Mormon Prophet, Russell M. Nelson’s Teachings on Doubts w/ LDS Discussions Ep. 45

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions) Edition. I am John Dehlin, your host for today. It is May 17, 2023, and today we are towards the end of an epic series on Mormon stories called LDS Discussions). For those of you who don't know, we are now currently on episode 45 where we are discussing as neutrally and as objectively as we can, Mormon Church truth claims. Today topic is Mormon prophet Russell M. Nelson's teachings on doubts. We're in a sub series within LDS Discussions) about how the Church handles doubts. For those of you who don't know, this is all based on the amazing work of mike from ldsdiscussions.com this series builds on itself.

John Dehlin 0:52 We're 45 episodes in. If you haven't watched the previous 44 episodes, please pause, go back to the beginning, watch them all, because these episodes build on each other. And of course, I'll just say, like I always say, you can consume this series in isolation, either on Spotify under the LDS Discussions) brand, in audio or video, or on the Apple Podcast app, or you can go to the Mormon Stories Podcast playlist. And there's an LDS Discussions) playlist there where you can view these episodes sequentially.

John Dehlin 1:28 We are joined today by two of my good friends who are both dead inside. We have Mike from LDS Discussions). And I just want to note you both sort of humbly nodded when I said dead inside. It's a little bit disturbing, but we're going to just go with it. Welcome, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:46 Hey, everybody. It's good to be back.

John Dehlin 1:48 And of course, we have Nemo the Mormon from the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo 1:54 Hello.

John Dehlin 1:54 Why is it you two are both okay acknowledging that you're dead inside? What is wrong with you?

Nemo 1:58 I'm British. I don't know what Mike's problem is. Yeah, I don't know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 2:01 My problem is either. It just. It is what it is, right?

John Dehlin 2:04 I'm. I just. For the record, I'm not dead inside. I just. And I. And I have 73% British DNA.

Nemo 2:10 Yeah, he does. Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:12 So I guess my. My dead inside genes are dormant. Like.

Nemo 2:16 Yeah. Because I've got 925. So somewhere I'm still.

John Dehlin 2:19 I'm still three quarters, bro.

Nemo 2:21 Somewhere in that, like 12, 23%, you know, whatever it is.

John Dehlin 2:26 Anyway, we covered last episode, part one of how the Mormon Church Handles Doubt. We shared a lot of cool videos or disturbing videos, depending on your point of view. And we decided to split this episode into two because this part two, number one, was going really Long. And then number two, a lot of this episode really focused on beloved Mormon prophet Russell M. Nelson and how he handles doubts. So make sure you watch last episode, because this episode builds on last episode. And without any further ado. Nemo. Nemo. Well, let's say Nemo first. Do you have any announcements you want to make? Nemo. Before we begin?

Nemo 3:04 I mean, I've done a video on this talk that we're about to look at. So what's it.

John Dehlin 3:08 What's it called?

Nemo 3:09 Lazy Learners and Lacks Disciples is what you type into YouTube and you'll find my video. We can pop a link down there, I'm sure.

John Dehlin 3:14 Okay.

Nemo 3:15 But I sat through the entire talk, so you don't have to, and I went through it blow by blow.

John Dehlin 3:19 Okay. Yeah. And while you're at it, please subscribe to the Nemo the Mormon channel and also subscribe to his donor box@donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon. Right, Nemo.

Nemo 3:35 Yeah, you could do that as you want.

John Dehlin 3:36 All right. Okay. Mike, any other. Any announcements you want to make before we dive in?

Russell M. Nelson's Talk on Doubt and Belief

Mike (LDS Discussions) 3:41 No, I think this episode, to your point, if you haven't seen the first one, I would watch that first, because the first episode kind of covers how some of the more recent talks by church leaders have gone, especially when you're talking to young kids, to college students. And then this one is gonna. We're gonna cover Russell Nelson's talk on doubts. We're also gonna cover a very recent talk by the church historian on doubts, which happened just within the last month. And so those two talks, I think, are really important, both because one's coming from the prophet of the church, who's the current prophet, and then through the other one's coming from the current church historian, who obviously should have access or does have access to way more information about church history than we do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 4:17 So to hear how he phrases doubts, to hear how he phrases how to deal with learning things about the church that kind of tell you that it's not what it claims to be is really eye opening. And I think that it shows how the game has changed, so to speak, for how the church has to handle doubts. Now, given that we all have access to so much information.

John Dehlin 4:37 Okay. And for those of you who aren't Mormon or have never been Mormon, Russell M. Nelson is the current president and prophet of the Mormon Church. We are taught that he is God's literal mouthpiece on the earth for the entire world, and that he is a special witness of Christ and has probably talked to God and. Or Jesus. That's kind of Mormon General Mormon belief. Is that overstating it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:06 Not really. I mean, it's been. We've. We did. We've done episodes on Revelations, so we've talked about this. But Russell Nelson will constantly say things like, I was woken in the middle of the night with an impression that I wrote down. And the implication to members is that those impressions are revelations. He's getting in his sleep. His wife, Wendy Nelson, I think, in an interview said something like, he pulls out his yellow pad, tells Wendy, basically, get out of the room, it's happening. And then she leaves the room and he writes down whatever he had in his dream.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:34 You know, it's. It's not much different than when you'll hear comedians, for example, say that they sleep with a pad next to their bed because sometimes they'll wake up with something that's funny and they want to write it down so they don't forget.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 5:45 Doesn't mean that that joke's coming from God. So we'll go through that. But, yeah, I would say they are. The Mormon Church today does a really good job of not saying explicitly that they meet with Jesus or with God, because they'll have talks where they'll say, I. I know his face. But then they'll also have talks where they say, you're not going to actually see him. So, you know. But they also do that game where saying the word impression is basically saying, I got a revelation that maybe isn't in words, but just more in a feeling. And therefore we're going to do something like say, say that God's offended when he used the word Mormon after he spent tens of millions of dollars to promote it. That happened from Russell Nelson's impression. So in the church, we consider that a revelation, even though there's no actual revelation behind it.

Nemo 6:27 That happened from Russell M. Nelson's grudge with Gordon B. Hinckley. I think that wasn't. That wasn't a spontaneous thing that had been brewing for a long time. Which is why it's all the more interesting when Wendy Nelson talks about him being unleashed because it was an idea he'd held onto for so long.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:42 Yeah, he still called him. I think he called it an impression. Like, I think he said, it was

Nemo 6:46 impressed upon my mind the importance of the full name of the church or the correct name of his church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:51 And that's his code word for saying, treat this as a revelation, even though there's no actual revelation.

Nemo 6:55 Because if something's impressed upon the mind of the prophet, then it's a. It's a revelation. Sorry, John, but the point, I don't

John Dehlin 7:01 want to get lost is that it's absolutely the. The beginning value proposition that a Mormon missionary will teach you in the very first. Within 20 minutes of the very first discussion that you'll have, they will say, God speaks to prophets today.

John Dehlin 7:17 That is what the restoration of Mormonism is all about. God spoke to Joseph Smith in 1820, and he speaks to a modern prophet today. And they'll show you a picture of Russell M. Nelson and say, this dude speaks with God in a way that none of the rest of us do. And as a Mormon growing up, I knew that the prophet spoke with God. And not just the prophet, but also the first presidency, the quorum of the 12. All 15 of those dudes are special witnesses of Jesus Christ. I'm saying that in air quotes, and that means they talk to Jesus.

John Dehlin 7:55 And the church may try and use subtle language these days for plausible deniability reasons, but they also want to make sure everyone behind closed doors continues to believe that they're special witnesses of Jesus. And so I'm trumping all of you if you're going to try and soften that, because I think that's factual. Nemo is showing it's all in here in the Preach, Preach My Gospel, which is the missionary manual. Okay, Mike, should we go to the first slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:24 Yeah, let's start it up.

John Dehlin 8:25 All right, let's do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 8:26 And so this is a talk from General Conference in 2021. So obviously this is an important talk. And Russell Nelson outlines basically how to increase faith in God. And more importantly, as we've talked about, when they say God, they mean the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But in doing so, he is going to constantly paint those with doubts in the worst possible light. And so we're going to highlight a few of the comments from his talk that show how they're connected to the previous talks we mentioned in the last episode. Because he's trying to send a very clear message to members because we are in this particular case saying, I am the one who speaks for God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:04 And this is what we need to think about when we think about people with doubts or if you have doubts. And so as Nelson, as you watch this video, he's going to tell members that now is the time to increase faith. He's going to take a shot not just at those who have left, but those who are wavering by calling them lazy learners, which is a phrase if you've been out of the church for a while. I'm sure. You've heard, because this caused a lot of people to be upset, because the. The real. And we'll get into this after the comment, but the idea that people who leave are lazy learners is one that the church wants people to feel, because it really is a way to dismiss the real. The real reasons that people leave. And obviously, it could not be further from the truth.

Nemo 9:38 It poisons the well against those that have left. And it's ironic that he has said this and then in his most recent general conference talk, said that we need to be kind in our interactions with others and that we need to not be contentious. We need to be peacemakers. We shouldn't malign. He particularly used the word malign. People that disagree with us. But to be fair, went out.

John Dehlin 9:59 And to be fair, it's okay for him. Right. Just to play devil's advocate, it's okay for him to say, let's have peace going forward. I guess he'll be under much more scrutiny if he says anything like this again. Is that not.

Nemo 10:14 Yeah, he can say it. It should just come with an acknowledgment that even he has said things in the past that may have upset people. And, you know, moving forward, we should all try to be a bit kinder. Like, I have no problem with the overall sentiment. It's just the kind of slight hypocrisy of it coming from an unapologetic man. Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin 10:30 He missed an opportunity, for sure.

Nemo 10:32 Yeah.

John Dehlin 10:32 So, Mike, should we play that clip?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:34 Yeah, let's play that.

John Dehlin 10:35 All right, let's play the first clip.

Nemo 10:38 Lazy learners and lax disciples will always struggle to muster even a particle of faith.

John Dehlin 10:47 I mean, I'm already super offended.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:51 It's absurd.

John Dehlin 10:52 That is one of the most offensive things said in the modern era for people who are questioning their faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 10:59 Yeah. I mean, it just. It dismisses everything that people that go through.

John Dehlin 11:06 Go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:06 Oh, no, I'll say. You could finish it.

John Dehlin 11:09 No, I finished it. That's all that was on the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:11 Yeah, I thought so. No, I was just saying it's attempting to diminish what people who leave the church go through. And, you know, one of the things that I've learned by running the website and talking to people is that most people who leave leave because of the fact that they actually are doing a lot more research than they used to do as a member. And so this idea is really, as Nemo said, it's directly to poison the well. It's an untrue statement.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 11:33 It's a dishonest approach for someone who is a self proclaimed proclaimed prophet to take. Because as we've talked about in previous episodes, the Mormon Church does a ton of research. They do focus groups, they do surveys. They do surveys all the time with members. They know why people are leaving. They know why people are, what they're encountering, what issues are having. So this idea that the church is going to come out in this talk and say they're lazy learners goes against what they know. Like they know when they say that, that it's not a factually true statement, but they also know that the, the need of that talk is to get members who are listening to him to want to shut off anyone who is coming to them with information they found.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:11 And so, you know, just to say, to try to quantify all the time I spent reading material, listening to podcast over the last few years, it's just crazy to say that that's lazy. And again, it's just, it's one of those things that we talked about from our last episode. If you watch our last episode, we did the Renlunds Youth Devotional. And in the Renlunds Youth Devotional he said at last blind like the mole in his burrow, he usually substitutes ridicule for reason, indolence for labor, and becomes a lazy scholar. And so this is building off of earlier talks. And so when the church tries to kind of say, oh, it's just one opinion of man, you could kind of see that there's themes in these talks that are going in this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 12:52 The Renlist talk was I believe, 2019. And then two years later it goes from, you know, lazy scholar to lazy learner. And so you can kind of see that it's not an accident that these words are being used.

