/Anachronisms/Animals
The work repeats itself on p. xiv, 7-8., 173., and 199.

173

Claim
  • Dee Green said in 1973 that Book of Mormon archaeology does not exist

Author's source(s)
  •  Citation error: Dee F. Green, "Book of Mormon Archaeology: The Myths and the Alternatives," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4:71-80 (1973).
  • The correct citation is: Dee F. Green, "Book of Mormon Archaeology: The Myths and the Alternatives," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 4 no. 3 (Summer 1969), 72-80.
  • This claim is also made in Becoming Gods, p. 66, 362n88
Response
  •  Misrepresentation of source: Green argued—in 1969—that the requisite work had not been done (the author also gets the date wrong by four years).
  • Dee F. Green on Book of Mormon archaeology
  • It is telling that the author must resort to a source that is 35 years old. A more current assessment is available:
    • John E. Clark, "'Archaeology, Relics, and Book of Mormon Belief'," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14/2 (2005). [38–49] link
  • Book of Mormon archaeology

175

Claim
  • "Book of Mormon archaeology" has yielded little credible evidence

Author's source(s)
  • John E. Clark, "Book of Mormon Geography," Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992).
  • Hugh W. Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Mormon (1964).
  • Hugh W. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert: The World of the Jaredites; There Were Jaredites, (1988).
  • Bruce W. Warren, Review of F. Richard Hauck, Deciphering the Geography of the Book of Mormon: Settlements and Routes in Ancient America, and John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon in BYU Studies 30:127 (1990).
  • David J. Johnson, "Archaeology" Encyclopedia of Mormonism (1992).
Response
  • If the author is going to cite these sources, he needs to engage their evidence, not simply declare it not credible.
  • Book of Mormon/Archaeology

176

Claim
  • The Smithsonian issues a statement that discredits the Book of Mormon

Author's source(s)
  • Smithsonian Institution.
Response

177

Claim
  • LDS apologists claim that the simplification of the Smithsonian statement indicates that the original statement is now inconsistent with the current knowledge of Mesoamerican archaeology

Author's source(s)
  • Sorenson critique, 1995.
Response

177

Claim
  • There is little evidence of a cultural link between Polynesia and the Americas. A linguistic link between a South American variety and Polynesian variety of sweet potato is not yet explained.

Author's source(s)
  • No source given.
Response
  • ↑ John L. Sorenson, "Addendum," to John Gee, "A Tragedy of Errors (Review of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 93–119. off-site
  • ↑ Daniel C. Peterson and Matthew Roper, "Ein Heldenleben? On Thomas Stuart Ferguson as an Elias for Cultural Mormons," The FARMS Review 16:1 (2004)
  • ↑ Daniel C. Peterson, "On the New World Archaeological Foundation," The FARMS Review 16:1 (2004).
  • ↑ John Gee, "The Hagiography of Doubting Thomas," FARMS Review of Books 10:2 (1998).
    • Retrieved from "https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/index.php?title=Criticism_of_Mormonism/Books/Losing_a_Lost_Tribe:_Native_Americans%2C_DNA%2C_and_the_Mormon_Church/Chapter_12&oldid=129340"