By 'antagonists' I mean those who have placed themselve as being an opponent of the traditional view taught by the Church and our early leaders and authorities, that the ancient hill Cumorah of the Nephites is the same hill Cumorah that stands in the state of New York today. They contend against such which was once generally understood and accepted within the Chruch. And they have set up their own competing alternative to where Cumorah is, but without precise identification of location. They say that the ancient hill Cumorah is in Middle or Meso- America. And that the ancient Cumorah is not the Cumorah of New York where Moroni hid up the records and from which Joseph Smith obtained them.
Yet they do not like to be called 'antagonists' as they make their position out to be the 'correct' and 'acceptable' fact of the matter and discount all of the past who ever stated otherwise and all who so continue to believe and so state it today. They have turned upside down what once was. And they make those out who would defend Cumorah as being Cumorah, to be those who are of the contentuous nature, when in fact they are the ones who have taken it upon themselves to so deviate and present such a contentuous opposing view.
So why do many members of the Church and learned Professors reject Cumorah being Cumorah? In this respect, I can only speak from my perspective that they are first of all not correct in their derived understanding. And from my position, which would most likely not be agreed upon by such 'antagonists,' I can only offer my perception of the matter. Yet I do have a perspective which I do consider to be very pragmatic in understanding why such can be the case of such good members of the Church to have such opposing opinions to what once was commonly understood and accept within the Church.
First of all, in the Church, as long as the Church has not published an 'Official Declaration' on a matter, Church members are able to use their 'Free Agency' to conclude upon such themselves. Such is the state of affairs on a number of matters. Politics is one that comes readily to mind. The Church encourages its membership to be active politically, but it does not mandate who we support or vote for. They strongly suggest that we vote for good, honest candidates whose platforms and belief structures are not in opposition to Gospel Principles.
Another such area has been that of the Geography of the Book of Mormon. The Church wisely has refused to make an 'Official Declaration' as to the geography of the Book of Mormon. This is wise as there is so much in the intellectualism of science and geography matters over time that men professes to understand and theorize about, which in reality are just not completely known or understood. And such a declaration, though it would be true if so declared, would bring so much 'fluff' of disagreement that it is just not worth it. Men of science and letters have various views and 'theories' on the origins of man, how civilizations have developed and where they are located and there relative time frames of existance. And when religion gets pushed aside by such 'authoritative' statements which deny Adam and Eve, the flood of Noah, the dividing of the earth in the days of Peleg, and so on, why would one suspect that they would readily accept any truth of the matter that just might not be consistant with their 'intellectually' derived truths? And with such controversy, the Gospel principles and precepts would be pushed into second place by the 'air' of confusion and disagreement over lands and sites and peoples and times.
Yet this lack of an 'Official Declaration' has given license to those who wish to explore the geography of the Book of Mormon to do so according to their own intellectually contrived opinion from the mental exercise of reason, analysis, and dissection. Forget that such philosophical and intellectual minds without divine guidance have interpreted the Bible to support numerous positions of the varying religous sects of our day, they still think that they can so contrive a correct answer by their own such intellectual exercise. And they tend to do so solely on their own terms and according to their own mind sets, backgrounds, and dissections of the matter according to how they see it being with little regard for past authoritive statements on the matter by those who are called upon and anointed to be the Church's leaders. And once thus endowed with such 'freedom' to expound, they soon leave even the portions of such Book of Mormon geography which have been put forth by the Church and its leaders as being not so. Such is the case with Cumorah being Cumorah or not.
Even the academic institutions of the church has its intellectual 'holy cows' and Dr. Sydney B. Sperry is one of them. Dr. Sperry is highly regarded and quite renown as a past Professor of graduate religious studies at BYU. Dr. Sydney B. Sperry is a prime example as to why men do not accept Cumorah as Cumorah despite what the Church has held? I have two Books of Dr. Sperry that where my father's, One was my father's Sunday School manual. Both books are dated 1947. And in both, Dr. Sperry highly supports the concept that Cumorah is Cumorah in the State of New York. So what might change a Church sanctioned author of Sunday School manuals to vacate such a belief?
Later, as Dr. Sperry developed in his career as a professor at BYU, Sydney began to personally 'dissect' the Book of Mormon by the intellectual exercise chiefly by analysis and reasoning out the reality of the Book of Mormon geography himself, Thus by the merits of his own examination, analysis, reason and opinion on the matter, Dr. Sperry changed his belief that Cumorah was in Middle America and not in the state of New York as taught by those of the Church. I believe the key here is that he began to study the 'details' of the matter. He became so caught up in his personal 'dissection' of the matter through his own percieved pattern of reasoning that he failed to any longer accept and believe what he had once written as true in he Sunday School manuals of the Church. And Dr. Sperry has lead many such a graduate student at BYU into this same pattern of reasoned belief. And I regard Dr. Sperry as the Founding Father of FARMS if not in actuality, in the spirit of the matter.
Now, why don't I follow after the learned in declaring Cumorah as not being Cumorah? I can answer that quite simply without getting into the fact. I once too favored the Mesoamerican Cumorah. But I have since stepped back and looked, what I feel to be objectively, at the entire matter. It is well to study the sciences of man, but often the study of the sciences of men spawn belief in the reasoned conclusions of men. Which type of deduced reasoning is the basis of all the verious religious sects of the world. And they all can not be right on the matter no matter how logical and reasoned out their opinion. And it such a field, it become a matter of who can argue the possition best and not a matter of what is actually true.