Nemo 13:01 And I think actually lax disciples is, is often overlooked in that sort of little couplet because that's a recipe for scrupulosity problems. The idea that if you're struggling or if you have questions or if things you've learned about the church are causing you to discomfort, then you need to work harder. You're not being a faithful or hard working enough disciple. You need to just pick yourself up by your bootstraps and work harder and then it'll all be fine. And that's sort of not great rhetoric.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:31 Yeah.

John Dehlin 13:32 Really quickly I want to share with everyone a resource that I think is crucial. And Mike, we probably should add this to our fall LDS discussions list. And I've referenced this on Mormon stories a few times. Back in the early 2000, 2000 and tens, I was contacted by a dear friend named Travis Stratford, who was connected with an area authority, Hans Matson from Sweden, and long story short, Marlon Jensen. Marlon K. Jensen was the church historian at the time and a general authority. And because of all the people having doubts and because of Hans Mattson particularly terrifying the church as, as a prominent European area authority started having doubts.

John Dehlin 14:21 We worked together to put together a study called why do People Leave the LDS Church? I'm going to put a link up in the show notes that, that shows this study but basically it, it has a really, really fascinating report that was ultimately submitted to Dieter Uchtdorf that came about from thousands and thousands of people that we, that we surveyed. And basically all I want to say about that is you need to check it out. But one of the main findings of that survey was that the people losing their faith on the Internet these days have a higher than average education, a higher than average income and a higher than average representation in high level callings like Bishop, Bishopric, APs on missions, relief society presidents, ward and stake, young women's and young men's presidents, etc.

John Dehlin 15:25 And this, this study was so compelling and disturbing to Marlon K. Jensen that he literally was quoted as saying that the church is losing its best and its brightest. And that completely contradicts this lazy learner's narrative that Russell M. Nelson is, is advancing. And, and I, and, and that's all I need to say. And I'm not even saying that he knows he's being disingenuous here. It's very possible that he just either doesn't know about this study because Uchtdorf was afraid to tell him, or he doesn't believe it or you know, just as is persuaded by his own biases. But, but top people at church headquarters know that this narrative isn't true whether or not Nelson buys into it. Any, any quick comments either of you want to make about that? No.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:21 Okay, I would just point, I would just point out the Laxes Nemo point out that the lacks disciples comment is kind of going to lead to some scrupulosity because you're going to have, especially when you have like younger members who are struggling and they're like okay, what am I doing wrong? And it really is a way to reverse blame. It's like if you're finding faults with the church, if you're having doubts, it's because you're not a strong enough disciple. And that's sometimes a very effective tool to getting people to then blame themselves. At the same time it, as Nemo said, it comes at a cost because you know, we, we've, you've had episodes before with people that have religious scrupulosity and it could cause problems.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:59 So it, it's a, it's a dangerous tool for a profit or a leader of an organization to be using to try to signal to their members that if you start having doubts, it's because you're not doing enough.

John Dehlin 17:11 It's also just insulting. And they know better by now. They know better and.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:16 Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin 17:17 Okay, let's go to the next slide.

Nelson's Claim That Belief Cannot Be Chosen

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:19 All right, so this next clip from the talk is one that generated, I would say, the most discussion because this is where he's just going to try to kind of almost twist a knife on those who have doubts. And I just want to point out, as you watch this, these are tactics that high demand religions and cults use to keep members from associating with anyone on the outside who will speak out against the truth claims of the leaders. And as we mentioned in our last, you know, couple of talks that we've done from the last episode, if any other religious organization or church or politician answered your doubts in the way that Russell Nelson is going to do it here, would you stick around for another minute or would you say, I've seen what I need to see.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 17:56 I'm done. And so as you watch this clip, just kind of try to picture it, especially if you're a believing member. Picture hearing this clip from someone from the Catholic Church or someone from, you know, I don't want to say a cult, but you know, David Koresh or the Reorganized Church, you know, of Latter Day Saints, the Church of Christ. And just picture, like, what would you say if you were coming to, to church with a friend to another religion and you heard this? What would your first reaction be?

John Dehlin 18:24 All right, let's, let's play the clip.

Nemo 18:28 If you have doubts about God the Father and his Beloved Son, or the validity of the restoration or the veracity of Joseph Smith's divine calling as a prophet, choose to believe and stay faithful. Take your questions to the Lord and to other faithful sources. Study with the desire to believe rather than with the hope that you can find a flaw in the fabric of a prophet's life or a discrepancy in the Scriptures. Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters.

John Dehlin 19:15 All right, let's ask Nemo for his, his cold reaction to that, and then Mike will have you jump in.

Nemo 19:22 It's this idea of just choose to believe. This is that simple. I'm off back to church, guys. I mean, I go to church anyway. But, you know, that's it. I'm done. I've closed down my channel because I just. I just choose to believe. That's fine. It's. It's nonsense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:36 Is.

Nemo 19:36 It's absolute nonsense to say that someone with, with reasonable doubts, compelling reasons to doubt. As the church historian will go on to say. If people with compelling reasons to doubt are told to just choose to believe, I think that speaks to a lack of answers possibly on the side of the person saying it, because he should be able to give compelling reasons to believe. He shouldn't just ask people to choose it without any sort of backing up of that. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin 20:03 Yeah. Mike, what do you want to add?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:06 Well, the next few slides kind of go through what I'm saying. But yeah, it's. It's this idea that we have Dallin Oaks in 2019 saying research is not the answer. And now you've got Russell Nelson just saying choose to believe. Like no one in the top leadership of the church is saying, if you've got questions, come to your leaders and we have answers. This is not, you know, this is the church is true. And we can show you why. These questions you're having are not based in history, they're not based in evidence, but instead they're just saying, dude, don't. Don't talk to other people who are having problems.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:38 Don't talk to other people who have found issues. Stick with us. And that is a really. It shows a lack of confidence from Russell Nelson that he believes that the claims that the church has are true. And it's also one that is a very controlling and manipulative thing to do with people that revere you as a prophet of God.

John Dehlin 20:56 Yeah. And I don't know how much of it is cynical manipulation versus just cluelessness because he is 90. Whatever. But. Yeah, but, but I don't. For all my attempts at not overinflating my position in the world, I do think I have spoken to more question Mormon questioners and doubters than almost anyone in the world, to definitely tens of thousands at this point. And I can say that almost unanimously these people, if they had a fault, it was caring too much, not too little. They weren't lazy. They weren't just trying to rehearse doubts. They had sincere problems that were legitimate. And, and, and Nelson's characterization of them is very glib.

John Dehlin 21:48 The easiest thing in the world within Mormonism is just to keep believing thing. The challenging thing, what I call the courageous thing, is to be willing to even start to doubt and question. Because the social and the familial consequences are. Are so often so incredibly dire.

John Dehlin 22:11 And so he just. They just. This is almost an unpardonable sin, that in 2020, what year did he give this talk? Do you. Do you guys know?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:20 20.

Nemo 22:21 20, 21.

John Dehlin 22:21 Yeah. That by 2021, they're. They're still advancing this narrative at the highest of levels. It's. It's. It's egregious dereliction of responsibility. And I, I couldn't emphasize that enough. Okay, let's go on to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:39 Yeah, one back. One more back.

John Dehlin 22:43 One more. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:44 Yeah. And so just, you know, as I said, when. You know, when I said to imagine that you're with someone else and you're at church for another religion. And so I'm using Scientology because that's ob. That would qualify more as a. Definitely a high demand religion, probably, I think, to a lot of people, a cult. And so you're sitting there with your friend, you hear the leader of their church say, if you have doubts about Scientology, choose to believe and stay faithful. Take your questions directly to our leader, David Miskov. Miscavige, I think Miscavige. I don't know how you say it.

John Dehlin 23:09 Miscavige. And read Miscavig.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:11 Miscavige. And read our faithful approved sources. Study with the desire to believe rather than with the hope that you can find a flaw in the fabric of L. Ron Hubbard or our history and stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters, would you respond by saying, yeah, that sounds pretty reasonable, or would you reply to your friend with, you need to get out of here and never look back? And I think we all know what the answer is. And this really comes down to, as we talked a few episodes ago about special pleading. If you remove the special pleading and say, I need this to be true, and you look at this just from that lens of, like, how would I view this from another place? You would immediately see this is not a healthy thing that's being done.

Nemo 23:45 I just want to. I want to make sure we can't be accused of making false binaries here. There is a spectrum of responses within that, but I think most people would tend towards the end of that. Doesn't sound reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. Just because I don't want that false binary to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:59 No, that's a good point, Nemo. I'm glad you said it. Just because. Yeah, I don't want this to be like, one of those things where, like, it's not black and white. It's not. But I'm just saying, like, would you find that to be something that would feel like an honest, fulfilling answer, or would you kind of go that there's something off there? And I really think that if you took a focus group of a hundred people and you had made sure that that focus group believed it was another religion saying it, I really believe. I. I mean, I would bet money that over 90, close to 100, would say they're. That. That's not. That's not a good place.

Nemo 24:26 Yeah, No, I think. I think if we're on it, if we're honest with ourselves, we all know that we buy us our own in group, and we. We all give special consideration to our own in group that we wouldn't give to other groups. And I would invite people to kind of. Yeah. Reflect on that.

John Dehlin 24:41 All right, well, let's go to the next slide.

Nemo 24:43 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:43 And so now I just want to take this one step further and apply it to something that's not a religious situation. And so we've used the car example a bit, but suppose you just bought a car. It's having issues, and so you looked online to see if you could kind of find answers to fix it, and you found out that the dealership not only misrepresented the history of the car when you bought it, but you discovered they have defrauded others in the past as well with questionable sales. Maybe they don't tell them that there was flood damage or previous accidents. So you go to the dealership, and the salesperson looks at you, and they say, if you think this car is not as good as when you bought it, choose to believe and stay faithful that it will get you where you need to go.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:17 Take your questions directly to our service center and read our faithful, approved reviews from happy customers. Read these reviews with the desire to believe what we're telling you rather than the hope that you could find a flaw in our sales tactics. Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other upset customers. And I realize this sounds super facetious, but the problem is, when you look at it this way, you would realize that you'd probably be walking out of that car dealership ready to call a lawyer. Because clearly this line of thinking is designed to shut off your critical thinking, and that is what Russell Nelson is doing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:46 And so with a car example, yeah, you're probably going, this is ridiculous. But the point is, that line of thinking is designed with a very specific intent to poison the well and to keep you from looking deeper. And that is not what any religion that believes their claims should be doing,

Nemo 26:03 if you believe your claims boldly. This is what I always found strange about leaders of the church, that they. They never get involved in debates. They'll never, you know, go toe to toe with someone who disagrees with them because it almost seems as though they're not actually that convinced out of a safe, controlled environment of their own beliefs, which, if they were, would leave to the lead to the sort of behaviors where they are willing and able to have their beliefs not attacked, but questioned. And they would have answers to those questions. But they very much exist in a bubble of don't question us, just believe us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:37 Yeah.

Nemo 26:38 And that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, really, to my. To my mind.

