Last week I had a very busy work week so I didn’t get to post a few things I had planned to do. Maybe that’s for the best since the story I am trying to flesh out has taken some real hits lately.

My last post had Moses blowing up my initial timeline for an origin story of this world’s “Israel”. The idea can still work but I have to solve a few problems with the timeline or else it will quickly become un-viable. And then apparently looking to kick a man while he’s down, WJT made a run at disproving the entire notion of the BoM’s sea-faring journeys possibly taking place not on this earth, but in Outer Space.

That idea is one I have borrowed from Bill and it is pretty central to the story I’m piecing together here, so if we lose Outer Space, I will have to rethink quite a bit. Plus it won’t be nearly as much fun. But hey, the goal here is to reach the truth or the true capital “S” Story of the world so we have to take the hits as they come.

WJT first attempts a knee cap on the travels of Lehi’s family. I actually think his analysis is pretty fair and balanced. Fox News would be proud. He gives credit where it’s due but does not hold back where the Space idea seems to fall short or strain the BoM reading.

I suggested he try the same analysis on the Jaredite travels, which he did. This was a little bit like Nancy Kerrigan asking Tonya Harding’s hired hand to try capping her other knee while he was at it.

I say all of that tongue in cheek, really. I had already done my own analysis of both BoM journeys and reached very similar conclusions as WJT did. In fact, I tested the idea out on my wife and kids a few months back and they indulged me through a reading of the Jaredite travels taking place in Space. They were good sports, but they did not hold back on criticizing the idea. Like WJT, my 16-year-old mocked me pretty ruthlessly about mention of waves, winds, and above all, sea monsters.

But I told my son to take it up with NOAA for describing space weather using the same terms. NOAA clearly believes this Space reading of the BoM so why can’t we? And then I reminded my son that the Solo movie had a sea monster in the Kessel run so that proves they exist. We all had a good chuckle, but it actually changed his mind a little that it’s at least a *potentially* viable reading, even if a strained one, if we get imaginative about how it could have looked. I said the same to WJT in a comment although I doubt it had the same effect.

As an aside, my wife and kids generally enjoy watching me try to fit my “elf lore” or “cray” into Mormon theology. They only take it half seriously but it’s fun to work through it with them and see their reactions when I make a good point. But they aren’t actually believers in these ideas. It’s just a fun exploration for them.

Back to WJT’s violent outburst…

I mean, Space is essentially completely unknown and unexplored and I think it strains credulity that we could even begin to prove or disprove an interstellar reading of the BoM using humanity’s limited understanding of the cosmos.

You may say that’s a cop out, but the Fermi paradox is compelling enough for me that humans have what amounts to an infantile understanding of Space, so little, in fact, that they have to make up wild ideas like “dark matter” just to plug gaping holes in their understanding of astrophysics. Like, a hole so big we need dark matter to fill up 85% of it.

I’ll just say it: I don’t believe Space is anywhere near what human scientists have conjured up and quite frankly, they have no real basis for being as sure as they are about its nature. I’d respect them more if they said Space makes more sense as a simulation than as what they say it is. But I digress.

True, that doesn’t negate WJT’s conclusion: that it’s easier to read the BoM travels as journeys ON planet earth rather than OFF planet earth. But recognizing the stunning knowledge gap humans have there is a lot of room to read the story in a unique way that includes Space.

Or you could read it as a journey that goes not off planet but INTO the planet (calling all hollow earth theorists!).

Or you could say their travels are inter-dimensional, and good luck disproving that one!

Or allegorical.

Or an altered and garbled tale too confounded to accurately piece together and therefore interpretable from pretty much any angle.

My point is….we choose what to believe. Like I said in my comment on WJT’s post, humans choose any number of irrational things to believe and we do so simply because we want to, not because they make a modicum of sense. There is no sense in believing in an undead homeless man who will magically take us to an unseen and unknown utopia if we do what a bunch of dead dudes said we have to do 2,000 years ago. Show me the logic in that belief? And yet it’s an idea widely embraced in the West, including by me.

Nor is there sense in believing a “sync stream” is anything but random coincidences. And yet, at least a few people see value in them, WJT, Bill, and myself included.

As for the Space reading, for now I’m choosing to accept it. I may change my mind, but my hope is that like Nancy, I’ll survive this knee capping and against all odds, land enough jumps on this bum knee to still get a medal. And I guess that means WJT will get a Netflix show out of it like Tonya did.