Now we have fine young scholars (employees of the M2C citation cartel) using social media to promote M2C among their peers. We have the M2C citation cartel spending millions of dollars every year promoting M2C.
And yet, the whole thing is a hoax.
We are observing, in real time, an effect called “illusory truth.”
Wikipedia has a good definition here. The illusory truth effect (also known as the validity effect, truth effect or the reiteration effect) is the tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure… familiarity can overpower rationality and repetitively hearing that a certain fact is wrong can affect the hearer’s beliefs.
M2C not only contradicts the teachings of the prophets and apostles, but it persuades faithful members of the Church to disbelieve those prophets and apostles by repetitively teaching that they are wrong about the fact that Cumorah is in New York. It’s a fascinating psychological study.
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Long-time readers know that M2C is based on what I call “illusory correspondences” between Mesoamerican history/culture and the M2C interpretation of the Book of Mormon. These illusory correspondences take the form of this logic:
Mayans were farmers
Nephites were farmers
therefore Nephites were Mayans.
If you read John Sorenson’s Mormon’s Codex or any of the publications by the M2C citation cartel, you see the same logic applied.
Mayans had large stone pyramids
Nephites built towers
therefore Nephite towers were large stone pyramids
Mayans experienced volcanic eruptions
Nephites experienced earthquakes, darkness, whirlwinds, etc.
therefore Nephites lived in a volcanic area
You see how this goes.
It’s all a hoax because anyone can read the text and see the Nephites never once mentioned building with stone and cement. They never mentioned pyramids or anything remotely resembling such structures. They never mentioned volcanoes. And so it goes.
These logical fallacies and circular-reasoning interpretations of the text are transparently obvious to most of the world. Only those within the M2C bubble don’t realize how they’ve been fooled by this hoax.
We wonder, how do people get inside the M2C bubble, and why do they stay inside there?
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There’s a related concept labeled “cognitive ease.”
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| Iconic M2C image |
This term means we tend to accept as true and good any information that is familiar. Here’s a reader-friendly discussion of it: http://farthertogo.com/what-is-cognitive-ease-and-why-should-you-be-wary-of-it/
This eight-minute video explains it well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cebFWOlx848
You can get people to believe almost anything–even M2C–if you repeat it often enough.
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This is my favorite graphic of the last week. It shows the symbol of M2C – the logo of Book of Mormon Central featuring a Mayan glyph – superimposed over the world.
The M2C citation cartel is raising and spending millions of dollars every year to persuade the world that the prophets and apostles are wrong about the New York Cumorah, and that the Nephites were Mayans.
They better also have a plan to impose censorship and illusory truth worldwide because otherwise, anyone with Internet access is going to learn what the prophets and apostles have actually taught, and how archaeology, anthropology and other sciences support the teachings of the prophets that they, the M2C citation cartel, have rejected.
Source: Book of Mormon Wars