Of course it's racist. People in the 19th century were racist. People in ancient Israel were racist. People in ancient Egypt were racist. Do you expect the Book of Mormon peoples to be Dr. Martin Luther Jnr? Does Coe?
The point is that the Book of Mormon perfectly reflects the racist sentiments of the nineteenth century. The author of the Book of Mormon was not the only person in that time period who was convinced that some, long gone, white race had built the incredible ruins being found, because it was inconceivable to them that ancestors of the native americans could possibly have performed such a feat. Most of these individuals were also convinced that this ancient race were from the house of Israel.
Well maybe you should take his advice and not try to convince everyone what is already "so obvious". Just quote Coe. Matter concluded. Lots more time to look into Mesoamerica without an anti-Book of Mormon agenda. Why not try writing a book on Mesoamerica without mentioning the Book of Mormon, as Coe has done. I bet you couldn't, because you can't resist chipping away at the Book of Mormon, or playing prosecutor and cross-examiner of people like DCP.
This is a minor diversion, Ray, it hardly makes a dent in my life. And I'm certainly not trying to convince "everyone". I have no interest in convincing you, DCP, or any other MADdite. I interact on these issues for lurkers sincerely looking for additional information.
by the way, I think you have misinterpreted Coe's comments here:
When I was a kid I don't think I knew anything about the Mormons, except of course stories about polygamy and things of that sort. But when I was at Harvard as an undergraduate and got into anthropology for the first time, I took a course on comparative religion. It was great. It was given by a wonderful professor, Evan Bowen. One of his colleagues and former students was a man named Tom O'Dea. He invited him in to give a guest lecture on the Mormons and Mormonism, on the theology of Mormonism.
I was astonished by it. This was a world I knew nothing about. I was really fascinated with the whole idea about how these people believe, for instance, that eventually every man and woman is going to go to heaven and become a God and Mrs. God; I never heard of this. This was a different side of things. That initially got me into this whole field. ... So I was hooked really even before I began to go into the field as an archaeologist and met real Mormon archaeologists.
http://www.pbs.org/Mormons/interviews/coe.htmlCoe is not saying that he became interested in mesoamerica due to the Book of Mormon. He is saying he was already interested in Mormonism before he went into archaeology and met Mormon archaeologists, which piqued his interest even more.
Here some other quotes from the same interview:
I really think that Joseph Smith, like shamans everywhere, started out faking it. I have to believe this -- that he didn't believe this at all, that he was out to impress, but he got caught up in the mythology that he created. This is what happens to shamans: They begin to believe they can do these things. It becomes a revelation: They're speaking to God. And I don't think they start out that way; I really do not. ...
It's as though P.T. Barnum had started to believe his own fakeries. In many respects he was a great man, [and] he could have done something of the same thing, but he didn't. He didn't have this kind of inner spirit and this sense of destiny that Joseph Smith had. Joseph Smith had a sense of destiny -- and most fakers don't have this -- and this is how he transformed something that, I think, was clearly made up into something that was absolutely convincing, convincing to him and to a lot of people, and he never could have convinced a lot of people if he hadn't been convinced himself.
And this one:
To make Book of Mormon archaeology at all kind of believable, my friend John Sorenson has gone this route: He has compared, in a general way, the civilizations of Mexico and Mesoamerica with the civilizations of the western part of the Old World, and he has made a study of how diffusion happens, really very good diffusion studies. He's tried to build a reasonable picture that these two civilizations weren't all that different from each other. Well, this is true of all civilizations, actually; there's nothing new under the sun.
So he has built up what he hopes is a convincing background in which you can put Book of Mormon archaeology, and he's a very serious, bright guy. But I'm sorry to say that I don't really buy more than a part of this. I don't really think you can argue, no matter how bright you are, that what's said in the Book of Mormon applies to the peoples that we study in Mexico and Central America. That's one way of doing it -- to build up a kind of convincing background, a kind of stage set to this -- but there's no actors. That's the problem. ...
What he is saying is that Sorenson - and every other Book of Mormon apologist I know of - tries to make a case with drawing the sort of comparisons that really could be drawn between almost any two civilizations.