If Joseph got it right, who got it wrong? w/ LDS Discussions Ep. 48

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is May 25, 2023 and today we are going to be answering the question if Joseph Smith got it wrong. Sorry, If Joseph Smith got it right, who got it wrong? Basically, we are something like 46 or 47 episodes into this LDS discussion series where with my friend Mike and with Nemo and some other special guests, we've been analyzing Mormon Church truth claims as objectively and as neutrally and as evidence based as we possibly could. We're nearing the end of kind of the series as Mike envisioned it. We will be taking a break for the summer and then we may have a few episodes to kind of close things out in the fall. But for those of you who want to check out this series, we really recommend you start from episode one and go sequentially. You can access the the LDS Discussions podcast feed either on Spotify in audio or video format as its own podcast. You can go to Apple Podcast as well and, and then it's integrated into the Mormon Stories podcast feed. Or you can go to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. There's a, there's a playlist where you can just kind of watch these episodes sequentially. We know that tens of thousands of people are finding a lot of value in this series and so if this is your first time joining us, we hope you'll go back to the beginning and enjoy this series. Like, like so many people are I, Nemo and I feel like this series is a game changer. Mike tends to be a little more self effacing and, and doesn't. Doesn't want to accept that. So if you want to tell Mike how much this series has meant to you, please email him at LDS discussion without an S gmail.com and pour your effusive praise upon this man who, who is dead inside. And I say that jokingly and lovingly and make Mike feel good about what he's. He's given all of us. Hey, Mike, Welcome.

Mike 2:23 How's it going?

John Dehlin 2:23 Welcome to this episode of LDS Discussions.

Mike 2:27 Thanks. That's quite the intro for that, but yeah, thanks.

John Dehlin 2:32 And Nemo, it's good to have you, brother.

Nemo 2:34 Yeah, I just want to say I disagree with John. I don't think it's impactful at all. I've got your back, Mike. Speaking for me.

Mike 2:40 Thank you.

John Dehlin 2:42 I think we've made Mike an honorary Brit because as Nemo tells us, it's very British to be dead inside. Is that right, Nemo?

Nemo 2:50 Indeed, yes. So if you want to swap that useless old passport of yours out for a shiny blue British one, then feel free.

Mike 2:57 We have to get dual citizenship, maybe. So we'll figure it out.

John Dehlin 3:01 All right, well, today's episode, Mike, is basically attempting to summarize maybe the previous 46 or 47 or 48 episodes to help people. To help distill for people. You know, what we've. What you've been trying to convey and what we've been trying to convey in this series. Is that right?

Mike 3:24 Yeah, it's. We've had a couple of episodes that have kind of summarized certain areas. Like we had an episode that summarized Joseph Smith's translations as a whole. We've had episodes about where Joseph Smith might have gotten his unique Mormon doctrine, where those ideas might have come from. And this episode is one. As I was doing the overview project, I was kind of adding on topics like I think I had said originally. I think I was thinking like eight topics. It ended up, I think, at 39. And so I was adding them as I was going, because I'm like, oh, I didn't think about that or anything like that. And this one came from. I was reading, and I wish I could remember what topic it was. I was reading something online where people are arguing about some topic of truth claims of Mormonism, and the person who was kind of saying the truth claims didn't hold up because of these different reasons finally just said, hey, okay, fine, let's assume he's right. But now you have to look at it from, if the Mormon Church's truth claims and Joseph Smith's claims are correct, look at the implications that are going to impact your life outside of religion. And when I read that, I was like, that's a really good point because we so much focus on, you know, from a believer standpoint, focus on making sure we're defending the faith, looking for evidence that Joseph Smith got it right. And as a critic, we're also usually focused on the truth claims themselves. And just saying this doesn't make sense. And this is why, well, this is a good thought experiment. And starting with looking at what do we need for the church to be true, and then flipping it upside down and saying, okay, now let's assume all of those things are true. What does that mean for all of these different aspects of our lives that we take for granted, as far as being. Being at least solid enough to kind of accept as not 100% perfect truth, especially when you're talking about science, but just that we accept as kind of being like the consensus that we all kind of live by and that for the most part, all areas of science are kind of using to build off of.

John Dehlin 5:13 All right, and just. Just as a friendly reminder, we. We pay Mike an email for their participation in these episodes. So please, if you will, go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button, and become a monthly donor. If you value this content, we would really appreciate that. We also would love it if you would subscribe on YouTube or on Facebook to this, to these channels. That. That's always valuable as well. And of course, while you're at it, please subscribe to the Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel, and support Nemo in his important work as well. Nemo. Anything you want to say before we jump into the slides?

Mike 5:54 No.

Nemo 5:54 I think a way you could possibly look at this is, I guess if. If we're wrong in the assertion we've made that Joseph Smith is wrong, then. Yeah, who. Who else is wrong? Because it wouldn't just be us then. Because the things you'd have to disprove for us to be wrong would be Egyptology, would be linguistics, etc.

John Dehlin 6:13 Yeah. Okay. All right, Mike, should we dive in?

Mike 6:16 Yeah.

What You Must Believe If Joseph Smith Was Right

John Dehlin 6:17 All right, here we go. Here's slide one here.

Nemo 6:19 Yeah.

Mike 6:19 And so just, you know, kind of as what we said, if you've been following along on this kind of series, you've now watched well over 40 episodes covering a very wide range of topics, whether it's Joseph Smith's time as a treasure digger, all the way up to Revelations in the church today in modern times. And so it's kind of hard for us to try to kind of wrap this up and kind of find ways to make these kind of recaps a little more relevant. And so what I'm hoping is that we did a good enough job outlining why we believe without any reasonable doubt, that the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that can be proven to be false with real, tangible evidence. We've shown that in every episode, and most of it's all through church sources and documents. And in this episode, we want to, as I said, do this in two different ways. So we're going to kind of go through some slides saying, you know, this is what you need to believe for the church to be true, because there are truth claims that are made that are in doctrinal scriptures, whether it's the Book of Mormon, Book Abraham, doctrine and Covenants that we believe to be the word of God. And then, as I said earlier, we're going to Kind of flip that upside down and say, okay, now if Joseph Smith did get it right, then who got it wrong? And as Nemo said, that's a question that's important because we oftentimes will, as a believer will say, well, the critics got it wrong. That's the end of the story. And it's like it's not. And that's the problem because this does have truth claims with implications beyond Mormonism. And this is something I never thought about early in my faith journey or doing the deep dive and all this stuff, because you don't really think about the implications outside of this little box we're looking into as far as, you know, religion and truth claims. But it's really important to evaluate the truth claims of Mormonism by looking at what we do know outside of Mormonism and then trying to kind of see how it is compatible one way or the other. And you know, as Nemo said, it's easy for an apologist to say that Joseph Smith's claims can be true if we just look at them at the right way and that the critics are wrong, but what they neglect to do is to outline what those implications would be. And I've talked about that in a lot of episodes when I say that when you try to create one apologetic over here, you're now creating a problem over here. And so when we talk, the best example is the tight versus loose translation of the Book of Mormon. And you'll say, okay, well, anachronisms. Well, Joseph Smith was using a loose translation, obviously, and he was able to put his own 19th century worldview into the Book of Mormon. It's kind of a co author and that's why there's anachronisms. But then on the flip side, there are areas of the Book of Mormon that need to be a tight translation. We did a whole episode on this and basically this episode is kind of trying to take that on a more overhead view and say you can't have it both ways. So you got to be able to, if you're going to create truth claims and apologetics, apply them not just to Mormonism, but to the world as a whole. And it's got to be consistent because otherwise you're going to see real quickly that that that's why apologetics simply don't hold up, because they don't look at the implications beyond the little target they're trying to strike.

John Dehlin 9:03 Absolutely. I just think it's, I think it's really important when somebody starts to doubt or question Mormonism immediately they fair Mormon or, you know, the gospel topics essays or Book of Mormon, you know, Book of Mormon evidences or whatever it's called, Book of Mormon Central or any of the classic apologetic sites. And I think to be. To have intellectual integrity, you have to kind of not just look at each tree individually, which apologists tend to want to do. You have to look at the entire forest if you want to have intellectual integrity. And what I mean by that is it's not just Joseph Smith's polyandry. It's not just the problems with the Book of Abraham. It's not just the treasure digging in the folk magic in the. In the peepstone in the hat. It's not just Joseph Smith lying to Emma and the church. It's not just the problems, the problems with the Book of Mormon, the anachronisms, the DNA, the geography problems. It's looking at all of that together, including the racism, the sexism, the homophobia. You have to put it all into the same basket and then weigh it together. And that's what I like about this episode is it basically is we're going to be drawing the extensions out. If you accept Mormon doctrine, Mormon theology, Mormon history is true, what are you going to be? What do you have to reject?

Nemo 10:31 Can I just throw something in there, please? Because it's, it's big. You've made a really good point, John. Like, this is. This is big. And a lot of people can be overwhelmed by it. And it's the reason this is over 40, 40 episodes long, this series, and I'm quite proud to be part of it. It's a good resource for all of this. But the thing to remember is, particularly for those that were born in the church, is you didn't learn all this in one go. Yeah, it wasn't overwhelming to. You were taught it over years. You were taught it through primary songs, through seminary, through church, every Sunday, bit by bit by bit, and you had this entire worldview constructed. And so to deconstruct that will take time and it will be big and scary and overwhelming. And that's what apologists will play on to say, ah, well, we'll just get you to focus on one issue because that feels manageable, and then we'll just dissect that issue and make it go away. But. And the thing they don't want you to do and the thing they convince you isn't necessary, but unfortunately it is, is to look at the entire forest, not just one tree, because an entire forest of a religious system was built up, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin 11:32 Absolutely. All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, Mike.

Mike 11:36 Yeah, and this is just, you know, to kind of start this episode, we want to look at the things that, as we've talked about in our previous episodes, you kind of have to believe if you want to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. And so, you know, at the end of this series, if Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God, everything falls apart. And I think any believing member of the church would agree with that. And so it means that I should probably tackle this at the very end of our episode. But we want to do it first because as we've talked about, it all begins with Joseph Smith. And, you know, one of the big things we talked about this in our first vision episode. We have to believe that Joseph Smith really had a first vision in 1820 where he saw both God and Jesus, even as the evidence is overwhelming that he did not believe they were separate beings until the mid-1830s, never wrote any account down until 1832, and at that point only claimed to see one personage, and actually revised the Bible to strengthen the idea that they were one. Instead of clarifying they were separate beings. We covered all that in the episode. So if you haven't watched that one, please do, because I think the revisions to the Bible might be the biggest element to knowing that Joseph Smith had no idea they were separate beings. And this doesn't even get into the details that we talked about with the revivals that is around his house didn't occur until 1824, which throws the timeline all into doubt. We then have to believe that the priesthood restoration occurred with John the Baptist being there for the Aaronic priesthood and Peter, James and John for the Melchizedek priesthood. And as we talked about in the priesthood episodes, the problem is that we could show that using the Church's own documents, revelations and timeline, that these stories were later creations that were retrofitted back into the history, even changing a revelation from God. I think two revelations from God to make them fit. And as we talked about, even Joseph Smith was not ordained to a higher priest until 1831, two years after he was claimed to have received it. And to say this a problem is an understatement, given that the Church claims to be the only one on earth with the ability and the authority to perform these ordinances. And so right off the bat, these are two things you have to believe to be historical, incredible in order to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. And right off the bat, we're seeing holes but these are, like, I would say, the two founding elements of Joseph Smith's kind of miracle stories that you have to accept as a member of the church.

John Dehlin 13:45 And if I can just remind people of a quote by beloved Mormon prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, he is quoted as saying, well, we have nothing to hide. Our history book is an open book. They may find what they are looking for, but the fact is the history of the church is clear and open and leads to faith and strength and virtues. But then he goes on to say, our whole strength rests on the validity of that first vision. It either occurred or it did not occur. If it did not, then this work is a fraud. And that's Gordon B. Hinckley. If it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens. And. And then again, President Gordon B. Hinckley says, each of us has to face the matter. Either the church is true or it is a fraud. There's no middle ground. It is the church and kingdom of God, or it is nothing. And. And so, you know, that's not. That's not us being dramatic. There are a lot of progressive Mormons these days that want to basically say, well, okay, maybe the Book of Abraham isn't quite scripture, and maybe the Book of Mormon is mythical and a metaphor. You know, maybe. Maybe this isn't the one true church, but maybe we're one of many faith traditions. But all faith traditions deserve respect. Well, that's not what prophet, you know, Gordon B. Hinckley said. He said, either it's exactly what it claims to be, or it's one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on mankind. Are we overstating that, Nemo?

Nemo 15:21 No, I want to address that as well in just saying that, you know, you have to believe these things. And a lot of people will push back and say, no, I can be nuanced. I can do something else. But in reality, you have to believe it because that is the. The script of Mormonism. That is what the prophets are teaching. So that is orthodox Mormonism is what Gordon B. Hinckley taught there.

John Dehlin 15:39 Yeah, I think so. All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is around. Let me make sure.

Treasure Digging, Gold Plates, and Translation Claims

Mike 15:50 Treasure digging.

John Dehlin 15:52 Yeah. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah, here's the next slide.

Mike 15:56 Go for it. Yeah, this is. Oh, yeah. Okay. This is one we covered, I believe in our. Is our first episode, and Joseph Smith's treasure digging, as we talked about in that episode and as we talked about in the episodes for following, that plays a prominent role in the Book of Mormon. That you cannot deny, once you know the history, Joseph's treasure digging, the methods were not used just to find the gold plates, but to translate the Book of Mormon as we have it today, using the very same Peep Seer stone that he claimed to see buried treasure with. And so that means that in order for us to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, we have to believe that treasure digging was a legitimate way to actually see buried objects. And even though Joseph Smith never was able to find or retrieve any of the promised treasures, we have to believe that he could at least see them. Because as the treasure digging company's seer, which is what Joseph's role was, he was the seer of the treasure digging company, which basically meant the group of people that were performing these digs, he was the person that was ordained or at least labeled as the person that could see the buried objects. We have to believe that Joseph had that ability, because we are also told that that is the exact same method he used to find the gold plates that were buried in Hill Cumorah, and also to translate the Book of Mormon itself. And so if Joseph Smith could not see buried treasure, then he could not locate the gold plates as stated. He could not see through his Peep Seer stone when they were left, when the gold plates were left hidden in a log, as he told Emma. And he certainly could not translate the Book of Mormon off the very same rock and a half that he claimed to find buried treasure with. And so, as we talked about in that episode, I know one of the apologetic responses is to say that God was preparing Joseph by letting him think he could see buried treasure with a stone. But that argument makes no sense, because the Book of Mormon itself has a translation method, a plan that did not require Joseph's treasure digging, a rock and a hat. Yet Joseph still used the treasure digging methods anyway. So to some degree, you have to believe that treasure digging is a real, legitimate, credible way to find lost or buried objects against literally every single shred of evidence or documentation we have, that no one could ever find anything. And the few that did, we could later see a lot of stories where people would go to these areas and plant little things that they would find to get people to pay them to dig into the bigger ones, which, of course, they would never find anything. So, but you need to believe that God actually gave Joseph this power because of the fact that Joseph is going to use that same method to translate the Book of Mormon, even though we're also told that God prepared an alternate way to do it. Which Joseph neglected to use.

John Dehlin 18:22 Yeah. And if you look at apologetic arguments, you know, the, the, like you said, the apologetic argument is that, you know, I think Richard Bushman is. Is credited with making this argument in his book Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Early Mormonism, where he basically theorizes that maybe God needed Joseph to have some practice with his revelation skills. And so the folk magic, treasure digging, peep stone stuff was. Was just the way that Joseph kind of sharpened his chops to then be able to do the Book of Mormon. There are a couple problems with that. The biggest problem with that is it's a rewriting of the narrative which we covered in our previous episodes. Because if you look in, first of all, why did the church hide this from the membership for over 150 years? If it's that simple, if it's just a matter of God's experimenting with Joseph, why was the church afraid?

Nemo 19:16 Why.

John Dehlin 19:17 Why did it keep the existence of the Peepstone? Why did it deny Joseph Smith's involvement in folk magic for 150 years? But then if you look at what Hugh Nibley, one of the church's early chief apologists, if you look at what he said, which we covered in previous episodes, he himself said that if this, when he was denying that Joseph Smith used a peep stone and engaged in folk magic and, and was even, you know, charged with crimes, if all of this was true, then it would be the most devastating, you know, case against Mormonism ever. Why was, why did Hugh Nibley say that? Why was that the position back in the 60s? If, if it's no big deal and if it's just God's miraculous work, this is a perfect case study for Mormon apologists reeling and then redefining the narrative and lowering and lowering and lowering the bar to justify the inconvenient history as it comes out. Nemo, do you want to add anything to that?

Nemo 20:20 No. We can move right on to the next slide, I think.

John Dehlin 20:22 All right, let's go to the next slide. Go ahead. Go ahead, Mike. Need to unmute yourself, Mike. Thank you.

