Loading summary
Transcript189 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:19]
B
Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Adam Francisco, Scott Keith and Bruce Hillman to talk about the Church of the Latter Day Saints or Mormonism or I don't know, they have preferred titles. Is it they don't like being called Mormon and they want to be referred as the Latter Day Saints.
- [00:42]
C
They didn't, but they're cool with it now.
- [00:45]
B
Hard to keep up with, but the reason we're talking about this is I was a little bit surprised. I was doing research on trending search data across Google, across YouTube, across a lot of different platforms in Christianity in particular. And the Latter Day Saints kept coming up as trending topic, trending search, highest search in some cases under the topic of Christianity. I didn't really get a full explanation for this because the search tools don't tell you why people are searching things. But it became apparent to me that at least within the broader context of search engines, AI and people's sort of minds, the Latter Day Saints have snuck into the category of Christianity. There's obviously, if you're an orthodox Christian, if you studied theology at all, you know that there's some big problems with calling Mormons Christian, but they're insistent that they are. And obviously that narrative is working to some degree. And so I thought we would do an episode titled what Mormonism Gets Wrong and just talk about specifically, if we can, the places where it is in complete contradiction with Christianity, such that the title Christianity is inaccurate for it or the description Christianity is inaccurate for it. So not just that it's another denomination that's out there, but truly what would make it so that the Church of the Latter Day Saints is not a Christian church? Yeah, so that's, I gave everybody had several weeks to reinvestigate this issue and now we're just going to jump in. So I don't know if you guys want to take any turns, maybe we should go Adam first. This is an apologetics angle and question.
- [02:38]
A
I like this.
- [02:39]
B
We hit Adam with this. Adam, what is your fact. What is the big starting point for or the most basic argument maybe for why Mormonism is not Christianity?
- [02:51]
C
Well, I'm going to kind of flip that on its head a little bit. I mean if you go to more the Mormon sort of narrative, if we can call that Mormon doctrine itself, you know, they tell the story oftentimes and there's they, they, I don't know, exaggerate and, or maybe even over emphasize the story of Joseph Smith's first vision where he the story goes that this would be like 8D, I think it is. He's a 14, 15 years of age. And he grew up. He grew up in, well, all over the Northeast. I think he was born in Vermont, but eventually they settled in upstate New York in a town called, or maybe to. Maybe it's a county called Palmyra. I think it's between Syracuse and Albany, way up there. He's his household. His parents were very religious. You know, the community. This is early 19th century America. People are though they maybe church attendance wasn't high per the records that we have, but people are still very religious and spiritual. And Joseph Smith is as a young teenager wondering as he experiences lots of different Christian confessions or denominations, like which one's the right one. And it's said that when he's 14 or 15, he goes, leaves his. He decides he's going to ask God and he goes, leaves his home, ventures out into the woods to this grove of trees and asks God that God would tell him which church he should join. And he gets this first vision where God the Father and Jesus the Son appear to him and tell him he shouldn't join any of the churches because all the churches, the Christian churches, are false. And he's been elected to restore the church in its pure form. So in a way, traditional Mormonism says that all of Christianity, at least all the versions of Christianity before 1820, are false. Oh, what's interesting is because Mormonism is a restorationist movement, it believes it's restoring the church as Jesus envisioned it, as the first apostles organized it and indoctrinated it, if you will. It uses a lot of Christian language. You know, that's one of the things about Mormonism and why it's so easy, especially for somebody who's not attuned to the nuances of doctrine and systematic theology and so on. How easy it is to confuse Mormonism for Christianity because they speak the same language, but there's a completely different worldview behind it. And the way terms like salvation are understood, they'll use the same terms, atonement and so on, but they mean something entirely different by it. So it by its own standards is denounces, not like in a polemical way necessarily, but rejects all of traditional creedal orthodox with a small O of Christianity and sets itself up as the true aversion of Christianity. So that kind of answers your question, but in a roundabout way.
- [06:15]
B
I mean, it does answer it. The reason, maybe that doesn't seem apparent today is probably an apologetic evangelistic methodology that Mormons have picked up, which is if you can make yourself adjacent to Christianity and then just sort of the right denomination or the right perspective, you can warm people up to it faster. And some of the doctrines that are the most, they're just designed to attack where people might already be having problems or confusion with Christianity. Right. Are things like the Trinity where Mormonism kind of cuts straight at a difficult doctrine and just says, actually there's an easy answer. The Trinity doesn't make sense at all. There's just three gods. But if they can warm you up to that, they agree with the Bible. They have the same base principles as Christianity. The morality is the same, the people and the characters are familiar. The Old Testament characters are all there. Jesus is there, Satan is there, and all this struggle and sort of base myth of Christianity is there. Let me just take the hard doctrines or the confusing or the paradox or whatever it is and just make it plain to you. Seems like their effective strategy today, which is, yeah, go for the Trinity, go for salvation. They go at Protestants pretty good too because they have a pretty works oriented salvation as well. It's, it's just grace in addition to works. They have a replacement of the sacramental system with their own sort of baptism into their church as well, if you're a Roman Catholic. So there's a lot of adjacent things with Christianity where they just put a plain spin on it, if that makes sense.
