I would say that what you, and many other Mormons, are avoiding, is reality.
Here's what I mean by avoidance:
1. "The Book of Mormon says that x, y, z happened."
2. The evidence indicates that neither x,y, nor z happened.
3. "We don't know what the BoM says."
Hmm, funny how you knew what it said, until it turned out to be wrong. Rather than admit it's wrong, now suddenly you don't know what it says. That's where the time period comes in, it's the order of events that is so suspicious.
It not our modern words, it's the words in the BoM. It describes metallurgy, metal implements. Such metal implements don't happen in isolation. To get them, you need mining, smelting and forging. All of those things are large and create extensive evidence, both archeological and geological. Same with the crops. It's not just that we can't find the crops, it's that these things represent an entire way of life, with ploughs, threshers, mills, grain storage and I don't know what all. Ovens? Etc. So we don't find any evidence of any of it. And so on and so forth. No chariots, no wheels whatsoever, no roads for them to drive on, no axles, no nothing.
I could buy your argument if you were talking about a small settlement (although think of the small Greenland settlement--we've found a lot of archeological evidence from that.) But you're talking about literally millions of people. For example, in a single battle, 230,000 soldiers are killed on one side. What percentage of the total population of men, women and children on both sides might that be? 10% would be astronomical. That would be 2 million people. So at one point, two million people grow wheat, drive chariots, raise horses, use spears, trade in metal currency, they have a big war and a huge battle, and no one has ever found a trace of it? That's just ridiculous.
the National Geographic Society has stated "Archaeologists and other scholars have long probed the hemisphere's past and the society does not know of anything found so far that has substantiated the Book of Mormon.
(wiki)
No one said a complete or definitive history, although what's the point of founding your religion on a book that's not definitive? What I said is, it purports to be a history. A history of a population of millions of people who lived and died here without leaving a trace. Meanwhile, we do have huge collections of artifacts, records, skeletons, etc. etc. from the people who did actually live here, in every corner of the continent, and they don't bear any resemblance to these mythical people.
Idaho? It's been extensively excavated for the last century. We know every major Indian tribe there, from the Bannock to the Shoshone. Heck, May is Idaho Archeology month. Go on a dig and see if you can find any evidence of Lammanites. Yes, in effect we've excavated representative locations in every single part of the Americas, and never found anything to support anything in the BoM. Ever. Period.
You can always tell anti-science from science. In science, we find out more and more. With anti-science, knowledge mysteriously retreats; we know less and less until we know nothing. That is because anti-science has to reject all discoveries inconsistent with its assumptions. So according to Mormon apologists, we've gotten to the point where we don't know who lived here, when, or how they lived. But of course, in reality, we do. And what we know is, the BoM was wrong.
So Smith "translates" the book with God's assistance, but has no idea what it is? He thinks it's a history, but he's mistaken? He really had no business founding a religion then, did he? I mean, the man had no idea what he was doing.