Mike 20:29 We talked about this in previous episodes, but for the Book of Mormon to be true, there had to have had gold plates with reformed Egyptian engraved directly on them. There also must have been interpreters buried with the plates as Joseph Smith claimed to receive and recover physical literal interpreter stones. And the problem that we've talked about is that the witness testimony is shaky about whether they saw the plates with their physical or spiritual eyes. And because Joseph Smith never even used the plates to translate the Book of Mormon as we have it today, the gold plate story has massive problems. And as we talked about in the gold plates episode, the idea of long records being engraved on metal plates is entirely anachronistic because there is no evidence of any long records on metal plates. And we talked about the Peer she tablets. We'll reference them again later in the episode. But effectively that is an apologetic response to say, aha. There was engravings on gold plates, but as we talked about, there were three plates with 200 words, which is a huge problem with the Book of Mormon. Furthermore, there's no evidence of reformed Egyptian. And the problems with the gold plates supposedly containing material that would not be written prior to Lehi leaving, such as deutero, Isaiah, New Testament material, the long ending of Mark. And beyond the gold plates, we still have other problematic areas that have to be true for the Book of Mormon to be an ancient, authentic record. As we talked about in our episodes on biblical scholarship, the Book of Mormon relies heavily on Genesis being a literal historical account of the creation of the world. And as we've learned since, that is not how Genesis, the history of Genesis from a biblical scholarship standpoint, points to them being etiological myths. And that is entirely problematic for a church that's going to create scriptures in the 19th century. That's going to cement myth as history.

John Dehlin 22:16 Yeah. And if I could just summarize, like, you know, we have interviewed on Mormon Stories podcast and we referred to this interview on this LDS discussion series. We've interviewed probably one of the most prominent Egyptologist Egyptologists or scholars of Egyptology in the history of the world in Dr. Robert Rittner. And what he has confirmed is that there's no evidence that anything called reformed Egyptian ever existed. And that would be the consensus among the top Egyptian scholars in the world. So do we believe Joseph Smith that some thing called reformed Egyptian existed, even though we now know that he kept the plates from anyone ever seeing them, from ever testing that? And we know that the Book of Mormon has 10 to 20 major foundational problems, not to mention all the other problems with Mormon theology and doctrine. Do we believe Joseph Smith and that claim of reformed Egyptian existing, or do we believe, you know, centuries of Egyptian scholars who say that that language is a fiction, it just simply doesn't exist? I think that's a really important question. Nemo, anything to add?

Nemo 23:35 No, I think I'm going to be a pretty boring guest this episode because John keeps reading my mind and, and saying, all right, I'm going to kick it next time.

John Dehlin 23:43 I'll kick it to you first, and then I'll go. All right, thanks. Thanks for that. All right, gentlemanly suggestion. We'll go to Nemo first before I opine. All right, Mike, let's go to the next one.

Nemo 23:55 Yeah.

Mike 23:55 And this is just to kind of branch off our last slide. These are biblical stories that must be literal history for the Book of Mormon to be true. Adam and Eve must be real people that lived about 6,000 years ago in Missouri, although the in Missouri part necessarily is not Book of Mormon centric, as most as later Joseph revelation that Noah was a real person that lived through a global flood that cleared out the Americas to leave it unpopulated for the Book of Mormon to take place. That the Tower of Babel was a real story where the Jaredite interpreters that Joseph Smith would claim to get with the gold plates were created, that Isaiah was just one author so that it could all be on the brass plates that would go with Lehi. That Jesus gave a literal sermon on the Mount that would be repeated almost verbatim in the Americas, like a stump speech with just a few things changed. And that the long ending of Mark must have been the original ending that had been lost for hundreds of years before being reattached by later scribes without any changes or wholesale alterations to the ending. And so those are a bunch of areas where biblical scholarship is telling us there are problems with the way Mormonism has basically integrated them. And all of those would then have to basically be against the consensus, which we don't get into more in the second half of this episode. These are big problems. We did an episode on each one of these to highlight just how interwoven they are within Mormonism and why. That tells us that these scriptures within Mormonism are not historical. Whether or not you find value in them, that's a different question. But from a historicity standpoint, they need all of these things to be true. And all of these things have been shown to have massive problems.

John Dehlin 25:31 All right, Nemo, any reactions?

Nemo 25:32 Yeah, this is a uniquely Mormon problem, because apologists might try and kick this back. Well, Christians also have to deal with the fact that Adam and Eve wasn't literal. They have to deal with the Tower of Babel story. They have to deal with all these things, but they have dealt with them. Many branches of Christianity have many biblical scholars. The whole field of biblical scholarship is dedicated to working these things out. There are biblical scholars who are faithful Christians who examine these things and are able to accept that different authors were involved in Isaiah, for example, whereas because the Book of Mormon takes these things and puts them in a document that claims to have a singular divine origin and a very tight origin story. That story then can't be changed and adjusted when it's discovered outside of Joseph Smith's own time period where these things were thought to be true, that they are no longer true, and that there's different stories. That's the problem here, separate to Christianity more broadly.

John Dehlin 26:26 I love it. All right. And Nima, I consider flattering that I would even share 20% of the Brilliant thoughts that you would have. So you do me a great honor. All right, Mike, let's go to the next slide.

What the Book of Mormon Text Requires to Be True

Mike 26:41 And this is kind of looking at what the text of the Book of Mormon itself requires to be true, ancient, credible, however you want to look at it. And so these are a few key things that come out in the Book of Mormon that we need to be true for it to be historical. And one is that the Native Americans came to America from Jerusalem, even though, as we've talked about our DNA episode, the DNA studies are clear that that is not how the Americas were populated, that there were battles with hundreds of thousands of people where they died without leaving as much as a single shred of evidence. All of the weapons the Book of Mormon talks about, they just disappeared. That Native Americans knew about Jesus Christ before anyone in the old world knew of Jesus Christ, and that the Book of Mormon people engaged in treasure digging knew of New Testament material before it was written and had the Hebrew Bible before it was compiled. And so all of these things are further problems that come, as Nemo said, from a uniquely Mormon standpoint. Whereas you're cementing this history as literal history, and now you kind of can't get out of it. Whereas, as Nemo said, other branches of Christianity can say, yeah, the global flood probably didn't happen. It was probably localized, not really a big deal. Whereas with Mormonism, it's a huge deal, because you need the Americas to be wiped out in order for the Book of Mormon to make sense. And so these are all, again, problem after problem after problem that you now need to believe are true for the Book of Mormon to be true and for Joseph Smith to be a prophet.

John Dehlin 28:02 Reactions, Nemo.

Nemo 28:04 Yeah, what's really interesting I find about that is that it undermines archaeology in many ways, like the battles that were fought without leaving a trace. But some of that can be chalked up to miracles. That is, certain teachings that come from the New Testament. You could argue that an omnipotent God placed those teachings in the hands of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, even though they hadn't been penned by their actual authors yet. And God guided those later authors to write exactly the same thing. It's a bit of a stretch, but you can, you can certainly go there. But the things I think that are really interesting and important are the. The archaeological evidences that are completely lacking and the sort of genetic evidences that are completely lacking for the historical narrative of the book and Mormon.

John Dehlin 28:44 What I'd like to add is that, you know, one of the, maybe one of the more disrespectful things that, that some of us have been saying in the past few decades is, you know, is that the Book of Mormon comes across a lot like a Bible fan fiction. Now, I. I didn't learn what the term fan fiction meant until probably 10 years ago, but for those of you who don't know, fan fiction would be, you know, an example would be like me writing a book about Frodo and Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf and basically taking the Lord of the Rings universe and then not as the original author, but as a fan of the fiction, doing some sort of an extension. Another example would be Harry Potter. If I wrote a biography of, you know, Dumbledore, somehow I got the rights from J.K. rowling to do that. That would. That's what fan fiction is. And in that sense, it's it. I think what's probably most accurate, a most accurate way of making sense of the Book of Mormon really, is that Joseph Smith was a huge fan of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament. And there were all these doubts and questions and problems that were being debated in 19th century, early 19th century, you know, northeastern United States. And so what Joseph Smith did as his next gig, once he knew that he couldn't keep treasure digging with folk magic, he knew he needed a new profession, is he wrote the Book of Mormon pretending it as sort of this massive effort of pseudepigrapha, which is writing in the name of an author or a respected person. He wrote some Bible fan fiction that borrowed heavily from the Old and New Testament, but then tried to apply it to an American context. Fanfiction's been going on for centuries. It seems to be what Joseph Smith did. But that becomes a problem because as you just said, Mike, if we know that the Old Testament is not a literal history, as we've shown in the LDS discussion series, there's no evidence that a literal Adam and Eve existed. There's no evidence of a global flood. There's no evidence in fact, there's counter evidence to all these things. There's no evidence that the Tower of Babel happened, and there's no evidence that Moses existed. And, you know, at some point we know that Jews emerged, but the whole foundation of the Old Testament is likely to have been fiction, you know, borrowed from Babylonian myths, etc. And then you sort of extend into the New Testament times, whether or not you believe in a literal Jesus and that the Bible is an accurate extension, the New Testament is an accurate extension of the Old Testament or an authentic extension of the Old Testament, the Old Testament's problematic. And so if the Bible is problematic and then the Book of Mormon is more fiction based on a book that is of questionable legitimacy, you've really got a problem. And then when you add to that the problems in the Book of Mormon, you. Including DNA and the wars and the, the cursings and all the historical and geographical and linguistic problems, it's just, it's just, it's invalid foundation upon invalid foundation upon invalid foundation. And at what point does it all kind of crumble? All right, Mike, let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

The Book of Abraham and Broader Truth Claims

Mike 32:33 Yeah, and so this is kind of like we've done so many episodes that have covered this in more detail, but these are just a few things kind of looking beyond the Book of Mormon that we need to believe for Joseph Smith to be a prophet of God. And so one is that Joseph Smith didn't actually translate the Book of Abraham correctly or incorrectly, but that God was actually just giving him a revelation that was riddled with 19th century material, including a patriarchal blessing recorded just prior to the Book of Abraham production, that, that ended up in material that was supposed to be written by Abraham. That the Masonic ceremony truly was the original endowment that was corrupted over the years before Joseph Smith restored it weeks after learning the Masonic ceremony. That God would command Joseph Smith to enter into polygamy using biblical justifications that contradict the actual biblical story, such as Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham in the Bible versus the book of. Or, sorry, the DNC 132, saying that it was actually God that commanded Abraham to take Hagar, even though that's not in the Bible anywhere. Or that God would tell Joseph Smith through revelation that the Lamanites were on the border of Missouri and could be identified by their dark skin. The revelation doesn't say they could be identified by their dark skin, but they just say that the Lamanites were on the border of Missouri and that border just happened to be where the Native Americans were Living. Even though, as we talked about, DNA tells us they did not come from Jerusalem. And so these are all areas where Joseph Smith is pulling things that he's saying are coming from God and they're just not panning out. And to John's earlier point, when you talk about fan fiction or pseudepigrapha, and he used Harry Potter as an example, or Lord of the Rings, whatever you want to use, and then John said something like, if I got the rights to Hagrid or whatever I think you're talking about, or Dumbledore.

Nemo 34:10 Right.

Mike 34:10 And you write a book. But what really is the difference here is that Joseph Smith, it's not like he's getting the rights and telling people he's writing an extension of it. He's telling people that he's writing it from God. And so it would be like John waiting until J.K. rowling died and then said, oh, my goodness, guys, I got a lost manuscript from J.K. rowling about this life of Dumbledore, and it was actually by her. But I'm just the one that's bringing it forth because I'm the only one that had access to it. And that's really where you get into bigger problems, because Joseph Smith is presenting this as if it's directly from God, directly off the gold plates, being translated in a way that cannot be corrupted. So when you find all of these problems, that's where you have all these apologetics that jump in, because you're trying to figure out how is Joseph Smith making these claims that are being riddled with problems over and over again from all these fields of study? And that's why this exercise is so good, because now we gotta look at all of these things. Every one of these things has to line up or else you've got massive problems. And we've already detailed, I don't know, 15 or 20 things that different fields of study are telling us simply don't hold up.

John Dehlin 35:12 Nemo. Anything to add?

Nemo 35:14 Yeah, a point I'm going to be making a lot, I think, during this episode to give our friend Neil Anderson a bit of help. I'm going to give Brother Joseph a break. I'm going to, you know, going to be making this point a lot about how a lot of this just comes from Joseph Smith's worldview at the time. It comes from a lot of the beliefs that were around him at the time. I think that's one of the important things that we've done in these episodes. And I'd encourage you to go back and have A look at the episodes that cover the sort of the cultural soup that Joseph Smith was swimming around in. So many of these ideas were present in his day. And so you can't blame him necessarily. You can't say, oh, where did you get these ideas from either. You can't say, oh, did he just think them about a thin air? No, they were around him and he put them into his new religion.

Mike 35:56 Yeah, I think one of the points I've heard before is if you could, if you could find people who don't know anything about Mormonism, who don't know anything about the Book of Mormon and you gave them the Book of Mormon and you said, can you read this and let me know what you think about it being authentic? And when you think it was written, you don't tell them anything. You don't, you don't poison the well, you don't do any of that. They're going to come back and they're going to say, this was written in the 19th century because it's got ideas that are very prevalent in the 19th century and yet nothing after. And it's also changing a lot of the stuff that was before in order to fit those 19th century ideas. And so that is one of the problems with Mormonism is that everything that Joseph Smith is doing, his fingerprints are all over it. Not just as being the author but, but as like you could tell exactly when it was written. It's the same thing as we covered in the backdating prophecies episode about the Book of Daniel because you could look at the scholars can look at the Book of Daniel and date it within, I believe like a five year window because of, because they know when the prophecies go from specific to vague to wrong. And the Book of Mormon does the exact same stuff. It's got a lot of stuff in there that prophecies that end right when the Book of Mormon is written and stories about Joseph Smith's lifetime that again just happened to end when the Book of Mormons being written. And so, yeah, you know, you could give Brother Joseph a break because it's all part of his worldview. But it's also important because that is what would lead anyone who is not affiliated with the church to go, yeah, this is exactly when it was written because the text is screaming to us, this is being written in the 19th century.

John Dehlin 37:22 And I'll just add that you talk to someone like Richard Bushman in 2023, he'll admit it. He'll say, even Patrick Mason, Patrick Mason, Richard Bushman, you know, Jana Reese, Pick, Pick your sort of neo apologetic scholar in 2023. They will tell you that the Book of Mormon reads like a 19th century document. And that's code language for saying it's not a literal translation of golden plates, you know, and that's when progressive Mormonism will try and talk about postmodern ism and sort of like myth and symbolism and what do words mean? And what is a tapir and what is a horse and what is steel? Because if you take Joseph at his word that the Book of Mormon is a literal history that was literally translated by the gift and power of God, it becomes super problematic. So whenever you hear. It's sort of like, it reads a lot like a 19th century document, what you really have is faithful Mormon scholars admitting that it, that. That the Book of Mormon isn't what Joseph claimed it was, in my view.

Mike 38:36 And I'll read Richard Bushman's quote real quick because it's, it is very telling. He says there is phrasing everywhere, long phrases that if you Google them, you will find them in 19th century writings. The theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century theology, and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament. So, I mean, that is as clear as day as Richard Bushman saying, yeah, this is written in the 19th century with 19th century ideas. These ideas are not coming from the ancient world, they're coming from the 19th century. And when you have historians within the church who are willing to admit it, that's a pretty good sign that everyone outside of the church is like, yeah, of course. That's what we've been saying for a long time. And when you have a book presented as being an ancient record being translated directly through the power of God, you have problems when you then have to say, well, it's not really directly through God, it's also through Joseph. And it's not an ancient record. It's kind of an ancient record that's been kind of like, you know, commingled with, with current theology. And then all of a sudden, it kind of feels like the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. To me, and I think to anyone else that's reading this without that predetermined conclusion that tells you the church must be true.

John Dehlin 39:45 All right, well, let's jump to the next slide. Let's turn everything upside down. That's fun. Yeah, that sounds fun.

Nemo 39:51 Yes.

Mike 39:52 So now this is one of those things, like I said, this was one of those kind of aha moments when I was doing the deep dive. You're always told that you're only looking at what the church gets wrong and that you need to focus on the things the church gets right. And the reality is that if the church's foundational truth claims are not true, it doesn't matter what they get right today. Because if we're talking about truth, and is this church the one true church of God, if the foundation is untrue, then what they're doing today, they could be doing good, they could be doing bad, but it's not going to be truer from God, because, you know, as we've talked about, it's fruit of the poisonous tree kind of a thing. And every religion gets some stuff right. That's why you hear this phrase. I'm sure if you're listening or watching this podcast, you've heard this phrase, which is, what's unique about Mormonism isn't good. And what's good about Mormonism isn't unique. And that comes from the very simple fact that the church today is doing good stuff. And a lot of what they're doing that's good, other churches are doing, businesses are doing, organizations, communities are all doing. And on the flip side, there's a lot of unique things that Mormonism has created with their doctrines that is causing harm and that causes pain for people. And so that is where there's this kind of different balance. And the point is that for the sake of argument, we're now, for the rest of this episode, going to assume the church is true. And we're now going to look at and say, okay, Joseph Smith got it right. The Mormon Church really is the one true church on Earth. But what does that mean for the world as we know it? And this is another way to evaluate the claims of the church, because if they are correct, then a lot of what we feel like we know in life, outside of religion, in different fields of study, are unquestionably wrong. And so in some ways, this episode is going to feel like a bizarro version of the first part, because, oh, Nemo, John just did you wrong on that one.

