First of all, I’m pretty sure that horses in the BoM is far from a settled issue. Some believe that it refers to native animals that Joseph called “horses” for lack of a better word. At any rate, there is no historical evidence for pre-Columbian horses, and this is a history test, not a religious test.
Secondly, most FARMS scholars believe in a limited geography model for the BoM. Even if the Nephites had horses (a big if) they had certainly all died out way before the Spanish came. So when the Spanish brought horses, it had a huge impact on the New World.
There is no reason to martyr one’s grades for erroneous conceptions of our religion.
]]>“For reasons not covered in the course, I do not believe that horses were first introduced to America by Europeans. However, it is clear that horses became much more widespread after Europeans came. The increase in horses among the aboriginal inhabitants had the following effects…”
]]>I would be careful about calling what’s in this particular history book “obvious lies”. While there are plenty of history books with questionable information masquerading as fact, there’s no reason to suppose that historians claiming that horses came to the New World via the Spanish are doing so in bad faith.
]]>Certainly it could be appropriate to challenge something if you can back it up using acceptable academic standards. And certainly there may be an obligation to be confrontational when situations involving non-academic moral issues arises (such as discrimination, slander and offensive non-academic opinions)
But in the absence of these exceptions, your only obligation in this academic environment is to show that you have been paying attention to and comprehend the material in the curriculum.
Therefore, you could just precede everything you say with “according to…[insert this or that textbook or historian]”.
If you truly take issue with something, I think you can very breifly and tactfully clarify that you maintain a different view for personal reasons, but then respectfully proceed to present what other academics have concluded in their research or studies.
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