- [08:05]
A
Well, and they use a lot of the same, like you said language, but it means something very different. So like they don't use the term Trinity, but they do use the term Godhead. And that refers to the three different beings, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who are one in purpose. So they're a Godhead, but they're not three in one as we understand Trinity. And they use Jesus Christ and they'll say he's the Son of God, but they believe he. There was a time when he was in a sense not. And he was made the Son of God and created, which is like, you know, an Arianism thing. So there's all these, the language overlaps and is shared. And so Christians who might interact with a Mormon might like interact with them and be super surprised, especially if they have a savvy Mormon that they're talking to be like, oh, we actually agree on a lot of these things when actually no we don't. But the language is being sort of used as an overlap to what Christians believe about it. And then just assumptions are made. For example, one of the big ones, Mormons will say, and I watch tons of YouTube videos of Mormons, like, actually doing this, like, on missionary journeys into people's homes and stuff where it was recorded. They will say, you're saved by grace. They will tell Protestants you're saved by grace. But the Mormon doctrine is you are saved by grace after you do everything that you can do.
- [09:29]
B
So it's literally like, do your best and God will do the rest. Like, correct.
- [09:33]
A
That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is. But they will say, we believe that you're saved by grace. We absolutely believe you're saved by grace. So it's very hard if you don't have a good understanding of your own Christian terms and then you don't understand how the Mormons are using their terms to really decipher what's going on in many cases, which is significant theological differences. Significant, not minor. And Mormons will say, oh, no, they're minor. They're not minor.
- [10:00]
C
Well, the worldview behind it, and I know Caleb doesn't like that word, but he's going to just have to get used to it.
- [10:05]
B
The worldview behind it.
- [10:07]
C
But as Caleb already mentioned, it's a kind of a tritheism, but then as you expand outward, it's actually kind of a polytheistic religion. So you got the Godhead that consists of three distinct, separate beings who are of all one will, but all of us are also divine. So it's a. It's a universe charged with deity in a. In a kind of a Western way. That's. It's, you know, it's. It's. As I've been reinvestigating it the last couple weeks, I'm like, there's so. It seems like there's just so many borrowings that. From, like Islam and like Eastern worldviews like Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Mormonism. It's very. It's almost like a. Well, a syncretistic kind of perennial type of religion, if you will, because it borrows from it almost like, you know, there's this old thesis that is. I don't know how strong it is in terms of the facts. I used to think it was quite strong. Now I'm not so sure. But that. Because Joseph Smith is quoted as saying he's going to do for America what Muhammad did for Arabia. And that's from, like, a newspaper. I think it is. Alvin Schmidt wrote a book called the American Muhammad on Joseph Smith that quotes the newspaper article which interviewed Joseph Smith. But it seems like what Joseph Smith must have been some type of genius or inspired by some sort Of. I mean, if you're visited by an angel of light, like Moroni, and you get a different gospel, it's maybe something more than just genius and maybe it's demonic. But am I allowed to say that?
- [11:48]
A
Didn't he die in a shootout? Didn't he die. If I remember right, didn't he die in a shootout in, like, a bar, Joseph Smith, or like a hotel with a bar at the basement? There was a saloon or something underneath. I don't think he was drinking, but I'm saying I thought it was like a hotel bar and he was shot.
- [12:04]
D
The history of Mormonism is very violent all around. I know you love the podcast. I recommend. Bruce. I have a podcast after the show I can recommend for you, but it's just. It's very. It's just very violent all around. I mean, it's a lot of. It's because they were getting chased out of places for their beliefs, and then a lot of it was their retaliation. Once they sort of would get to a place, you know, and hunker in. They very much then sought out some retribution for being chased out of other places. So. But again, it's, you know, not an unviolent time in which they lived either.
- [12:43]
B
Well, they still live. Not under, like a persecution.
- [12:46]
D
No, I mean, they're their founders.
- [12:49]
B
Yeah.
- [12:50]
C
Yeah. Was it one day? I'm trying to remember the. The history here, but it's as Joseph Smith leaves and they're heading towards paradise, the Garden of Eden in Independence, Missouri. They get to Missouri, but then they're kind of forced out of Missouri. I like to think. I don't know if this is true or not. I like it to think that it's because there's lots of Lutherans in Missouri, but it's probably too early for that. But they. Then they go to Nauvoo, Illinois, and. And they're given. Aren't they given, Bruce? Maybe you know this. They're given, like a Nauvoo, this territory in southern Illinois right along the Mississippi. And they stay there for a while. And then people are like, what. What's going on with these people? And they're 40 plus wives. And, yeah, they get chased out. Then they go eventually make their way to Deseret, otherwise known as Utah.
- [13:36]
D
Right.
- [13:36]
A
And that's all Brigham Young. That's why Brigham Young is so important.
- [13:40]
D
If you're driving through Utah and you see a Deseret Christian bookstore, just know it's Mormon.
- [13:50]
B
I. I kind of wonder why, you know, why is it gaining popularity? I mean, we could this could be the fun part of the episode where a little bit of speculation happens too. But it, you know, I'm certain that they've had some of the same decline in just religiosity amongst young people that most religions have had. But they seem to report also having growth every year. Not a lot 1 to 2% over the last 10 years, every year and something like that, but certainly some growth. And then obviously a lot of searches on it. And you also find that there's a lot of. If you're on Instagram, YouTube, all of the social media, there's a lot of these influencers who end up being Mormon. There's a couple of famous examples with like, what's that? That truck.
- [14:42]
D
The. Yes.
- [14:44]
B
And then Heavy D. Heavy D, that. There's this one kind of.
- [14:50]
D
He now does, like, recovery. He does. He now does, like, recovery stuff. Like he'll go out into the desert and find an old abandoned helicopter and he'll go recover it and fix it up. He also was one of the guys that. When was it here?
- [15:04]
B
Yeah, Arrowhead.
- [15:05]
D
Yeah, Crestline. When Crestline was snowed in, he brought in like several semi trucks worth of his own recovery equipment. Backhoe. Not backhoes, but front end loaders and bulldozers and stuff like that. And got people out of their houses. Yeah. And then you turn out and he's serious, serious Mormon.
