None dare call it crackpottery

Jonathan Neville asserts:

The M2C* citation cartel employs every possible tactic to limit the information available to Church members. They seek to prevent members of the Church, as well as Church leaders, from getting information that contradicts their theories.

We’ve seen how the Saints book, for example, censored Cumorah. Cumorah was censored from the Gospel Topics entry on Book of Mormon Geography. Joseph Smith’s own statements about the Urim and Thummim were censored from the Gospel Topics Essay on the Translation of the Book of Mormon.

Book of Mormon Central continues to censor evidence and explanations that contradict M2C. Now they’re doing the same with the Urim and Thummim. The entire M2C citation cartel participates in this, and it’s amazing to watch.

The theory that there’s a massive, ongoing conspiracy to keep Heartlander views out of Church publications and away from the attention of Church members is central to Neville’s bizarre worldview. In his mind, the Heartland Book of Mormon theory is obviously true and should be given equal (or even preferential) time and attention with other views, especially the Mesoamerican view.

But all theories are not equally valid. Just because Neville, Rod Meldrum, Wayne May, and other Heartlanders have managed to build a sizable following does not mean that their arguments and assertions have any merit. Numerous reviews of Heartlander claims have demonstrated that those claims lack scholarly rigor and are prone to errors of fact, irresponsible interpretations of scripture, and the use of outdated and discredited historical and scientific theories.

Neville’s latest complaint could have just as easily been written by a flat-earther:

The spherical-earth cartel employs every possible tactic to limit the information available to students of earth science. They seek to prevent young people in schools, as well as public officials, from getting information that contradicts their theories.

We’ve seen how the Smithsonian’s book, Earth: The Definitive Visual Guide, for example, censored the flat earth. The flat earth was censored from the Earth Science page on NASA’s website. The statements of Auguste Piccard, the Swiss physicist and explorer who was the first man to reach the stratosphere, affirming the flat earth were censored from the Earth Sciences page of the National Science Foundation’s website.

National Geographic continues to censor evidence and explanations that contradict Spheranoia. Now they’re doing the same with anti-vaccination views. The entire Spheroid citation cartel participates in this, and it’s amazing to watch.

Lest you think the preceding is hyperbole or overstatement, keep in mind that it is Heartlanders who are developing and promoting the so-called “Universal Model” that claims all the physical and life sciences are wrong, that they are in fact based on completely different principles than mainstream science teaches, and that there’s a massive conspiracy to promote traditional scientific explanations and censor “nontraditional” ones like the Universal Model.

Heartlanderism and the Universal Model share a common origin: They’re both crank theories that push back against the established, accepted narratives by offering pseudoscientific and ahistorical explanations.

Neville and his colleagues aren’t being censored; they’ve been discredited and rejected.

—Peter Pan

* “M2C” is Jonathan Neville’s acronym for the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon.