"An Open Letter to Michael Coe" by John L. Sorenson is an outstanding reminder of the dangers of taking a casual approach in confronting the Book of Mormon. Yes, it's easy to regurgitate old objections and feel like the case against the Book of Mormon is overwhelming. It's another matter to consider what the text really says and determine how it relates to scholarship in the relevant fields. Sorenson's response to Michael Coe merits careful consideration, though it's just a prelude to much more significant information and analysis that he is publishing shortly.

Unfortunately, there's one serious problem in his letter. He refers to an article of his that can be found on a website that, sadly, has now been hacked. The website is Sino-platonic.org. Don't go there. If you do, you'll see a page proclaimed that it has been hacked. There's a risk that you'll be infected by malware if you go there, though I think I escaped unscathed. In this case, however, you can turn to the Way Back Machine at http://archive.org to view the site before it was hacked. The site in 2011 can be observed at http://web.archive.org/web/20110719183522/http://www.sino-platonic.org/. The paper John Sorenson refers to, "A Complex of Ritual and Ideology Shared by Mesoamerica and the Ancient Near East" can be found at http://liveweb.archive.org/http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp195_mesoamerica.pdf.

If someone could let John or the site's owner know of the hacking, it would be appreciated. I only have a couple of minutes tonight and have to run.
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