John Dehlin 26:43 All right, let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:46 And this is one of the parts, you know, we talk about, where Nelson, sorry, Russell Nelson, is trying to reframe the idea of faith to make it basically transcendent, actual evidence. And so he says a nonbeliever might say that faith is for the weak, but this assertion overlooks the power of faith. And I've talked about this in previous episodes, but that is not what those who leave the church say. It's a complete straw man argument. And the definition of faith from the Book of Mormon is really consistent with how I always understood it before I joined the church. And so Alma 32:21 says, if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:23 And as I've said, when I grew up, I was not obviously in the church, and I was more of a Protestant background. The faith was the idea that you believe in things that you cannot see and you cannot know for certain one way or the other. And not only was I taught that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but I was taught that before because of the fact that the Book of Mormon really does reflect that Protestant Methodist view of the 19th century. And the problem with Mormonism is that they're trying to redefine faith and make it not the assurance of the existence in spite of what we have seen.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:57 And so what they're saying is, you know, faith is about believing in things we cannot see, but it's not about believing them in spite of what we can see, what we can read, what we can understand about the evidence. And so to say that you're overlooking the power of faith when someone comes across, say, the Book of Abraham translation being wrong, that's a horrible argument from Nelson because he's trying to basically tell you that you're just doing it wrong. You're lacking faith if you're looking at very testable truth claims from Mormonism and actually testing them. And as Joseph Smith was telling everyone to do

John Dehlin 28:29 anything you want to add, Nemo?

Nemo 28:32 Sorry. Yeah, muted myself. There we go. So, yeah, I think I've explained it with the whole idea of the doctor before and the idea that, you know, you put your faith in a doctor, but then if you get evidence that he isn't qualified or has a drinking problem or any of these things, then you shouldn't keep faith in him in spite of that newfound evidence. I think the easiest way to explain it would be you've got the things that faith can deal with in a circle and then you've got the things that evidence can deal with in a circle. And as the sphere of evidence gets bigger, the role of faith gets smaller, because naturally it must do, because it deals with the unknown.

Nemo 29:06 And once you have evidence, it becomes a known thing. So as scientific advancements move forward in the world, then the need for faith that people will get better decreases because the evidence that people will get better based on clinical trials and all these sorts of things increases. So you're no longer having to pray for the recovery of people that could be treated by a evidence based medicine. I think that's the simplest way I can put it in how faith should act. But as Mike said, in Mormonism, it acts differently.

John Dehlin 29:39 I love it. All right, well, let's go to the next slide.

Bandwagon Reasoning and Martyrdom Arguments

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:43 Yeah, and so this one is where Nelson is going to kind of invoke the bandwagon effect, which we talked about in a previous episode, which is to say that you should know the church is true because others before you have given so much to be a part of it. And I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here. But other religions have had many more people die in wars over their beliefs, die for other causes. It doesn't make what they believed any more or any less real than the truth claims of Mormonism. And so as you listen to this clip, I just want you to think about this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 30:12 909 people died in Jonestown. Why would 909 people have willingly died in Jonestown if they didn't have faith that the People's Temple was not the one true belief, one true church, whatever you want to call it. And so I think we need to focus on that as we listen to this clip from Russell Nelson because it really shows how this is such an ineffective argument and it just doesn't really hold up in any possible way.

John Dehlin 30:34 I also want to just refer people to our episode on Mormon spiritual witnesses and testimonies because it really just approaches the problem of epistemology within Mormonism, which is the study of how people believe things. And we've all been taught that if we have strong emotional experiences, that that's the Holy Ghost bearing witness to us, that something is true. And obviously the problem with that is, is that people in the FLDS church and Jim Jones and, and the people's. What is it? The ones who all did death by suicide in California Heaven's Gate, like the dudes who flew the planes into the twin tow powers the, you know, from the, from Islam, from, from the Muslim faith. Like who, what faith doesn't have people who have felt strong emotional feelings, called that inspiration.

Nemo 31:31 And then Christianity went on several crusades.

John Dehlin 31:34 Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just the way, it's just the way religion works is they get you to have strong feelings. They tell you that it's God or the Holy Ghost or some spirit confirming to you that it's true. And then you've got thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, or millions, or in the case of maybe Christianity, broadly a billion people all telling you they believe it's true. Okay, so now that we've poisoned the well, let's play Russell Nelson's clip.

Nemo 32:03 Would Joseph and Hyrum Smith have suffered martyrs deaths defending the restoration of the Lord's Church unless they had a sure witness that it was true? Would nearly 2,000 saints have died along the pioneer trail if they did not have faith that the gospel of Jesus Christ had been restored? Truly, faith is the power that enables the unlikely to accomplish the impossible. Do not minimize the faith you already have. It takes faith to join the church and remain faithful. It takes faith to follow prophets rather than pundits and popular opinion.

John Dehlin 32:55 I mean, it's just such incredibly bad poor thinking, especially for someone who has a training at the level of, of a, you know, medical degree. It's just such bad thinking.

Nemo 33:07 Yeah, but John, you're just a pundit, mate.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:09 Yeah, and it's effective. I mean, it's effective. That's. I, I've had people tell me, people I know and also people I've met through doing this, that, that one of the things that holds them to the church is this idea that I have had pioneer heritage that I cannot walk away from. Because if I walk away from, what does it say about my parents, what does it say about my great grandparents that they gave so much and I'm willing to walk away from it. And so Nelson is definitely choosing these, these words and choosing these concepts carefully because he knows it's effective on getting members to refocus their kind of mindset with, with regards to faith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 33:43 And so that's why he does it. Yeah, I feel like, as I said this, this has no bearing on the truthfulness of Mormonism either way. It doesn't mean it's true. It doesn't mean it's false. Because so many other religions have had way more people die. Way more people do things because they believed it was true. But again, it's effective when you're, when you're speaking to an audience of believers to hammer this home, to make them plant that seed in their mind of look at all you're giving up. If you walk away, all these people before you did it, and now you're gonna be the weak one, the weak chain of the link.

Nemo 34:13 Yeah, I mean, can I, can we just point to some of the factual accuracy of some of what he said? Would Joseph Smith and Hyrum have suffered martyrs deaths if they didn't believe it was true? Well, they didn't exactly have much of a choice. And Joseph Smith did do things to try and get out of that situation. You know, it's not the whole lamb to a slaughter thing that we're necessarily led to believe. So this idea that he didn't necessarily want to die, you know, he didn't go, well, then kill me for my beliefs then, you know, he tried to get out of it. He tried to stop people coming into Nauvoo.

Nemo 34:44 He wasn't exactly the placid laid down person that we're meant to believe that he was in this situation. And again, that appeal to popularity about the sacrifice of the pioneers for those that are the descendants of pioneers, it's almost like a sunk cost fallacy. It kind of, it starts to lean into a bit of that. It's like, well, your ancestors have already paid this price, so are you going to squander it? It's the same thing that's used to kind of press people on the whole, Jesus Christ died for your sins. So are you going to then throw that thing away? You know, someone else has already done this thing for you, so it would be rude and wrong and horrible of you to then not live up to that thing that someone else did all that.

John Dehlin 35:23 And I just want to add that people commit fraud all the time and face dire consequences as the result of their fraud. Whether it's Bernie Madoff, you know, or just all the Ponzi schemes, all the financial fraud, all the sexual, you know, abuse that happens, just criminal behavior in general. People commit fraud all the time and end up being punished significantly for it. So just to make that argument, why, you know, is it possible that someone would commit fraud and then face negative consequences? Like, has he heard of the legal system? Has he heard of the judicial system? Has he heard of the criminal courts? Like, it's full of people who do that kind of stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:14 Well, and just to hammer home the one point where he says, would Hiram and Joseph have died if they didn't believe it? It's like, well, did David Kresh died? Did he not believe it? I mean, we have all these leaders who have died throughout history. Are we then trying to play this special pleading game of saying, well, our guys are really true because we believe it, whereas those other guys were kind of just crazy and believed it? And I think that's why this doesn't. It has no relevance whatsoever, but it's effective, and so that's why he's doing it.

Nemo 36:39 The scientific method would look a whole lot different if you'd got, like, university professors who had to, like, be willing to die or duel to the death, and then that would prove their hypothesis true, rather than just simple repeatability of results. You imagine, you know, you've got string theory versus whatever, and a couple of physicists duking it out to the death. That's just not the way that we know things are true. It's not, are you willing to die for it? It's. Is it repeatable?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:05 Yep.

John Dehlin 37:06 Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's go to the next slide.

How the Church Responds to Criticism and Change

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:11 And so at the end of that little clip we played, he talks about how, you know, the Church doesn't change due to popular opinion or pundits. And they really hammer this home a lot, which is a way to appeal to an us versus them mentality, especially when you are being seen by society as a whole as being behind the times. We see that today with the LGBT stuff. And I just want to point out before we move on that the Church has made a lot of big changes due to popular opinion that are massive changes. They end up polygamy, at least for time. I know it's still doctrine for eternity because the government basically said, and the public as a whole said, you can't do polygamy.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 37:43 They removed the priesthood ban on members of African lineage and black skin because the civil rights movement was happening. They had all sorts of issues with potential, you know, lawsuits. Byu, they had teams that were Boycotting their games. Obviously, at that point, they were a good, what, 20, 30 years behind the civil rights movement to finally remove that ban.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:03 They removed the penalties in the temple ceremony where members used to have to repeat the Masonic penalties that, you know, basically you were miming, you're killing yourself, slitting your throat, cutting your bowels out. If they revealed the temple ceremony, they removed sexist. Some sexist language in the temple that was rooted in polygamy, where the wife gave herself to the husband, but the husband gave himself to God. They removed the November 2015 LGBT revelation from God just three and a half years later with a second revelation because members were not willing to accept such a discriminatory policy as well as the public as a whole. And allowing their parents to be with their children when they have interviews with the bishop where sexually explicit questions are asked to young children.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 38:43 Happened because Sam Young was basically got excommunicated trying to rally people to stop allowing bishops to basically force a situation where parents couldn't be in the room. And so these are just a small list of really, monuments, some of the monumental changes in the church that come because popular opinion force them to change.

John Dehlin 39:05 Absolutely. Nemo, you want to add anything?

Nemo 39:08 Yeah, it's just. It's almost the biggest lie that the church tries to tell the members to disempower them that, you know, we won't listen to you. We get all our decisions from God. But if members realize just how much power they actually have, it's the same with a lot of organizations like this. If the people at the bottom realize that they actually had a lot of people power, then they would be able to change so many things that they feel like they're stuck with because they've been convinced by the few people at the top. I was watching a TV show the other day, and.

Nemo 39:39 And essentially the people remark that what if there's actually only two or three people watching us down here? What if they want us to think that there's loads of people here keeping us in, but what if actually there's only a couple of them? And it's the same in the church? There's actually only a few people trying to tell us what to do. But actually, history of the church shows us that if the members feel that something is wrong and enough of them speak out, it will change and change quick.

John Dehlin 40:08 Yeah, yeah. John Larsen has made the point. We have him on Mormon Stories occasionally. He's the former host of Mormon Expression Podcast. He makes the point that you really can't name a fundamental core Mormon doctrine That hasn't changed significantly since the founding of the church. Including the Godhead. Right.

John Dehlin 40:31 You know, including the priesthood. You know, take your pick. The Book of Mormon itself has undergone many, many significant changes. You really can't name a core Mormon doctrine that hasn't changed. And if you really, if you're open and you study the history, you'll be able to find the origins of the changes coming out of, you know, social, social dynamics and, or relationships and. Or just new things that Joseph learned, but primarily legal or social pressure. So it's, it's either a just a naive.

John Dehlin 41:11 Just lack of. Of understanding about basic history and social dynamics on the part o. Russell M. Nel or again, it's this cynical deception because he should know better about how much in fact Mormon doctrine has changed over the years due to social pressure.

