The Tower of Babel and Mormon Scripture w/ LDS Discussions – 13

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Delind, and we are 10 or so a dozen or so episodes into this amazing series with Mike from LDS discussions on an analysis of Mormon truth claims. We're going to maybe have 40 or 50 or more of these when we're all done. But we're super happy and proud of what we've done so far. Today we're going to be tackling the Tower of Babel and Mormon scripture. And of course, we have back with us mike of ldsdiscussions.com hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:38 Hey, everybody.

John Dehlin 0:39 You ready for another one, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 0:41 Let's do it.

John Dehlin 0:42 All right. This is so good. So we've talked all about, you know, Book of Mormon and we've started talking about the Bible. We just finished an episode about the problems with Adam and Eve. We where we basically showed that Adam and Eve couldn't have been historical literal figures. And yet the entire, all of Mormon scripture and prophetic utterances from Joseph Smith to present, you know, and the articles of faith, they all rely on a literal Adam and Eve. And if that weren't enough, we've, we've got the Tower of Babel that we now have to deal with. So where should we begin?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:17 So we can just begin right. Go dive right in. So, yeah, now we've done, now that we've kind of moved into the biblical scholarship, we've done Adam and Eve showing why that's not a historical story and why that impacts Mormonism. We've talked about the global flood, and so that leads us to the Tower of Babel. And so again, anyone who's watching this or listening probably is aware of the story. But the Tower of Babel is the story in Genesis 11 that explains why different civilizations and communities in the ancient world spoke different languages. And so the story is estimated to have happened, you know, depending on who you're asking, about 2400-2200 BCE and that's about 100 years after the global flood would have occurred. And again, we talked about this with Adam and Eve, but in the global flood, secular scholars, and I would say most non secular scholars would consider the Tower of Babel to be another ideological myth. But the Book of Mormon again, is going to tie this directly into literal history because it ties not just the Jaredites coming to the Americas, but to the records in the Book of Ether. The Nephite interpreters and the truth claims of the Mormon Church and Joseph Smith as well, all tell us that this must be a literal event. Again, that most scholars today would argue without question is just simply not historical in the way it's presented in Genesis.

John Dehlin 2:32 And if we just want to kind of back up, you know, you can imagine, you can imagine people sitting around. Maybe these people don't even know that there are people living in the Americas. Maybe they don't even know that the Americas exists yet. And they're realizing that there are other civilizations and they're starting to have a language and they're starting to tell stories and write stories down thousands of years ago. And they're like, wow, oh, we bumped into these other people, they speak differently than we do. How do we. Oh, and now that we bumped into another group and they have a totally different language, like where are all these languages and people's coming from? And so you come up with a story, is that right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:14 Yeah, I mean, yeah. And again, we tied this with Adam and Eve. I know we were talking about this. Where you look at the Adam and Eve story to the Bible is similar to how Joseph Smith is creating origin stories in the Book of Mormon. And this is no different. So in the Book of Mormon you're trying to answer that question of why when the white settlers arrived in America, did they find these native Americans who had dark skin, who behaved differently than them, who did agriculture different, who lived differently than them? And you're trying to create, the Book of Mormon creates an origin story for them because the white settlers are trying to figure out why these dark skinned Indians are in this land and how they got there and why they're different. And the Tower of Babel is the same thing. Like, you know, my kid as he's growing up used to ask like, you know, if we saw someone in a store that was speaking a different language, they might say, you know, why, why couldn't I understand that? And then you just explain, well, they speak Spanish or, you know, they speak Polish or they speak, you know, know Arabic, whatever. You know, I'm trying to think of the different Urdu, some languages we, you know, we've heard around here. And in biblical times when you come across new civilizations, you just assume everyone has this, this language, right. That's just evolved from every person. And so you're creating an origin story to explain why there are different people speaking different languages. And just with Adam and Eve and the global flood, these stories are mythical. They're added into Genesis at the beginning, but later, so that they give the communities that these books are being written for, that these texts are being written for their origin and their understanding. And while they might not take them as literal history. It's a way for them to kind of understand a little bit better and to put it in the mindset of how it frames within a religious standpoint.

John Dehlin 4:51 Yeah. And so solidified listeners and viewers in your mind, around 2200-2400 BCE, if the Mormon scriptural timeline is accurate, it's gotta be around 2200-2400 BCE, about 100 years after the Flood. And out of the gate, we're already starting with the acknowledgement that scholars and scientists say this event didn't happen, but let's suspend judgment and look at the evidence.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:22 Yeah. And so this is another one where we just. If you go into it, you could kind of point out the problems really easily today. But again, like I said, most biblical scholars agree that the stories of Genesis are not historical and were written later. But with the Tower of Babel, we can clearly point to reasons, just like we do with Adam and Eve in the. In the global flood, why it simply cannot be a historical event. Because there were already a diversity of languages that are established before the Tower of Babel would have taken place in that 2200-2400 BCE range. So written records of the Sumerian language exist as early as 3500 BCE and Egyptian as early as 3300, Akkadian as early as 2800, Canaanite and EBL. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. Eblai around 2400 BCE. So we're already seeing that there's not one universal language before this timeframe anyways. And so written languages evolved after they were spoken for a long time in their community, meaning that the languages were developed long before we have written dates. And so being able to find those written examples above tell you that they were probably developed a lot earlier as far as oral languages go. And Genesis itself confirms that there were other languages before the Tower of Babel. In Genesis, chapter 10, they say, by these were the isles of the Gentiles, divided in their lands, every one after his tongue. These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues. These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues. And so, you know, the Tower of Babel being this event that's going to confound a single Adamic language into other ones is just problematic from the start.

John Dehlin 6:54 And a viewer listener, without having. Without knowing anything about biblical criticism or historical criticism, or without having watched the David Bacavoy episodes on Mormon stories, they're like, wait a minute, how could The Bible simultaneously talk about, you know, let's just say Adamites or descendants of Adam speaking multiple languages and then simultaneously have the Tower of Babel story, which would not allow for languages before the Tower of Babel. But then you have to understand that the Bible has, has, Genesis has two creation stories that are actually different. Like the Bible is full of self contradictions. And, and that's just. You have to understand how the Bible came to be both the Old Testament and the New Testament to understand that the Bible's contradicting itself all the time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:42 Yeah, and that's just that, I mean, again, and this is one of those things we mentioned, I mentioned the Adam and Eve story because I think when you get into biblical criticism and biblical topics, it is a little bit different than talking about like Mormonism, especially for a lot of people. If you, if you're a believer and then you start to question some of the unique Mormonism stuff and then all of a sudden you get to hear and you're like, oh, crap. Because this has problems too. But again, you're using the same skills you use to, to evaluate the truth claims of Mormonism. But now we're going, and I would argue now we have more to work with because at least with the biblical stories, we actually do have more of a history of how these developed and it helps us to get a better understanding of what the initial intentions were when they wrote them.