- [15:25]
B
And that's only one example. It's actually kind of wild to me, the amount of these influencers who gather millions of followers on TikTok, Instagram and things like that, and after a year or two of gaining their fame or notoriety or they have something go truly sort of viral outside of their bubble, they'll then say, I'm going to talk about my faith on one of these things. After something happens, There's a solid 60% chance that they're Mormon. So I don't know if this is maybe part of the strategy where there's money dumped into it or something like that, but it is interesting to me that in the era of the Internet too, you can have these share your faith moments where you sort of just talk generically about Christianity, but you believe in opening, where if somebody dives deeper, they can find out what it really, really is behind it.
- [16:13]
D
I think your opening question. Adam's going to remember this because I'm sure we took the same class. Do you remember this book, Adam?
- [16:22]
C
You're not in my.
- [16:22]
D
Dr. Mansky's World Religions.
- [16:24]
C
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [16:28]
D
In that class, when you're going through world religions, whether you took it from Dr. Mansky or somebody else who just used a text. He would ask the two questions always that would be asked is what is their material principle and what is their formal principle? And you could sort of compare those. This is one of the ways to examine if something was Christian or not really, because the Christian material principles should be very, very, very similar and their formal principles should pretty much all be the same. You get a little wonky with Roman Catholicism there, but other than that, it gets in there. Material principle is just what's your core, what's your core belief? Like, what is the core belief of your religion? And the formal principle is just where do you get that information? Basically, what's the core source of authority that tells you that within Christianity, especially from our perspective on the material principle, we'd say something like, you could just use the solas to do it, really, that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, and that all who have trust in Christ Jesus for their salvation will be saved. You could go in further, and this is on account of his death and resurrection for you whatever. But that's the material principle. And the formal principle is we just understand this from the text of Holy Scripture, the Old New Testament, right within Mormonism, at least as Dr. Mansky puts it. And I think he was pretty good at researching this stuff. He just lays out succinctly here, their material principle is man as a pre existent soul is put on earth to gain salvation by obeying the laws and regulations laid down by the priests for the remission of sins. So in other words, it's not just kind of a workspace religion. If they're right about, if Dr. Manski was right about this material principle, it is 100% workspace religion. Like you are only saved by obeying the law as handed down by the priest. And then you get to their formal principle as to what sort of distinguishes it from Christianity. You have progressive revelation through church leaders, the Bible and the Book of Mormon. And you could probably actually add to that other sacred authoritative sources like the Pearl of Great Price and something called the Talmage, which is just the studies of articles of the faith. So that's very broad. I mean, that's going to be your basic distinction from Christianity. And then when you go, oh, and.
- [18:51]
B
Always has an opportunity for change, always.
- [18:52]
D
Has an opportunity for change, much like Roman Catholics. But beyond that, you go past that and you also get out of sort of the circle of orthodoxy, of Christianity. And you guys already mentioned it. It's not, it's a religion that uses Christian language but denies the Trinity. It denies the really the deity of Christ in the way that we use that, where he's part of the Trinity, part of the one true God, pre existent, all that kind of stuff that's all out. And the further you go down the road to actually asking for qualifications about what they mean by X, Y or Z, the further you get from it being something that should be called Christian at all. But to your question, why is it they use the words? It's pretty simple. They use the words they hear, especially evangelicalism, I think, use grace and faith.
- [19:45]
B
And Jesus, an emphasis on works and.
- [19:48]
D
Discipleship, growing, discipleship, growing in your faith, all this type of thing. And then people hear that and then they hear Jesus and they're like, oh, well, that's Christian. And if they don't sort of do the work to say, well, no, it's not really. It's this other thing. It's pretty easy to bring people into it. Why does it grow? You know, your heart leans towards the law, My heart leans towards the law. And that doesn't just mean, you know, that you want to be told you're wrong all the time. It means what you want to hear is that you have control over every aspect of your life, including your salvation. And this, you know, ticks that box like nothing else. And so I could see it growing. Especially in a time when people are trying to connect to something spiritual or more meaningful or to gain back some religion, they're going to lean this way unless sort of. I'm always a little worried about religious revivals because it's not usually people looking to hear again that they're saved apart from anything they've done. And that's a big distinction here. We used to call, and I believe this is Mormonism. LDS shows up in Kingdom of the Cults too. Adam, it used to be called a Christian cult. I mean, this doesn't mean that it's like Jonestown, you know, where we're expecting people to sort of go off into the jungle and drink the Kool Aid, but that it is something that uses Christianity as a jumping off point to deny Christianity. So he uses Christian terms, familiar Christian things and concepts as a jumping off point to actually deny the base tenets of Christianity.
- [21:35]
B
I've found that. Go for it, Adam.
- [21:37]
C
The one thing. So in revisiting all this stuff after many, many years of, yeah, no kidding me, not thinking about it, obviously the theology is problematic. But I think there's something else that's just as problematic that might lead to the bad theology and that it's basic epistemology and it's the epistemology that. Scott, you referred to kind of this revival kind of ethos where, and maybe we could just call it a, a spiritual kind of ethos where people just believe whatever tickles their itching ears or scratches, I guess, their, their itching ears and don't attend to like basic first things kind of issues like how do we know what we know and, and from where and why would we trust that? So I mean, and I, as I was, I watched this documentary on the Book of Mormon. I forget what it was called. And the whole time I'm thinking if your epistemology, your theory of knowledge or your understanding of how you know what you know is. Well, because it came from a book and that's it. I mean, to use the Rod Rosenblatt question is like, well, which book?