Nemo 41:30 And that's, that's the really weird thing about Ahmed Corbett when he starts saying that activism towards the church is not appropriate and is wrong and all this sort of stuff. And he, he is the beneficiary of that very activism that he's trying to stop. Because as a black man who can now hold the priesthood, it is activism he has to thank for that. And the other thing I just want to point out to lighten the mood slightly, do you remember the ban on oral sex that the church had John

John Dehlin 41:52 Spencer B. Kimball in the early 80s? Yeah.

Nemo 41:55 Took them nine months to reverse that because so many members were in few like they incensed by that ban is the quickest turnaround the church has ever done on something as far as I know. Nine months.

John Dehlin 42:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo 42:08 For them to reverse the ban on oral sex.

John Dehlin 42:09 And did you. I'm looking at your list. Did you, did you mention Mike Sam Young's activism? About what?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:19 That was the last.

John Dehlin 42:20 Okay, okay, sorry, sorry. I was, I was doing other work behind the scenes. Okay, well, good. Well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:26 Yeah. And so. And one thing I'll say was. One quick thing I'll say before that slide is to piggyback off Animos point. The church only has the power you give them. And I think that's one of those things that was hard for me to learn.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:39 And especially the moment I really learned it was. I was always told you never turn down a calling. And I think I've told this before, but I got to a point where I just. I couldn't do it anymore. I had issues with polygamy. I had issues with the ban of blacks and the ward I was in. I really didn't feel comfortable. And it just got to a point where I didn't want to go. And so they knew that and so they kind of pulled me aside. They're like, if you don't start going to more activities, you're going to fall away. And I was like, I'm not going to the activities.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:03 So like two weeks later they're like, we just prayed about you. And we were told by, you know, revelation, a personal revelation, that you need to be one of the counselors in the elders quorum. And I said no, because I couldn't do it. And it was that moment where you realize that the church doesn't have any power over me unless I give it to them. And to Nemo's point, that's why if enough people say enough's enough, and you really actually put your foot down and realize the church is powerless unless you give them the power, they will make changes. So, you know, if you're a woman who's sick of not being able to hold the priesthood, not being able to pass the sacrament, not being able to baptize your child, that is where the more people that are willing to get together and actually make noise, the quicker the change is going to be.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 43:45 Now, the church will never immediately change because they don't want to be seen as caving, but they, they do a really good game of kind of waiting just long enough to where kind of the initial uproar has gone to make it go away. The November 15 policy is a great example where we had mass resignations because the November 15th policy is really bad and it's a really bad knee jerk reaction to a same sex marriage being legalized through the Supreme Court. And it was one of those things where they had to wait a couple years to reverse it because they had to kind of do it so they didn't feel like it was directly because members were raising their voices and, and it just shows again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:24 That's why, like people say, what? I'm still a member of the church. And they'll say, why don't you resign? I'm like, I don't really care. They don't hold power over me, so why am I going to go to them, be like, hey, take my membership away because I, I want that gone. I, I just don't care. And so that's at least for me, my way of saying, you have no power over me, so whatever you want to do doesn't really matter. And I'm going to stay a member because it's more important to other people. Than it is to me. But the point is, as Nemo said, or piggybacking off Nemo, the church only has the power you give them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:53 And you should always remember that when you're in an interview, when you're being asked to do something that doesn't make sense, because the moment you give them power is the moment they'll take it and they'll hold it over you. And we've talked about that in previous episodes. Sorry for that little bit of a tangent, but I think that's an important thing for. It was an important thing for me to realize when I was kind of at the end of being able to stay active.

John Dehlin 45:12 I love it. All right, let's go to the next slide.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:15 Yeah. And so this last one is just one more final one on Nelson. And this is just. It's not necessarily about doubts. This is more about faith. And Nelson is going to. He gives a story about his visit. He visits, like all these different countries. He's giving these talks. And so in these visits, it's raining a ton. And so they're praying and they're fasting for the rain to stop before Nelson has these big events there. And in Samoa and in Fiji, the rain stops just in time for Nelson's talk. But when he gets to Tahiti, it keeps on raining despite their fasting and their praying.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:44 And so Nelson says the following. Faith sufficient to stop the rain and faith to persevere when the rain did not stop. It's just like he's talking about this as if. As if the praying and the fasting had any impact. And it's just. It's the ultimate move by a church that wants to have it both ways. And so Nelson might as well have said, heads I win, tails you lose. Because he's literally saying that faith and fasting stop the rain in Samoa and Fiji, while also saying that faith wasn't enough to stop in Tahiti, but also that the faith to persevere through his speech was just as good as a faith that didn't stop the rain.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:16 And so if your head is spinning from that, that's apologetics. In the church, even when things fail, you find a way to spin it into a faith promoting story, even if it basically contradicts the other part of the story that you're trying to tell. And you see this a lot in the church. It's the faith with the faith to be filled, the faith to be healed. And now they say you have to have the faith not to be healed because obviously priesthood blessings don't actually heal people. And so this is the same thing where you're saying in the church, if you have faith and you're getting the answers you want, that's God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 46:42 If you. If you pray and you fast to get answers, you don't get the answer. That's God telling you to have more patience and that you need more faith to accept that you can't get those answers. And it's just. It's a really. It's kind of funny if it wasn't so. Just kind of contradictory and kind of absurd in a lot of ways, too.

John Dehlin 46:59 Nemo.

Nemo 47:00 It's. It's almost like saying, you know, random chance happens, and if it's good for you, then that's God. And if it's not good for you, that's God too. But your fault that God didn't do what you. It makes no sense. And at that point, you may as well ask yourself, well, what's the point in praying? Because if I pray for a specific outcome and it doesn't happen, and that prayer has no effect on whether it happened or not, because we've just heard an example from the prophet that prayer works sometimes, doesn't work other times. So am I just doing it on the off chance that it might? And if it might just happen anyway, then why would I, you know, do that? It doesn't seem to make any sort of logical sense really, to me.

John Dehlin 47:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of the house always wins idea or blame reversal that we've talked about in Luna Lindsay Corbin's amazing Recovering Agency series. In the Mormon Church, the house always wins. It's heads, I win, tails, you lose kind of thing. All right, well, let's move on to the church historian. This is kind of a really recent development that shocked many. The current Mormon church historian this year admitted that there are compelling reasons to doubt. Set this up for us, Mike.

Church Historian Acknowledges Historical Compromises

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:14 Yeah, and so this was just over the past month. The past month. And this is a new church historian, Kyle McKay, and he gives his talk to BYU Idaho. And he admits in the talk that there are compelling reasons to doubt the church's claims. And so I want to give a big shout out to Radio Free Mormon because he had done a podcast about this already, and he kind of gives a really, really good breakdown of this talk. And one of the parts that I thought was pretty cool was when Kyle McKay, who's a lawyer, because as we know, church historians are lawyers now. They're not historians or lawyers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 48:44 And RFM said when he uses the word compelling that that's an intentional choice of a word. And so he looked it up in the dictionary, and I looked it up after just so I could kind of copy and paste it into here. And when you look up compelling, they give you three basic meanings. One is that it's forceful, that is, it's a compelling reason to doubt. One is that it's demanding attention, I. E. They're compelling reasons to doubt, and so you need to pay attention. And then the third is that it's convincing. And so that would be to say the evidence was so compelling that it causes you to doubt.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:12 And so, as we said, they're all lawyers. They're choosing these words carefully. And this is being given to a group of BYU Idaho students. This is not being done by accident. He is literally telling them that there are reasons to doubt the church that are compelling, meaning that they are real, that they are convincing. And that is something that you just would not expect to hear a church historian in 2023 say. So just to set that up before we watch the clip. But, yeah, this is. This was one of those ones where you. You do a double take. You're like, he didn't just say that, and he obviously did.

John Dehlin 49:43 All right, should we play it?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:45 Yeah, let's play it.

John Dehlin 49:46 All right, let's play the clip.

Guest 49:50 Is your foundation sure and certain enough that you can remain unshaken even if someone you admire in the faith makes a mistake now or in the future or in the past? Is your knowledge and testimony of truth strong enough that you can stare down compelling reasons to doubt and choose to believe? Have you learned the gospel, the principles of the gospel, in such a way that you can do all this? In the spring of 1837, for reasons that seemed legitimate to him, Apostle Parley P. Pratt turned his back on the prophet Joseph Smith and tried to take others with him, including.

John Dehlin 50:39 All right, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 50:40 It didn't cut off on its own, but, yeah, just, you know, like I said, just to point out that, you know, he's basically saying that you need to have the faith to basically be able to stay believing, even if there are compelling, I. E. Convincing arguments that the church isn't true. And that is just. It's pretty crazy for a historian to tell you basically that you should have faith to do it when he obviously has access to all the information that should be able to rebut those convincing arguments.

John Dehlin 51:02 Emo.

Nemo 51:02 Yeah, if he's. Well, if he's saying stare down compelling reasons to doubt and choose to believe, this is the problem. Because if they're compelling, you should investigate them, because if they're compelling, they could be legitimate good reasons to doubt and therefore reasons to no longer believe. So what he is promoting, then is willful ignorance. That's what he's advocating, because he's. He's advocating that people ignore compelling reasons to change their paradigm and instead continue to believe the same things they always believed and ignore those things. So it's just willful ignorance he's promoting, which isn't good for people.

John Dehlin 51:40 Absolutely. All right, should we go to the next slide, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:45 Yeah, let's go to the next slide and we can just. We'll play the clip.

Guest 51:48 Is your foundation after.

John Dehlin 51:50 Okay, here we go.

Guest 51:52 As you increase your.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:55 So that's right. Yeah, this is correct.

John Dehlin 51:57 Okay, here we go. You play the clip first. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:00 Yeah, I might as well.

Nemo 52:01 Okay.

Guest 52:03 As you increase your efforts to increase your testimony, you are likely to become confronted with reasons to doubt. President Nelson cautioned, don't pollute your testimony with false philosophies of unbelieving men and women. Please hear me and understand. There will always be some reason or another to doubt the truthfulness of this church and gospel. There are arguments and evidence supporting the proposition that there is no God, that Jesus was just a good philosopher teacher, that Joseph Smith was simply a charismatic storyteller, and that this church and gospel are not true. This evidence, these arguments are on some level appealing and believable, for there are many who believe them.

John Dehlin 53:00 All right, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:02 Yeah, it's just to point out that he's trying to do a very common trick you see within Mormonism, which is to tie God to Mormonism, which is to say there are reasons to believe that maybe Jesus wasn't resurrected. So. But people believe it. So that means you got to believe in Mormonism. And I think that's one of those areas where you look at that, you're like, that's not. That's not a connection that holds up. And he's trying to build off of Russell Nelson's talk about doubts by telling people, you don't rehearse your doubts with others. But he's the church historian who has all the information, and he knows the reasons that people doubt.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:33 So he's at this. This talk with BYU Idaho students, basically telling him there's compelling reasons to doubt. But I'm not going to tell you what those reasons are, But I don't want you to talk to other people who do know them, because you need to be afraid of what will happen if you find out. And just as I've said before, if this is A truly restored church with a living prophet, with church historians, with access to all of this information.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 53:52 Why should there be so many compelling reasons to doubt that we can't actually be told what they are? I just, I feel like he's not saying the things that are really obvious here, which is there's compelling reasons to doubt. We can't tell you because we don't have answers for them.

John Dehlin 54:05 Nemo.

Nemo 54:08 It's absolutely right. And, and again, it's strange to have someone actually explain what those reasons to doubt might be. You know, he does begin to touch on some of the things that people don't believe or some of the arguments that people make, which is new. That's different because normally they just don't touch on it at all.

Nemo 54:25 But he's kind of trying to put down the appeal to popularity argument. He's saying just because lots of people believe these things doesn't mean they're true. And that's great. That's fine. That's good thinking. You've got to weigh up the evidence yourself.