John Dehlin 8:21 Yeah, and we should just make this more explicit. All of this is in an essay you wrote, maybe with some help of others@ LDS discussions.com Babbel B A B E L so that people can kind of look at the footnotes. And.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:36 Yeah, and there's many more. There's obviously more in there. This is a little bit obviously of a shortened version of it, but yeah, I mean, and this is just, you know, this is a really important thing because again, I mentioned in the Adam and Eve episode that Anthony Miller was one who kind of turned me onto this. But the Tower of Babel is, this will be a shorter episode because it's not as involved as Adam and Eve in the global flood, but it's just as important because of the way that Joseph Smith puts it directly into the timeline of the Book of Mormon. And so you can't have a figurative or mythical Tower of Babel story and still have the Book of Mormon be historical. And that is just where this stuff gets really problematic. Because I said earlier with these other topics, most churches can find meaning in these stories and still acknowledge and give space for the fact that they might not be like perfect literal history. With Mormonism, you just can't do that.

John Dehlin 9:23 Yeah. Okay, so I guess we go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:29 Yep. And so actually go back one more. Okay.

John Dehlin 9:32 Okay.

Math, the Global Flood, and the Tower of Babel

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:32 So we've kind of, we've kind of hinted on this with some of our topics overall, but math is a really big problem when you get into some of these topics. And so, as we've mentioned earlier with Adam and Eve and the global flood, most biblical scholars agree that the Pentateuch was not likely created until somewhere around the 6th and 5th century BCE, at least composed in a way that we have it today.

John Dehlin 9:53 And that's the first five books of the Bible, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:55 Yeah. So for the Book of Mormon's purpose, it'd be the first five books of the Bible, which would be on the brass plates. And, you know, one of the things about when we get into this a little bit, you know, Moses is, you know, believed to have been written this or, you know, ascribed to have written this. And he would have lived between like 1391 and 1271 BCE. But, you know, again, that's so far before these texts are being created. That tells you that these were not being written by Moses, which is another issue with regards to how Joseph Smith puts that and cements that as a historical data point. But the point is these are written lately. And the belief was that the global flood wiped out all human life on Earth about a hundred years before this happens outside of those on the ark. So we have eight people, and that all life descended from Noah's family with one single Adamic language. I mean, every. Remember under the biblical history, every single person on Earth is dead except for like these eight people. So just imagine you're. You're. Say you're at a holiday event, you're at a Christmas dinner with your family, and every person on earth dies except for that thing. You're going to have one language. That's just how it goes. Right. And so using the Bible's accounting of the children that came from Noah since the flood in Genesis 10, by the time of the Tower of Babel, There were about 70 men born from the lines of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And even if we were going to assume half of them were women, just for ease of doing this, there'd be about 150 people on the entire Earth that would be told are creating the Tower of Babel. And again, it's a math thing. 150 people would have to then cast, gather all the supplies, mold all of the bricks or the cement, however they built it, and that is impossible. And then when we look at the estimates of the world population based on archeology, they believe that around 3,000 BCE there are between 14 and 45 million, growing to between 27 and 72 million by 2000 BCE. So in addition to what we talked about before about the Global Flood not being a historical event, there's. There's a lot of evidence that the world was actually thriving with a diversity of civilizations and languages. And yet in the Bible, we're being told there's about 150 people on the Earth at that time.

John Dehlin 11:58 And in the show notes, we'll include links to our Global Flood episode with Simon Southerton, a scientist, and we'll be covering that as well, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's going to be a lot about the Flood that you can find on Mormon stories and elsewhere. And like I said, it's all of these things tied together. So you got Adam and Eve, then the Global Flood, and then Tower of Babel, and all three of these stories with the scriptures of Mormonism are going to fit together in a way that you have to acknowledge, even as a believer. And if you do that, then like I've said before, it's about, for me, just being intellectually consistent. Or if you don't want to be intellectually consistent, just say, I don't care, but don't argue. You know what I mean? Like, don't try to push that it's history to kids on a Sunday when you know it's not. And if you're going to tell the kids on. In, you know, in Sunday school that it's not history, then you're going to have that. You're going to have to have the difficult conversation as to how to make sense of that going forward. But again, the numbers tell us one, that so many more people lived here than the Bible would tell us. I mean, that's not in dispute by any real scientific study. And then on the flip side, if you want to believe a Tower of Babel was really built, you're dealing with 150 people, half men, half women, who are going to have to build this thing. And that also just is not going to happen in this time frame.

John Dehlin 13:12 Yeah. And then that all the languages that we have today are going to emerge. But we'll.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:16 Exactly. So it just doesn't make sense. But we talked about this before. A lot of these stories are influenced by earlier myths. And so a Sumerian. Sumerian Myth written about 2100 BCE called En Merkar and the Lord of Arada discusses calling upon the Lord to unite the languages again among the people in an Assyrian myth dating from the 8th century BC. And this would be a lot closer to when this is going to be created, which I think is important. They discussed the confounding a ton. So I just want to read this to you. This is from an Assyrian myth, 8th century BCE of him his heart was evil against the father of all the gods was wicked. Of him his heart was evil. Babylon brought to subjection and great he confounded their speech. Babylon brought to subjection and great he confounded their speech. Their strong place tower all the day they founded to their strong place in the night entirely he made an end in his anger also word. Thus he poured out to scatter abroad. He set his face, he gave this command. Their council was confused, the course he broke fixed the sanctuary. So again, this is going to be written before the Tower of Babel story is going to be compiled into Genesis. And it's basically giving this Babylonian myth, or you know, that there was a confounding of tongues because the people were evil. And then they get scattered. And so we're going to see this in the Tower of Babel story in Genesis, which again shows us that just like the Book of Mormon is pulling from 19th century ideas, these early stories in Genesis are pulling from Babylonian myths. And that's why I mentioned before, as David Bach always says, without Babel, there'd be no Bible. That's why. Because they're pulling so heavily from these stories, because these are the stories being told from generation to generation in these communities. And then they're actualizing them to themselves, as again, David Bakba would say, they're actualizing them to their own communities to give purpose, to give meaning, to give origin to them so that they can learn from them and grow as a community.