- [22:46]
D
Yeah, that's right.
- [22:46]
C
If there's not something else.
- [22:48]
B
Well, and the answer for that is sort of famously, it's an actual thing. It's the burning in the bosom. I had a reaction to the book.
- [22:59]
C
Yeah, well, yeah, so you got this. Let's just call it a feudistic epistemology that just sort of believes a faith because of faith and you add to it this sort of experiential dimension. It's powerful in a ethos that has, you know, that can, that lives sort of bifurcated lies where when it comes to our iPhones and things, we want like the latest technology, but when it comes to religion and philosophy, we just sort of latch on to whatever makes us feel good. And I think the question, I don't know if you asked it, Caleb, but we've been kind of hinting at it what's leading to the growth of Mormonism. And a lot of that is. I can't remember whether we had hit record yet or not, but Bruce said, well, when you've got like this encouragement to have lots of children, that's, that's obviously going to lead to a lot of growth. But you do see conversions to Mormonism. I don't know so much about the United States, but in Latin America, Brazil, the country of Brazil is usually highlighted as a country that in the last decade or so the Mormon population has doubled. It's been a long time since I've been to Hawaii, but I remember back in the 90s being stationed there, that the Mormon presence was everywhere and they were buying up all the industry and so on. But another thing that might be powerful about it Is in addition to. It plays on this, the natural opinion of the law, this natural inclination that we all have that our religion should tell us how we ought to live and give us like a nice checklist. It also is if you look at the messaging of Mormonism in our day and age where everybody recognizes, I mean, Scott, you know this very well in all your research that everybody recognizes that the breakdown of the family and what we Lutherans would call like the domestic estate. It's probably not just us Lutherans. People are looking for solutions to that. And boy, do Mormons really project that sort of family centered. There's a theological reason for it, but there's also an advertising or marketing reason for it. You know, that family is the center and they're right there. You know, in terms of our temporal, secular, civil lives, that families just when.
- [25:11]
D
They first attach it to their soteriology.
- [25:14]
C
Well, that's where it gets really strange.
- [25:18]
A
Well, and Mormons believe in, I mean, like you said, Adam, the family's really center. And where that comes out in some, from our perspective, strange doctrinal preference practices. One is they baptize dead family members, not the actual bodies, but someone basically becomes a surrogate in name and is baptized for the dead. The other thing is there's like three levels, levels of heaven, at least three levels, knowable levels of heaven. I think the kind of bad one which is like a Hades ish place is called Teles. Teles. Telestial I think is what it's called. And like the bad people kind of go there, but Mormons who were wayward or lukewarm go there too. But the difference is.
- [25:56]
C
But it's also kind of a salvation too. So don't. It's.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [25:59]
C
Outer darkness is like the worst place. But.
- [26:02]
A
Yeah. And. But in that place, if you were a practicing Mormon, but you were lukewarm and were sent there, Heavenly Father can call you up to the next level where if you weren't a Mormon, that's not gonna happen. But the other thing, that's the same thing.
- [26:14]
D
Not just pound a drum here, but kind of like purgatory.
- [26:18]
A
Yeah. But also if you're a woman, your earthly husband knows your secret name and he's the only one who knows it, and he's the only one who has the power to call you up to the true heavens. So as a woman, you cannot have salvation, that full salvation in the highest heaven without your husband.
- [26:36]
B
So you better make sure he's not lukewarm too. So you're not at the same level.
- [26:39]
D
Yeah, I guess so he can only say as far as he is.
- [26:43]
C
Yeah, it's a save word.
- [26:45]
A
So. So the, the husband has a tremendous amount of authority in these families. I mean, imagine the potential abuse that happens. Could happen and does happen sometimes when you're in a marriage and your entire eternal salvation is dependent on you pleasing that man. Because if you don't, he may choose not to call your name in the afterlife. I mean, that's a.
- [27:06]
D
It's irritating. It's kind of funny. Anytime you talk about. So we, we fall into this trap all the time. Specifically, the four of us fall into this trap all the time where we start talking about, take whatever. This is what you, you know, you will look at another. This is what you teach. Because we've read the book and this is what you teach. And then you run into one of them and they're like, I've never heard that. Like happens all the time. And I think the same is true here. I mean, there isn't the actual teaching something around the children thing. Adam, it's not just like an encouragement to have lots of kids. It's basically a mandate. If you want to reach that highest level of heaven and get your own planet and all of that, that you have at least seven. Right.
- [27:45]
A
You have to populate heaven with spirit children.
- [27:48]
D
Yeah. And you have at least seven. Once you have seven, you kind of, in the afterlife reach this higher level of atonement and you can get to be the God of your own little planet where you can then call your wives to that planet. Right. And blah, blah, blah, and all this stuff.
- [28:02]
C
Well, in doing that. I started to interrupt, but just to add to that, in having lots and lots of children, not only are you fulfilling like a commandment, but you're actually participating in God the Father's whole mission because you're bringing these. You referred to it earlier, Scott, the primordial souls, the pre existing humans that are just.
- [28:26]
B
Yeah.
- [28:26]
D
You're bringing them into physical being.
- [28:28]
C
Yeah. And so that they too can reach the celestial kingdom. Perhaps.
- [28:33]
A
I call him Heavenly Father because that's what they call him. Because he's not God the Father as we call him. He's actually a different being. He wasn't always, which is also interesting. He was on some other planet or some other space time continuum, like he made himself a God. He was the first in a.
- [28:51]
D
Sort of the same way you could. Right?