Nemo 54:36 But the problem is the church tries to then use the appeal to popularity for their own good. When they want to say, would 2,000 people have died crossing the plains if it weren't true? Would this would that if it weren't true? So they can't have their cake and eat it too. On that one, they can either say appeal to popularity is a logical fallacy, or they can, you know, start using themselves. And with that, there's my binary for you. It's not a false one to me.

John Dehlin 55:03 What they're trying to do here as well is kind of like inoculate the members to any possible doubt and to just kind of say, oh yeah, you're going to have doubts all the time. That's the whole purpose, that's the whole design, the whole test of existence is that you will experience these doubts and, and, and then overcome them. And in that sense, they're kind of trying, they're trying to make themselves invincible. They're trying to say that the, the doubts in the faith crisis you are going to experience is the test.

John Dehlin 55:41 And in that sense, it's an inoculation. The problem is the inoculation metaphor points to a virus, right? A sickness. And some would say that religious belief is a sickness or a virus. And I'm not going to go that far. I think there are ways to have religious beliefs in something bigger, in something greater that's actually healthy or adaptive for many, many people. So I'm not the person that believes that all faith Based or religious beliefs are our illnesses. But I would say that faith or belief in something that isn't true, in something that is truly harmful to people, like a virus, resilient faith or belief in untrue things is a sickness.

John Dehlin 56:34 And I think that's what strikes at the core of why this LDS discussion series exists. It's okay to have faith or belief in. In innocuous. In innocuous things or in things that are healthy or that are at least not disprovable. But let's not have resilient faith in things that are built on fraud or falseness or deception or that cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. Is that fair?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:06 Yeah. I think I've said in a previous episode, I think if someone wants to watch all these episodes and say, I still believe, fine. But at the same time, if you then go to next year's the Book of Mormon I Believe for Come Follow Me, and you go to teach the Book of Mormon and you teach about gold plates and how Joseph Smith translated off it, and you're showing pictures of him sitting at a table, then you're being dishonest. And I think that's where it comes down to, which is if you want to have faith in something that we can't disprove, like Joseph Smith had a first vision.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 57:34 We weren't there. We know that he changed the story. We know it was a late addition. Okay. But if you're then going to repeat things that we do know are proven to be proven false, then I think that's where we run into problems. And so when you have a church that is continuing to push these narratives that we know are factually not true, that is harmful, even before getting into how it impacts people's lives, because you're telling people something that we now know today is just simply not what the church claims it to be. And that's not faith. That's something entirely different. And I hate that the church tries to tie that faith together.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:06 And they also do it in a way where they bundle it in with God. It's like, as I've said before, God does not need Mormonism. And yet you saw the Elder Corbich talk we talked about last episode, where he says, well, if you believe in God, then naturally you can get to Joseph Smith being a prophet. And here we have a church historian basically saying, well, you know, there's a lot of people who don't believe in God. So clearly a lot of people are wrong with doubts, which means anything that goes against Mormonism you know, it's the same thing and it's like, no, no, no, it's not at all the same thing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 58:31 Because a lot of the ideas of did Jesus get resurrected? We can't really know. Whereas a lot of the truth claims of Mormonism we can test now because Joseph Smith gave us very testable claims and now we have the ability to do that.

John Dehlin 58:45 Nemo.

Nemo 58:46 There are deep and long standing theological arguments about God. They've been going on for a long time and Mormon scholars generally don't tend to scratch the surface of some of those. Like the question of evil we've seen, I shouldn't say Mormon scholars, Mormon leaders try and touch on the question of evil and just unable to deal with it. Particularly, I think Renlund tried to give a talk about infuriating unfairness. He starts to touch on the problem of evil and then just can't. So. So I don't think it's honest for them to hide behind some of these very big and difficult theological questions to uphold Mormonism, which the you. The unique claims of which are easily, easily refutable. Yeah, I would say.

Attributing Doubt to Spiritual Opposition

John Dehlin 59:37 All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, shall we?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 59:40 Yeah. And this next one, it kind of in a lot of ways mirrors some of the ones we talked about in our first part of this, this doubts, the first episode on doubts, which is you're telling college students that doubts are coming from Satan and that they're evil. And I just, I feel like, as I've said in previous episodes, Elder McKay here saying that doubts are bad and that we need choose, we need to choose not to doubt because ultimately come from Satan. It once again shows that in Mormonism, the God of Mormonism is completely powerless and that Satan is really powerful. And I think that's another thing where you see it in a lot of these episodes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:12 You know, I know I've mentioned in a few of them, it's like, why is Satan being blamed for the very clear mistakes of Joseph Smith or for the church as a whole? It's like, did Satan cause Joseph Smith to have failed revelations, to translate the book of Abraham? Wrong to use bad biblical scholarship when he's recording revelations from God? And I think that's the problem. It's like you can't blame Satan for the problems of the church, but you're trying to put the idea of doubts of finding out the information onto Satan, which I think is just such a, just an absurdly dishonest approach. And so I just want, I know, probably as Nemos joked Earlier, I'm poisoning the well here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:46 But as you listen to Elder McKay talk here, the church historian, about how doubts are from Satan, just ask yourself, why is it that in the Mormon Church, Satan is so much more powerful than God?

John Dehlin 1:00:57 All right, let's roll the clip, shall we?

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 1:01:02 Now, I want to be clear. By acknowledging the existence of reasons to doubt, I am not legitimizing them, and I am certainly not advocating or excusing doubt itself. Jesus said doubt not in the face of reasons to doubt.

Video Clip 1 1:01:21 Doubt not. And what did you think Satan would throw up? Flimsy, easily dismissable reasons to doubt? No, they will be flattering and enticing. If the Prince of Darkness can transform himself into an angel of light, then surely he can put forth ideas and arguments that appear enlightened.

Video Clip 1 1:01:49 One of Lucifer's tactics is to play upon our natural human tendency to project natural human tendencies on God, ignoring or forgetting the fact that his ways and his thoughts are different from and higher than ours. We sometimes try to create or recreate God in our image so that he and his doctrine align with our thoughts, our ways, our shifting sympathies and evolving values. Discovering that God and his doctrine are not shifting or evolving, but everlasting and unchanging can become a reason to doubt for.

John Dehlin 1:02:37 Oh, my gosh, Mike, is it okay if I jump in here for a second?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:02:40 Yeah, feel free.

John Dehlin 1:02:41 Like, so. So first of all, like, the fact that he just made the assertion that the Mormon doctrine is everlasting and unchanging. Did. Have we done an episode on LDS discussions about all the different fundamental core Mormon doctrines that have changed? Because if we haven't, we need to add that right now. Have we done that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:03:02 We haven't done that. Might be one to add for later, too. Okay, so it definitely is.

John Dehlin 1:03:06 So, Mike, will you right now annotate that on our of new LDs discussions topics we gotta cover? I'll add it to the spreadsheet because there's a really important changing doctrine. I'm adding that right now. There's a book by Charles Harrell.

John Dehlin 1:03:24 Charles Harrell. He was a BYU professor at the time. This is my doctrine. There's a Mormon. There's a book about it, and it's called this is My Doctor in the Development of Mormon Theology. There's also a Mormon Stories episode, and I think at some point Mormonism Live or Radio Free Mormon have interviewed this guy. But it's basically a book that goes and shows all the different ways Mormon doctrine has changed in critical, crucial ways over the years. I just want to say that's just such a canard. It's so outrageous that they're still pulling that out. The second thing I want to say about this dude, Kyle McKay is that it's a conspicuous cult tactic or tactic of a high demand religion to try and use the emotion that's the E in the bite model.

John Dehlin 1:04:17 To invoke Satan and to pair Satan with doubt is clearly a tactic to make people terrified or afraid to doubt. It's manipulative, it's gross, and the church needs to stop it. He's got me upset now and. And that's what he's doing. Invoking Satan is that with vulnerable young adults who have been curated to. To fear and to trust church authority. He's now saying, if you have doubts, Satan is going to get a hold of you. They do it in the Mormon Temple ceremony. He's with. With Satan and Lucifer in the temple ceremony. He's doing it here. And it's gross. The final thing I'm going to just add is this is something that I referenced last episode as well.

The Value of Doubt and the Church's Rigidity

John Dehlin 1:05:08 There's an amazing book called Doubt A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht. It's subtitled the Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation From Socrates. And what will somebody tell me what word comes after Socrates and Nemo or Mike?

Nemo 1:05:29 Jesus.

John Dehlin 1:05:30 From Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. And if I can just read her description of this book, this is an account of the world's greatest intellectual virtuosos who are also humanity's greatest doubters and disbelievers. From the ancient Greek philosophers, Jesus and the Eastern religions, to modern secular equivalents, Marx, Freud and Darwin, and their attempts to reconcile the seeming meaningless of the universe with the human need for meaning.

John Dehlin 1:06:08 We doubt. And we doubt to our own success as a species. Doubt is a virtue, not a vice. And no one should know this more than Kyle S. McKay because Joseph Smith himself began the restoration by the Church's own account by doubting the Christian debates and theologies of the day. And when he quotes Jesus Christ as saying doubt not that can't be a more glib. I can't imagine a more glib interpretation of Jesus own teachings than to say that Jesus was just universally condemning all doubt because he doesn't provide any other interpretation. He's just saying don't doubt. Jesus said doubt's evil. And I just. That's so glib. It's so maddening. Somebody please rescue me from a raving rant, Nemo.

Nemo 1:07:08 I'll rescue you, John. By informing the viewers that the Reason I look unintelligent on this show is because John always steals my points. Exhibit.

John Dehlin 1:07:14 I'm sorry.

Nemo 1:07:15 Now I'm left with nothing to say. No, it's fine.

John Dehlin 1:07:18 You made some really good points, Nemo. If you reiterate my points, it'll make me feel validated. Plus, repetition is a key to memory. So please repeat my points.

Nemo 1:07:29 Well, okay. So he may. I want to start with the point you didn't make, and then I'll repeat your points through the course of it. He said that by acknowledging the existence of reasons to doubt, I'm not legitimizing them. Well, why did he call them compelling then? And then he goes on to undermine that statement by saying that, you know, of course Satan isn't going to flow, throw flimsy arguments away. And of course, invoking Satan is a way to emotionally manipulate people because we've been taught to fear Satan our entire lives. So it will bring up that fear in us. And anything that is from Satan to be run away from, especially what will make people fearful is if they can't trust what they see.

Nemo 1:08:04 Which is why he brings up this example of Satan being able to appear as an angel of light, because, well, then how do I know if I'm seeing an angel light or Satan? How do I know if what I'm getting is from God or from Satan?

John Dehlin 1:08:14 The answer is power. The answer is follow the brother, Nemo. That's how you know. Always follow the brother.

Nemo 1:08:21 You have to know for yourself. So you've just got to trust them. Because Satan. Satan's good enough to deceive you, individual member of the church, but he won't deceive us, so just follow us.

John Dehlin 1:08:30 But we've made this point a billion times. Which prophets do we follow? Do we follow Brigham Young, who said you have to have plural marriage to reach and at least three wives to reach the celestial kingdom? Do we follow Wilford, you know, Woodruff, who. Who, you know, declared the polygamy should be ceased? Like which. Which prophet do we believe? Right.

Nemo 1:08:54 The one that's alive because a living prophet is more important than a dead prophet, according to Ezra Taft Benson.

John Dehlin 1:08:59 Do we believe Russell and Nelson? Do we believe Russell, Nelson, who said that the. That the exclusion policy was doctrine, or the Russell and Nelson that later unwound it? You know, which do we believe?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:09:13 Both.