John Dehlin 15:06 And again, a Mormon's going to go, wait a minute, 2400 comes before 2100. So the tower of Babel people would have written down the Tower of BABEL Stuff at 2400 BCE. And that's earlier. But again, you just made the point previously that there's no evidence that those stories were written down until over a thousand years later than the Tarabel would have allegedly taken place. And again, if we've got Sumerian myths literally written around the time the Tower of Babel should have happened, those are going to trump, you know, if you're going to use, if you're going to rely on historical methods at all, you're going to. You're going to conclude that it's much more likely that these Sumerian myths make their way into something written, you know, six or 800 years BCE that then make it into the Bible. It's just. That's what makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:07 Yeah. And not only that, but again, we've talked about before, and the episodes with David Bachavoy I think, illustrate a lot better than obviously I could. But, you know, there's no evidence that the story of the Tower of Babel is written down, but there is a lot of evidence that the stories were not written down, and they were originally written down so much later. And so. And so, like, we were talking about, there's a lot of evidence that was written later. There's a lot of evidence, as I think David Bachford said, Hebrew is the origin of the original text of Genesis for the different sources. And so because of that, they know Hebrew is not a written text, I want to say, until like, 1300 BCE a written language. And so the Tower of Babel was not written until probably at the earliest. I mean, I'm talking possible earliest to be like a thousand to twelve hundred B.C.E. something like that. And so while I guess you can make the argument that it would have predated the Caesarean myth, we have evidence of the Caesarean myth being in the 8th century, because we have it. There is no evidence of the Tower of Babel story being compiled before that, and a lot of evidence to say it was compiled after. And so, again, it's kind of like one of those things where we're piling problems on top of problems. And so if you want to make that claim, it's just you've got a lot of other things you have to answer for in order to make it work. And that's where it gets messy. But at the same time, this follows the pattern that we see with Adam and Eve and the global flood of borrowing from earlier myths to create an origin story for the people this is being written for.

John Dehlin 17:29 Okay, so. So what? What's next?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:34 So this was something that David Bacheloy actually mentioned on Mormon stories when he was with you, is. Which is to say that the story is likely a Babylonian polemic against ziggurat worship. And when he had said that, I remember thinking that was a pretty cool thing because it kind of shows that it was a story that was being written for a purpose, which was to tell people not to view these ziggurats as these important things. And so I started looking into it, and I found out that a lot of scholars believe, and I'm not sure if I'm saying this right, but Edaman Menachi was a ziggurat which was dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon and was likely an influence in the Tower of Babel story. And they said it was famously rebuilt by the 6th century BCE Neo Babylonian dynasty. Rulers known Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar too. Second, according to modern scholars such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Edamanachi Menachi during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews. And the cool thing about this is not only does this match the story of the Tower of Babel, but it also, again, kind of confirms the dating of Genesis because this was famously rebuilt by the 6th century, which is around when they think these stories being written. And this would be a story that be told during the Babylonian captivity, which is a lot where a lot of the scholars believe these materials are being kind of compiled and finished. And so kind of like we talked about how DNA is confirming what we know about archaeology. This is kind of cool because this story is kind of confirming what they believe about the dating, which is why this is a really important data point in trying to understand how the story evolved and why it was written in the first place.

John Dehlin 19:11 Okay. And a ziggurat, I just looked up that term in ancient Mesopotamia, a rectangular stepped tower sometimes surmounted by a temple. Ziggurats are first attested in the late third millennium BCE and probably inspired the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Yep.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:35 So it's really important. And you know, when you see the pictures, and I should have included one, I feel like an idiot for not doing that. But yeah, when you look at the picture, like, yeah, that would make sense. Now, to be fair, I think the pictures are also based on the, you know, artists. Artists picturing what that would look like. But yeah, you know, so David Bach's point is just awesome because it led to me looking that up, which obviously he would have known that, but it's just cool because it helps to date. It helps to give you clues on the dating of the text, why the text was written, and it makes sense. It fits. And so that's what we talked about earlier about when you talk about history versus kind of having straight faith. These are giving you historical data points that again, point to the clues as to why they are being written and probably were better understood by the people at that time as to why it was being written. You know, there's not to go On a tangent, but I don't know if it was David Bachavoy or if it was someone else I was listening to. And they were saying that, you know, the story of Abraham, you know, sacrificing his firstborn in a lot of ways was. Was because back then people, some people did sacrifice their firstborn kids in religion. And that story is not historical, but it was being used as a way to tell people, guys, stop doing this. You don't need to do this. And that's why I find this stuff, like, truly fascinating, because you're learning a lot, not just about the text, but about why it was written and how it's serving a purpose in that community at its time. And that helps us to understand why it was done. But it's also really cool because it helps us to be able to understand what Joseph Smith is doing with his scriptures as well, even though, unfortunately they're not going to hold up well from a historical standpoint.

The Tower of Babel in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin 21:08 Which takes us to the next slide. The Book of Transition and the Tower of Babel.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 21:13 Yeah. And so, you know, for the Book of Mormon, a non historical Tower of Babel presents a huge problem. And it's because in the Book of Mormon they have the Book of Ether, which is a literal recounting of the Tower of Babel. And so it says, which Jared came forth with his brother and their families. With some. Well, with some others and their families from the great tower. At the time, the Lord confounded the language of the people and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth. And according to the word of the Lord, the people were scattered. And the brother of Jared, being a large and mighty man and a man highly favored the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him, cry unto the Lord that he will not confound us, that we may not understand our words. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord and the Lord had compassion upon Jared, therefore he did not compound, confound the language of Jared. And Jared and his brother were not confounded. And so this right here is taking what is an ideological myth and just solidifying it as a historical story. There's no way around it. And again, you know, we'll have some apologists who will say, well, you know, they, the early prophets believed these stories to be true, and so they spoke them as true. And that would make sense. But this is putting it as a materialistic, physical, tangible story that without it creates huge problems.

John Dehlin 22:24 It's a lot like Adam and Eve.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:26 Yeah, it's exactly like that.

John Dehlin 22:28 And, and we're going to talk about this in the very next slide, but I'm just going to kind of make the point beforehand about anachronisms. If, if you, if you were to stumble upon a document, you know that, that alleged to, to have been a document written by Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham Lincoln mentions in the document in his own handwriting, that he grabbed his iPhone and used it to call General Lee or whatever, General Grant, you immediately know it's false, that it's a fraudulent document because it's got an impossibility in the text. And I'm not trying to like be ham fisted here, but just like with Adam and Eve, if the Tower of Babel doesn't happen, isn't real, if it's just a Sumerian myth that got incorporated into the Old Testament, it immediately then calls into question whether the Book of Mormon from the beginning is a historical document.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:30 Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that's the problem. We're just like, these overviews are just one after the other. It's like you need all of these things to work and it just doesn't. And so with the Tower of Babel, if it's a mythical event, as the evidence tells us, and then Jared's story immediately becomes non historical. But it gets more problematic because if the Tower of Babel did not happen, then the 16 stones that the Lord touched were non historical, which means that the two stones that were sealed up to translate the plates of Jared were also non historical. Those same two seer stones were later used as the Nephite interpreters, which were buried with the gold plates of the Book of Mormon. If the Tower of Babel was mythical, as both history and linguistics tell us, then the Nephite interpreters are also mythical because they rely on a literal Tower of Babel. And if the Nephite interpreters are derived from a mythical story, then the entire Book of Mormon story is derived from a mythical story because the gold plates were buried with the interpreters. Moroni claimed to translate the records from the brother of Jared of a vision of all things from the foundation of the world until the end thereof, using these Nephite interpreters, which he included with the seal of place to be revealed in my own due time. And so.