John Dehlin 41:35 Keep going.

Mike 41:37 Oh, you have to pull the slide back up. But, yeah, this will feel like a bizarro episode because we want to take everything we just did in that first part of the episode and flip it upside down to see what that would look like for everything else we know outside of Mormonism. And this is an area I've been harping on this whole series, which is when you try to fix one problem with apologetics, you have to then carry it through and say, okay, what does that do as far as impacting other areas of the church and other areas of the world as well?

John Dehlin 42:06 All right, Nima, why are you laughing?

Nemo 42:08 So I just caught that out of the corner of my eye. I think I've been. I think I've been outed. As a man who eats Doritos directly

Mike 42:14 from the bag, there is nothing wrong with that. No, nothing wrong with that at all.

John Dehlin 42:18 It was the second time I saw you do it, so I just had to share it with the world. So somebody's got to grab a screenshot of that and then share the world. And our listeners are like, what in the fetch are they all talking about?

Nemo 42:29 Yeah. So for those that were listening, come on to YouTube and watch. But essentially I lifted the ends of a big bag of Doritos up and tilted the crumbs out into my mouth to save every last delicious.

Mike 42:41 The best part of the bag, by the way. Oh, yeah. If you're not doing that. If you're not doing that, you are doing it wrong.

Nemo 42:47 But if you're doing that after having shared that bag with other individuals, you are doing something incredibly wrong. That is a solo activity, people.

Mike 42:53 That gets into a different.

Nemo 42:54 Keep it hygienic.

Mike 42:55 Yeah.

Nemo 42:56 Okay.

Mike 42:57 And apparently, before we go to the next slide, I'll tell you one thing I've been told to give some levity to this podcast is if you buy a bag of Doritos, you open it from the upside down. Which actually fits into the theme of this episode. Because if you open it from the upside down, all of the spices and seasoning that has settled at the bottom will then get redistributed back to the top. You're welcome.

Nemo 43:18 No, I disagree. Because if you start from the top, then you work your way down and you're starting to get bored, but then they start to get more flavorsome, so you keep going.

Mike 43:25 Well, there's that too.

Nemo 43:26 That's what you want.

Mike 43:27 We might need to do an episode on Dorito eating.

Nemo 43:29 I think we do. Yeah, we do. Kinderhook plate shaped Doritos.

Mike 43:35 Yes. Yes.

Nemo 43:37 All right.

John Dehlin 43:38 Sorry. I have completely and successfully derailed our entire conversation.

Nemo 43:42 The people love it. They love it.

Mike 43:44 Yeah.

Nemo 43:44 That's what they come here for.

Mike 43:45 And anyone who hasn't done that with a bag of Doritos, I'm telling you, you're doing it wrong.

Nemo 43:50 So they come for the Mormonism. They stay for the banter.

Mike 43:53 Exactly.

Race, Skin Color, and the Lamanite Curse

John Dehlin 43:55 All right, well, let's jump in. Let's now start answering the questions. Of this presentation. And let's start with the first slide. Mike, do you want to jump this?

Nemo 44:06 Yeah.

Mike 44:06 And this is one. I know this is going to feel a little bit charged, but this is a problem because as we did our talk on our. We did two episodes on kind of the history of race and the priesthood and all that. The Mormon Church, they have three scriptures that all make clear that people with dark skin or black skin have that because they were cursed by God. And so in the Book of Mormon we have dark skinned because, you know, they broke off from the Nephites. And in the book of Moses, it's because, you know, Cain killed Abel. And so it's the curse of Cain. And the book of Abraham solidifies it by talking about they had the curse that, you know, that they were not allowed to have the priesthood. And so this is an issue within Mormonism that is unique to Mormonism, although other Christian branches, especially during the times of slavery, use that as justification. But this is something that is still canonized today in the Mormon Church. If you believe that all those scriptures are directly from God and that they're true. People with dark skin or black skin have that because their ancestors were cursed by God.

Nemo 45:04 Nemo, other than the quite racist figures we've got on the screen, shows some quite troubling worldviews that have been pointed towards black people in the past. But it is problematic that the world has progressed so much. And the idea that if Mormonism is true, then me from this perspective, I guess you from another perspective view is regressing. You'd say, oh, well, we have to regress a lot of that progress and come back to an otherizing sort of worldview where we look at people as less than because of the color of their skin, which by and large, in many parts of the Western world, we've sort of moved past in many ways. But if Mormonism is true, then scripturally and by the authority of God, we need to undo that progress.

John Dehlin 45:52 Yeah, it's kind of a repulsive and a distasteful reality.

Nemo 45:58 I didn't even like saying it, but

John Dehlin 46:01 that's something that we've covered now multiple times in this LDS discussion series. Joseph Smith couldn't create scripture without incorporating the super racist doctrine of the curse of Cain. And that includes the Book of Abraham, that includes the book of Moses, that includes the Doctrine of Covenants. Literally, if he had translated the Kinderhook plates, I'm sure the curse of Cain would have been incorporated into that as well. Am I going too far, Mike?

Mike 46:29 Well, I mean, it's just. It's tough because I know this is a really touchy subject. But if you read the Scriptures and you take them at face value for what they are, and you especially look at them at the context of where Joseph is pulling these ideas from. The Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, are, by the very definition, white supremacist ideas. I know how charged that is, but if you read the definition of white supremacy, it's the idea that that one color of skin is favored above others. And the Book of Mormon tells you that the white and delights of Nephites were the chosen ones of God. And I know that there's times where, you know, God kind of talks about the Lamanites being, you know, more righteous than the Nephites, all that. But let's be honest. If you ask, especially if you go back, like 10 or 12 years before, you know, the Internet kind of made this a little bit more unsavory. If you went back and said the Nephites, the white people, were the good ones, it's. Yeah, yeah. And there was a thread on Twitter by Lindsay Hanson park where she talked about how missionaries came to her house and were doing the discussions with her kid because they're not active in the church. And they were kind of just being nice to let them do the discussions and bring them in and give them something to eat or whatever. And she had actually asked the missionaries, oh, yeah, the Lamanites were the brown people because they were cursed or whatever. And the missionaries like, yeah, exactly, you know, and that is the belief and the Book of Moses. It cements the idea of white supremacy into the Bible. That was Joseph's revision of the Bible, where he makes clear to go back and make black skin a curse of God, a curse from God. And so today we try to redefine what curse means and what skin means. And we've covered all that in our episodes. But at the end of the day, these are still canonized scriptures that make clear that white skin is favored from the favor of God. And it's uncomfortable, but it's right there. You cannot do that away unless you redefine words. And we talked about that a lot already. But we need to cover it, because if he got it right, then, yes, people with dark or black skin have ancestors that were cursed by God.

John Dehlin 48:23 And that takes us. Oh, go ahead, Nemo.

Nemo 48:25 So just to put something out there, John, you said he probably would have put a cursing or a racist cursing into the Kinderhook plates. Yeah, well, he did because he mentions them coming through the loins of Ham. And it was the curse of ham that's found in the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin 48:38 So even the Kinderk plates he had

Nemo 48:40 to inject, he managed to get it in.

John Dehlin 48:42 Inject the curse of Cain in there. Beautiful.

Nemo 48:46 There you go.

John Dehlin 48:47 Well, that's a good segue to our next slide, Mike.

Mike 48:50 Yeah, and so this is what we talk about with the Book of Mormon. So if the Mormon Church is true, Native Americans were cursed at some point with dark skin to make them loathsome and unenticing to the white and delights of Nephites. And you might again feel like it's charged to say unenticing to the white and delights of Nephites, but those are words that are in the Book of Mormon and all of the Book of Mormon artwork, even now, but especially up until I believe like 10, 15 years ago, the Book of Mormon children's stories that was published by the church would actually say that they, you know, their skin was cursed because they were, you know, not righteous. And it has pictures of basically savage Native Americans. And the church is captioning it with they had, you know, cursed skin. And so this is the 19th century belief that the Native Americans or the animals holding it up right now. And so, you know, we're not making this up. And this is the 19th century.

Nemo 49:43 This is my copy from when I was a child.

Mike 49:45 Yeah, I mean, so I think they changed it like 20 years ago or something or 15 years ago. But Book of Mormon Children's Stories teaches kids that Native Americans have dark skin because they were not righteous and God cursed them. This is a 19th century idea that the white settlers came to America and they saw these dark skinned Native Americans are like, who are these savages? Why aren't they as sophisticated as we are? And they built up this mound builder myth story that we talked about where basically they came up with this idea that there was this white superior race killed off by the dark skinned savage Indians. And that is why there's all these mounds. And guess what? All of that works its way into the Book of Mormon, even though that's all a myth that has been proven false by all of the historical evidence of America. So this is racism brought into what is supposed to be an ancient authentic text directly translated by God that we know simply is based on a really horrifically incorrect racist myth.

John Dehlin 50:39 Nemo.

Nemo 50:40 Yeah. If you look at people that aren't what would be described as weird, I think it's Western, educated, industrialized something. And Democratic. I never remember what the R stands for, but it's a category basically of people like me, like John Rich. Rich. I think Rich is what it is. I think, I think that's what it is. But yeah, this idea that actually they came and looked at Native Americans went why aren't they as sophisticated as we are? It's ironic now that people in that category actually look to things like Eastern wisdom and Eastern philosophy and ancient wisdoms and things like stoicism, all those sort of things. We look to those for help now with a lot of the problems of our modern technological age and a lot of the mental health challenges that come with living in the world that we live in. And I think that again shows just how backwards some of the thinking was at the time of Joseph Smith when they come over and see these people living quite an organic sort of life, not to sound too hippie dippy, but you know, living quite fulfilling lives sort of in harmony with, with what was going on around them and just generally have been living that way for a long time. They're viewed as savages at that time, whereas now some people actually would look at that and view it as quite an idyllic life and wish to kind of return to it.

John Dehlin 51:51 Yeah, great point, Nemo. And then I'll just, I'll just add the, the, the point that it's not just that this Lamanite curse, Native American dark skinned curse, isn't something just that Joseph Smith taught back then or that is in the Book of Mormon, but isn't really believed today. If you travel to Central America, Mexico, South America or the Polynesian islands, including Hawaii, Tonga, you know, even New Zealand, the Maori there, you'll find that, that all of the dark skinned Latin Americans and or Polynesian Mormons self identify as Lamanites. It's not metaphorical. They believe they are the blood descendants of Layman and Lemuel who were, according to the Book of Mormon, cursed with dark skin because of their wickedness and that their dark skin is loathsome and that white skin is preferable. And on Mormon stories we've covered, you know, Native American and Polynesian Mormons talking about how they believed as a child growing up that their dark skin was indicative of inferiority and how they hoped and were taught to hope that if they were righteous enough their dark skin would lighten over time. We're not making that up. It's a.

Mike 53:17 No, that's.

Nemo 53:18 No.

John Dehlin 53:18 It's a modern belief in a modern teaching.

Nemo 53:20 Joseph Smith went to the people in New Zealand, told them they were the descendants of Hagoth, who is a figure from the Book of Mormon who built a boat and sailed off somewhere. So, you know, they were teaching these people, which is a weird kind of cultural appropriation. And I don't think we need to necessarily go into the damage it does to these people and so their connection to their ancestry by having this other narrative put upon them. So now all of a sudden they're disconnected from their authentic ancestry, believing a historically false narrative about the origin of their people.

Mike 53:50 Yeah, and Spencer Kimball, General Conference in 1960. This is a quote. I know we mentioned our previous episode, but he says, basically this is the Mormon Church was taking Native American kids and having them live with Mormon families to teach them the gospel. And the belief was they would make them white and delightsome. So here's Spencer W. Kimball at General Conference in October of 1960. Says the little member, Girl, 16, sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents. These young members of the church are changing to whiteness and delightsomeness. So I mean, this is, yeah, this is something that was taught until it became so toxic that the church had to basically turn around and go, yeah, we never actually meant that skin change. We didn't mean skin, men's skin. Even though they're telling us decade after decade after decade that literally we believe if you have dark skin and you join the church, you're gonna be as white as can be in the eternities. Which is such a weird thing to say to someone who has, you know, actually pride in their family. Like, if you have a family with black skin and you're like, hey, if you join our church and you're righteous, we're gonna make your skin white. It's. But that's what they taught, you know, that is not us making it up. And one other point I'll make is that you had mentioned you kind of touched on this, John. But John Larsen, in one of his earlier Mormon expressions episode, made a point that I never really thought of. But when the Book of Mormon describes the Lamanites, they're dark skinned, they're savage, right? All of the way that they talk about in the Book of Mormon, the way they dress, all of the stuff they wear, all that stuff, it is very reminiscent of the Iroquois Indian tribe, which happened to live in New York during Joseph Smith's lifetime. And so that's another area where you can look at that and go, here's Joseph Smith incorporating his, you know, 1830s worldview into the Book of Mormon in a way that seems creative, but it's really not because he's just describing the Native American tribes that are all around him at that time and just kind of putting it back into the Book of Mormon using the myth of the mountain builder myth. And so that's another thing to think of. When you read the descriptions of the Lamanites, it really does match what the Native Americans lived like in the time that Joseph Smith was alive.

Native Americans and Book of Mormon Historicity

John Dehlin 55:54 All right, let's go ahead and go to the next slide. And Mike, Nemo, I'm sneaking this in on you guys because neither of you have seen this slide yet, but I just have to add it, so I'll go ahead and do this slide. If Joseph Smith got it right. Native Americans were allowed to practice Christianity before Jesus Christ was even born and before Jews themselves were allowed to know the name of Jesus Christ and to do things like baptize Christ, confirm the gift of the Holy Ghost, et cetera. And that, that is one of the. For me, one of the biggest smoking guns of the Book of Mormon is you have pre. You know, you have people on an entirely different continent before the birth of Jesus Christ who are supposed to be descendants of Israelites, literally baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ, confirming people in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ teaching Christian doctrines four or five hundred years before Christ was even born. How does that make any sense in the universe? If anyone was going to be given a sort of like advance notice about the name of Jesus Christ, let alone what his teachings were, it would be the people that shared the blood of Jesus Christ in their veins, which would be the ancient Jews. But somehow God didn't feel like it was necessary to let the actual Jews know the name of Jesus Christ, who were, by the way, performing annual rituals, anticipating the coming of the Messiah. Yet they weren't allowed to know the date and the date of Jesus Christ coming and his name and, and his teachings and his ordinances. They were stuck performing, you know, Moses and Abrahamic based rituals hundreds of years before the Native Americans. It just makes no sense. And Mike and Nemo, I apologize for throwing that in without your consent.

Nemo 58:00 You've just thrown to mind the apologetic that I heard as a seminary student. For this, which was kind of twofold, was first, had the Jews been more righteous when Moses went up to the mountain, they would have been acting like this too. His first port of call. They would have got this stuff earlier. They would have been like the Book of Mormon people, but they weren't. So they had to live the law of Moses for a long time. And then two, the Jews were the fall guys who had to end up killing Jesus, so they had to be kept in the dark, whereas other civilizations on other parts of the world were able to know, because the Jews were the ones that would end up having to kill him. So if they knew, they might not do it. Those were the apologetics I heard as a teenager.

John Dehlin 58:39 And that's fine, Nemo, if you wanted, if you want to now advance those apologetics. My point is just to ask viewers and listeners, how much sense does that make?

Nemo 58:49 Oh, it doesn't. My point is I'm putting that out there and saying, do you really buy that? Because I bought it as a believer. But thinking back on it now doesn't make a ton of sense. Really?

John Dehlin 59:00 Yeah. Anything you want to add to that, Mike?

Mike 59:03 Well, no. I mean, obviously, for the exercise we're doing here, we're accepting to your point that that's true, that the Native Americans knew of Jesus before the old world did. And I would just say that as we've seen with within Mormonism and we. You can even document this slightly when we do, like the 116 pages episode. I mean, the reason is because the Old Testament was written before Jesus was born, whereas the Book of Mormon was written after Jesus was born. So it's a lot easier to backfill the story. But yeah, I mean, that's basically what it comes down to. It's just, just that Joseph Smith knew the ending when writing the beginning, and so he was able to do that.