- [28:53]
A
Yeah. Well, you. That's exactly what you can do. You also can make yourself a God. Yeah. And you're following in his practice. You know, Jesus is the offspring of Heavenly Father and a female copulating. I've heard some people say it's the Virgin Mary, but I've heard some people say that's not true. It's just sort of a belief that a lot of Mormons have, but it's not official doctrine.
- [29:18]
B
But yeah, I think that trend is true again, which is take something that can sort of be difficult in Christianity, especially given like modern science or something like that, and go, just push it back, go. No, God's not eternal. He's not from nothing. He's, you know, he is from somewhere. He is an alien. He is from somewhere. And you just, you take something difficult for some Christians to wrap their heads around and you just explain it in the most simple terms possible. Instead you just take what would be like the, the easy explanation that's wrong that goes against Scripture and you just run with it.
- [29:55]
A
Here's the thing that I find the most kind of apologetic or, or from a Christian who might be tempted or interested in Mormonism to just think about. If you actually read like the actual Book of Mormon, it's not very big. I have a copy here. And if you read some of this stuff on like when Jesus shows up in 3 Nephi, it sounds very biblical. He calls himself the Truth and the Light. You know, you wouldn't have a big. If I just gave you this and didn't tell you this Book of Mormon and showed some verses, you wouldn't really have a problem with just this main page where Jesus shows up, for example. But the problem is that not only does the Book of Mormon have things in it that contradict obviously Christian orthodoxy, but within the Church, the Mormon Church, they have these other books like the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price and prophets who lead them, who come out with new stuff. And if you compare those things like the Doctrines and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, which are probably the two biggest other scriptural kind of sources for them, they contradict the Book of Mormon and there's lots of charts and stuff that you can go to. And a lot of ex Mormons talk about this, how Joseph Smith's how the Book of Mormon is far closer in comparison to the later books like the Doctrines and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price to what the Bible says than these books, but they count the Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrines and Covenants and certain things from. I forget, I don't know exactly how it works, but like general authorities from the LDS Prophet, whoever's in like those all become codified and doctrinal as well and they don't match each other. And again, it's probably what Scott said. I bet you the average practicing Mormon who isn't particularly astute like many Christians who are just true believing Christians but don't know all the details of their doctrine, probably haven't taken the time to look at this and see the.
- [31:53]
D
Well, some of it is intentional inner contradictions. Some of it's intentionally secret. That's true.
- [31:58]
A
Almost like the golden plates.
- [32:01]
D
Yeah, well, and almost everything that happens in the temple is intentional. Well if not everything is intentionally secret.
- [32:08]
A
And not any Mormon can go in the temple.
- [32:10]
D
You gotta only get to know it if you're sort of at a certain level and you gotta get permission even to do some basic stuff in like in temple. And so it's, you know it. There's no sort of more dangerous person to LDS than a former lds, you know, especially like a former high level lds because man, you watch some of what they do and read some of what they write and they. It's like a tell all book from a bad marriage. It's just goes all the dirty secrets that you didn't, you know, that you had no idea about this person and it gets kind of interesting but that you're sort of when you have so many sources of authority and when they can change that sort of, you know, that's ripe for that kind of thing, that kind of secretism and that sort of, oh well, this didn't work out so we'll change it. I'm always curious, like Caleb says, all these influencers. I've had these questions before because one of the big things in the past, and I think it probably still is, I don't really know is like the secret Mormon underwear, right. That there's this layer of clothing that they wear under their clothing that pretty much has to stay on like most if not all the time. Right. I'm sure you can bathe, but other than that. Well, you watch some of these Mormon influencer wives, right? They're in bikinis, straight up, like bikinis. I would, if my wife was wearing it, I'd be like, come on.
- [33:36]
A
And they believe that protects them from like demonic stuff too.
- [33:40]
D
Yeah, yeah. And that's part of the reason they were. Has that changed? Is this like sort of the view regarding black people and salvation and membership in the Mormon Church, that that's changed? Has this changed? You never. You know, I would bet that there's some of it that's very forward facing that it's changed and that some of it just sort of are practices, you know, that adapt through time. Much like in Christianity, right? Much like in Roman Catholicism or in evangelicalism or in Lutheranism, even sort of, you sort of get this degradation over time. But it's worse when more people can sort of make something official, right? There's more books that can make it official or modern prophets can speak into it and make it official.
- [34:25]
B
Or the more specific it is, the worse it is too. So like, if you were to take a Christian principle that's maybe changed, which is you could say something like modesty, that's at least, you know, it's got interpretation as to what does modest mean.
- [34:38]
D
And mores regarding modesty.
- [34:40]
A
Does that.
- [34:40]
B
Do they change? Does your culture, your society help determine what modest.
- [34:46]
D
You have to wear this underwear all the time.
- [34:50]
B
Then you have a. You have a sticking point. The thing I have to remind myself with Mormonism, I've actually asked a couple.
- [34:56]
D
People, what's up with the underwear? And you don't get a straight answer on it. Like a couple of modern Mormons, like, what's up with the underwear? Is this like a thing that's changed? You don't get a straight answer on it. Other than the one answer I did get for the ladies is that there was a modern movement to say that it could cause unhealthiness in specific regions. And that sort of. You can get an exemption, basically, you can get a health exemption.
- [35:19]
B
Yeah, that's interesting to wear a bikini. The thing that's hard with this is when we talk about this, it just seems so ridiculous on its face in a lot of the principles that it's easy to just dismiss. And one of the greatest examples of this is the not inaccurate south park episodes and spin off Book of Mormon. What was a Broadway sort of Broadway musical comedy play that, you know, like, as much as you don't want to be like, well, satire is a good representation. It's unfortunately well researched for them. And it helps point that it's sort of ridiculous on its face. But when it comes to something like a religion like this, I go, well, are there things in Christianity that to a particular culture this is just, you know, Western, you know, our secularism making this ridiculous on its face. Do I have to at least take this seriously? Like when I hear there's three gods, I just start to like, chuckle. I'm just, atheism is so normal and rooted for me that that just immediately sounds ridiculous. You go, oh, there's three gods. Wow.