John Dehlin 24:36 Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. I have to ask you, did you just say that according to Joseph Smith, the Urim and Thummim, the two stones for the Urim and Thummim in Joseph Smith's accounting, went all the way back to the Jaredites coming to America.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:55 Well, so same stones, as I understand, and I will correct myself if I'm wrong here, as I understand this is kind of the thing we talked with Anthony Miller about was the lord touches those 16 stones, right? And those stones are used for. To translate the plates of Jared. And then they're passed along and. And they're used as Nephite interpreters. And we're told in Joseph Smith's own words that he gets Nephite interpreters with the plates because, remember, he doesn't use the term Urim and Thummim. And so I guess it's possible they're different, but the phrasing leads you to believe that they have to be the same because he's calling them Nephite interpreters, just as they're used in the Book of Mormon as interpreters for the Nephites. So again, if I'm wrong, I will correct that. But everything that I could see tells us that there's this line. And not only that, but there kind of needs to be, because that line of, you know, being passed down throughout as with a special purpose gives again, more credibility to Joseph Smith when he claims to have them. And also, you know, backdates itself into the text as well to give it a little bit more authority within the translation process, which Joseph Smith is going to claim. As we spoke about, you know, many episodes, it feels like ago now, the spectacle is that he basically is forced to agree to because of Samuel Lawrence going with them to the hill and claiming to see them. So all of those things kind of get tied together. But again, I'll correct myself, I'm wrong and I will double check that. But when I was doing it the first time, I was trying to go through that because Anthony Miller's presentation talked about it and it made sense that unless they're going to kind of conflate the terms, it would match the line of, you know, the interpreters going from all the way from there to being used by the Nephites to Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 26:33 Yeah, and again, all these stories affect and infect each other because if we know that the spectacles were just an idea that Joseph Smith was forced to acknowledge, and then we know that no one ever saw them really, and that he didn't use them. That combined with the fact that we know the Tower of Babel never happened, so the Jaredites never happened, so the interpreters never happened, that would make sense that. That the interpreters. There's no evidence of the interpreters ever being used or witnessed by anyone. Like all it's like all these different. It's like a crime scene where we've got all these different kind of lanes of evidence converging to invalidate each other almost.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:20 Right, well. And, yeah, and again, we're talking about 16 stones that are touched by God. For the Jaredites, remember? Excuse me, in treasure digging, they use stones to claim, to see and to claim all that. And so again, that, again, you could make the argument that's also tying back into treasure digging. And it also, again, by saying that God used stones to allow for interpretation, gives Joseph Smith credibility when he's using his own peepshear stone and a hat to translate the Book of Mormon. It sounds more Biblical because in the Book of Mormon, they're using stones as well. And I think that's also why that story goes through where you have the Nephite interpreters, which are then buried with the. With. With the plates of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 27:58 Yeah, yeah. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:01 Yeah. And so it's just, like I said, it's problem on top of problem, and it's hard to really deal with. And so I think we're on the next slide.

John Dehlin 28:09 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:10 Yeah. So, yeah. So basically, if the Tower of Babel is not historical, then Joseph Smith claiming to obtain the Nephite interpreters and use them before obviously switching to his own stone to hat becomes impossible. So in other words, if the Tower of Babel is not historical, as the evidence indicates, those Nephite interpreters cannot be historical. And. Which means Joseph Smith created the story of the stones as he was familiar with the idea of using stones to see objects and messages from the past with treasure digging. And as we mentioned a few minutes ago, he also was forced to kind of create the story of the spectacles with the two stones because Samuel Lawrence went with him to the hill and said he saw them and forced Joseph Smith to admit he saw him too. And as we've noted with Adam and Eve and the Global Flood, the Book of Mormon's dependence on a literal Bible is why we know the Book of Mormon is not historical. Before we even get into the issues that you usually see with the CES letters or even the Gospel topics essays,

John Dehlin 28:56 because all of those. The horses and the steel and the wheat and the barley.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:01 Yeah, and it's kind of like, we'll get into it down the road. But one of the coolest things about your interview with David Bacavoy was when you talk about the Book of Abraham, because his whole point is, like, don't even look at the translation. Don't worry. About the facsimiles. Don't worry about the Joseph Smith getting it all wrong. If you look at the text of the Book of Abraham, the text itself tells you it's not an ancient text. You don't even have to do that. And so it's the same thing here. It's like before you even get into the unique Mormon stuff, you can already tell that this book cannot be historical. And once you do that, everything else makes a lot more sense. Like it makes more sense once you understand this, to read the Book of Mormon. Because when you see all the errors, you're like, well, of course there's errors. Because he's writing this, trying to basically backdate a lot of the stuff into ancient times. So of course he's going to have errors, just as he made errors with the Bible. And that's why I think it's really fascinating, even though it's also really uncomfortable as a believer to go through it.

John Dehlin 29:48 Right.

The Church's Apologetic Stance on the Tower of Babel

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:50 And so, you know, we kind of talked about this with the previous biblical scholarship areas. But to look at the Mormon Church's stance on the Tower of Babel. This is a article written in 1998 Ensign by BYU Professor Donald Perry, who I think might have been a general authority, but I'm not sure. But he notes that because of the prophet Joseph Smith, Latter Day Saints have additional knowledge that comes from the reality of these world changing historical events. For some in the modern world, the historicity of the Tower of Babel story, as with the flood, is often discounted. One modern school of thought considers the account to be nothing more than an artful parable and an old tale. The Latter Day Saints accept the story as it is presented in Genesis. Further, we have the second witness of the Book of Mormon. The title page of the Book of Mormon explains that the Book of Ether is a record of the people of Jared who were scattered at the time. The Lord confounded the language of the people while they were building a tower to get to heaven. And the Book of Ether itself then tells of when Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families from the great Tower. At the time, the Lord confounded the language of the people and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth. And so, I mean, he's not. This is a good way to look at it because this is basically how the Church teaches this, that this cannot be just a parable, a mythical origin story. This has to be literal for the Book of Mormon. Now he's using circular Logic to say the Book of Mormon proves it to be true. And I'm just arguing the other side of it, which is to say if it's not true. To take his own argument. If it's not true, the Book of Mormon can't be either.