Nemo 59:33 Yeah. And the thing we need to point out is that although these people seem to miraculously know about Jesus Christ all the time, they seem to forget miraculously, halfway through the book, when exactly it was, he was going to turn up again because of the way the Book of Mormon was written. And it's, it's also, it's distinct forms of Christianity. It's Methodist or. Sorry, it's Protestant Christianity from Joseph Smith's time that appears in the Book of Mormon. Yeah. Which is again, what's wild. Like, we, we've gone through it, but you know, King Benjamin's sermon is a perfect example of a Methodist sermon.

John Dehlin 1:00:04 Yeah, yeah.

Nemo 1:00:05 Even based on one. Around Joseph Smith's time.

Mike 1:00:07 Yeah. So it's not even just that they knew of Jesus. It's like they knew of a Chris, you know, Christology that was hundreds of years later in development and it makes its way into it. So it's, it's just like knowing of Jesus is a big problem. But there's like a lot of problems beyond that when you start peeling back the layers. And so, yeah, it's, it's. We covered that in the 116 pages episode, the anachronisms episode. But yeah, I mean, to John's point, it doesn't make sense unless you kind of look at, you know, when the Book of Mormon was composed versus when the Old Testament was composed. And then all of a sudden it's the same thing we talked about, like with the Book of Daniel and backdating prophecy, all of a sudden Joseph Smith can backfill that in. And as Nemo pointed out, which we did in the 116 pages episode, because he wrote the beginning of the Book of Mormon at the after he wrote the ending. He then tries to backfill it even more to match the ending. But then that runs into problems, into the middle of the Book of Mormon when all of a sudden they lose track of when Jesus is coming, which again tells you that Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon because of the fact that it has no continuity, or at least it lacks continuity in that area, which makes no sense if you really believe this is the savior of the world. And all of a sudden they kind of lose track of when he's coming and all of that.

Evolution, DNA, and the Tower of Babel

John Dehlin 1:01:14 All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next slide. If the Mormon Church is true, organic evolution is fine. False.

Nemo 1:01:20 Yeah.

Mike 1:01:21 And this is just straightforward. Joseph Fielding Smith declared, if evolution is true, the church is false. And, you know, if the Mormon Church is true, everything we know about evolution is wrong. And this is an area where you really can't have it both ways. And I know some people say he was speaking as a man, and it's not really like in the canonized doctrine, because most of the canonized doctrine was written before evolution discussion was really prominent. But if the Mormon Church is true, you know, science and DNA tell us that Homo sapiens have lived for at least 200,000 years, with much evidence pointing to earlier species of humans that have been around for possibly 5 to 7 million years. We have evidences of, I believe, tools that go back like 1.8 million years, little hand tools. And within the Mormon Church, we are told that Adam and Eve were the first humans around 6,000 years ago in Missouri. And so if evolution is true, the church is false. And on the other hand, if the church is true, then evolution must be false. Which means that everything we currently know about the history of evolution, genetics, all of that is wrong. And there's just no way around it. When you have it from the direct words of not just Joseph Fielding Smith, but you have Russell M. Nelson say, to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible. Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It's just the way genetics work. And again, I know apologists will say they're speaking as men, but I believe this is an area because of the fact that Joseph Smith also cements Adam and Eve, as, you know, 6,000 years ago, as the first humans. When you have all of this other history and evidence, evolution can't be real. And then we'd have to find another explanation for all of these remains that we're finding and tools and all of that other stuff.

Nemo 1:03:01 And just because Russell Nelson can't comprehend it doesn't mean it's not true. You know, it's incomprehensible to him based on his very specific set of worldviews. The worldview that we're ascribed, we're currently for this thought experiment saying is true, but when you apply that to other things, it's equally problematic. That's not a good way to look at the world. It's like, well, if I can't understand it, therefore it can't be true. I don't understand how a lot of things around me work. Doesn't mean that they don't work or they aren't true. It's incomprehensible to me in many ways how, you know, coding in computers works. I couldn't code anything, but it doesn't mean it's untrue. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry, that, that just irks me a little bit. He's an intelligent man. He's a heart surgeon. You know, that was a bit of an unintelligent thing for him to say, really.

John Dehlin 1:03:52 And the final thing I'll just say is there's, there's going to be a lot of orthodox believing Mormon and Christian listeners that are going to say, oh great, well, I hate evolution. Evolution is clearly a bad thing. So that's a, that's a, that's a mark in Mormonism's favor if, if, if evolution has to be false, if the Mormon church is true because Christians have been primed to hate and not believe in evolution. And to feel like it's demeaning to think that humans might have evolved from a, or share an ancestry with, let's just say, apes or chimpanzees. And all I can say is you have to, you have to invalidate many of the major streams of scientific of modern day science. You have to overturn biology, geology, archeology, you know, so many, you know, chemistry. You have to overturn so many pillars of modern science if you're going to throw out evolution.

Nemo 1:04:52 So, yeah, if any of these people need genetic therapy for any sort of disease or problem, that's going to be difficult for them because that's based on a field of science which they, if they accept the Book of Mormon is true, for example, or even just the broader Christian community, like you said, that are taught this way, then that's undermined because a lot of, a lot of our understanding of genetics and a lot of our ability to treat genetic problems are based on our understanding of how evolution works and how humans came to be.

Mike 1:05:21 Yeah, it also impacts like the biblical stories, like the global flood. When you talk to people who understand how evolution works, they can tell you that you can't have a global flood 2,000 years ago that wiped out all land species because we couldn't have all of the repopulations of the world and all of the new species that have been created in that short window of time. And so it really is, it's an area. And I guess that's why evolution is such a hot topic, because it's an area that has implications for so many aspects. And so depending on where your belief is with regards to like a literal Genesis, this is going to have great implications. But as Nemo said earlier, just because you can't really understand how that would work doesn't mean it's not happening. And so it's just an area that if we're going to take the approach that the Mormon Church is true, we have to throw out everything we know about evolution. And that is going to have a lot of impacts, as Nemo said about all these other areas, that has given us a lot more understanding in medicine and in where we came from. And all of a sudden we got to throw that out and go, nope, that's actually wrong. When the reality is we know it's actually helped a lot of people's lives. Especially when you talk about stuff, as he just said, with, you know, therapy and all that, and, you know, this is where we're getting into this problem now. When we start with the equation that is true, you now have to reconcile that with other areas and we're going to see it's just really hard to do.

John Dehlin 1:06:36 All right, well, speaking of science and of evolution, let's go to DNA.

Mike 1:06:42 Yeah. And so the entire Premise of the Book of Mormon is to have a record to provide to the descendants of the Lamanites to bring them back to Christ. And the revelations from God to Joseph Smith make clear that the Native Americans are identified by God as the Lamanites. And obviously the way they know that is because they're Native Americans with dark skin. And as we talked about in our episode on DNA, study after studying makes clear that the Native Americans originated in Asia and not Jerusalem. I know Jerusalem is technically Asia, but not, you know, it's like not in that area of Asia. And the Americas began being populated tens, they believe, like 30 plus thousand years ago with no interruptions of population due to a global flood. And this is a point that is effectively concealed by the Church in their essay, which is why they use the theories of bottleneck, genetic drift, you know, all of those different ways to explain how the Book of Mormon got it wrong, but actually got it right. And what this means is that the people identified by Joseph Smith via God as the descendants of the Lamanites are not descended from Jerusalem. Which means the Book of Mormon's main premise is false. And so, just like evolution, for the Book of Mormon to be true, everything we know about population genetics must be false. And the apologetic response is that the Book of Mormon people were just a small part of a larger community, but we would still see remnants of that DNA in all of the different testing we've done. And more importantly, the text of the Book of Mormon contradicts the idea from apologetics that they were just part of a larger civilization, as well as the direct quotes from the prophets, seers and revelators of the Church. And just as we were saying, if the Church is true, everything we've learned about DNA has to be false, because it would mean that the very basic study of DNA to understand where we are from is not reliable. Which means that every Mormon that does their 23andMe, their Ancestry.com test, all of those different things, they're not reliable because if they were, it would also show the Church is not true. It's kind of, you know, when I we did our 23andMe test, we were talking with believing members and we're talking about all of our ancestry and how far back it goes and what percentage of our DNA is Neanderthal. And all of a sudden you just want to be like, well, if we have, you know, 1.5% Neanderthal DNA from 40,000 years ago, the Book of Mormon and Mormonism, all the truth claims fall apart because we are believing that Adam and Eve were the first humans 6,000 years ago. And so that's why you need to have this intellectual consistency where if you're going to, as a believing member, take a DNA test and look at those results and take them as, oh, this is so cool, I know where my ancestry came from. Well, you then have to take it a step further and say, what does that say about my core beliefs within my church? Because they are not going to be cohesive. And so you have to then for this exercise say, well, I believe the church is true, so this result can't be real and just throw it out because it obviously is getting it wrong somehow.

John Dehlin 1:09:25 Nemo.

Mike 1:09:28 Yeah.

Nemo 1:09:28 You, you have the problem that they could start to cherry pick and say, well, no, okay, geneticists and people that study DNA are correct about G, A, T and C. They're correct about what my DNA is made of. Okay, maybe they're correct about RNA and how my DNA, you know, replicates and codes itself and. But they're wrong about then those basic things and understanding that, okay, well, if I take the coding of my entire DNA, if I take it, all of it written out as a human being and I put it next to an ape and oh, okay, it's 93 similar or whatever it might be, they. They say, oh, well, that's not true. We can't be related. We can't take the conclusion from that. That would mean we're related because the Book of Mormons trim. Because this is all the church is true. But then how can they rely on that base part of the study of what DNA is made of when it comes to medicine? Again, I just, I bring it back to modern medicine and how that has benefited everyone. And it's based on the same concepts and ideas and theories that prove that we have been around a lot longer than the Book of Mormon and the Church would indicate. All right, you can't really cherry pick it. They're not really separable.

John Dehlin 1:10:41 Absolutely. All right, well, let's go to the next point, which is about linguistics.

Nemo 1:10:47 Yeah.

Mike 1:10:47 And this is one we talked about more in the episode on the Tower of Babel and the Book of Mormon. But if there is no L, no, sorry, no literal Tower of Babel story, the Book of Mormon cannot, can just cannot be a literal historical record. And we talked about this because the Book of Mormon incorporates the Tower of Babel as a literal event, which basically is how we get the interpreter. So if there is no Tower of Babel, that leads to the Jaredid story, which leads to the interpreters. Which we are told were buried with the gold plates. If that didn't happen, then obviously Joseph Smith couldn't be telling us the truth. And as we talked about when we talk about the Book of Mormon, there are no non LDS linguists that would support the idea that the Tower, I should say there are no religious linguists that would support the idea of the Tower of Babel being historical. Due to the very simple fact that there are languages that were around prior to the Tower of Babel timeframe that went through without any confusion. Kind of like we talked about the global flood, we could see continuation, we could see the evolution of those languages by studying history. And so if the Church is true, and that means the Tower of Babel story has to be true, which means everything we know about the evolution and creation of languages is wrong. And this is another area where it's just difficult because we have actual tangible evidence to show how languages have evolved, grown, spread throughout history. But if the Church is true, that everything we know about that is wrong. And it might seem like a small thing, but this is like the whole study of like how languages through civilizations came to be. And it would have to be completely incorrect. All the evidence we believe we have must be wrong because the Church has to be true and the Book of Mormon must be true.

John Dehlin 1:12:26 Nemo.

Nemo 1:12:27 Give us enough time and we'll be speaking different languages. American English and British English are already slightly different. They're still what you call mutually intelligible. But give it long enough and they will drift apart. And that's the case with language of any kind, is that people will. Language is a living thing. People speak it slightly differently. We all have already alects, we all speak differently. And so over time these things through region or more broadly by countries, deviate and change and grow and develop. So how long were people around before the Tower of Babel? How did they manage to get keep one language this entire time? That doesn't really make sense for it then to be confounded. And, and it's not long enough on the flip side for these vast array of languages, all with their different routes, to have all then come about again. And we can trace them to specific geographical areas as to where they started. So it just, it doesn't work on so many levels with the study of linguistics. And again, the study of linguistics has been useful in so many fields that if you're going to discount it, you have to then discount all the benefits that it brings to modern life.

John Dehlin 1:13:36 Yeah, yeah. All right, let's go to the next

Global Flood, Book of Abraham Translation, and Biblical Scholarship

Mike 1:13:39 slide and so, you know, piggybacking off the Tower of Babel, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses all require a global flood to be a brittle, real historical event for the scriptures of Mormonism to make sense. And just like the Tower of Babel, the there is just too much evidence that there was no global flood. As we covered in the episode on the global flood in the scriptures of Mormonism, which is way back when, excuse me. And if the church is true again, once everything we know about archeology, carbon dating is just, it's just wrong. And so if science cannot date, if scientists cannot date sediment to correctly show that there could not have been an earth altering event like the global flood, then they clearly would have everything else wrong when they're talking about dating, because they use dating and sediment and all that to kind of know how these things have changed over the years. And that also kind of tells you there was no world altering flood. And we can now date the arrival of humans in Americas to about 25 to 35,000 years ago, which again cannot be true if a global flood had wiped them out entirely because we would have seen that complete halt in that population, that civilization that would then not kind of get kickstarted again until the Book of Mormon starts. And so we would have records of this massive extinction event. And it's just not there. And on the flip side, there's a lot of evidence of civilizations that thrive and continue to grow throughout those tens of thousands of years. And I know from, you know, one of the things I was talking about with Nemo and John before the episode is I don't want to be accused of false binaries, like it's this or that, but. So this might feel like oversimplified, but these are very clear truth claims that are made by the church in canonized scriptures. And if they are true, all of these areas of science that we've learned so much from over the last, you know, couple, like say couple hundreds of years especially, they all have to be false because they're getting things wrong. Like, like carbon dating, looking at like where this flood could have happened, skeletal remains, archeology, if those are all wrong, then what could we possibly trust from those fields of study?

Nemo 1:15:42 But then we don't want to trust those fields of study because they undermine other truth claims of the Mormon Church. You know, if the Mormon Church is true, archaeologists don't know what they're doing because they were never able to find any of the remnants of the great big battles that happened. Around the hill, Cumorah, the millions of people that died there, they weren't able to find them. So, you know, from this point of view that the Book of Mormon was true. Those archaeologists have to be undermined because they weren't able to find the evidence.

Mike 1:16:06 Yeah.

Nemo 1:16:06 It's the same way that Mormon apologists will attack carbon dating as a science. They'll say, oh, well, it's not very accurate, knowing full well that it's still accurate within the time limits necessary to disprove their hypothesis. But, yep, that's a tangent.

John Dehlin 1:16:22 No, that's great. Okay. Yeah. And I'll just refer our viewers and listeners to our episode on. On, you know, the Global Flood and on the Tower of Babel so that you can just understand the end on evolution and all that, because we've done a lot of groundwork before, we kind of make these sorts of assertions. And you may not understand why it's significant to say that. That something like evolution or the Tower of Babel or the Global Flood are wrong. So please, again, go back and check out our. Our previous episodes. Okay, should we go to the next. To the next slide, Mike? Yep. Okay.

Mike 1:17:05 In this one, you know, one of the most testable truth claims of Joseph Smith's time as prophet was the translation of the Book of Abraham. Because we have the source material for at least the beginning of the book Abraham. And we covered all that in our Book of Abraham miniseries. We can compare what Joseph Smith claimed that papyrus said against what Egyptologists know it said because the Rosetta Stone helped crack what was long lost to be a thought, what was thought to be a long lost language. And the new information as we talked about did not go well for Joseph Smith's claims to being able to translate ancient languages as Joseph Smith not only got the text wrong, but even translated the characters in facsimile 3 incorrectly, which scholars could evaluate even before we found, before the church was returned, the papyrus fragments that were long thought to be lost in a fire. And, you know, for the Book Abraham translation to be correct, everything we know about the Egyptian language has to be wrong. And this means the Rosetta Stone must be wrong, or at least our interpretation of the Rosetta Stone must be wrong, because the language does not match what Joseph Smith, through the gift and power of God, told us it would. Which means that every other document that has been translated. Hang on one second, guys. I'm so sorry.

John Dehlin 1:18:12 Nemo, do you want to go ahead and jump in here for a second and maybe finish the slide?

Mike 1:18:16 Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin 1:18:17 Yeah, go ahead. And finish the slide.

