Yeah, agree that nephites are bullshit. Nothing Smith says should be taken seriously. Just wanna make it very clear that I’m not trying to defend the truth of Mormon historical accounts because they’re clearly bullshit. But mormons over here do claim they found the plates. Remember, I don’t live in Utah, I live by THAT tree. I hope you know what I’m talking about when I say that. I can PM you the place, but I can firmly say that I live in a place that facilitates a more disingenuous Mormon. This is a really hard thing to research into because I think I may be talking about things that I heard through word of mouth over the years and a couple articles I remember. I wouldn’t be surprised if the church has just done a particularly good job of making people over here ignore the plates. Like I said, regardless of what is true, the plates they show are for people already in the church, not outsiders. They show them so that people get more wrapped up in it. But like I said, nothing has hieroglyphics on it.

I’d be more concerned about keeping things fully accurate, but we’re talking about religion where what people believe is literally the whole thing. Joseph Smith loved archaeological finds, if the plates don’t exist, he’s still a grave digger who stole artifacts from other civilizations. With his history, I find distinctions on him to be unimportant