John Dehlin 31:21 And I went ahead and looked up Donald Perry. He's a professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at byu. It doesn't say anything about him being a general authority.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:34 He might not be. I might be misremembering that.

John Dehlin 31:36 But, you know, again, this is published in the church's publication.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:41 It's in the unsigned.

John Dehlin 31:42 So prophets, seers and revelators oversee the publication of the unsigned.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 31:47 Yeah, so I don't think this. And again, if you said this to gospel doctrine class or whatever, no one's going to argue with you. This is.

John Dehlin 31:55 Or Joseph Fielding Smith or Joseph F. Smith or Brigham Young or Joseph Smith, you would not find any prophet, Syria revelator from Joseph Smith to now saying that the Tower of Babel isn't real. You wouldn't find it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:07 That's just it. I mean, you know, I don't think it's saying. That's nothing controversial. So we'll look at some apologetic responses. And this is from Fair Mormon. It's written by Michael Ash, and he writes in his introduction. There are historical indicators, however, that suggests that the story is a myth in the scholarly sense. And then he goes on to present the possibility that the Book of Mormon is not actually citing the Tower of Babel with the following statement. When we shine the light of science and scholarship on the Tower of Babel, we find some interesting things. First, the word Babel comes from a Syrio Babylonian word that means gate of God and is related to a Hebrew word that means confusion. It appears that the author of the Babel account are engaging in some wordplay to make a particular point about their story. It's also interesting to note that the Book of Ether never mentions Babel, but simply the great Tower. And let's just go straight to the next slide, actually, because that'll kind of do it. And so if we look at Genesis 11, it says, and the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language. And the and this they do begin to do. And now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go, go to. Let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth. And they left off to build the city. That's Genesis. Now let's look at ether. Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families from the great tower. At the time, the Lord confounded the language of the people and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth. And according to the word of the Lord, the people were scattered. And the brother of Jared, being a large and mighty man and a man highly favored the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him, cry unto the Lord that he will not confound us, that we may not understand our words. And so if you look at these two quotes, they're too similar. I mean, to say that there's another tower that's doing the exact same thing. It just doesn't make sense. And it really doesn't make sense, given the fact that we've got the, you know, the Book of Mormon introduction stating this. This is just something that is coming out of. As I've said before, these apologetics come out of necessity. And so when you throw these out there, you got to have some textual evidence for it. And the textual evidence here is pretty clear that they're referring to the same event.

John Dehlin 34:11 Yeah. And. And this is kind of a meta point, but who is Michael Ash? Who are these apologists there? Until a prophet, Syrian, revelator kind of comes down, these are just sort of professionals paid by the church to come up with theories to pacify people who have doubts or questions. But until it's incorporated, we know the line of authority. We know that prophets and revelators are the voices of God, allegedly, in Mormonism, just because some apologist writes something on a website or in a book, until it's brought into the top church leadership and acknowledged, it's just as the Mormon Temple, temple, temple ceremony says, the philosophies of men mingled with Scripture. Right. Why should we even care what Michael Ash says? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:01 Well, I mean, on the flip side, why should anyone care what I say? And so I get that, because you're right. The thing is what I'm saying here and what Michael Ash is saying, Michael Ash is not speaking for the church in an official way, although I do think that the church is very good at sending people to apologists when they run into people with trouble. And like, you know, I've mentioned Michael Ash before because he's a really nice guy. And so I'm not trying to beat up on him in any way. He's always been awesome. It's just this argument. It doesn't work. And so one of his big arguments in his latest book is that Joseph Smith is a co author. And you know, that's the same type of problem to your point, like the church is going to kind of send you to these people basically when, when, only when people are losing faith, you know, and then they'll send them to people as like a last ditch effort to get them to stay, even if it's not maybe with the same belief they had before. But yeah, you know, these are the apologetics that are given, but the church is not going to come up on a general conference talk and say maybe it's, you know, they're not even going to get into it because it's an area that they just don't want to talk about. They do not want to talk about the historicity of these things with regards to Book of Mormon because it's not going to work. So yeah, I guess that's a long way, a long winded way of saying a lot of the apologetics are, are used by the church as a last ditch effort. They're always kind of an arm's length away and they're not official. And so until the church really incorporates them in an official way like or a gospel topics essay, it's not as important. But I do like to cover them just because of the fact that I think it does show where the church's, I don't know how to phrase it, like the brains inside the church. I think that, see the writing on the wall, they're going. And so when you see like Michael Ash or Richard Bushman or Patrick Mason, when they start going, Terrell Gibbons, when they start going a certain way, you know that in a lot of ways the church knows that the writing is on the wall and they're going to have to slowly go there, even if they won't go there as fast. And so it's important to know what they're saying. But yeah, I mean, until, you know, the earlier slide is the church's true stance and this is more like the secondary, softer approach. And so obviously we got to cover both. But yeah, I mean this is not the official church stance at all.

John Dehlin 37:07 Yeah. And the Book of Mormon, more importantly the Book of Mormon, the keystone of our religion is just very clear. Correct.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:14 Yeah. And so now if we look at the Book of Mormon, just to kind of go through this about potentially having another tower, not only does the author of the Book of Mormon use the same language as the Bibles we showed in the previous slide, but the timing lines up so it would be hard to claim there's another tower because the timing lines up in both of them. So you'd have to have. You would think some time elapsed to even claim that there'd be a second tower that would have the same exact result from God. And more Conclusively, Ether Chapter 2 makes clear that the Jaredites went down into the valley, which was northward, and the valley and the name of the valley was Nimrod, being called after the mighty hunter. Nimrod's kingdom is where the Tower of Babel was built. And in Hebrew and Christian tradition, Nimrod is considered the leader of those who built the Tower of Babel in the land of Shinar. So even the Book of Mormon's heading for Ether, chapter one makes it clear. It says, Moroni abridges the writings of Ether. Ether's genealogy is set forth. Language of the Jaredites is not confounded. At the Tower of Babel, the Lord promises to lead them to a choice land and to make them. And make them a great nation. So it's just to say the Book of Mormon is telling us exactly what we'd expect, which is, this is the Tower of Babel. The heading is telling us that. I know the headings on a lot of these were written long after. But the point is, in no possible way is there textual evidence to suggest there's some second tower. This is the one. And so if the Tower of Babel is mythical, which Michael Ash kind of admits at the start, where, you know, he says there are historical indicators, however, that suggests that the story is a myth and the scholarly sense. So if he's willing to say that, and then you get to a point where there really is no other way to make a second tower work. I mean, he's being honest in that, in that first statement, so I applaud him for that. But it just shows the problems that this creates for the text of Mormonism when you have mythical events being written into the Book of Mormon as historical, because it tells you that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon was detached from the time that they claim to be. And if they're writing something down that we know didn't happen.