Nemo 1:09:14 Both at the same time, apparently. And you get a gold medal in mental gymnastics if you manage it. The last two points, I just want to make about that. He says, shifting sympathies and evolving values. He says that in such a derogatory way. But if God is. God's not evolving, if these things aren't changing, then what's the point in a continuing restoration that Russell M. Nelson keeps harping on about and, and saying, you've just seen the beginning. Take your pills, get your rest. Even though loads of other people said the church had been restored, he's coming out and saying, well, it's ongoing. One of the biggest value propositions, as we talked about earlier, of the Mormon Church is ongoing revelation and a prophet that speaks to God.

Nemo 1:09:50 So out of all the churches that should be able to be progressive and change and non kind of rigidly conservative, you would imagine it would be the LDS Church. That's what you have going for you. Sorry, my dog's moaning at me. So you guys carry on.

John Dehlin 1:10:04 No, I love it. Mike, what do you want to add?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:06 I just would point out just the, the simple fact that, you know, I feel like I've said this a few times, but when you come out and you say, excuse me one sec, and you come out and you say, did you really think Satan would be that powerless against you? And you're talking about how he can impersonate angels of light, it's just as Nemo said. It's like, well, that's the same crap you heard from Joseph Smith where someone would say, joseph, I was. Or Hiram Page gets revelations off of his own stone and a hat. And then Joseph's like, yep, from the devil. And then someone else like, Joseph I was visited by an angel.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:10:37 And he's like, what? The angel? Did the angel shake your hand? Right. What color was the angel's hair? It's always this, this little thing where it's like, Satan is so good and powerful, they could trick everybody except for the leaders who need you to be loyal to them. And I feel like that is something we've seen over and over in these episodes. And I know from a believing perspective, you're like, well, you're not giving them the right context. You're not giving their perspective. But how many times do you need to see that before you go? They're using Satan as a tool to keep you in this box.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:03 And as Nemo said too, this idea that he's like, you can't expect God to be in your image to change with the times. But the Mormon Church always makes God in their image. They've literally done that since Joseph Smith kind of changed from like, what was, you know, at the time or the trinitarian modalist viewpoint and made God exactly what he had learned through his theology as, you know, as a, you know, was a tabernacle of flesh. Right now I'm trying to think of the phrase. And then the idea that we, you know, we. We obviously, we. We paint Jesus in certain ways, we paint God in all these different ways that the Mormon Church envisions them.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:38 So they're doing the exact same thing that the church historian is telling that people we can't do. And I just feel like it's one of those appeals to authority. It's like, ultimately, it's like, well, I'm having doubts. And then all of a sudden they go, oh, don't. Don't doubt those. Okay, well, can you give me some answers? And it's like, no, just trust me. And that's. That's not the way an organization that has confidence in their claims would. Would act. Especially the church historian, who has access to more information than anyone else.

John Dehlin 1:12:05 Yeah. And I'll just. I'll just reiterate what I've already said, which is. Stephen Hassan, the world's expert in cults, wrote a book called Combating Cult Mind Control, where he lays out an acronym for how cults work. And it's the BITE model. And the E in BITE stands for emotional manipulation. And I want to. Maybe there's really a Satan in the world, but for those of you who are seeking truth and enlightenment, I want to propose to you to consider the possibility that the invocation of Satan by religious leaders, Mormon and not, is an attempt to emotionally manipulate people. Maybe you don't believe that. I'm just putting that out there. I'm advancing that as something to consider. And in this case, I think he's absolutely. Kyle McKay is absolutely doing that.

Nemo 1:12:57 Can I just put forward a quick point about the problem with a lawyer being the church historian?

John Dehlin 1:13:01 Sure.

Nemo 1:13:02 And it's something I mentioned because I. I did a podcast about this as well. Me and the Britain just got together, did a panel discussion about this talk, and one of the things that I said was that the problem with having a lawyer as a church historian is that while the skill set of a lawyer and a historian do overlap, that is, they both examine evidence. It's what they then try to do with that evidence. That's very different. Historians, when they examine evidence, try and come to an objective analysis of what occurred. Lawyers, when they examine evidence, try and argue what happened depending on what side they represent.

Nemo 1:13:38 And it's. It's a big difference between the two. And it's really important because it shows you why the Church would want to use lawyers rather than actual historians, because lawyers will fight the side of the church and use the available evidence to further the church's cause as though the church were their client, rather than just looking at the evidence and giving an objective view of what the evidence. What the. What story the evidence tells.

Guest 1:14:00 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:14:01 Thanks, Nemo. All right, Mike, are we ready for the next slide?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:05 Yeah. I just would say with Nemo's comment that that is absolutely the reason that they use historians because. Or, I'm sorry, use lawyers for historians. Because historians, they want all the information because they want to get to the truth. Being a historian is not about, you know, trying to privilege one side or the other. It's about what happened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:20 Whereas a lawyer is going to take the approach of an apologetic approach, which is what Kerry Muhlstein says, where, you know, this is a church historian who is not saying, I want to know what's true. They're saying, I want to know what's faith promoting that I can let out to the public. And that is another way that you're controlling information over the people, that you're then using your authority as a church historian to say, oh, I know all this stuff. It's not a big deal, but I'm not going to show you what it is. I'm going to tell you there's reasons to doubt. I'm not going to tell you what those reasons are.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:14:46 And that alone should be a red flag when people are like, yeah, there's compelling reasons to doubt this church. And then they're like, and those are. And they don't tell you a single thing. And I think that's a red flag for anyone that should say, this guy is hiding something from me. And as Nemo points out, it's by design. There's a reason that a lawyer is a church historian and has been, I think, since Leonard Arrington. So this is not a coincidence. It's not an accidental choice. This is a deliberate choice by the Mormon Church to have a lawyer as a historian so they can protect the church above all else.

John Dehlin 1:15:18 Yeah. And I. And for those of you who are new to these Mormon discussions, you need to learn the story of Leonard Arrington, who was a. Who was the last professional historian, as far as I know, to have been hired as official church historian, maybe the only one, because prior to him, it was like Howard W. Hunter, who is an attorney, and before that, it was just Feeling Smith forever. And before that, it was like B.H. roberts, who was not a trained historian, but they did hire one of the One credible professional PhD level historian, Leonard Arrington. He served from 1972 to 1982. He was called a church historian in General Conference, but simply as a faithful historian producing faithful history that caused so many problems at church headquarters that by 1982, they quietly released him and did not release him in General Conference.

John Dehlin 1:16:16 And since then, they've only hired attorneys. Since this is absolutely factual, check out Greg Prince's book on the history of Leonard Arrington. Check out Signature Books, several books on Leonard Arrington. Check out Leonard Arrington's own biography called Adventures of a Church Historian. It was absolutely a book that was crucial in my unraveling of orthodox Mormon faith and coming to an awareness of factual church history. It's really important stuff. All right, Mike, let's jump to the next slide. We spent a lot of time on that previous slide.

Counsel to Avoid Scrutinizing Church Leaders

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:51 Yeah, let's. Let's play the video first before we listen to. Or before we. Before I talk about it. Actually. Go back one. One back one slide, I think. Yeah, so let's. Let's listen to this one, then we can talk about it after.

John Dehlin 1:17:03 Okay, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 1:17:04 It was. And finally there's Joseph Smith. Mistake prone at times, just like the ancients, but God called and magnified him in the greatest restoration of truth ever. And what about you? If the truthfulness of this church or the truthfulness of your beliefs were judged by your errors, would anyone ever believe what you believe? Would there have been fewer mistakes, fewer messes, if God had only restored his church and gospel through you?

Video Clip 2 1:17:48 Yes.

Video Clip 2 1:17:49 So what do we do with error? You can't hide or hide from the humanness of humans, but it is equally unproductive to seek out error and wallow in it by making it an error. Emphasis of study. You will never come to know and understand the truths of God by studying the errors of man. Nor has God appointed you or me or anyone to be an ongoing arbiter of error in his leaders, scrutinizing every word or act of apostles and prophets to make sure they fit within our current understanding of correctness. That is not his plan. That is not his order.

John Dehlin 1:18:36 Holy. All right, Nemo, you're first.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:18:39 No, go ahead, Nemo, go ahead.

Nemo 1:18:41 I feel called out. I just want to let you all know that I have been called as by God as an arbiter of truth amongst his leaders, and I will continue to hold them accountable. Kidding. So he started off with a two quoque argument there. This whole idea of, well, could you do any better? Well, that's not the point. We're examining what Joseph Smith did, doesn't matter whether I could have done any better or not. He's the one that claimed to have God guiding him and restoring his church through him. So we need to look at him. It doesn't matter. It's a complete logical fallacy to even begin to examine my ability to do what Joseph Smith claimed he could do.

John Dehlin 1:19:16 There's a quote, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Right. He's making the claim to have talked to God so we don't need to meet some unreasonable standard of perfection.

Nemo 1:19:29 And often when I'm talking with one of the things I do at Thrive events, I'll talk to people about logical fallacies in conversation. And I'll tell people, don't get caught up defending yourself when you're discussing someone else because if the discussion turns to you somehow. Well, that's not what discussion's about, so don't worry about it. Anyway, the other thing he said, don't study errors. You'll never come to know the truth of God by studying the errors of man. Well that's the complete antithesis to improvement through self reflection. And there's the idea that those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. So the way to godliness is wisdom. Joseph Smith said things like that which is gained by learning. Wisdom is learning from your own mistakes and the mistakes of others. So error should absolutely be the focus of our study the errors of others and our own so that we can avoid them.

John Dehlin 1:20:16 Yeah, yeah. There's just so much I find distasteful in this talk. Again, this idea that, you know, oh, don't you know, give Joseph a break. Everybody makes mistakes. Yeah, but not everybody claims to be God's mouthpiece. Not everybody claims to produce ancient scripture. Not everybody takes 35 wives, 14 year olds, mother, sister pairs, you know, sister pairs, mother, daughter pairs. Not everybody commits financial fraud on a mass scale and you know, leads people to the brink of, of annihilation. And so it, you know, and not everybody produces what, what turns out to be demonstrably fraudulent scripture or you know,

Nemo 1:21:04 or

John Dehlin 1:21:06 what's the word in, in college when you steal someone's work. Like plagiarism. Like plagiarism. Not, not everybody commits plagiarism. So you know that argument of like are you perfect? Then don't judge, judge Joseph Smith, again I'm being repetitive. This idea that people seek out and wallow like none of us sought out, just problems to wallow in it.

John Dehlin 1:21:32 It's more like Joseph's lies have leaked out and burst Forth over time. And whether it's BH Roberts discovering things. Check out the secret Mormon meetings of 1922, where Egyptologists started to uncover the Book of Abraham as being a false translation. Or BH Roberts himself as church historian, starts discovering problems via science to the Book of Mormon's claims to be historical. Whether it's Fawn Brody's book. Who was Fawn Brody? The niece of David O. McKay. All she was doing was trying to write a faithful biography of Joseph Smith. Just through reading the original source documents, uncovers that Joseph Smith was engaged in sexually predatory behavior and fraudulent behavior.

John Dehlin 1:22:29 None of us are just. Or Leonard Arrington, who was just trying to publish history, starts uncovering severe problems with the church's core narratives. Like, none of us are just seeking out and wallowing in problems with church history. We're just, like, trying to prepare our seminary or our Sunday school lessons. And just by just trying to seek out factual knowledge, we come across factual evidence that disproves the core Mormon church truth claims.