Nemo 1:18:18 So for the Book of Abram to be correct. Go from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. For the Book of Abraham translation to be correct, everything we know about the Egyptian language has to be wrong. In other words, the Rosetta Stone must be wrong because the language does not match what Joseph Smith thought through God told us it would. Which means that every other document that has been translated has actually been translated incorrectly, because we know that the Book of Abraham papyrus actually translates to the Book of Abraham text. Again, this is something that would defy any rational, logical thought, but is necessary if we are to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Not only would the Egyptian language have to be wrong, but again, the dating of ancient documents would be wrong because even the Church admits that the papyri fragments date to much later than Joseph Smith claimed they did when declaring that the scrolls were written by Abraham by his hand upon papyrus. The implications of this again would be huge, but absolutely required for the Church to be true. And I want to say something interesting that I've just picked up on there, which is that the Church admits the correct date of these papyrus. So what do we do now when we're saying, well, in order for the Church to be true, these things have to be false and we would have to take everything we know about Ancient Egypt and actually translate it using what Joseph Smith said the bits on the papyrus meant, which means we'd have to take his bits of the papyrus and then apply them wherever else we see them and say this actually means the firmament or whatever. What do we do when the Church admits that he wasn't right? What do we do with that? Because then the only conclusion you can draw from that is that the Church is admitting the veracity of these Egyptological studies or these studies of the date of these things. So the Church is saying that it isn't true. The Church is by tacit admission admitting that their claims aren't true because they're admitting the veracity of these modern sciences. Yeah, that's big.

John Dehlin 1:20:12 Yeah, it is.

Mike 1:20:13 It's huge. It's the same reason they changed.

Nemo 1:20:15 Sorry to steal your thunder, that's where you were going.

Mike 1:20:17 But no, no, it's perfect. And it's also good because we just talked about DNA and the fact is the DNA studies are so robust and so overwhelming that the Church had to change the introduction to, you know, were the. I forgot the word primarily descended from Native Americans to among them. And so to your point, we're doing this exercise like the Church is true. So these Things must be false. But we can see areas where even the church itself has made changes based on science that we are also told not to trust. And that really does show you, I believe, how reliable and strong the evidence is, because the church is not going to make these kinds of changes or admissions, especially talking about, like, the book of Abraham, unless they really have nowhere else to go. And so from an apologetic standpoint, they'll say, well, the Rosetta Stone can be correct because Joseph Smith wasn't actually translating. He was getting a revelation. And that is the apologetic we covered in our Book of Abraham series. But at the same time, when you take that approach, you then have to say, well, why is Joseph Smith telling everyone that he's translating over and over? It's always translating, translating, translating. And so that, again, just goes into, you know, the church changing the story because of the fact that they need to get away from the fact that he translated incorrectly. That would not be an argument they would have made had the rose set of stone not been found. We wouldn't have known the Egyptian language, the true translation of it in the first place.

John Dehlin 1:21:37 All right, anything else you want to say, Mike, about. About this slide, or we are. We're good to go into the next one?

Mike 1:21:43 No, I think we're good.

John Dehlin 1:21:45 Okay, so the next slide is. Biblical scholarship is now completely wrong.

Nemo 1:21:51 Yeah.

Mike 1:21:51 And this is one, you know, we harp. I should say harp time. We've talked about this a lot throughout the series, and I mentioned this in the first part of this episode, but over the last few hundred years, we've had some amazing advances in biblical scholarship by looking at the different scrolls and the different manuscripts and learning about archaeology and learning about so much about these. These civilizations. And, you know, one of the things we talked about is we've learned that Isaiah was written by multiple authors. We believe three. Some still will go with just two, with, you know, the original Isaiah and the. The deutero Isaiah. And then some believe there's like a Trito or a Trito Isaiah. The original ending of Mark was added on by a later scribe. And that's something that obviously plays heavily into the Book of Mormon. And that Genesis was compiled from multiple sources and that the King James Bible contains many translation errors. And so if we're starting with the conclusion that the church is true, these advances in biblical biblical scholarship have to be wrong, because Joseph Smith brings the parts of Deutero Isaiah into the Book of Mormon and references even to the third Isaiah. Those are written after Lehi left. And the scholarship behind the idea of deutero Isaiah would have to be wrong because of the fact that it needs to be before Lehi left. But the evidence is all point to most, almost all scholars now conceding that there's definitely a deutero Isaiah and likely a third Isaiah as well. And as we talked about, because Joseph Smith is incorporating so much of the King James Bible directly into the Book of Mormon, it would mean that the biblical scholarship that claims that those are translation errors must be wrong. Unless you want to then take the approach that some will take, such as Michael Ash and say Joseph's actually a co author. But then again, that goes against Joseph's claims when he was writing it that he never said he was a co author. You know, it was all through the gift and power of God. And it would also mean that Joseph Smith bringing the long ending of Mark into the Book of Mormon must mean that that was always really part of Mark, but it was just lost for a hundred couple hundred years and then restored later. It would also mean that the Bible really was composed in a codex form before Lehi left, even though scholarship has shown the idea of a codex having all of these things in one bound book did not exist until long after Lehi left. It would also mean that Elias and Elijah are two distinctly different people, along with all the other different topics we've covered about how biblical scholarship impacts not just the Book of Mormon, but all of the scriptures of Mormonism as well.

John Dehlin 1:24:03 Nemo.

Nemo 1:24:04 No, I'll let you go first on this one, John.

John Dehlin 1:24:07 Oh, I'm, I'm good.

Nemo 1:24:08 Yeah, I'm good.

John Dehlin 1:24:10 Okay. I think we're making, I mean, what, what we're basically showing. I mean, it's like Joseph Smith or, you know, centuries of Egyptian scholarship, you know, Joseph Smith or centuries of biblical scholarship that Jews and Christians alike now overwhelmingly support. And, you know, what point are we going to just say Joseph always got it right or, you know, Joseph trumps all. Joseph is like this divine trump card that trumps everything upon which modern society is built. Or are we going to sort of say, how about another possibility is that Joseph got it wrong and modern science, modern scholarship kind of gets kind of is actually who got it right.

Nemo 1:25:05 You know, this is not like an appeal to popularity. This is not all these people are right, therefore Joseph is wrong. Or like there's more people on this side, therefore Joseph Smith is wrong. It's that the views and opinions on this side are backed up by the scientific method of repeatability of, you know, hypothesize, hypothesis, all that sort of stuff. The scientific method is involved here, whereas Joseph Smith is just making claims, and those claims are testable by the people on this side.

John Dehlin 1:25:35 No, it's. It's like, yeah, do you believe in, you know, reason? Do you believe in logic? Do you believe in the scientific method? Do you believe in evidence? Do you believe in modern scholarship, modern academia and modern science and all the different disciplines that the pillars of modern society? Or Joseph Smith, an uneducated farm boy who grew up in the early 1800s.

Nemo 1:26:04 But it's not just Joseph Smith. It's God to those people. You gotta remember that.

John Dehlin 1:26:08 I know.

Nemo 1:26:10 That is the thing we're actually looking at. It's like Joseph Smith who channeled a deity, and that's the weight that those people take. Sorry.

John Dehlin 1:26:17 Yeah, well, but I would just say my Christian and other believing friends would say you can still believe in God and believe in science and believe in academics and believe in reason and logic, but not believe in Mormonism. Right?

Nemo 1:26:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:26:36 All right, let's go to the next slide. Mike.

Mike 1:26:39 Yeah. And this one we've talked about multiple episodes as well, but the idea that records are written on gold plates in this time frame, especially in the New World, is just simply anachronistic. And there are no records of writings on metal in the Americas in this time. And even in the old World, the writings are tiny amounts of text. And so fair Mormon probably cites the Peer G tablets that are pictured on the right. If you're watching, if you're listening, it's three tablets. We've covered them in previous episodes that have writing on them. And Fair Mormon actually puts them as one of their best evidences for the Book of Mormon. But what they don't tell you is that when you actually look into these plates, these contain literally a tiny fraction of what's on the Book of Mormon. And that's why we don't have any records of long amounts of text being written on metal or gold plates, but on scrolls instead. These three plates of the Peersy tablets contain about 200 words of text, meaning the Book of Mormon would need over 1000 words, 1000 tablets of gold to contain the same amount of text. And so if the Book of Mormon is true, not only would a codex have been needed to exist long before that we know they were used, or at least that we have evidence that they were used, but vast records on gold plates must have occurred. And that means that everything we know about record keeping in ancient times is wrong. Along with our knowledge of the use of codex for long records and as we'll point out, as we point out in previous episodes, does it make sense that there's just simply no records on metal plates that existed with any kind of long term history and yet the Book of Mormon just happens to bring it up, which was kind of this idea at the time that I believe kind of is somewhat of an outgrowth of treasure digging as well. The idea they're on gold plates and they're buried and all that, but just the fact that we've never seen them anywhere else and yet were kind of given the impression through the Book of Mormon that this is just the way it was done.

Nemo 1:28:22 Didn't we work out in that episode that for the plates and everything to have been the size that Joseph Smith said that he was, and the dimensions and so forth that you would have been missing per plate, 10,000 words, I think something like a university dissertation, essentially.

Mike 1:28:39 Yeah, you would need. And the thing was, we kind of talked about like, how many, you know, with the size that they would be and kind of the amount of characters you could fit and the amount of text on each plate would have just been insane. Like, you wouldn't. There's no way to do it. And then of course, the apologetic would be like, well, they're written on symbols and then God's translating them. But then you're also like, well, nobody in the world would be like, here's two paragraphs of text. I'm gonna write a little circle with a dash through it. You know, I mean, like, and that, that's really where you just get into huge problems when you try to get into this idea that like, reformed Egyptian is somehow condensed beyond all kind of common sense. And yeah, when you especially. And that's especially if you're going to use this Peerage tablet as evidence, as Fairmormon does, then you have to then take that implication one step further and say, okay, what does that mean for the Book of Mormon? And that's really what this episode is about, is trying to say, okay, let's give fair Mormon the benefit of the doubt and say these piercing tablets are proof. Okay, take it a step further. What does that mean for the Book of Mormon? Oh, it needs over, you know, a thousand plates. And then all of a sudden you're like, that doesn't make any sense. And no one's carrying around a thousand plates, you know, to go bury him. It just doesn't work. Just think about what that would mean to carry around a thousand metal plates. It's absurd. It just becomes cartoonish when you start to Drill down into what is needed for this to work.

Word of Wisdom, Age of the Earth, and Science Denial

John Dehlin 1:29:53 All right, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is if the Word of Wisdom is true.

Nemo 1:30:00 Yeah.

Mike 1:30:00 And this is just. You know, as an investigator of the church, when doing the discussions, I was. This is one that was told to me a lot, which is that Joseph Smith was one of the first people that ever knew that alcohol and tobacco were harmful to our health before anyone else could have possibly known. And to since learn that Joseph was effectively lifting the teachings of the temperance movement, which was right next to him in Ohio. It actually makes a lot of sense as to where the Word of Wisdom came from. But a lot of the text of the actual original revelation is just factually wrong. We would see that hot drinks cause health problems today, such as hot chocolate, coffee, soup, and tea. But instead, we have study after study showing the health benefits of coffee, while the church is allowed beverages such as soda and energy drinks carry way more potential health problems. If the church is true, then most of what we know about nutrition is wrong. Even though the evidence only continues to mount against the church's claims on the Word of Wisdom. Not only does the Original text of DNC89 get it wrong, but their reinterpretations are even worse because they don't even mention coffee and tea in the original revelation. And the church today bans both for arbitrary reasons. And as we talked about, it's about hot drinks, but you can't drink iced coffee. It really gets into this area that just makes no sense. And so the church needs the Word of Wisdom to be upheld by nutrition to be a true revelation from God. But even in their second interpretation, they're still getting it wrong. And so if the church is true, then a lot of what we know about nutrition is wrong. And it's hard to believe. And there are people that really do believe. When you talk to believing members about studies showing that tea has been having huge benefits, especially when you look at countries like China and Asia as a whole, and they're like, well, you know, someday they'll figure out that it really isn't. And so that is kind of the mindset you run up against. But so far, everything we're seeing, it's just that a lot of not just DNC89, but the reinterpretations just don't line up with being some sort of nutritional wisdom that we couldn't have known at the time. And so I think this is one where, if the church is true, you really have to rethink a lot of these studies and science on nutrition.

John Dehlin 1:31:59 Nemo.

Nemo 1:32:00 Yeah, I've. I just found a meme that I saw once upon a time. It's a couple of more missionaries stood and someone basically lays out how the word wisdom works. And I think it's worth sharing. Caffeinated sodas are okay, but coffee and tea are forbidden because the word of wisdom discourages hot drinks. It's not about the caffeine. But hot chocolate is okay despite being hot because hot drinks really means brewed drinks. Iced tea and iced coffee are forbidden despite being cold because they're brewed. But herbal teas, hot or iced, are okay despite being brewed because there's no caffeine. But then caffeinated sodas are okay, but coffee and tea are forbidden because it's about hot drinks, not about the caffeine. It's this weird circular logic that goes round and round.

Mike 1:32:42 Yeah.

Nemo 1:32:42 About this whole argument and, and again, it's not an old thing that's just being carried on by the die hard members. You've got people over the pulpit in conference saying because of one cup of coffee, they weren't able to be with their children in the temple and whatnot. So, yeah, it's a big deal.

Mike 1:33:01 Yeah, John.

John Dehlin 1:33:03 Yeah, that's good. And again, check out the Word of Wisdom episode if you want more details about what we're talking about. But so much of, so much of what Joseph Smith gave us is we're just commonly debated or understood beliefs and theories. There's an episode we did on, on the influences of, you know, on Joseph Smith and on Mormonism. And the Word of Wisdom is just one of many, many, many commonly held movements or dynamics or understandings or theories that, that like a sponge or, you know, as, as Terrell Givens would say as an inspired syncretist, Joseph sort of combined or merged or imported into Mormonism

Nemo 1:33:51 and not to be a hypocrite, having just downed a massive bag of Doritos. But diabetes is a huge problem in the Western world. And the book and the word wisdom doesn't address possibly one of the most dangerous. Well, one of the kind of most unhealthy substances we're dealing with at the moment, which is sugar. In fact, like the slide said, and as I've observed firsthand, massive sodas are not good for you, but they're perfectly permitted by the Word of Wisdom.

John Dehlin 1:34:18 Yeah.

Mike 1:34:18 Yep.

John Dehlin 1:34:19 Problem. Okay, well, let's go to a topic that was lampooned in the Book of Mormon musical to accept that Joseph Smith got it right at the Mormon Church is true. You have to believe that Adam and Eve lived in Missouri.

Nemo 1:34:34 Yeah.

Mike 1:34:35 And this is just. It's similar to the DNA example, which is that Joseph proclaimed that Adam and Eve lived in Missouri, which contradicts every single piece of evidence that shows that Homo sapiens came out of Africa. I know there are some studies that are showing that there might be some origins in Europe, but either way, there's nothing at all to suggest a human life began in Missouri. And if you're watching this, the picture on the right, that's church artwork. I put this is Missouri in there just on the text. Because when you look at that, you would never say, oh, that looks like, you know, ancient Missouri. But that's what the implications of Joseph Smith's revelations are from God. And so if the church is true and Joseph Smith is truly restoring long lost truth through God, and everything we know about the origins of humans is wrong, because they actually began 6,000 years ago in Missouri. And there is a reason this isn't taught in church anymore. And it's because it's so ridiculous against the overwhelming evidence that we have. But at the same time, this is still a revelation that Joseph Smith claimed was from God. And if he was a prophet, you have to believe that human life began 6,000 years ago in Missouri. There's no way around this.

John Dehlin 1:35:41 Nemo, do you. Do you think that's overstating it?

Nemo 1:35:44 No, I think that's fine. And I've spoken to church geneticists and DNA researchers about the origin of human life versus the claim. Jackson Cat, Missouri and there's no real good arguments. So you have to throw the modern understanding of the evolution of humankind. This addresses, this links back to the problems with evolution. This will throw evolution under the bus. This will throw DNA studies under the bus. Because all of a sudden, where human beings started and then fanned out into the world from the locations just shifted by a few thousand miles from Africa to North America.

John Dehlin 1:36:24 Which takes us to the next slide, which is that if you believe in Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church, then you have to believe that the earth is about 6,000 years old. Mike?

Mike 1:36:33 Yeah. So the church recently has began to kind of argue through apologetics that there were these pre Adamites who lived on the earth before Adam and Eve. So basically, Adam and Eve were created by God, but there were these pre Adamites. It's almost like God was kind of tinkering with how to get it right. It's almost like you're trying to create, like the perfect formula for a meal. And so you've got all these iterations and they basically are just meaningless. And then you finally get the real one. And the evidence is showing that this theory really only comes about because church leaders began to realize that the 6,000 year old belief is untenable. And this is compounded by Joseph Smith stating in D&C 77 that the Earth is 6,000 years old. And we are now in the winding up scene. And so the question asked to him is what are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals? And Joseph Smith says we are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries and the works of God, the hidden messages of his economy concerning this earth during the 7,000 years of its continuance or its temporal existence. And then he says, what are we to understand by the seven seals with which it was sealed? He says we are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh. And so apologists contend that we can just assume Joseph Smith didn't mean that that included the creative and preparatory period. But then you also have to say the humans who existed for millions of years on earth, we're merely like this, preparatory collateral damage. Right. That's paving the way for Adam and Eve. And so if the church is true, everything we know about the earth's dating, about life on earth prior to 6,000 years ago, is just simply wrong. And so the apologists try to shift kind of like what the meaning is of thousand years. They'll say, well, a thousand years is more of a symbolic, instead of actually meaning literally a thousand years, it's kind of more just meaning an overall time period. But at the same time, you got Joseph saying it from God. You would think if it was revelation from God, he wouldn't have to, you know, we're supposed to speak in the manner of our understanding. So why would he not say in the first period of time instead? He's very specific because again, that's what a lot of people believe, that each of these are 1000 years of each seal. This is not something that's unique to Joseph. And so if the church is true, the earth is really just 6,000 years old. And that's a problem if you carry that out to other aspects of basically everything we know about the world.