John Dehlin 39:05 Yeah. And for those of us raised Mormon, was there ever a question that the Tower of Babel was literal? No. I mean, I was 45 years in the church. Never once was there any question that literally any story in the Old or New Testament was anything other than literal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:22 Yeah, there's no way.

John Dehlin 39:23 Just no question.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 39:24 It's just how it is. And so just to, you know, again, kind of COVID apologetics a little bit, because I really want to try to do that in these overviews. But there's not a Gospel topics essay or entry on the church's website, nor is there much in the way of apologetics online, like on the church's site about the Tower of Babel. So that's why, you know, we kind of went to fair on that. And then, like I said, well, there are apologetics about the historicity in general, because, of course, this. This affects more religions than just Mormonism. Most scholars will readily acknowledge the story is an ideological myth that was designed to give, you know, meaning and origins to this community. And as I've said for the other ones, this is not nearly as big a problem for other religions as it is for Mormonism.

John Dehlin 40:05 Yeah. And honestly, the only reason there's no Gospel topics essay on this is because we haven't made a big deal about it. Like, you know, whether it's Mormon Think or Mormon Stories or CES Letter. If we were to really. If we were to create a billboard in Salt Lake City on the Tower of Babel pulling people to an essay, point people to enough of these discussions about it, voila, we would see a Gospel topics as they emerge.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:28 I mean, that's true. And it's like, even for me, when I started diving into this stuff, it took a long time before I got here. And so I think most people that lose faith in the church are not going to stick around and keep reading this stuff. For me, like I said, it's fascinating, and I was really trying to figure it out. And so I came across it by talking to Anthony Miller. But, yeah, I think you're right. This just isn't a problem that reaches a lot of people, but it's so important. So it's like, it's. It's kind of one of those things that's weird because a lot of times I think you talk about Tower of Babel and Book of Mormon, I think people's eyes are going to glaze over because at this point, it's not as juicy as polygamy or the first vision or anachronisms, but to me, it's just as important because it actually, in a lot of ways, I don't know if anachronism is the right word, but it's out of place. It shouldn't be there, and yet it appears. And so it's like building a.

John Dehlin 41:13 You can't build a castle on a cloud.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:16 Yeah.

John Dehlin 41:17 And if. If Adam and Eve in the Tower of Babel and the Global Flood are all clouds. If they're all myth. Joseph Smith makes it all literal. He's building an entire Book of Mormon historical narrative, alleged historical narrative, on these events being literal, which then means the Book of Mormon isn't literal. And of course, if you now add that to the archaeological, anthropological, geological, linguistic, and genetic evidences, all of that's telling us the Book of Mormon isn't literal. And we. We could have known that just by knowing that Adam and Eve, Global Flood, and Tower of Babel never happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:56 Yeah, I mean, that's just it. And again, it's like. I know it feels oversimplified, but it's true. Like, once you understand that, and like I said earlier, I think it actually helps in a lot of ways, because once you understand that, then I think it's easier to start looking at the other problems and understanding where they came from, because all of a sudden you can really start to understand that the foundation is based off of just a misunderstanding of biblical history.

John Dehlin 42:15 Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:18 We actually have a few slides kind of concluding this. But, you know, like I said earlier, you can approach this for multipliers of study, just like with Adam, Eve, just with the Global Flood, to know it's not a historical event. So, you know, we can look at the diversity of languages that began long before the Tower of Babel, which we talked about earlier, which tells us that there was not some united Adamic language leading up to this. Furthermore, Genesis 10 talks about, you know, all of the different, you know, lines speaking in the manner of their tongues, which tells us, you know, that it probably wasn't even at that point, understood that way. And then we can look at the fact that we have other mythical stories that have the same exact thing where you've got the confounding of languages, a scattering of people. And so, like I said, the study of linguistics tells us that the idea of a singular language that becomes confused, it just doesn't exist. And it's like. Just like the Global Flood. You know, with the Flood, we have all of these civilizations that carry on completely undeterred throughout the time of the Global Flood. And with linguistics, we have languages that continue on completely undeterred on. You know, you would technically see this. You would expect to see these huge disruptions where you'd see writings on cave walls or some of these writings we have that were before the Tower of Babel would have happened. And then you would. You would see no continuation ever after a certain point. But none of that happens. And so it Tells you that there's not some worldwide event where God is scattering people around the world. You know, again, there's only about 150 people at that time scattering them around the world, giving them different languages. It just. There's, there's no.

John Dehlin 43:40 I mean, does he, like, pick them up and like, move them? Yeah, like a tornado come and carry them to America?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:47 Like, that's another problem because I'm sure from a biblical. I think from us. I think. I think I heard once they said that the scattering was done by like, creating. Creating environmental situations that force people away from each other. And the fact that they can't understand each other, they kind of split. So you'd spread out that way. But yeah, I mean, that's the problem. And that's the problem where, you know, we talk about the Adam and Eve episode where there are all of these elements of these stories that you can look at and go, yep, that's mythical. You know what I mean? Like, it's just. You look at it now, if you look at it with a blank slate and you didn't know it was. Obviously, it's hard to not know it's from the Bible. But you look at and you go, yeah, it reads like a story that you would tell, you know, like a tall, A tall, tall tale or a fable that you'd read to a kid to give you embark a lesson on them. It just, it doesn't read like history. And it's because it's not, you know, And.

John Dehlin 44:30 Yeah, no, go ahead. It'd be cool to have an episode with a linguist just to talk about how languages develop and how, how long it takes and how that ties to population and, you know, chronologies. Because I think you could probably find that language evolves a lot like genetics. There's a code that. There's a pattern and there's a timeline, and there are population numbers that all correspond to the evolution of a language. And if you just go to like, I don't know, like Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, and you look at what year that was, and then you look at how the English language develops, you can kind of see how long it takes for a language to develop. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:18 Yeah, that's just it. And that's. And that's. Yeah, you hit on a good point. Because that's one of the things that people point to a lot when you talk to scholars about, you know, when you read scholars who write about this stuff, they'll say the complexity is what's missing here. You know, the book of Mormon. Everyone will say it's such a complex book. And when you read it and you look at the different characters, they're all very wooden, they're all very one sided, they're all very similar. Nothing advances. You know, I think John Larsen made a point in a Mormon Expressions podcast. He's like, if you read the Book of Mormon and you look, you remember how many years it covers, there's no, like huge change. Like, if you look at the history of mankind as we have it, you could, you would know from a 1000 year, you know, time frame the advancements would just be, you know, innumerable. And in the Book of Mormon they're just, it's not really there. And it just shows you that the author, while he was good at kind of weaving stories together, was not good at evolving characters and evolving what they were dealing with. It's very kind of one dimensional and that's really hard for a believer to hear. But that is why when people from church talk about how complex the Book of Mormon is, if it was truly that complex, you would have people who are not Mormon in literature classes teaching it. Maybe they don't believe it's be historical, but they'd be teaching about how amazing it was that somebody could create such a complex book. You don't see that anywhere because it just isn't that complex unless you're raised to think it is. And we've talked about that in a previous episode. But it's a big problem and you hit it on the head with the languages. It's so complex and none of that complexity is in here. And that tells you it's not historical. It's a really good way to kind of note that this is being written from the perspective of someone who's trying to create an origin story and not thinking about all the things that would have to happen.