- [36:25]
D
And potentially more.
- [36:27]
B
But you do have to step back and say, is it possible that there are three gods? Is it possible that you do need to wear magic underwear? Or another great example is treatment of women to modern society. We've made progress in this area. And so it just seems anytime you say anything that could be oppressive about women, you go, that's just ridiculous. Look how far we've come. Could it be true that women need to be obedient to the degree that Mormonism says they need to be obedient for their salvation? How would I discount that instead of just laughing at it? Because it's so different from Christianity, it's so different from American Western values. And that is what you guys have been talking about. It's about this source of authority. It's about, where does the information come from? Is there anything indicating that it is divine, that God has given them this information, that it is true? And the answer is no. The whole story behind the Book of Mormon and actually helps invalidate itself. You cannot see these texts. These texts could only be transmitted by the prophet through a very specific means at a very specific time and place. And so, no, you will never be able to verify whether that information is authentic, came from a spiritual source, a particular revelation, has any truthfulness. Contradiction is sort of, as you guys have pointed out, irrelevant. So if there were gross contradictions in the Christian scripture, we have a problem. Mormons are comfortable with a gross contradiction between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. They can pass it off on certain things, corrupt translations of the text, usually for the Bible is what is cited. They'll say, you know, the Bible is authoritative when properly translated and communicated. Where and when that Bible is, and.
- [38:12]
D
Seen in light of the other revelation.
- [38:13]
B
And seen in light of the other revelation. Or if there are contradictions, like Bruce said, between the Book of Mormon and these later spiritual texts they have or corrections made later, it's sort of irrelevant. And so when you add that up, it makes it hard to believe those other things that are already seemingly ridiculous, which goes, you know, maybe I could believe that there are three gods and I'm going to get my own planet if God spoke that. But their argument for why God gave them their scripture or how God or the means by which God gave them their scripture is unfalsifiable. It's not even just not verif. It's not even not just verifiable, it's unfalsifiable. There's nothing you could do in their system to prove that those were false. Whereas with our texts, you could falsify any particular book of the Bible. It's texts that have been passed down through history, that Christians have examined, have worked with through history, have faithfully compiled, have made corrections, have gone to other manuscripts, have noticed places, make. We make the notes ourselves about where there are differences and issues. It's, I think, there. Where I go. It is okay that this seems ridiculous at face value to me.
- [39:28]
A
Caleb. Can I just say, I think there's parts of it that are falsifiable. And I think ex Mormons who have converted to Christianity and now are apologists and evangelists to Mormons have pointed some of these things out. And I'm not an expert on this, but I can just tell you a few. For example, the golden plates that. So the quick backstory on that is that the Book of Mormon is named after this guy, Mormon, who wrote the story of. Of two tribes that existed in the Americas prior to Jesus's coming. And they fought each other all the time. And then Jesus comes and gives them a certain level of peace for like 200 years, and then one of them kills the other one or something like that, and there's only one tribe left. And then out of that one tribe, Mormon gets a divine kind of revelation and writes down the Book of Mormon on these gold plates, and then they get buried.
- [40:16]
D
It's also a convenient answer to a question a lot of young Christians have when they first hear about sort of Christianity expanding through the proclamation of the Gospel from mouth to ear. If you've taught this in a freshman class or even a confirmation class or something like that, you're expecting the question, what about the people who never, you know, what about the people in far off lands?
- [40:42]
B
Yeah. Why would God only do a saving act in that part of the world?
- [40:45]
D
And so this is sort of a convenient answer to that too, in a way. Just kind of throwing that out there.
- [40:50]
A
Yeah, yeah. So, but the plates are described in different texts, Mormon texts. And actually, if they are pure gold, which it says they are, like 10 people couldn't pick them up. I mean, so they say they have them and they have a replica that they've built, like in the temple in Salt Lake that you can go see, but there's no possible way with just like weight ratios and everything else, that that could be the other. But the biggest. Yeah, the biggest thing is actually that most of the Book of Mormon, the actual. If you read it, is about these two tribes that exist in America. America was where the Garden of Eden was. It was in modern day Missouri, and these two tribes coming from one guy from Israel named Leahy. And then it's split into two tribes. They live in Americ America, kind of separate from all of Israeli history. And so Book of Mormon, much of it is that history. And there's the battle all the time, these two tribes. There's all these wars and big battles and stuff.
- [41:42]
D
Are they the lost tribes? Aren't they the lost tribes?
- [41:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, but here's the thing. Here's how it's falsifiable. There is no archaeological evidence at all for any of this. There are no swords. There are no battle sites. I mean, it talks explicitly about like certain steel swords and stuff that are used. There's no steel here that from those time periods. There's no mass migration of people like it says, the sites that it says where battles happen. There's no evidence at all.
- [42:09]
C
You mean there weren't elephants in pre modern America like the Mormon says?
- [42:14]
A
So I would say that parts of it are falsifiable. Obviously you can't.
- [42:21]
D
You can't.
- [42:22]
A
When it comes to spiritual claims, you can't. I mean, but with any religion, you can't. You can't falsify that per se because you're making a scripture.