Nemo 1:38:53 Yeah, and if you go to the Scriptures, it's even more kind of laid out even more plainly than that. If you go to the Bible dictionary, it's the chronological tables 4000 BC fall of Adam. So there you go. So 4000 BC yep. 6023 years ago, Adam and Eve fell and left the Garden of Eden. And like you said, all the apologetics about how long they were in there and all that other stuff is, is to one side, but that's where the church pegs the date.

Mike 1:39:24 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:39:27 And so this takes us to a slide that I've snuck in here that neither of you have seen nor pre approved and I.

Nemo 1:39:33 Stop sneaking in on me like this, John.

John Dehlin 1:39:35 I did a few of them today. But basically what all of this amounts to is that if Mormonism is true, most major fields of science are substantively wrong and ill founded. And what I have for those who are just listening is, you know, a photo on, you know, a series of photos on the left hand side that include Albert Einstein, Dr. Robert Rittner, Egyptologist, archaeologist, Michael Koh from Yale, Charles Darwin, Madame Curie, you know, they're all on the left hand side. And then it's versus sort of Joseph Smith down H. Oaks, Russell M. Nelson and Iring. And you know, some people are going to call this ridiculous or unfair, but that's really what this amounts to. Are you going to believe the overwhelming body and history of science and the scientific method and scholarship, or are you going to believe these dudes that are predominantly from Utah or you know, in Joseph's case, an uneducated farm boy from upstate New York? You have to kind of pick one or the other because you really can't choose both. And to, you know, to, to the point, Mike, you and Nima were making. Modern Mormon apologists are going to try and explain away things like the 6000 year old Earth that Joseph Smith claimed or what, you know, Joseph's claim that he was translating golden plates. And they're going to talk about some sort of inspired theory of, you know, some other apologetic theory to make it so it doesn't need to be a translation. It could be in revelation. But why are we needing to completely redefine the words that Joseph Smith gave us? It shouldn't be necessary. His, his statements, his doctrines, his theologies, if they come from God, if he has any value or worth at all, his revelations, his doctrines, his theories should stand the scrutiny of, you know, a mere century of science and of scholarship. But it wasn't even 10 or 20 years after Joseph Smith's revelations where science and scholarship started disproving many of his core theories and beliefs. And that just doesn't make sense, Mike. Or Nemo, anything, you guys.

Nemo 1:41:50 The problem with such a new religious movement is that it exists as a direct contemporary with scientific thought and understanding and theorizing. Whereas the thing that generic Christianity and Judaism and other religions like that have on their side is how old they are. And you can kind of explain away back to ideas and understandings of the time and these sorts of things. But, but Mormonism is just too new in that sense.

Mike 1:42:14 Yeah, too new. They kept too many records. They kept too many, too many newspaper headlines. It's just, that's the problem. You know, these episodes we've done a lot of, especially when we talk about like first vision, priesthood restoration, we're focusing on materials the church has. We're not just pulling random people who don't like the church and saying, aha, look at these guys. We're saying, look at Joseph Smith's evolution on these stories. Look at how he changed this. Look at how the transfiguration of Brigham Young was completely wretched. These are all things that come from being a new religion that keeps a lot of records and that makes a lot of claims. Because Joseph Smith believed he had answers to everything. If he was asked a question, he would give you an answer. Like if, you know, you talk about the recent general conference when the Mormon church gets up and says, we know you want to know about Heavenly Mother, but we don't know anything more than the 500 word gospel topics entry on our website says. So stop asking. Joseph Smith would get up there and be like, oh, I know everything about her. Sit down, I'm going to tell you about her. And that really is the difference because we know today, the leaders today know that these claims are going to be tested and they're going to be proven false because they know, they don't know Joseph Smith, I think, I mean, if you read his writings, he believed the world was ending. So he's just going for it. And it really shows, like you said, the difference between being a religion that is old, without a ton of documents that you can really just draw directly from, and being a brand new religion making a lot of claims based on what you know in that time frame that are going to be tested in the centuries after. And it just shows that at some point you have to either say we're going to stick with that 1830s mindset of Joseph Smith and we're going to ignore all the evidence we have because we believe the church is true, or you got to say, all of these things are showing us this isn't true. And this is really the whole point of this episode is now we're saying we're staying on that side where the Church is. True. And now you've got a lot of. You got this massive mess on the other side. You've got to reconcile somehow.

John Dehlin 1:44:04 Yep. And yeah. And if that isn't enough, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is about the Masonic ceremony.

Masonry, Polygamy, and Joseph Smith's Marriages

Nemo 1:44:14 Yeah.

Mike 1:44:14 And we've covered this one in a few episodes. We have an episode on basically Masonry and the Temple endowment, but Joseph Smith is going to largely lift the Masonic ceremony when creating the endowment. And during this time, there were many claims that Joseph Smith was restoring a corrupted endowment which was carried directly from Solomon's Temple. And these are very early teachings from a lot of people. And the problem is, fair Mormon even admits that Solomon's Temple had nothing to do with the endowment, but it was instead used for animal sacrifice. And we covered this in a previous episode, but this is a question and answer. And they say, wouldn't it be more correct to say that Masonry came out of the endowment and the fair Mormon. I don't know his first name. His last name is Kearney, and he says it would be Greg Kearney. Greg Kearney. Okay. He says it would be. If you believe that Freemasonry has a continuous historical line from King Solomon's Temple to the current. Unfortunately, there is no historical evidence to support a continuous functioning line from Solomon's Temple to the present. We know what went on in Solomon's Temple. It was the ritualistic slaughter of animals. And so to make that worse, the Masonic ceremony did not even originate until long after that. Which means that the endowment ceremony could not have been restoring either Solomon's Temple or some early uncorrupted version of the Temple that was passed down through the Masonic ceremony. And so for the Temple ceremony to come directly from God, we have to ignore this evidence and declare that Joseph Smith's teachings that he was restoring a corrupted endowment ceremony that the Masons carried over time is true, and that Solomon's Temple originally looked like the endowment ceremony that the church introduced about 180 years ago. So this goes against everything we've learned since Joseph Smith. It goes against everything we've learned about Solomon's Temple. But again, it has to be wrong if the Temple ceremony was restored by God as claimed by the Church and Joseph Smith. And this is another area where, to Nemo's point, it's almost like it's too new of a religion to make these claims that we can then, through the next few hundred years, get more and more information on and go, yeah, that's not at all what it was. But Joseph Smith was very clear that he was restoring a corrupted endowment.

Nemo 1:46:15 You'll find masons who will tell you that the story about Solomon's Temple is just their origin myth and that actually they come from 14th century stone masons. You know, like that members of the organization will tell you that it's not like they believe that too. So the only person who's really saying that that is the truth behind Freemasonry is Joseph Smith and those who then sort of propagate that narrative.

Mike 1:46:43 Yeah, yeah. And. Oh, go ahead, John.

John Dehlin 1:46:46 And this is just a pattern that repeats with, with Judaism. Most modern Jews are going to agree that it's unlikely that Moses or Abraham ever existed. Or at least they'll admit there isn't evidence that they really existed. Most modern Christians, as we already mentioned, are going to agree that Mark didn't write Mark, Luke didn't write Luke, John didn't write John, Matthew didn't write Matthew. Like, you know, all of modern, most, most, if not all of the credible modern Christians or Jews are going to admit that the Tower of Babel didn't happen, that Adam and Eve didn't exist, that the earth is billions of years old. And yet Joseph Smith and Mormonism want to hang on to all that, just like they want to hold on to the idea that the Masonic Lodge temple ceremony was practiced by Solomon and Jews, you know, a thousand plus years before Jesus. When Jews themselves are going to disagree and Masons themselves are going to disagree.

Nemo 1:47:47 Yeah, you know, yeah. It goes back to that point I was making earlier, that because Mormonism's boxed itself into a corner where things have to happen as they literally say they happened. There's no wriggle room for them to say, yeah, Moses probably wasn't a real person, but there's still value in the books of Moses. Abraham probably wasn't a real person, but there's still value in those stories. You know, you can look at the Bible that way, and a lot of modern Christians look at the Bible that way because, you know, they can say, well, whoever those authors were, they were clearly inspired by a Christian message. And those are the teachings I hold on to. But because the Book of Mormon and all the things Joseph Smith claimed, he got them directly from God, it becomes very problematic when the holders of the things that he borrowed from disagree with his interpretation of it.

John Dehlin 1:48:32 That's right, yeah.

Mike 1:48:34 And you know, Nemo made a really good point earlier about the Book of Abraham when he talked about how even the Church, by admitting that the papyrus is dated much later, is kind of accepting the science, which really complicates the need to even say it's true. And we read this in the episode with Joseph Smith in the temple, but this is the Mormon Church's Gospel topics essay on Masonry. And it says by Joseph Smith's day, the boundaries between Masonry's early European history and its founding myths and traditions and had long since been blurred. And so what they're basically saying is that what Nemo said is the idea this came from Solomon's Temple was an origin myth that was completely not historical. And that got blurred over time as all ideological myths do. And Joseph Smith, as he's making these promises by the gift and power of God, cannot see the difference between history and myth. And so the church is literally saying they got blurred and Joseph Smith couldn't tell the difference. And that is a really good indicator that the church is kind of saying, yeah, Joseph Smith didn't know what he was talking about. But if the church is true, then you got to ask, why is God telling Joseph Smith that this is the original endowment when even the church today is like, yeah, no, this is not at all what it is. And that really is where we're seeing these problems kind of compound on each other.

John Dehlin 1:49:52 All right, let's go ahead and go to the next slide, which is that if Mormonism is true, polygamy, Polyandry, and even 14 year old marriages to child brides are from God and that the Bible got Abraham's story wrong.

Mike 1:50:10 All right. Yeah, so I think John snuck a few adjectives into the title there. But so, you know, we, we talk about polygamy a lot in our episodes and it's hard to know exactly what to make of polygamy from the Bible itself because. Or beyond the, beyond the text itself. But Joseph Smith specifically states in doctrine and Covenants 132 that God commanded Abraham to enter into polygamy when the Bible tells us it was Sarah who told Abraham to take Hagar to conceive a child. And so if the revelation of DNC132 is correct, then much of the Bible is just not accurate in that God is commanding these ancient prophets to enter into polygamy when there's absolutely no record of it in the Bible. You know, there is, there are people that will say that polygamy was kind of like a cultural practice, but there's no part in the Bible where God's like, we need these civilizations to enter into polygamy. That's Just not there. And so if the church is true, we have to believe that that's just somehow left out of the Bible by later scribes who are either embarrassed by it or because the cultural norms have changed, they've just gotten rid of it. But then we also have to believe that God was so concerned about polygamy that he sent an angel with a drawn sword to make sure Joseph Smith was marrying and having sex with enough young women, and yet not concerned about incorrect doctrines on members with black skin, LGBT members, or creating a bank that would fail shortly after launch. And so that's another area where you go in the Mormon Church. You have to believe that the God of Mormonism is so concerned about polygamy, is going to send an angel with a drawn sword to make sure it's getting done right, but not at all concerned about the systematic racism, getting the Book of Abraham translation wrong, misrepresenting biblical scholarship in that, again, is one of those areas where if you want to accept the church as true, you got to kind of try to find out how to reconcile this very disjointed priority of God is, I guess, would be the way I'd phrase it.

Nemo 1:51:54 And also, you've got the problem where early in the Book of Mormon, polygamy is condemned. The whole idea of taking polygamous wives is condemned early on in the Book of Mormon. So Joseph Smith translates this book where he puts his head in the hat and he reads the characters from the stone, and he reads them out loud and they're written down, and he can't move on till it's right. So it's a tight translation. So that was absolutely what God wanted him to write in that book. And then God would go on to contradict it a few years later by telling him, actually, no, polygamy's chill. Now go do that.

Mike 1:52:26 Yeah. And I've done an image on, I think on Twitter. But you know what's amazing is if you look at the change between the Book of Mormon and how it talks about polygamy, DNC 132, which obviously contradicts the Book of Mormon with regard to how God justifies polygamy as opposed to finding it to be an abomination, and then the happiness letter, which is Joseph Smith's letter to Nancy Rigdon, which we did an episode on, it really shows this really weird progression of Joseph Smith's how he frames polygamy through the voice of God. And what's amazing is I've talked about this in our previous episodes, but you Know, in the happiness letter, he says to Nancy Rigdon that anyone who opposes. I'm going to botch the words a little bit, but basically anyone who would oppose polygamy knows the order of heaven only in part. And then you look at the Book of Mormon, I think he says, anyone who calls it an abomination or abhorrent would know that order of heaven only in part. Then the Book of Mormon literally has God saying that. And so you could see that Joseph Smith here to get the justification for polygamy is literally throwing the God of the Book of Mormon under the bus. And it really just shows that if the church is true, all of these things, just to reconcile those, you're going to twist yourself into a pretzel and it really starts to show you the fingerprints of the person writing these things are doing so in order to get what they need to get, you know, in this case, you know, polygamous wives,

John Dehlin 1:53:53 which for me takes us to the next slide. That again, neither you, Mike nor Nemo have pre approved. I'm gonna, I'm gonna share the slide and then I'll ask you guys to tell me whether you're okay with what

Nemo 1:54:06 it's on the bloody loose. Bloody loose cannon, isn't he?

John Dehlin 1:54:09 I'm a loose cannon today, but I just wanted to provide a tiny bit of input. And, and these words are going to come across as really harsh. So Mike and Nemo, I'll let you check me on it. But what all, what to me, what all of this means is that if Joseph Smith got it right, if the Mormon Church is true, then God, the creator of the universe, ended up choosing a man, meaning Joseph Smith, who repeatedly behaved, you know, in a, in a way, in a manner that would be indistinguishable from an actual fraud. And, and again, these are very severe words as a sexual predator to be his, meaning God's most important prophet in history. And what I mean by that is just very simple. If John Dehlin in 2023, or David Koresh or Jim Jones or David Miskovich or L. Ron Hubbard, you know, pick. Pick somebody in the modern times. If they claim to see God, but then change the story significantly over time, if they claim to, if, if they had a history, a criminal history, which Joseph Smith did, and if they engaged in sketchy folk magic behaviors prior to claiming to start a church, which people like L. Ron Hubbard and Keith Renieri and others actually did, you know, if they claimed to produce scripture that was translated from ancient texts, but then modern scholars revealed these translations to be completely inaccurate. And if any man started, in addition to an existing wife, started taking other men's wives, teenage girls, 14 year olds, mother, daughter pairs, sister pairs, started taking them to wife, secretly having sex with them, and then lying about it, not just to their own spouse, but to the general public, if anybody behaved as, as Joseph Smith did in modern times, they would not only be disbelieved by Mormons as frauds, as criminals, but they would likely be incarcerated for life. And yet somehow, because we have been taught these things as Mormons from infancy, and because we have all these warm feelings and hymns and testimony meetings and grandparents who bear solemn testimony of the truthfulness of Joseph Smith, because we have all that cultural priming, all that cultural context to condition us to love and believe in Joseph Smith, then we give Joseph Smith a pass when we learn about his actual behavior. But, but my point is, my question to you, Mike and Nemo is how is Joseph Smith's behavior in any way distinguishable from a charlatan or from a sexual predator? Mike, I'll let you go first.