John Dehlin 46:58 Yeah, just like we've had Michael Cohen to talk about our archeology and anthropology, Robert Rittner on to talk about Egyptology, and then the scientists that Simon Southerton's brought on to talk about, you know, genetics in the Global Flood and Adam and Eve. We need to have a linguist on Mormon stories to talk about both Tower of Babel and the Book of Mormon from a linguist point of view.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 47:19 Yeah, I would definitely like to see that, just to see their perspective. But yeah, and then, you know, just to kind of conclude we've kind of covered some of the stuff. But, you know, the Book of Mormon states that the Jaredites come from the Tower of Babel and are only able to maintain the original Adamic language after pleading with God. And so it cements it as a historical story. And they come from the Valley of Nimrod, which is a nod to the Bible. They use very similar language with phrasing from Genesis. And just kind of going back to the apologetics is the only reason you would even want to consider a second Tower of Babel is just because, you know, the Tower of Babel is not a historical story. And if it's not, it creates a massive problem for the Book of Mormon's historicity.

John Dehlin 47:53 It reminds me of when they had to create a second Cumorah because the first kimora didn't work. So let's find a second kimora. And then you've got to make the geography really small. And all of a sudden you're saying, how could we, of course, genetics disappear, and of course genetics get bottlenecked. Apologists have to make the target smaller and smaller and smaller so that they build expectations so low that it's like, of course we. Of course the Tower of Babel didn't exist, you know?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:21 Yeah. And, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, I said this a lot, and for me, the most important thing to do is to say, let's take this stuff at face value. And if we take it at face value, we what does it tell us about what Joseph Smith claimed versus what we have today? And I think that's the important thing. I want to read you a quote real quick because I love this one, and let me see if I can find it real quick. Actually, we'll do it at the end because it'll be a good way to summarize apologetics at the end. Okay, okay. But anyway, so this is a great slide. The Book of Mormon tells us that the Jaredite story comes from 24 plates of records that were translated with Nephite interpreters that were touched by the Lord following the Tower of Babel. And those same interpreters were claimed by Joseph Smith to be with the gold plates of the Book of Mormon. The Tower of Babel is a myth, as the evidence tells us, and every story that comes from what comes from it cannot be historical. And I know one of the things that a lot of people are going to tell us is that that's too black and white of an approach, and I get that. So the black and white approach is a tricky one. But if the Tower of Babel is not historical, the Nephi interpreters that Joseph Smith claimed to physically possess were never created at any point. And that is the point that is of such massive importance, because as we've mentioned in some of these episodes, Joseph Smith is making these things material to give meaning to the people around us in the Americas. Right. Because in America, that's where all this is taking place. But if he's making something physical, you can no longer say that the early prophets believed it was a. You know, or some people, like I said earlier, they'll say, well, the early prophets believed it to be a story, but, you know, it was mythical, but they believed it because it was told over generations. But this makes it physical. This is where you start to lose that ability to just say, well, they believed it, but it was metaphorical. And that's why it's written into the records. This, unfortunately, just. It ties it down in a way that you can't get away from that.

Why the Tower of Babel Matters for Mormon Scripture

John Dehlin 50:02 Yeah. Without the Tower of Babel, you don't have the Jaredites, you don't have the 24 plates, you don't have the interpreters, which means you don't have the Book of Mormon, basically, which then calls into question Joseph Smith and calls into question the entire foundations of Mormonism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:22 Yeah. And I mean, that's just it. I know it seems overly simple, but I think for.

John Dehlin 50:26 That's just. It's like somebody who would try to argue. I know you've got a document that's got Abraham Lincoln using an iPhone, but it's overly simplistic to say that that makes the document fraudulent. No, certain historical proofs invalidate documents. They just do. You know, it's not. It's not oversimplified.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:49 And that's the thing. I know, I know I've mentioned this a few times, and I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but it's like one of the things you'll hear is like, well, you. You have to have faith. You have to have faith that these stories were either literal or that these prophets believe they were literal. And so they wrote them in. And again, for me, and I've said this before on the website, don't know if I said it here, but, you know, this idea, and I don't know how to phrase this, but faith to me is the belief in things we cannot know, we cannot see. So Tower of Babel, you can have faith in it from a standpoint if you don't look into it, because you just can't know. Right. We can't know. There wasn't a Tower. But the problem is, for me, faith is not the belief in spite of what we can see. So to say that you should still have faith in the Tower of Babel, even though we can show from both a textual standpoint and from a historical standpoint didn't happen, I don't think that's still having faith. And so I think when you hear people say, just put it on the shelf and have faith, it'll all work out in the end, I think that's where you take that leap from faith to, I don't want to say blind obedience, but just to ignoring problems that you would not give space to if it was another religion. And I think that's where we all have to look within ourselves and say, do we really want to know this stuff? Do we really want to get into it? And if we do, we're going to have to acknowledge this in some way because you can't just ignore it because it is so importantly foundational to Mormonism.