- [42:30]
D
It's only falsifiable though, if their epistemology opens it up to it. So if you say, hey, if this battle happened in Missouri, we should be able to find archaeological evidence of this battle. But if they say God has hidden.
- [42:44]
A
It, well, their text would have to say that, right? That would be the only way you could get away with that.
- [42:50]
B
So my point of a lot of this is like when it comes to the golden plates, for instance, it's unfalsifiable in the sense that you are not allowed to have access. Only particular people can have access to what the plates do.
- [43:01]
D
They claim that they have them.
- [43:03]
A
My understanding is they. I thought they did have them.
- [43:06]
C
No, they're giving back to Moroni.
- [43:07]
D
Yeah.
- [43:08]
A
Are they?
- [43:08]
B
Okay, see, look again. Again, unfalsifiable. Of course.
- [43:12]
D
Of course. We don't have these plates.
- [43:14]
B
The angel has them.
- [43:15]
D
I thought I had heard too something about the. That God had hid.
- [43:18]
A
But they still have all the translation equipment, right? The stone and all that?
- [43:22]
C
They have Urum and Thummim.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah, that I don't know.
- [43:25]
C
I think they were given back to Moroni too.
- [43:27]
B
Look at this. It's as bad as I think it is with the falsifiability, maybe worse. Yeah, but it's also that you can't be in the system and question it and like falsify it. Right. So you could be a Christian. And I hate to do this, but look at a particular book of the Bible and say, this might not be the best text we have and still remain a Christian. I don't think you can really do that with the Book of Mormon.
- [43:59]
A
Well, an example of that would be the census in the New Testament. There's a lot of debate over that census. You can be a Christian and be like, I don't really understand how that fits. And you wouldn't be told that you've lost your salvation and you're a horrible Christian for questioning something like that.
- [44:12]
C
So I have an example of what we've been talking about that's not Twitter based or TikTok secret.
- [44:19]
D
Well then can it be true?
- [44:20]
C
Mormon housewives or whatever.
- [44:21]
D
Can it be true then?
- [44:23]
C
So this is going back over a decade ago, maybe even two decades ago. I just finished reading Greg Kukle's book Tactics, which is a book like saying, hey, Christian apologetics. In our day and age, a lot of the stuff remains the same. But our initial approach in apologetics, rather than assuming we know what somebody who claims to be a Muslim or a Mormon or whatever believes, we should probably let them do all do the talking up front by asking just basic questions. He, he, and he, he offered up some suggestive questions and like, they're kind of, there's a hierarchy. And the last one was kind of the epistemological question, you know, like, oh, so tell me, why do you, what led you to believe that? Right. So anyway, read the book was on a plane. I don't, I can't remember exactly the details, but was somehow in or going through Salt Lake City and a guy next to me, or a guy sat down next to me with his wife and we're waiting on the tarmac for like an hour or so. And he turns to me and introduces himself and I introduce myself. And he asked why I'm, that's like.
- [45:33]
D
A nightmare for me.
- [45:34]
C
Yeah. Anyway, I want to try to make this long story short. You know, I told him I'm just traveling through. And he goes, he said he was from Salt Lake City. And then he asked me, he goes, are you a Mormon? He didn't ask me if I, I was lds, but are you a Lutheran?
- [45:46]
D
Well, look at you.
- [45:47]
C
Well, and I, I responded, I may have like chuckled a little bit. I can't remember. But I said, oh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm a Lutheran.
- [45:55]
D
It's worse than that. I'm A Mercedescent Lutheran.
- [45:57]
C
Yeah, no, I'm from the other cult. Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. But he, anyway, we talked for, I don't know, our flight was like two, three hours and we exchanged email addresses. And the whole flight he, I'm just asking him questions, tell me more or what's it there? And so on. And he would, you know, he told me the basic stuff, but as we get in the conversation, he would preface a lot of things by saying like he hit slap me on the knee and say, and you're going to think that this is really crazy. He told me about the planet Kolob or something like that.
- [46:29]
D
I do think it's crazy. You're right.
- [46:31]
C
I'm like, anyway, we exchanged email addresses. I still get a Christmas card from. Every year we send him a Christmas card. One year he sent me a gift, a quad. That's the King James version, their King James version of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Doctrines of Covenants and pearl. Great price and a leather bound like real expensive edition. And we've had email exchanges.
- [46:49]
D
Do you send them a really expensive edition of the Book of Concord?
- [46:52]
C
No.
- [46:53]
B
No.
- [46:55]
C
So finally over an email, we're going back and forth. I remember distinctly asking once, because he's a lawyer in the Salt Lake City area. I said, you know, we've been talking all these years and I've, you know, I'm always amazed how strongly you believe in, in these things. But you never answer my questions when I ask you why you believe it. Like on what evidence or what grounds do you believe all these things? And he responded, and I think I saved the email in my AOL Saved Emails folder. He said, well, when it comes to my life as a lawyer, of course I follow the rules of the practice and evidence, baby. But when it comes to my religious or maybe he said, spiritual life, I just have faith. And I think, I don't know, maybe I'll just sort of make it up. But I think that's when I really became irritated with what we might call Feedism. If that's your, if you believe things regardless of what the evidence says, you could believe whatever the heck you want. And if you're, let's say you're a Missouri Synod confessing Missouri Synod Lutheran, you better thank God you had the right parents or grandparents or right circumstances. Because that epistemology, if that's your epistemology, put you in Pakistan you'd be an Islamist, or in Salt Lake City you'd be a Mormon or what have you. So sorry, I should get off My stomach.
- [48:18]
D
That was good.
- [48:18]
B
No, it is very good.