John Dehlin 1:23:04 You know, and so I'm just so sick of them blaming the victims for fighting the church's attempts to keep us from learning the truth. We heroically and courageously uncover the factual evidence, and they're trying to shame us for it. It's so tiring.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:26 Yeah. And I just. That's, you know, the point I was gonna make is the same thing where it's like he asks, do you think you could have done a better job? It's like, yes, 100% yes.

John Dehlin 1:23:35 I mean, read LDSdiscussions.com right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:23:38 Yeah. Or it's just like, I wish someone in the crowd had the courage to be like, yeah, I could. Because it's like, look, these are not mistakes. Like, Joseph Smith was married to dozens of women and having sex with at least 10 women behind his wife's back. Would I have done better? Yes, I would have been. First of all, if an angel with a drawn sword came up like, listen, go talk to my wife. You're wasting your time talking to me. I don't know why you're even here. That's number one. Number two, with the Book of Abraham, I would have been like, look, guys, I don't know where this came from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:07 It was a revelation. This papyrus was just a. You know, I don't know what I'm doing. But this is what came from God. Joseph Smith made very testable truth claims. We can test them. They're false. Those are not, you know, scrutinizing mistakes. Those are not looking for the flaws. This is a church Historian that is kissing up to Russell Nelson in his talk on doubts from two years ago, he's referencing all these points. Don't look for the flaws in the prophets, because guess what? That elevates the church if you don't look for their flaws. And as we've said so many times in these two episodes on doubts, if you go to any other part of your life and they say, I don't want you to look for the flaws in what we're trying to sell you, you'd be like, yeah, I'm out of here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:46 Because you're clearly trying to hide something. And yet within Mormonism, we're supposed to be like, oh, yeah, that's faith. It's like, no, that's not faith. And just to be perfectly clear, the idea that the church wants to tell you, on one hand, God works through flawed, problematic people like Joseph Smith. On the other hand, like, you think you could do better? It's like, what. What are we doing here? I mean, yes, I could do better because I would not do some of the things Joseph Smith did because I'm not going to cheat on my wife behind her back without telling her. And then when she finds out, go, God told me to do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:14 Didn't you know? I mean, like, that's the thing. We can look at DNC132, as we did in our episode, and show that it's just. It's historically wrong. Uses bad biblical scholarship. Joseph Smith broke every rule within it. Those are not mistakes. That is Joseph Smith relaying something that he claims is from God that we now know cannot be because it's got bad scholarship.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:33 And obviously then his behavior almost becomes secondary to that. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to rant either, but it's just this idea of putting the blame on the members is ridiculous.

Nemo 1:25:42 Better from a Mormon perspective is problematic and open to shifting goalposts because he's the one that gets to determine better. It's like, do you think you could do better? Well, do what better exactly? Like start a religion. I possibly couldn't start a religion that would get to the size that. And the wealth amassed that the LDS Church has got to possibly. I couldn't. Could I have done better morally?

Guest 1:26:05 Probably.

Nemo 1:26:05 You know, these are the. There's so many shifted goalposts. You say, okay, I could do better than morally. Yes. Well, could you get so many people to follow you? Okay, well, then maybe not. But then maybe John de Linde, good, he's got enough people to follow him on YouTube, so then he's like, oh, well, yeah, but it's got to be a religion. So there'll just be these shifting goalposts all the time. So you could never make that argument, Tim, that you could do better because better is defined by him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:28 That's true.

John Dehlin 1:26:29 Yeah. And again, I'm just gonna say that a common cult technique is blame reversal, where you're. Where. Where if you have faith, if you faith, if you put your trust in a church or a cult or religion and it works out, they take the credit. But if anything goes wrong, it's always your fault. You're always blamed and to blame. People who lose, Mormons, who lose their faith over history or over the church's mistreatment of marginalized populations, they're the victims of abuse and misinformation. They are not. They are not the problems. They are not to be blamed. And it's outrageous that they're doing that. All right, so let's go ahead and go to the next slide. We're almost done here.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:17 Yeah, and you could play this one, too. We could talk about it after.

John Dehlin 1:27:20 All right, let's play it. This is the. The church historian says answers to doubts are not the solution.

Guest 1:27:29 Brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that having perplexing questions that arise from reasons to doubt is not a problem. But please understand, finding answers to these perplexing questions ultimately is not the solution. The solution is a sure and certain foundation whereon, if you build, you cannot fall. That foundation is Jesus Christ and his gospel, the fulness of which is found and taught here in history.

John Dehlin 1:28:13 What's wrong with that, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:16 It's absurd. I mean, like, this is just. It's the. He is taking the down H. Oaks one, which, by the way, a lot of people, when we talked about the Dallin H. Oaks quote, that research is not the answer, immediately attacked me and said I was taking him out of context, and that's not what he meant. Here the church historian is repeating it and making crystal clear. Yeah, that's what they mean to tell college students you're in college to learn, to research, to study, to grow, that finding answers to your question is not a solution is one of the most. It's just. It's. It's insane.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:28:44 Like, this is one of those things where you would think it was a parody of someone making a parody video of a church apologist because it's so egregious to tell college students that finding answers to your questions is not going to be the solution to your doubts. It's just this is. This is just, it's John. I don't know what else to say. It's crazy.

Nemo 1:29:00 Could you play the opening of that again? Just until he says it's not the solution.

John Dehlin 1:29:05 Sure, yeah.

Guest 1:29:08 Brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that having perplexing questions that arise from reasons to doubt is not a problem.

Nemo 1:29:20 Okay, it's not a problem, but please under. Yeah, and then he says, but please understand that finding answers to these questions is not the solution. Right, that's what he says.

John Dehlin 1:29:30 Yeah, but did he say previously doubt? Not that Jesus said don't doubt at all.

Nemo 1:29:34 No, but he's saying having questions because they like to delineate between questions and doubts. Right? Yeah, they like to say questions are fine, but doubts aren't. But what's really interesting here, like for a lawyer, he's being really lazy with his words because he's saying that having perplexing questions arising from doubts is not a problem.

Nemo 1:29:52 And then he goes on to say, but finding answers is not the solution. Not the solution to something that you said wasn't a problem. So why does it require a solution? What are you actually telling me here? He's trying to say that it's not the solution, but I shouldn't be looking for a solution because you've just told me it's not a problem. So it clearly is a problem.

Nemo 1:30:09 And you, and you realize that we clearly feel it's a problem. And so you're saying that the answer to this problem is not to look for answers. So there's gonna be a lot of empty exam textbooks, a lot of empty exam papers at BYU Idaho this year because lots of people are going to say if their press is. Well, I was told that finding answers to these things is not the solution. So you know what? I, I didn't study this is. These people have paid for an education. They've not paid to be indoctrinated.

John Dehlin 1:30:39 Yeah.

Nemo 1:30:39 And I, I think it's wrong that they get someone like this to speak to these students and say such anti intellectual things at a place of higher education. I find that problematic, personally.

John Dehlin 1:30:50 Ironically, one of my favorite memories as a college student was at byu, the Lord's university, where the professor wrote up on the chalkboard, the university is the, is not the place to have your questions answered. It's the place to have your answers questioned. And that's, you know that that was a BYU professor who is still a living, faithful believing Mormon who wrote that up on the chalkboard. I like that a lot more, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:31:17 I just, it's one of those things where you just get to a point where you just. I feel like they're giving the game away. It's just that members don't see it because you're so conditioned not to pick these things up. But they're literally screaming at you. We have no answers. Don't look for them. And we've shown throughout all these episodes why they're not telling people what these problems are. They're saying there's compelling reasons to doubt. I'm not going to tell you what those are. It's okay to have questions. Oh, but don't find the answers.

Information Control and Faith Crisis Patterns

John Dehlin 1:31:43 And I've mentioned Stephen Hasson's bite model before and I'm going to mention it again here, because the I and the T in the bite model stand for information and thoughts. Cults or high demand religions want to control the information that that comes to you. But the main reason why they want to control the information is because they want to control your thoughts. They don't ever want the thought occurring to you that what they're teaching you may not be true, or that they might be misleading you or withholding information from you.

John Dehlin 1:32:16 But that's exactly what the Mormon if the Mormon Church has a history of anything that's very consistent, it's 200 plus years of withholding factual, truthful information from its members and deceiving them. That is why so many people in the modern area have lost their faith in Mormonism, because they feel misled and deceived. It wasn't until my 30s that I learned that Joseph Smith had over 30 wives, that many of them were teenagers, that at least two of them were as young as 14 years old.

John Dehlin 1:32:50 It wasn't until my 30s, three decades in the church, until I learned that the Book of Abraham was a fraudulent or false translation, that the Book of Mormon had all these egregious anachronisms. And until I learned about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and all the other problems with the Mormon Church, that Joseph Smith used a peep stone and a hat to translate the Book of Mormon. It's the whole reason this LDS discussion series exists is because the Mormon Church has two centuries of deceiving and misleading people. And it's intentional. It goes back to the bite model of controlling information so we can control your thoughts. And this thing that McKay's doing right here, telling you not to doubt, pairing doubt with Satan, making you fear doubts and telling you ridiculously that the solution to doubts is not to question and to learn, it's to just believe and follow the brethren, that's overt explicit thought control.

John Dehlin 1:33:52 And it's, you know, go back to my Stephen Hasson interviews or check out Combating Cult Mind Control or Recovering Agency. Just those titles. Recovering Agency. Why did Luna Lindsay Corbin name her name their book Recovery Age Covering Agency? It's because while the Mormon Church preaches free agency, it systematically withholds free agency by limiting the information you receive and trying to control the thoughts that you have. It's coercion, it's undue influence. And why does Stephen Hassan call it the bite model? Why does he call these organizations cults? Because in Stephen Hassan's perspective, it's mind control. It's literally controlling your mind by controlling the information and controlling your thoughts so that you will do the Church's bidding.

John Dehlin 1:34:45 And that's the whole reason we have the LDS discussion series, is to help free your mind, to liberate you from the thought control of these 80 and 90 year olds who are literally trying to just get you to pay, pray and obey. And that doesn't mean the Mormon Church is fully evil. That doesn't even mean we want you to leave the Mormon Church, but we do want you to have your life back. I'm ranting, but I'll say one final thing. We have a podcast called the Gift of the Mormon faith crisis@mormonfaithcrisis.com why did we name it the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis? Because the gift of having a faith crisis in Mormonism is the rest of your life.

John Dehlin 1:35:30 You get your life back. And that doesn't mean you have to leave the Mormon Church. Some do, some don't. But what we think everybody deserves is informed consent about what it is that they've given their lives to and then the freedom to make informed decisions once they have all the information. And that's what Mormon Stories is dedicated to. And that's what LDS discussions is dedicated to. And that's why I love YouTube. All right, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:56 No, I mean, I, like I said, I. I think when we look at these episodes as a whole that we've done throughout the series, you can understand now that we're getting towards these episodes that are not necessarily about history, but about how the Church portrays itself today. You, they have the same access to information we do. Kyle McKay has access to more information than we do. And the fact that he's telling members doubts are from Satan. Researching your doubts, as Dallin Oak said, but finding, finding answers to your questions, this is the solution is just crazy. I mean, imagine that again in any other scenario, whether it's religious, non religious, it just, it goes against any common sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:33 But at the same time, this is being written by a church historian who is a lawyer with the intentional end game of keep these members in the church. These are college students that are getting into that period of the life where they're going to encounter more stuff about the church. And this is to basically get them afraid of information, get them afraid. Even if they find solutions that tell you the church is true, they're saying that still is not worthy of answering your doubts. And I think that, you know, I prefer to call Mormonism a high demand religion. I know cults is a very loaded term, but these are things that should not be happening in any healthy religion or organization.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:09 And yet we're seeing them over and over in the Mormon church, not just with adults, but with, with youth, with the Redlands devotional where you have like eight year old kids hearing it. The Corbridge talk, this talk are both the colleges.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:21 The Russell Nelson one was general conference to everybody. Dallin Oaks was to a group in Chicago. I think there were some, I think it was young adults. And so this is to all ages that it's happening. It's by design. There are themes that you see throughout these talks. It's intentional and it's just, you know, as we said, these episodes are designed to give you the information, you're going to do with it what you want. But at the same time, I hope at least you could see that the answers you're getting from the church through the gospel topics essays through Saints, they're not holding up. And so you then have to ask yourself, why can they not give us the full picture while still asking us to remain faithful and to do all of the things that are required to be an active member in good standing.