Mike 1:57:17 Well, I mean, as we've talked about in these episodes, I believe that he used fraudulent practices. We can show that. If you go back to our treasure digging episode, we literally have a story from Josiah Stowell, who was a believer in Joseph's ability as a treasure digger. So he's a, a positive source. He tells a story about how Joseph Smith, after they're doing this long dig because remember, he's on trial because Josiah stole. His nephew, I believe, realizes that this is not right. And so he takes Joseph Smith to court and Josiah Stoll tells the story about how Joseph Smith says he could see through the stone in the hat that the buried treasure is buried deep in the ground with a feather. And wouldn't you know it, the next day they go to dig and they find the feather, but no treasure. And so Joseph Smith's like, oh, man, that sucks. The treasure got sunk down to the ground by the guardian spirit, but the feather was there. So, you know, I'm the real deal, right? And I'm being facetious because as we talked about, feathers have a life underground. And I believe like three to six months before they fully decompose. So if buried treasure was with a feather deep in the ground, there's no way in the world it's going to be there when Joseph Smith diggs long after to uncover this buried treasure. So Joseph Smith right there in a story from a positive source, is using outright fraud. There's no way around that. And then you look at the polygamy stuff, and we talked about this in our episodes on polygamy. But Joseph Smith used tactics that are textbook grooming tactics and predatory tactics. So you might sit there and go, oh my goodness, sexual predator is such a loaded word. But by its definition it fits. If you look at the Lucy Walker story, Joseph Smith, Lucy Walker's mother, dies and she's got what, like 10, there's 10 kids in the family. There's a lot of kids. So Joseph goes to the father and says, leave the older children with me and the younger children we're gonna have with another family. And I'm gonna send you off on a mission to get your head right because you just lost your wife. And as Lucy is living with the Smith family, Joseph is teaching her secretly about polygamy. After she loses her mom, she has no father to talk to and she's in this vulnerable position as a 15 year old girl. And Joseph Smith's teaching her about polygamy in secret. And then after a while, proposes to her. She says no, or she, you know, kind of hesitates. And then he goes back to her sometime later and Sundays, you have 24 hours of the gates will be closed forever. Which means the gates to exaltation through doing this. And she then goes, I believe two or three sleepless nights, feels like she gets a confirmation, marries him, has sex with him. All of those things are predatorial grooming tactics. And so when people use the word groomer, that is by like literally textbook definition grooming. And so I don't want to be long winded here, but just to say that yes, there's evidence that Joseph Smith engaged in outright intentional fraud in his treasure digging days, then there's evidence that what he was doing as prophet was fraudulent. When you look at the book of Abraham, when you look at other aspects where he's making these claims that are obviously not true. And then when you look at polygamy, there's evidence and accounts that show Joseph Smith using tactics that would be absolutely considered grooming today by members of the church, by people outside of the church. And so they're loaded terms, but they fit. And so when you hear members of the church go, and you hear this all the time, they'll say, if God had waited for a perfect person to lead the church, then how could I ever hope to live up to it? And I feel like that is the most. It makes me sad because that is what you're conditioned to believe in the church, to think that you, if you find Fault with Joseph Smith, then you're not any better. We talked about that in our episode on, I believe, the one on doubts where the current church historians like, could you have done any better? And my answer is yes. Oh, my goodness, yes. Because I would not do this. And yeah, it's a really. It makes me upset because I hear that all the time where you bring it up about Joseph Smith will say, well, he was an imperfect person, and if God had chosen someone perfect, how could I ever hope to live up to it? It's like you just. If it was anyone else outside the church, to your point, John, they'd say, that guy belongs in jail. But with Joseph Smith, it's like, oh, my goodness, he was imperfect just like me. And it's like, no, no, no. He was a groomer who was using outright fraud. And he is not just like you. And the only reason we're trying to make that connection is to keep you from running because you realize that there are so many red flags here. And so I apologize for my tangent. I just want to make clear that when we use these terms, fraud and predatorial behavior, they are backed up by evidence.

John Dehlin 2:01:42 And I'd also refer people to the Happiness Letter episode, which also helps to illustrate Mike's point. Nemo, anything you want to add?

Nemo 2:01:49 I was just going to say the Happiness Letter and Helen Markimbell. That's enough to give him the sexual predator title. And then fraud, the treasure digging.

John Dehlin 2:01:57 I steal Nemo's thunder. I don't mean.

Nemo 2:01:59 That's all right. It's fine.

John Dehlin 2:02:00 Great minds, Nemo. Great minds.

Mike 2:02:03 Can I. Do I still have it up?

John Dehlin 2:02:05 Go ahead.

Mike 2:02:07 Yeah, I've got. I just. I don't have it on the screen, but I just want to read this. This is what I was referencing earlier. So in the Book of Mormon, it says, behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. Right. That's really clear. So we know that DNC132 then says that God justified them having it, which is really weird considering he's calling it abominable in the Book of Mormon. But in the Happiness Letter, he says, this is what he's saying to Nancy Rigdon after she rejects. Rejects his proposal. He says, if we seek first the kingdom of God, all good things will be added. So with Solomon. So that's your. That's your flag right there, that this is about polygamy. First he asked wisdom, and God gave it him. And with it, every desire of his heart, even things which might be considered abominable to all those, all who understand the order of heaven only in part, but which in reality were right because God gave and sanctioned by special revelation. And so this is a tactic that Joseph Smith is using the voice of God to tell Nancy Rigdon that, yeah, sure, the Book of Mormon says that polygamy is abominable, but the people who say that only know heaven only in part. And if you marry and have sex with me, then you are going to understand is right, because I am getting special revelation just like Solomon did. And those are tactics that are. I mean, as John said, those are used by every charlatan who sleeps with their followers. And so to then turn around and say that it's different because it's Joseph Smith, that's as we talked about, that's special pleading. And I just wanted to read that because that really reiterates that the tactics Joseph Smith are using are very textbook grooming and also predatory behavior. And to say otherwise, I think really, as we've talked about in this episode, it, it's flipping those definitions upside down because you just don't want it to be true.

John Dehlin 2:03:51 Amen. All right, which takes us to the next slide that I've added, which, which is sort of. I'll, I'll just describe it as saying the quiet part out loud. And, and ironically, what I'm about to say was, was said out loud, you know, whether it was by Bruce Armaconki or Joseph Fielding Smith or even the Book of Mormon. And it's only in the, in the recent few decades that the Mormon Church has sort of backed off this very bold assumption to the point where modern Mormons would be really hesitant to ever admit this out loud. But I think it's, it's face value, face valid, true, which is that if Joseph Smith was right, all non LDS or non Mormon creeds and churches ultimately are an abomination before God. And all non Mormon church or LDS marriages and religious ordinances are invalid. This means that non Mormon marriages don't count in heaven. Non Mormon baptisms don't count in heaven. It all is, you know, worthless, is not valid, is invalid, is false. And you know, it seems like a very bigoted thing to say. It seems like a very elitist thing to say. It seems like a very judgmental thing to say. But I just, is, yeah, but I just want to find any, any active believing Mormon to contradict me that in heaven a Catholic baptism doesn't count. That in heaven an evangelical Christian baptism doesn't count. That a Jewish marriage is dissolved. I challenge any active believing Mormon to contradict me there because they'll be literally contradicting the entire reason we do baptisms for the dead or temple ceilings for the dead. It's because we have to spend our lives and the millennium performing these ordinances because Joseph Smith himself declared them as invalid.

Nemo 2:06:06 Yeah, can I. Can I just add something onto that, please? Yeah. Which is. And. And I don't want to get too into this because it's quite sensitive and I haven't quite thought about enough to really get into a debate about it, so I want to tread lightly here. But there was a problem for a while with the descendants of the family members of Holocaust victims being upset that the. That they were being baptized posthumously as members of the church. Right. The proxy ordinances were being done for them. Rightly. So they were upset, upset by that. And so the church said they would stop doing it. But that's actually quite interesting that the church said they would stop because what the church is then saying is because of this elitist view that John's just put out, which is absolutely explicit almost within Mormon teachers, but certainly implicit. They've said, right, well, the 6 million Jews that died as a result of the Holocaust, they just, I guess, aren't getting eternal salvation. That is then the Mormon view, because they said, well, in order to appease the sensitivities of those still alive, those who are understandably upset, we will not allow those people to be posthumously baptized. But what that is saying within Mormon doctrine is just those people are going to the celestial kingdom. And I don't, as a believing member, I'd love, if you're watching this, to put in the comments how you would balance that. Like, I would love to hear how you balance that. Is that all right, John? What do you think of that?

John Dehlin 2:07:27 Yeah, let's get Mike in.

If Joseph Got It Right, Every Other Tradition Got It Wrong

Mike 2:07:29 Well, I was just gonna say we did our episode with Russell Nelson's Miracle stories, and RFM was on there, and he had a quote from, I think, Russell Nelson's first autobiography that he read where he literally talks about how Russell Nelson goes to the Holocaust site and he says something along the lines of, these are a lot of people we can baptize to save. You know, and so there is this view within Mormonism that, yeah, we got to clean up the messes of all these other religions. And, you know, to the most point, it's. This all is a very sensitive area. But this is what Joseph Smith claims during the first vision. He says, I always answered that I must Join none of them, for they were all wrong. And the personage who addressed me said that all their creed were an abomination in his sight. And those professors were all corrupt, that they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They teach for doctrines the commandments of men having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. And so fair Mormon actually says, Joseph did not claim that the churches of the day were an abomination. He was told their creeds were an abomination. And so if you look up the definition of creed in the Oxford Dictionary, it says a system of Christian or other religious belief, a faith, in other words, you know, the basis of a church. And so fair Mormon here is playing this word game of, Joseph didn't say the churches were an abomination, but just everything they stood for was. And so.

Nemo 2:08:39 Oh, Joseph didn't say anything. Jesus said it.

Mike 2:08:42 That's true. Yeah, exactly. So fair Mormon here is trying to be like, look, guys, Jesus didn't say that the churches were an abomination. Just every part of them was. It'd be like, you know, it's like,

Nemo 2:08:52 Mike is not an abomination. Just his hair, his mouth, his eyes, his skin, his bones, his heart, his lungs. Yeah, just those bits.

Mike 2:09:00 I didn't say that so and so was ugly. I just said that their face reminded me of a car wreck and their body looks like, you know. But I'm just saying, like, that is the most, like, ridiculous stance for fair Mormon to say, because they know full well what creeds mean. They know full well the context in which. Which Jesus apparently is saying it to Joseph Smith. And so, yeah, if the church is true, then God told Joseph Smith, every other church is an abomination. Everything they stand for is an abomination. Every other tradition or practice they have is an abomination before me. And just think about what that means. It's horrible.

John Dehlin 2:09:36 Yeah. And so I've got an image here of like the Pope ordaining someone, and it's crossed out with an X and a bunch of Muslims, you know, at the Hajj, you know, and that's crossed out. And a bunch of Jews observing Judaism at the Wailing Wall. And it's crossed out like, it's deeply offensive to say the quiet part of Mormonism out loud, which is that every other religious tradition is invalid and an abomination. Now, of course, Mormons will try and soft pedal that, like Gordon B. Hinckley once said, and say, well, let's just see what good they have and see if we can add to it.

Mike 2:10:13 But that's.

Nemo 2:10:14 But then Brad Wilcox and his ilk will just tread right in it and say, well, they're just playing church.

Mike 2:10:20 Yep, I was just gonna say that.

Nemo 2:10:21 Right, so there are people that will say the quiet part out loud, and it's deeply offensive when they do. And the public backlash to that proves your point, John, that when you say that quiet part out loud, everyone kicks off. Sorry.

Mike 2:10:32 Yeah, but, but I will say Brad Wilcox went out and he's been giving this talk over and over how all the other churches are in his quotas. They're just playing church. In other words, they're getting married, but they're not really getting married because it's all meaningless. Right. They're doing ordinations and baptisms, but they mean nothing because we have it. They don't. Right. That's an us versus them. Yeah, that's a Mormon exceptionalism. But then Brad Wilcox, didn't he just get promoted at the last General Conference? Like he got into a higher position? So, yeah, to Nemo's point, when that came out, I believe they took the Talk off of YouTube. They kind of took Brad Wilcox. They canceled a bunch of his speaking things because all of a sudden they're like, holy crap. These things he's saying are horrible. But then they quietly promote him later because he's saying what the church believes. It's like the same thing. Oliver Cowdery makes up the priesthood restoration story and a few months later he gets elevated to the number two in the church because he lied for the sake of Joseph Smith, which elevated Joseph Smith. So Joseph Smith rewarded him by being number two. And you're seeing the same thing here. To Nemo's point, you don't say it out loud, but you don't get punished for it because it's what they believe.

John Dehlin 2:11:29 Yeah. All right. Well, believe it or not, I have yet another slide that you guys haven't seen and that you have not consented to. But for me, it's an important summation of the points we're making.

Nemo 2:11:44 Dinner's going cold.

John Dehlin 2:11:45 I know. We're almost done. If Joseph Smith got it right, then modern day LDS church revelation is really an amalgamation of openly understood early 19th century social dynamics and that God's hand selected modern day prophets get it wrong on the really important things as often as they get it right. And that God's holy and chosen prophets often cave to social pressure. So whether it's, you know, the reversal of the priesthood ban on black people, whether it's the cancellation of the practice of polygamy, whether it's the reversal of the LGBT exclusion policy between 2015 and 2019. You know, pick any of those things and many, many others, including, you know, Mormon doctrine's denunciation of the Catholic Church as the great whore of all the earth and the. The great and abominable church. You know, pick your essential Mormon doctrine. It's as if the Book of Mormon musical got it right, that God conveniently changes his mind whenever social pressure gets intense enough. And a modern example would be, you know, when a whistleblower reveals that the Mormon Church has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Then all of a sudden, the Mormon Church starts to care about its philanthropic offerings, but before that, it gave very little, if any, charitable contributions with its hoarding of massive wealth. So. So, Mike, do you. Do you feel okay about this, this summation, or do you want to correct it or object?

Mike 2:13:35 No, I mean, we. I think from all of our episodes, this really is. What it comes down to, is that the prophets, seers, and revelators of the Church are limited to whatever knowledge is around them. Their worldview limits them. And that's why we talked about, even in a more modern term, Wendy Nelson, when she gave her interview after Russell Nelson became prophet, was like, he's become unleashed. He can do the things he always wanted to do, but now that he's president, he can do them. It basically is every prophet is a product of their time. And that's why the church is now saying that they age poorly, because they are literally products of their time. They don't. They can't see the future. They can't predict what's going to happen. And so they're limited to whatever worldview they've been in their whole life. And so they are always going to be an amalgamation of whatever they've learned, and most of the time, they've learned within the bubble of Mormonism. And so you can't expect them to get it right more than they get it wrong because they're just dudes that are just imposing their worldview in the name of God. They're not actually speaking for God. And if they were like we've talked about, you'd expect more and more stuff to get right. So I hope that to me, that's really. I think for me, it's a quick way. I've usually long, long winded to these answers, but I don't think you need to say much more than that.

John Dehlin 2:14:41 Nemo, do you think I'm overstating it with this slide. Be honest.

Nemo 2:14:45 Oh, you want, you want honesty because you get honesty. No, I think, I think it's actually, to me, very interesting, this idea where you said that it was 19th century ideas. And one of the arguments people might make is that, well, that's why God waited for that time, because it's those ideas that need to be restored. And that also works with the idea that Joseph Smith himself believed that the end of the world was nigh. But the problem is the end of the world has been nigh for the past 200 years and the world keeps changing. And I think Mormonism as it started then is then not designed to catch up with the world that's changed so much. Joseph Smith could have never envisaged just how much the world would change from when he established the church. So it wasn't set up to, to deal with this sort of social change that we've seen. That would be, that would be my thought. I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to say that that's what's going on here.

John Dehlin 2:15:35 Yeah, yeah. All right, so we've just got a couple slides left, but some of these I think are just, just really crucial. This takes us to one other conclusion that I arrived at literally in high school, that it just, that I put on my shelf. I basically just divided the number of active Mormons in the world by the total number of people in the world and realized that if Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church got it right, that the all powerful creator of the universe, God's eternal plan, ends up only being enjoyed in life by 0.0625% of his children. That God Almighty, who loves everyone and who is all powerful, who could create any plan in the universe for his offspring, creates a plan where less than 0.0625% of his children get to be members of his one true and only living church. Now of course that's supported by Jesus teachings, you know, exclusive teachings, and you could almost say racist or you know, sort of highly selective teachings that narrow is the gate and few shall there be that find it. And of course the highly selective chosen narrative that the Jews, you know, of all people, the Jews were the chosen people on earth. Forget about the Native Americans, forget about the Asians, forget about the Africans. It was the Jews who God preferred. Again, it's the Mormons who God prefers. And the problem with that is it leaves out 99.99 plus percent of the living people on the earth is. You know, again, this is saying the quiet part out loud, but But Nemo, do you think I'm overstating that?

The Trickster God Problem and Mormonism's Exclusivity

Nemo 2:17:38 Everyone wants to be the main character in their own story, don't they? And it's. It's interesting that God actively rejected the plan that would have brought all his children home, which means he is clearly playing favorites. And if you ever. Do you remember that bumper sticker? I don't know whether you ever saw it out in Utah. You must have seen it. My uncle had one on his van, said Jesus loves you, but I'm his favorite.

John Dehlin 2:17:58 Yeah.

Nemo 2:17:59 And I think there's extra layers to that when you're Mormon, because I will know there is a clear favoritism here because he chose to send me to a family in 0.0625% of the population. So, as I was told in youth, you won the genetic lottery. You were extremely lucky to be born into a Latter Day Saint family. And at the time, you take that to mean, oh, isn't that wonderful? And now I need to share it with other people. But actually, what that means is that statistically we're. We're fairly insignificant as a religion. And it doesn't make sense that God would only want this many of his children to return back to live with him, unless he just doesn't love a lot of them.

John Dehlin 2:18:36 Yep.

Mike 2:18:37 Yeah.

John Dehlin 2:18:37 Mike? What? What? Do you want to add anything?

