The God Culture: The Ginés De Mafra Deception Proves The Poor Research Skills of "The God Culture Research Team"

For a number of years I have voiced my doubts about the existence of "The God Culture Research Team." From all appearances it is only Timothy Jay Schwab who is "The God Culture Research Team." The research Tim presents to the public is so poor that it's implausible it could be the work of an expert team of researchers. However, if there is a team they are extremely incompetent. 

Case in point, the testimony of Ginés De Mafra. Tim said this document was only two pages long while in reality it's 29 pages long. I wrote a whole article about it linking to the source and calling out Tim for discussing a primary source while knowing nothing about it. Here is his response. 

When we first released our Smoking Quill article highlighting Spanish Document #98, we made the bold claim that the Lequios Isles—the true destination of Magellan's voyage—were not the Ryukyus, but the Philippines. At the time, the Ginés de Mafra testimony was unavailable in full, that our researchers had found. We only had partial access and honest summaries.  

Ironically, a critic attempting to discredit our incomplete access ended up sharing the full document—one that confirms our case more clearly than ever before.

And so, we thank him.

https://thegodculturephilippines.com/spanish-government-document-98-confirmed-lequios-is-the-philippines/

Tim says when he wrote his original article Mafra's testimony was "unavailable in full" to "The God Culture Research Team." The truth is the book containing Mafra's testimony has been on the Internet Archive since 2018!

https://archive.org/details/AX072/page/n5/mode/2up

After reading Tim's original article it took me maybe five minutes to find this book. There is absolutely no excuse for Tim not to have found it as well. The fact that he proceeded to discuss a book to which he admitted he did not have access only worsens the situation. 

Rather than delete his wholly erroneous original article Tim has left an update.

📝 Update Added May 2, 2025:
After this blog was published, the full Ginés de Mafra manuscript resurfaced. We have now reviewed it thoroughly and found that it not only supports our position—it explicitly confirms Leyquios as the endpoint of the voyage. We have published an updated analysis here: [LINK to new blog]. We leave this original post up as part of the transparent research journey. Mafra was not silent after all, and now we know he supports our position, not the blogger's.

https://thegodculturephilippines.com/the-silence-of-mafra--magellan-s-inner-circle-and-the-missing-lequios/

Unbelievable! The manuscript didn’t RESURFACE. It's not an obscure missing relic of the past. It’s been publicly available for seven years. Tim and his so-called research team were simply too incompetent to find it. Rather than admit to making the embarrassing mistake of discussing a primary source he hadn’t actually read and then apologising, Tim spins the correction as some kind of vindication. It’s as if I handed him the rope, and he thinks he’s the executioner, not the condemned. Tim's ability to twist his most glaring errors into imagined triumphs is astounding. This is not the behavior of an honest researcher. It’s the reflex of someone with no shame, no humility, and no capacity to admit when he’s wrong. This is pathological behavior. 

Timothy Jay Schwab’s handling of the Ginés de Mafra testimony is not an isolated error, it is a case study in his method: make grand claims based on partial evidence, ignore what contradicts him, then twist corrections into triumphs. Whether the so-called "God Culture Research Team" is real or not, the incompetence is real and the public should be aware that what they’re being sold as “research” is often little more than bluster propped up by Google-proof arrogance.

Let's have ChatGPT elaborate.

they say " At the time, the Ginés de Mafra testimony was unavailable in full, that our researchers had found." yet it has been on the internet archive since 2018 https://archive.org/details/AX072/page/n5/mode/2up

ChatGPT said:

That's a key contradiction—and it speaks directly to the reliability and diligence of The Smoking Quill's research process.

They write:

“At the time, the Ginés de Mafra testimony was unavailable in full, that our researchers had found.”

But the full Mafra testimony has been available on the Internet Archive since 2018—in the Colección de documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españolas de ultramar, Volume 5 (specifically starting on page 5). It's a well-known, public-domain, digitized Spanish colonial source frequently cited in academic and historical research.

This raises several issues:

1. Failure of Basic Source Discovery

If their "researchers" failed to locate a digitized, indexed, and widely accessible primary source that's been online for at least seven years, it calls their research competency into question. Even a basic keyword search of "Ginés de Mafra" on Internet Archive or Google brings up this document.

2. Undermines Their Narrative

The entire "ironic twist" they construct—that a critic handed them something they couldn’t find—crumbles. What actually happened is that their team either didn't look carefully, didn’t know where to look, or ignored the full source in favor of summaries that fit their theory. When a critic (you) supplied the actual source for proper context, they spun this correction as an accidental confirmation of their view.

3. Lack of Transparency

They don’t tell readers where the full Mafra testimony came from, nor do they link to the Internet Archive version—something any responsible researcher would do when citing a primary document. Why? Likely because doing so would reveal that it’s been publicly accessible all along, contradicting their claim of past unavailability.

4. Post Hoc Rationalization

Instead of admitting that they built their earlier claims on incomplete evidence, they now pretend that the discovery of the full text somehow retroactively justifies their earlier conclusions. That’s not how historical methodology works. Responsible scholars revise or withdraw premature conclusions when confronted with fuller data—not claim vindication through narrative sleight-of-hand.

This detail is not minor—it’s central. It exposes a pattern: they assert bold claims on shaky research, and when challenged with evidence, they reframe the correction as vindication while hiding the weakness of their original method.