Survey Results and Listener Reflections

John Dehlin 1:38:00 Nemo, I want to get you in here, but if it's okay, I just because you mentioned it, I'm going to share the survey Nemo that you just put out on ex Mormon Reddit. Basically, Nemo asked the question, what was the first quote anti Mormon material you encountered? And I thought it was interesting that tied for number one with the CES letter right now after 73 votes is what? At the very bottom, Nemo and Mike, what's what?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:38:27 Is that possible?

Nemo 1:38:28 Topics essays.

John Dehlin 1:38:29 Right. So like just let that sink in for a second. It took the Mormon church like almost 200 years to start being honest about its history. And so in 2014 or 13 or 14, it comes out with these gospel topics essays that just begin to speak honestly about things like the Book of Abraham about polygamy, you know, about the Mountain Meadows massacre, et cetera. And it's already become the top reason for people losing their faith tied with the CES letter. Does that not speak volumes, Mike? And Nemo. Nemo, let's have you go next.

Nemo 1:39:09 It.

Nemo 1:39:09 It does. It shows that there was a reason, a very good reason from the church's perspective, why they didn't let people see this stuff. And because it's because that they had been perpetuating a narrative that this stuff contradicts the contents of the gospel topics essays, contradicts the mainstream narrative that they have been teaching. The correlation committee had put together church materials and church curriculum or curricula. I think it is. They put these together knowing that the narrative they were trying to teach people was undermined by certain things. And then when transparency was forced upon the church, it broke a lot of people's trust in the church because they'd been taught a narrative that was determined not to be true by the Church's own materials.

John Dehlin 1:39:55 Mike, we really should have it. I'm going to add to the LDS discussions list just the Church's hiding of history, a summary. Because all the efforts that the Mormon Church has made to hide its history and to punish the truth tellers. That's. It's outrageous and we need to make its own episode, Mike. Or people just won't. They won't see it. From all the excommunications in the 1900s, from like, it's like William Law, first presidency member, excommunicated for trying to reveal Joseph's polygamy. Oliver Cowdery, excommunicated for calling Joseph out on his adultery with Fanny Alger. You know, all the way through to the Danites and Brigham Young and all the lying about the Mormon Church sending missionaries to England, lying that polygamy is happening back in Salt Lake City when it was actually polygamists that were telling people that no polygamy was happening back in Salt Lake City, all the way through to the second manifesto, where the Church promises to not commit polygamy to the world.

John Dehlin 1:41:07 And they keep practicing it all the way up to apostles and prophets, through the B.H. roberts secret Mormon meetings of 1922, all the way through to the excommunication of Fawn McKay Brody, to the Leonard Arrington administrations of church history, to the silencing of dialogue and Sunstone in the 70s and 80s and 90s, to the excommunication of the September 6, all the way through to the Internet and the excommunication of people like Me and Bill Real and others like, it's just exhausting and revealing how hard the Mormon Church has worked over two centuries to mislead and deceive its people. Not to mention the way it's treated Geraldine, Sandra Tanner and others.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:41:54 Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. It's one of those things where it's like, sometimes I think people don't necessarily care how the sausage is made, but it is important to. To look at how Michael D. Michael Quinn did all this work, was excommunicated, and a lot of his work is now used in the Gospel topics essays, which is just really. It's both sad and kind of, you know, it's not funny, but it's just, like, ironic that.

John Dehlin 1:42:17 Or the pharmacy or the. Or that Rough Stone rolling. Richard Bushman's book reveals nothing interesting that wasn't revealed in Fawn McKay Brody's book. No Man Knows My History. I believe Fawn McKay Brody is the most cited source in Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling. And yet, you know, Fama K. Brody was excommunicated because she released the book in 1945, but because, you know, Richard Bushman wrote a super boring, long book and pulled a few punches. His book is sold a Deseret Bush, you know, while Farmer K. Brody was excommunicated. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:54 I mean, it's just. It's just the way it goes.

Nemo 1:42:55 That's what I was saying earlier. It's not about the facts. It's about whose side you're on.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:42:59 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:43:00 Yeah, that's. That's good. That's a good. That's a good quote, Nemo. All right, well, should we go to the final slide then, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:07 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:43:07 All right, let's do it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:09 And, you know, like I said, I don't really know what more to say about all of these talks we've covered in these two episodes. But these are all from the last five years, from the last episode in this episode. And, and I chose them intentionally because they are being taught to the youth right now. They're being taught to the older members of the church, young adults, as I just mentioned, through both the current leaders, the prophet, the historians of the church, and as I've been kind of talking throughout these two episodes, members of the church would recoil if they heard these lines being used on their children by any other religious leader or politician or a teacher.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:39 And yet these talks are being given to make members afraid of doubts, to be afraid of looking under the hood of these problems, and to most importantly, be afraid of friends and family that have doubts and to ultimately circumvent our critical thinking so that we stay in the church and we don't think about it. And I think if there's one lesson to take away from these episodes is that doubts are a good. They're a great thing. And even if they end up being painful because the journey leads you to have to change your paradigm, to change your core beliefs, whatever the case might be, ultimately doubts are a great thing because you're going to get answers that are going to help you to make better decisions going forward.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:16 It's not something to be afraid of. And I think one of the things we've talked about in these episodes is just if you apply the thinking of the church to other aspects of your life, it would greatly hamper your ability to make good choices. You know, when, for example, the church historian says, if there's compelling reasons to doubt, you shouldn't look at them. I mean, just imagine if you had a loved one come up to you and say, I have compelling reasons to think that your spouse is being unfaithful. And you're just like, no, I'm just going to choose to believe he's faithful or she.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:43 And all of a sudden, years go on and you find out you've been lied to, and all of a sudden you realize you could have made your life have a better path. And as John said, going through this process sucks. Going through the process of learning the Mormon Church's truth claims are not true. It sucks. It's not fun, it's painful. You feel isolated, you feel alone. But at the end of the day, it does give you a lot of your own freedom back. It gives you your agency back for real. Because now your free agency isn't the choice to obey a church, but it's the ability to choose your conscience to do what you think is going to be right for your community and for your family.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:45:18 And you know, just to close up by saying, as I mentioned earlier, if you hear this from another religion, your response is going to be that this is just a horrible way to try to get members to stop thinking. And there is no amount of special pleading to try to erase the fact that, that the Mormon Church is doing that repeatedly. And if they had the confidence in their truth claims, they would not be taking this approach. They'd be a general conference, pounding the podium, saying, we have the truth. Go out and research it. You're going to find out it's true. And it said it's exact opposite. And that should be all you really need to know about what the church believes about their own ability to back up their claims.

John Dehlin 1:45:57 All right, Nemo, you want to add anything?

Nemo 1:46:00 Yeah, just a really quick story about a TED Talk I watched where a magician said that one of the greatest skills of being a magician is being able to see things from other people's perspective. Because being able to see things from other people's perspective is how you make the magic work, because you understand what they're going to see when you do the trick. And it's about making sure that they enjoy the magic show.

Nemo 1:46:20 And I think what's really important for all of us is to be able to try and put ourselves in other people's shoes. So if we want to try and put ourselves in the shoes of someone from another faith, looking at this, we would see how they would view these things, and that would be helpful to us then trying to objectively determine, is this a good way of thinking? And similarly, if you can put that other. The put Carl McKay as a member of another religious group and say what he's telling me, if you're a member of another religious group, how would I view that? Being able to put yourself in those sorts of mental spaces would be really healthy for your thinking and will help you come to better decisions. I think that's what I would encourage. That would be my homework, that I would set all the listeners.

John Dehlin 1:47:03 I love it. All right, well, Mike and Nemo, this has been a great episode. I hope that our viewers and listeners have enjoyed it. We do have a few more episodes to record this spring of 2023 before we take a hiatus for the summer. Mike, do you want to tell us what. What's left for the LDS discussion series?

Closing Thoughts and Series Outlook

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:47:29 Yeah, I think we've got. Our next episode, I believe is going to go over some of the miracle stories from Russell Nelson, which is going to have Radio Free Mormon, which I'm excited about. I think that one's a really important one, especially when you. When you use the Spiritual Witnesses episode and the Transfiguration to Brigham Young episode, the Russell Nelson's Miracle Stories episode is going to make a lot more sense. We're also going to have an episode on apologetics, and we're going to have an episode on it. Basically, if Joseph Smith got it right, then who got it wrong? And the idea is just kind of turning kind of the way we're thinking about all of this upside down to say, okay, let's just assume Joseph Smith did get it right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:04 What does that tell us about all of the things we've come to accept as truth or science around the world that has to be wrong in order for that to happen. And I think it's a good way to kind of look at it from a different perspective to try to further, kind of underline how the problems are when you go into apologetic science.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:23 When we talk about how one apologetic answer kind of creates another problem. And this is a good way to illustrate that by saying, let's just assume it's right, then what else do we now have to change from our daily thoughts to make that fit? And there are a lot of things that would have to change.

John Dehlin 1:48:38 I love it. All right, well, Mike, you've done a great job. And, you know, as we tried to persuade you before this episode started, you've impacted the lives of tens of thousands of of people in very, very positive ways. And so we really appreciate it, Mike. And I know my listeners and viewers will join me in thanking you for all your work so far.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:49:01 Like I said, I hope that's true. It's hard to kind of be able to know how many people are really being helped with this, but I think that hopefully this series has put a bigger spotlight on it just because I know the website's gotten a lot of hits, but it's not anywhere near what this is. And so that was the goal, was just to put it out there. I think early on when people would email me and say, man, this was done in a way that really helped me a little bit more or differently than some of the other websites that were out there, I thought, well, okay, that's the way it helped me process it. So if it helps other people do it, that's a really cool thing. And like I said, hopefully it lasts for a while.

John Dehlin 1:49:38 And if I may, let me just end by encouraging everyone, if they've been helped by Mike and by LDS Discussions), to drop him an email at LDS Discussions)) singular gmail.com Sometimes when you're just working out of a bunker at an undisclosed location and you don't get the direct feedback, you just don't know the way that you're helping people. So if you love Mike, if you appreciate Mike, feel free to shoot him an email@ LDS discussionmail.com and let him know what his words work has meant to you. And while you're at it, you could also email nemo themormonmail.com but also please subscribe to Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel along with subscribing to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel, because that's how our channels grow.

John Dehlin 1:50:31 That's how we reach more people, and that's some good that you can do in the world. You can also donate to Nemo's work@donorbox.org NemotheMormon and you can donate to Mormon Stories podcast at MormonStories.org clicking on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor. We do pay Mike and Nemo for their work, and we would love your support to keep this series alive and to continue to offer Mormon Stories podcasts to those who need it. So thanks so much, Mike and Nemo. You're both the best.

John Dehlin 1:51:06 Thanks to all our viewers and listeners and everyone who works behind the scenes, including Neem, including Maven and Julia and Gerardo, and our board of directors and everyone else who makes all this stuff possible. We couldn't do without you.

John Dehlin 1:51:20 Please be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and on LDS discussions. Take care everybody.

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