Now it is not bad to reason a matter out when the conclusion has had abundantly enough information to conclude upon the correct solution. But when men of learning begin to make conclusions based on inadequate factual information, in which case the jump to their on mentally contrived assumption, then partial and false theories abound.
You see, I maintain that Mormon gave only a very 'condensed' abridgement of the records of the Nephites. The words of Nephi, Mormon, Moroni and the facts of the matter confirm this. Nephi's record included in the Book of Mormon was his small plates which contained only an abridgement. Mormon's and Moroni's abridgements contained only one hundredth of the available information. And the record itself contains broad gaps in its histories such as the period from Nephi and Jacob down to the middle of the reign of King Benjamin. And then the history of the people from the time of Christ's visit to the days of Mormon, some 300 years later is covered in a one chapter book IV Nephi. And the history of the Jaredites is summarized and highly abridged by Moroni into just a hand full of chapters in the Book of Ether. And such particle history and information is just not enough to base conclusions upon to over ride what the authorities of the Church have taught. Yet 'students' and 'professors' continue to so self reason felling in the gaps of such a condensed abridgement with thier own personal assumptions.
Further, I read, I think the same Book of Mormon as these men who believe in the Middle America Cumorah. I have read their books, understand their logic, but I cannot conclude upon the same dissection and conclusion they have decided upon from the same book. It can be and does read differently due to the lack of the other 99% of the information which must be assumed which is missing within the pages of the Book of Mormon. And this makes of any such conclusion derived, no matter how well intended, to be almost what ever one makes it say according to what a preconceived notion would allow it to suggest. Thus it comes down to personal conjecture and I don't feel that is a solid enough base to leave the stated information which I have supplied within this work entitled 'Cumorah Is Cumorah' by the Church's leaders.
One example of such interpretive conjecture where I just don't see the fact supporting the matter is found in the little book by John L. Sorenson. In dissecting and analyzing Alma 52, and the distances between the City of Bountiful and the City of Mulek, John takes the liberty to read between the lines. For the Meosamerican model to work these cities and land must be quite close to each other. In reading of the 'long march' of the Lamanites which make them weary, John inserts the thought that it was a "long 'hot' march" which made them weary thus side stepping the singular term within the Book of Moron that says it was the 'long' march. Then John emphasizes that it was the 'heat' that exhausted them not the long length of the march. And John is not consistant, he is selective. In one place a Nephite can travel a hundred miles or more across the narrow neck in a day or a day and a half within the regions of this same climate but the 'long' march is cut way short by making it a 'hot' cliamte to march in. A Zulu army in Africa can travel 50 miles in a day in a gated marching run and fight a battle at the end of such a march. And then base on his own ability to draw conclusions from a condensed abridgement, John some how just automatically knows that it was a 'one day' march and strings all the events accordignly as all occurring within less than 12 hours. That is the standard length of a day of the equator countries.
Now I read that same Alma 52 chapter and there is nothing there other than a preconception that forces that 'long' march to be completed in one days time. There is nothing there which makes it only a twenty mile experience. And there is nothing there which suggests that it was the 'heat' that made the Lamanite army weary. In fact from my knowledge, background, and understanding, not forcing any of the matters at hand, I find it most difficult to come anywhere close to Dr. Sorenson's conclusions on the matter. How far an army can march in a single day's march across 'plains' and the low land 'seashore' terrain without many obstacles can be a great distances. A Nephite travels, according to John L. Sorenson in that same book up to and over a 100 miles in a day and a half. That is the distance the Mesoamerican theorist need for their narrow neck. And that is over terrain that is impassible except for the narrow pass which leads from the land south to the land north? Also, I am aware that a 'Zulu' army during the period of the British occupation was known to be able to march on a gated run 50 miles in a single day and fight a battle that same day at the end of their march. And as to the heat, Africa is hot, but it is not the heat that governs what a man can or can not do. It is what they are use to. The Lamanites and Nephites where acclimatized to their climate. The record did not say it was hot. Whatever the temperature, surely they where acclimatized to it and it was not the 'critical' factor as reported by Mormon. The critical factor was that the march was a 'long' march implying, if anything that it was a large number of miles traveled between the two cities during the Lamanite march.
It really does become not seeing the Forest because of the trees when many of the trees are but figments of your own contrivance. And then those figments begin to take on a life of there own, that is when one gets overly involved with the dissection of the facts, which are no longer just the facts, but self reasoned conclusion based upon personal assuption which intellectual men of learning and letters often do. And these added pretended details of facts often get in the way of seeing the overall big picture of what really is there. Then they tend to loose track reality and reality becomes based upon their own contrived reasoning of the matter. Thus we have hundreds of Churches all believing different things from the same Bible.
What is a more interesting study is to see what it would take to comply with a Cumorah in New York and ascertain if the Book of Mormon could support it. And in so doing you would have to realize the record to be only a very condensed 'reader's digest' version of the matter. This type of approach, I have concluded upon. And over my many readings and intense study of the matter, I find nothing in the pages of the Book of Mormon that does not support a Cumorah is New York. I've read John L. Sorenson's book. There is nothing there which cannot be reviewed in what I consider to be a more objective manner. And I accordingly can conclude Cumorah as being in New York where John by his own course of reasoning cannot.