Mike 2:18:40 I would just say, you know, I pointed this out in previous episodes, but for me, one of the biggest. I don't know if. I don't know if shelf would be a way to put it, but here we have, you know, this idea that we have this God that loves everyone, and all God wants to do is to get us on the path back to the Mormon Church. Right. And so then you have, like, say, the Book of Abraham, where Joseph Smith should be shown to be correct with time, that his translation is correct, and yet we have the opposite. And so the church will then say, well, if Joseph Smith translated the papyrus correctly, there'd be no need for faith. And I'm thinking to myself, if you have a God that really wants you, wants all of his children back to come back to him, why is he having his profit out there looking like an idiot? You know? And so it'd be like if I was running a company that was trying to sell whatever, and all of my salespeople were out there just being proven incorrect all the time. They would look at the salespeople and say, what are you doing? But they would look at me and go, what kind of plan do you have when you're sending them out there to say stuff that is just completely untrue. And I guess that's where I just go, does it make sense that God wants all of us and loves all of us equally and wants all of us to come back to him, yet at the same time as having the prophet get it wrong over and over again, which makes people not want to go back to him? And I think that is, to me, something that once it got into my head, I started noticing it more and more. And it should be the argument that you need faith and that's why God set Joseph Smith up to get the book of Abraham wrong. I think really is a giant red flag to say, yeah, this is either Joseph Smith making it up or God really sucks it at basically trying to get people back to him. Because the God of Mormonism looks very powerless and very incompetent. Unless you then realize that it's not actually God, it's just the people who claim to speak for Him.

John Dehlin 2:20:23 Yep. Which, which for me brings me to the final slide that you guys haven't seen that I really do think is, is an essential part of Mormonism because you present this whole, you know, 48 episode or 50 episode series to progressive Mormons or apologetic Mormons and they'll say, mike, Nemo, you're proving our point. The whole purpose of this existence is to have faith. If God made it obvious, if God made it consistent, if God made it fact based or evidence based, there'd be no reason to believe. So not only is God going to not provide the evidence you know of belief, he's going to even put landmines in your way of belief. Like making his core Mormon scripture undermined by science and choosing as the head of his religion someone who behaves indistinguishably from a charlatan and a sexual predator. And what that leads to is the sort of conclusion that if Joseph Smith and the Mormonism got it right, then the Mormon God is a trickster God. It's a God that is actually not just going to make it hard to believe. He's going to literally put bombs and hand grenades and landmines in your path on the journey to exaltation to blow you up at any moment. And I would add to that the CES letter, Mormon stories, podcast, LDS discussions. You know, Nemo, the Mormon God's going to just literally make it super easy for his chosen people. We've already got it down to 0.00625% of God's chosen people and even them are going to be peeled Away in the latter days by a PDF in CES letter or by a podcast with Mormon stories, or by a website with LDS discussions or a YouTube channel with Nemo the Mormon. How fragile is God's plan? You know, because, because all of us are accused Nemo. You're, you're accused, Mike. LDS discussions. You're accused of like, destroying people's faith. Mormon stories. I'm accused all the time of like, destroying people's faith. Well, if John or Mike or Nemo can literally destroy the faith of tens of thousands of modern day Latter Day Saints who are saved by the way, according to Mormon doctrine, saved for the last days to usher in the return of Jesus Christ based on their valiance in the pre existence, if we can can ultimately undermine God's eternal plan, well, then God is a trickster God. And some would say he's not much of a God at all. Have I overstated that, Mike?

Mike 2:23:39 Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this in so many episodes, but that's the problem that really comes from apologetics, because you'll say Joseph Smith translated the book Abraham incorrectly. He didn't realize it was just a common funerary text. And then they go, well, yeah, God didn't want you to think it was correct because then there'd be no need for faith because you just know. And it's like, what kind of world are you in where you're falling back to basically saying, yeah, of course God had Joseph get it wrong, you idiot. If he got it right, then everybody would just join the church. We'd be one happy family. And I'm like, yeah, that's just right. So, you know, again, to me it's not. And I agree with you because I think, I know I've used the phrase trickster God a lot too, but to me it's more like the God of Mormonism really is the people who speak for the God of Mormonism. And it just comes to this thing where it's always, it can't be God getting it wrong. So it's got to be that God needed to get you to get to you to be deceived so that you could learn a lesson. And it just kind of, at some point you just go, is it really that the God of Mormonism is so inept in his position that he keeps getting things wrong through his prophets? Or is it just that the people who claim to speak for him don't really speak for him? And yeah, I just, I feel like at some point you just, when you, you almost want to like when someone tells you that, you want to say, repeat that again. But now instead of saying the Book of Mormon and Mormonism, you just throw in Scientology or Catholicism or whatever other religion, and they would realize how stupid it sounds.

John Dehlin 2:24:58 Good.

Nemo 2:24:58 John, can you go back a slide? Yeah, I made an edit, but I don't know whether it will come through in time.

John Dehlin 2:25:04 Let me. Let me escape and then go back in.

Nemo 2:25:06 There you go.

John Dehlin 2:25:07 Okay, let me. Now. Now let me show the slide. Go ahead, Nemo.

Mike 2:25:11 Cool.

Nemo 2:25:11 So I added to the end of that. He's a trickster God, and he seems indifferent to us coming back to him because he was ready to cast off a third of his children from his presence to start with. Then he made it to. Only 0.06 to 5% of his children ever made it into the religion he says will get them back to him. Then he makes it really easy for them. Deceive, in fact, actively seems to be involved in trying to deceive them and trip them up and. And stop them getting back. So it's kind of just like he. He's enjoying his peace and quiet. Sorry to be flippant, but it's kind of like he's just chilling up there and he just doesn't want us back.

Mike 2:25:42 Yeah, almost. No, it's like I. I think I said this in a previous episode. I'm pretty sure I did, but the God of Mormonism is really. If you viewed the God of Mormonism as a father, you'd be like, that's a really horribly abusive, manipulative, bad father. And I know how just sharp that sounds to a believer. But just imagine you have a kid and you really want this kid to be on the right path and to love you, and you just keep tricking him and making him believe things that he finds out to be false, and then you blame him for finding it out. It just doesn't make sense. And then you're like, oh, you found out that that was wrong? Well, have fun. You know, being separated from me for eternity. It just doesn't make sense until you get to the point where you realize that the people who are writing these things and coming up with these ideas are just making it up. And again, I know that sounds very like a polemic and all that, but it just. At some point, to Nemo's part, when you really think of the God of Mormonism and how little he seems to care about whether or not people come back to him because he's throwing out all of these horribly wrong claims for his prophets, it just doesn't add up in any way.

John Dehlin 2:26:49 It does not. And that leads us to the final slide of today's presentation. We. We finally reached it. So, Mike, what's your conclusion to this entire episode?

Recap, Conclusions, and What If It Is Not True

Mike 2:27:02 Yeah, and just, you know, I think if you've watched all of these episodes, this is somewhat of a recap. There's obviously some new stuff, too, but so I think at some level it might feel kind of like a weird thought experiment to kind of start with what the church needs to have to be true and then kind of flip it upside down. But I really think it's an important one because we need to think about all of the things that had to have happened for Joseph to be a prophet of God and for the Book of Mormon, Moses, Abraham, doctrine and Covenants, be ancient or at least true records with some, you know, DNC is not ancient. And on the other hand, we have to think of the implications are if those are true. And it's one of those things I've talked about a lot on these episodes, which is when you have apologetics and you try to attempt to solve one issue, you're often creating other problems elsewhere that you don't actually ever intend to deal with. And with Mormonism, that really is problematic because as Nemo said, they're a new religion, very well documented, they make very testable truth claims. And over these last few hundred years, we've been able to assess so many of them through so many fields of study. As we talked about genetics, linguistics, Egyptology, biblical scholarship, archaeology, textual criticism, and so many more. And so it's one thing to look at this through the lens of whether or not Joseph Smith got it wrong, as we've kind of been doing through these earlier episodes. But it's almost just as problematic if we start with the assumption that he got it right and then apply it to everything outside of Mormonism, because it really shows not just how the truth claims don't hold up by their own evidence, but if they were true, how much chaos it would send, everything else that we kind of take for granted in our daily lives. And I think that is, for me, a good way to kind of look at some of these issues is almost a recap to say, let's just start with the equation being that it's correct and try to find out how we're going to make it balance out on the other side with everything else we know about the world, and it just doesn't work.

Nemo 2:28:54 Yeah, it's like I have to say, okay, this is my conclusion. It's the Kerry Muhlstein argument. It's like the Book of Mormon is true, and everything that comes from is true. And so I'll take all my evidence and make it fit that narrative. You're like, okay, how do I have to shape and bend and twist and mold the world to make the Book of Mormon work? That's what we've looked at in a nutshell in this episode. And I think it's been a really interesting thought experiment for me, for us to go, right, how do we have to shift the world, change the world to make the book a mortal Mormon work and the truth claims to the LDS Church work?

Mike 2:29:29 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:29:30 And the way I'd summarize is, you know, one of the most common metaphors in doubting, questioning, or disbelieving Mormonism is this metaphor of a shelf that you basically, you know, you're taught one version of Mormonism from childhood, or in Mike's case, as soon as you're baptized. And then, like every subsequent year as a Mormon, you are ultimately discovering things that are either the opposite of what you were taught or that you were never taught that are disconfirming to the church's truth claims. And so what you do is you take each problematic item and you put it on a metaphorical shelf. You put polygamy on a shelf. You put racism on a shelf, you put DNA on a shelf. You put the Book of Mormon problems, the Book of Abraham problems. You put misogyny and LGBT issues, and you just keep putting them on a shelf until your shelf collapses. And I just remember in the early 2000s, as I was starting to really have a major faith crisis, years before I started Mormon stories, I had never allowed myself to ask just a very basic question. What if the Mormon Church isn't true? Because I had all of these questions and problems mounting. And so I was spending all of this time studying apologetic arguments that that would force me to put my brain into a pretzel to try and make the Mormon Church true, to answer a thousand pinpricks or a thousand bee stings, as Richard Bushman once described it to me in contorted, convoluted science invalidating ways and ethically and morally invalidating ways. I had to do all of that contortionism to make the Mormon Church come out as still true. Or I could just sort of come up with one simple answer that makes it all make sense. Everything makes sense if you look at the Mormon Church through the lens of it simply not being true. And I think that's kind of what the entire LDS Discussions Project is, is possibly suggesting as neutrally and as objectively as we've tried to be. I think we're all asking the question, what if the simplest answer, what if Occam's razor points us to the possible conclusion that it just isn't true? Is that too bold, Mike? Nemo, if I, if I jump the shark?

Mike 2:32:10 No, it's just. That's what I mean. At some point you just go, what would you say if it was another religion? And to your point, what makes the most sense? And if you have to constantly redefine words or you constantly have to say other people are wrong in order to continue to make the church true, then the problem at some point is going to be on you because you're just not willing to see what's going on. And I think my dogs agree with me on that one.

John Dehlin 2:32:35 Nemo, anything you want to say to conclude?

Nemo 2:32:39 No, just that I don't know why I say that. I say no and then says, we all do it.

John Dehlin 2:32:45 We all do it.

Nemo 2:32:46 Yeah, it's bad. I, I don't like this. I, I don't enjoy this. I don't take joy in it. But as a logical exercise, I think it's been very thorough and very fairly conclusive that if you, if you, if you, if you take into account all the things that you have to discredit and disprove and disagree with for the Book of Mormon and the truth claims of the LDS Church to be correct, then ultimately you're left with one conclusion. Yeah, all right.

Mike 2:33:19 Sucks. But that's what it is. I mean, at some point it's, you know, I'll say one thing before we gotta go. I don't know if any of you have watched the show Scrubs. It's a awesome show that was on. I think it ended about 10 years ago, but it was a medical kind of like comedy with drama. And there's an episode with Brendan Fraser. He's a guest star and he's sick, and they don't know what's wrong. And so the main character, JD Played by Zach Braff, gets the results, and they're bad. So he goes back to the guy and he's like, I need you to rerun this test. And the guy says, do you want me to rerun them because you think I got them wrong or because you hope I got them wrong? And he says, cause I hope he got them wrong. And I think you see a lot of that with Mormonism where you see this evidence that tells you it's not what it claims to be, and you're just like, no, no, no, just redo it. Because I know that it's probably right, but I just can't get to that point of admitting to myself that I need to look at my beliefs here. And as Nemo said, it sucks. It's not fun to do these episodes. It's not fun to talk about polygamy and to talk about the priesthood restoration, the ban on those with black skin. But at the same time, for me, putting the information out there for other people to deal with it, hopefully in a more gentle way than I did when I was going through it, is the reason I wanted to do these episodes and the reason I did the overview was because someone asked me to. It's not because I woke up one day and said, I'm going to burn this church to the ground or I'm going to kill someone's belief. It was because a family member said, I want you to put this together for me so I can see all of it at once. And that's why I did it. I didn't do it to make money. I didn't do it to be famous. I didn't do it to be influential on post Mormon spaces. I did it because I was asked to by somebody that wanted to see it. And so it sucks. And I feel burned out doing these episodes because it is very tough, because I think about my experiences. I think about people I know, think about Nemo and John and all these people I've talked to and how much pain it's caused and how much pain it's caused with their families. And, you know, so when we do these thought exercises, it's not like I'm sitting there or Nemo's sitting there, John sitting there smiling, oh, my goodness, this is really gonna get someone. It's just how, for me, it helped make sense of it. And so I hope if you're watching this and you are a believer, you can at least understand. In no way did I wake up wanting to do this, to tear away someone's faith. I did it because I was asked to and because this is how it made sense to me, and how going through the deep dive was really a painful experience. And in a lot of ways, I'm hoping that this can help someone else going through it today, at least kind of shorten some of that pain by being able to get deeper into some of these issues than it took me to do it. And so if I can lessen someone's anguish and pain and torment over these issues, just A little bit, then it's worth it. And so I just hope if you're a believer, you can understand that. And I hope if you're not a believer anymore and you're watching this, you're getting something out of it that has helped the experience of going through this just a little bit better, because it sucks no matter which way you cut it.

Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes

John Dehlin 2:36:09 And I'm going to end also, as we begun, by encouraging those of you who've appreciated all these LDS discussions episodes to now, in addition to the ldsdiscussions.com website and. And the essays that are up there. If you appreciate or value what we've done, please drop Mike a line at LDS Discussion no. S gmail.com and let him know, because Mike probably doesn't understand how profound this series has impacted people and how important his work truly has been. And then also, I just want to. I want to encourage people to subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on Facebook, donate to Mormon Stories, podcast@mormonstories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor. And then finally, I want to encourage believing Mormons or apologetic Mormons. If you think we have gotten something wrong today, if you think we've jumped the shark, if you think we took things too far, if one of these slides you think is factually inaccurate or unfair, I want you to challenge us, write us, email us, let us know. You can email me at mormonstoriesmail.com you can email Mike, ldsdiscussionmail.com you can email Nemo at Nemo the mormonmail.com and tell us where we got it wrong. And we'll do an episode and we'll correct the error of our ways publicly if in any way what we have asserted today is factually inaccurate. Is that fair? Nemo and Mike, are you guys on board?

Mike 2:37:41 Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin 2:37:42 All right.

Nemo 2:37:43 Works for me.

Mike 2:37:44 Yep.

John Dehlin 2:37:44 Okay. Well, that concludes today's episode. It was a bit longer, but I think the things that we talked about today and the things that we added, I think are really important things to discuss. So thanks, Nemo and Mike, for enduring my additions to the slide deck. Nemo, we adore you and your insight and wisdom. Please subscribe to Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel and donate to Nemo@donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon. And please continue to support not just Nemo, but the entire Britvasion of Mormon and post Mormon, British YouTubers and podcasters. They all do amazing work. Thanks again, Nemo. We love you.

Nemo 2:38:30 Absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Mike 2:38:33 Thanks.

John Dehlin 2:38:33 All right. And Mike, we adore and appreciate you. Check out Mike's work@ LDSDiscussions.com and please email him with any questions or comments. Thanks, Mike.

Mike 2:38:42 Yep. Thanks everybody.

John Dehlin 2:38:45 All right. And of course, we do still have more episodes to air. This isn't the end of the LDS Discussion Series. We we not only may do one more this spring and these will be titrated out or spread out throughout the summer of 2023. Mike has committed to possibly coming back in the fall of 2023, and we've got a list of at least eight or 10 more episodes that we've asked Mike, we've commissioned commissioned Mike to consider writing and preparing. And if Mike can recover from his burnout, then over the summer of 2023, Mike will add at least a few more episodes to our canon to complete the LDS Discussions Project endeavor. So anyway, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. Thank you for your support. Thanks to Maven and Julia and Gerardo and the Open Stories foundation board and all of those who make Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation possible. We couldn't do it without you. And to conclude, please be good to each other, please be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast on Nemo the Mormon and on the LDS Discussions Mormon Stories Series. Take care everybody. See you soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.