John Dehlin 52:03 Yeah. So here, that brings us to your final slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:05 Yeah, this is the final slide. So it's just as we see with Adam and Eve in the Flood. The Book of Mormon ties itself directly to a literal historical Bible, which was the predominant belief of the 19th century. And so again, we've mentioned this before, but in the 19th century, people really believed the Bible was a history book. And this helps give us a window into the worldview that fueled the ideas of the Book of Mormon. But unfortunately for Joseph Smith, it also creates a lot of testable truth claims that we can evaluate its historicity by such like DNA. And the Native Americans, Adam and Eve, Tower of Babel, Global flood. And so if any of these events are not historical, then nothing that comes from them is going to be historical. It's, you know, it's, it's like, it's the phrase, you know, like, not. This isn't. I'm not saying the Book of Mormon is garbage. I'm just saying, like, when you create like a computer program, they'll say it's garbage in, garbage out, you know, or, you know, if good goes in, good's going to come out. If bad goes in, bad goes out. And so it's like if non historical stuff is going in, you're not going to get historical stuff out. It just doesn't work that way. And so to me, that really is like the biggest part of these first three. The Adam and Eve, global Flood, Tower of Babel. All three of them are just linked as historical events, and all three of them are not true in a historical sense. That's it. Like everything that comes from that is not going to be true. And in the Bible, you can make the argument, I think it's a fair one to say that they in those times did not necessarily believe that they were writing perfect history. They knew these were stories. They viewed history differently then. But in the 19th century, they did view history like we do today. And so that's the problem. Joseph Smith is taking what he thought was a literal history and then basically building off of it with basically a sequel to the Bible and the Book of Mormon. But because it wasn't historical, that entire book is now just. It's not historical. It's over from that standpoint. And that's, like I said, not even getting into some of the other areas, such as in the anachronisms and the DNA in the Lamanites. You don't even need to get there to know this isn't a historical book.

John Dehlin 53:58 But. But we'll be covering them as well.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 54:00 Yeah, yeah. And we've covered DNA already, and we're going to cover some more of these things just because, again, like I said, it's layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. And I don't. You know, it's like there was this thing where people were saying, like, they're talking about red flags in Mormonism. And it was on Twitter. And I remember I said, how many red flags do you need before you go, this is a problem? Because it is. You know, there are going to be times where you're going to come across something and go, that doesn't make sense. But everything else does. But what I'm saying is every single one of these topics we've done, you can show that they're not going to make. They're not going to add up to what we were told they were. And we're now like 12 or 13 episodes in, and we've already got that. And then we've got all these other ones on the other side. It's just there's too many to where you would ever give the same space to any other religion, especially when you're talking about one that is so modern, that gives us so many tangible claims to test. I mean, these are not. Joseph Smith didn't do this a thousand years ago. He did this 200 years ago. It gives us so much room to be able to test it. And unfortunately, they're just not coming back. And again, if you were reading this about Scientology, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, and you're a Mormon, you'd be like, oh, yeah, those guys got it wrong. Cause, look, you can see it. It's just because we're so invested, it's hard for us to be willing to say, yeah, you know what? This probably is not what I thought it was.

John Dehlin 55:09 I saw it somewhere on the Internet the other day that if you're wearing rose colored glasses, all red flags just look like flags.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 55:16 Yeah, and that's true. I mean, and again, it's so tough because I remember being there. I remember, oh my goodness. I remember like in 2012 when Romney ran and I would hear things on the news, I would just. I'm like, I'm not even going near it. And at that point I had already lost the literal belief. And so even then I was still too afraid to look. And so I have. I totally understand why it's so hard as a member to trust someone like me. I totally get it. I'm just saying that I'm coming at people and saying, here's what it is, here's a face value. I'm not redefining anything. Do with it what you will. Whereas apologists are telling you what you're looking at isn't really what you're looking at. And that's what's going to lead me to this last quote, which I wanted to read. It's from John Hamer, who I love and mentioned a few times. And he was asked about how fair Mormon operates with apologetics. And he said, generally you can avoid saying, well, this is a forest if you spend all your time staring at bark through a microscope and telling yourself that the pattern in the bark is similar to the pattern in an elephant's hide. I know it's maybe not the most eloquent way, but what he's saying is from an apologetic standpoint, they will drill down so far that they just completely ignore all the problems around it. Just to tell you that this one point is something that it's not. And he's obviously oversimplifying. I just, I love that quote because it really does show that sometimes if you as an apologist can get a member to just keep digging down and digging down, digging down, you'll kind of forget the bigger picture. And that's why I mentioned needing to look at this in totality.

Closing Reflections and Thanks

John Dehlin 56:36 And we've done something that we probably thought was impossible. We've concluded a Mormon Stories episode in less than an hour.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:42 I know. Give us a run of applause for that one.

John Dehlin 56:45 Well, great job, Mike. This is a really important one. In the show notes, we'll have a link to all the episodes we referenced, including the Tower of Babel episode or essay on the ldsdiscussions.com website. And what other topics should viewers and listeners look forward to coming up?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:06 Well, we've got a few more on the Bible and how it impacts Mormonism. So we've got Deutero Isaiah, which is, I would argue, the most important as far as kind of, you know, being a smoking gun. As far as using material that wouldn't have been available. We've got the long ending of Mark, which is a really good one. That'll probably be a shorter one, too. For those who enjoy these shorter ones. The one I'm kind of excited about is the Sermon on the Mount and how it's used in the Bible and how that gives us a lot of clues as to the historicity of the Book of Mormon, because that's one I never thought of as a member, never thought of even until long after I left as to how important the Sermon on the Mount being used as a sermon on the temple is. So that one's going to be a really fun one. That's going to come up in the upcoming weeks as well.

John Dehlin 57:46 All right. Well, Mike, you're a gift to us all. I can't thank you enough for your time and your willingness to create this series. When we're done, if we all live over the next six to 12 months, we'll have 40 to 50 of these episodes. And we'll probably share them not only as a playlist on YouTube, but maybe as its own podcast so that people can just kind of free from A to Z, go through the top 50 or so issues with Mormon truth claims and get a really solid, integrated contextualized education. So thank you, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:19 Thanks, guys.

John Dehlin 58:20 All right, we'll see you soon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:22 Bye.

John Dehlin 58:22 And viewers and listeners, thanks so much again for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. Again, I'm John. Check out all these essays@ LDSDiscussions.com we are so grateful for all the donors that make Mormon Stories possible. We couldn't do this without your financial support. Unfortunately, we lose donors every month and less than one out of a thousand of our donors and listeners actually donates. And so we're always having to scramble to keep the revenue coming in so that we can pay Gerardo and Jen and Brooklyn and Jennifer and me and everything else. So if you value this content, please don't join with our honored small group of donors and become a monthly donor. You can go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. It's tax deductible in the United States. We've been financially transparent since day one. Like all 501C3s are required to do. We've done our best to provide even more information than we're required to do financially. But most importantly, our mission is not to destroy Mormonism, not to tear down faith of the Mormon Church. It's simply to provide people with informed consent so that they can know what it is that they're a part of or might be joining or considering. And then in addition to informed consent, we are all about supporting Mormons in the faith crisis or transition and then for those who need to leave Mormonism to help them end up in a healthy, happy place. And we're here to help improve the Mormon Church so the Mormon Church can just fundamentally be more honest and open with its members. So thanks for joining us, thanks for your support, Support us if you don't and come back soon, this week or next or in your feed for just more episodes of Mormon Stories podcast. Thanks everybody. Take care and we'll see you all again very soon.

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