Jonathan Neville sows doubt, blames others

Jonathan Neville’s February 5, 2021, blog post, “Multiple hypotheses-Cumorah,” is, once again, about the absolutely critical need for the hill Cumorah of Book of Mormon to be the same hill where Joseph Smith unearthed the plates of Mormon in 1827. In this post, he repeats many of his usual misrepresentations of the evidence and counterarguments, then closes with this startling statement:

True, for the last two decades or so, Church leaders have been silent about Cumorah. But is that because they disagree with their predecessors, because they aren’t sure whether or not to agree, or because the scholars have used the academic cycle to persuade Church members to reject these teachings?

Why don’t living prophets and apostles teach the New York location of Cumorah? Neville gives us three possibilities:

1. They disagree with earlier leaders on this teaching and believe “M2C.”*
2. They’re unsure if the New York Cumorah or “M2C” is the correct theory.
3. Academics have blinded them to the truth.

All three of his proffered options don’t increase faith in the authority and testimony of living prophets. Once again, Neville has cast doubt on the knowledge, understanding, and testimonies of living prophets concerning what he thinks is a vitally important doctrine of the Book of Mormon.

What’s ironic about this is that, in the very same blog post, Neville asserts (without providing a shred of evidence) that many people are leaving the Church today because of “M2C”:

It is common knowledge that many formerly faithful Latter-day Saints are leaving the Church. Few, if any, leave with an intact testimony of the Book of Mormon.

What causes people to lose faith in the Book of Mormon?

As Joseph Fielding Smith explained, the two-Cumorahs theory causes members to “become confused and disturbed in their faith in the Book of Mormon.”

Here again we see Neville committing the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, also referred to as “correlation does not imply causation.” His fallacious conclusion is:

• “It is common knowledge that many formerly faithful Latter-day Saints are leaving the Church.” [An argumentum ad populum fallacy.]
• “Few, if any, leave with an intact testimony of the Book of Mormon.”
• “M2C” causes people to lose faith in the Book of Mormon. [An unfounded assertion based entirely on appeal to authority.]
• Therefore, “M2C” causes people to leave the Church.

It’s disturbing how Neville persists in continually writing blog posts that are critical of the Church and its leaders (in a passive-aggressive way, of course) and yet also asserts that it’s actually his intellectual opponents who are to blame for loss of faith in the restored gospel.

—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.