- [48:19]
A
No, no, that's important because I think a lot of people do think when it comes to comparative religions, like what we're doing in this episode, that it really is just a pissing match between a type of fideism. Like, well, you believe that because you grew up there and you believe that. But it's all crazy. And part of it, I will say it is all crazy. I mean, everybody. Caleb, you were talking about this earlier, but I would just say this. Everybody's to the other. Everybody is strange, right? Like nobody. Nobody has.
- [48:43]
B
Christianity's laughable to somebody who.
- [48:45]
A
Every belief system is strange to the person who holds a completely different one. I mean, that's just. I mean, people who are, for example, pure materialists, I think that's strange.
- [48:54]
D
The only one that's really strange is Christianity. This is the whole thing. Christianity is the only one that is really strange. The rest of them are basically the same, dressed up in a different dress. Christianity is completely different. It is. It is the only religion that tells you the gospel, which is that apart from your works, God decided to save you through his only son, Jesus Christ, and that only through God given faith in him do you have salvation. Every other one is going to put together for you a list of things that you have to accomplish in order to maybe gain some favor with some deity type entity in order to have something that we would call salvation. Christianity is also completely unique in this other one way. When we're talking about falsifiability, it's the only one that gives you the code to break the system. If Christ be not raised, we are of all men most miserable, deceived ourselves, we deceived others, and our faith is in vain. It's the only one that does either one of those things. So it's the only really weird one. The other ones are still the same. And when you take Christian words and you try to make them just like every other world religion, that's when you know that it's not Christian anymore and that you're in the realm of a Christian cult again. This isn't like Jonestown. We're not expecting to go out into the jungle and do crazy things. But it just means you've taken our words, you've changed them, and you've made another system out of them or a system out of them that is just like every other religion on the planet, even though yours has some kind of weird alien stuff in it.
- [50:30]
A
You know, I think this is always what happens with these sort of like restoration slash, replacement religions.
- [50:36]
D
Yeah, I'd say this is replacement.
- [50:38]
A
Yeah, it really is sort of replacement, but it relies upon sort of foundational presuppositions that people in certain cultures aren't going to abandon. Right. Because they've just been inculcated as part of the culture. You could see this with, you could see it with the Gnostics within early Christianity, but you can certainly see it in Islam. You can see it here in Mormonism.
- [50:59]
D
Well, this is heavily.
- [51:00]
A
It's a bait and for me it's a bait and switch kind of thing. Right. Because it's, it's. People have questions about their own faith and religion that don't match with their experience and either they don't want to do the hard work to suffer through that process of finding those answers or they don't have access to a good pastor or teacher or trainer who can help them through that process. And so along comes a, in air quotes prophet, someone who says, well, I can make this make more sense for you. So what's happening? It's the, it's the Garden of Eden, right? It's I'm going to create some more doubt. Did God really say I'm going to give you certainty? And then once you buy into the sort of comfort of the certainty that the prophet gives you now you're completely primed to believe whatever things are crazy because it's worth it, because you now have this certainty, because your questions have been answered in the areas that you couldn't get answers to before. So I think in some ways I'm overstating the case. These replacement theologies come about from a failure to do apologetics well in certain areas to insiders. So apologetics is for outsiders and insiders. But I think when it fails insiders, you open yourself up to these kinds of people who come in promising certainty and answer to the questions that you just can't get an answer for in your own tradition.
- [52:19]
D
I bring it, I used to bring it up all the time, but I'm going to do it again. It's a cultural reference which is now extremely dated. So I apologize to the young people in our aud.
- [52:30]
C
I get the cultural reference.
- [52:31]
D
You will because it's around the same, it's around the same time as the tactics book, around 2012. It's the Ken Ham, Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
- [52:40]
B
Oh, that's dated. Am I old?
- [52:42]
D
It's more than a decade old now. I mean, and basically it's just a debate between a TV personality and a Christian apologist. Right? Or a Christian pastor. And this science guy asks him, is there anything. Bill Nye asks him, is there anything that would make you not believe your Christian faith? And Ken Ham just blurts out, there's nothing. Nothing could cause my faith to be shaken. All of us who have done any thinking on this are sitting there going, paul gives you the thing. When he gives you the thing, what he's doing there is very smart because he's at the end of the day telling you, this is so true. Go look for the bones. I mean, that's how true this is. Go ask the people. You know, it starts giving you a list of names that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection. This is so true that you can go interview the people that saw him. And you can go to the tomb of Joseph Arimathea and check it out. You can interview the guards, you know, the whole nine yards. And don't you remember that crazy guy.
- [53:45]
A
Though, found Jesus's bones in the ossuary?
- [53:48]
B
I think, well, there's nothing.
- [53:49]
A
No, I forget.
- [53:50]
B
Yeah, there's a documentary telling about the way people reacted to that, which is you sort of did have two Christian reactions. You had the hell, yeah, my faith is unshakable. Our faith is unshakable. I told that science guy, I know Jesus could never get out of my heart. And then you had the apologetics people going, my word.
- [54:10]
A
It's also kind of a false question, though, because you can't say what will convince you to stop believing in something. I mean, I mean, yes, you're right, Scott. Like, there's an objective criteria, kind of hypothetically speaking, like, yeah, if we actually found the bones of Jesus, of course that would do it. But if you're asking for, like, well, what would make me not believe something? Well, I don't know when the evidence piles up to such a fact that it's no longer compatible with what I think is truth. I mean, you haven't presented that evidence, so how can I tell you what it is?
- [54:40]
D
That's an answer. That's an answer. And for you, that evidence, I would assume, is going to revolve around whether or not Jesus actually died and actually rose. Correct? That's the answer. Come on. That's the answer. Right, but my point is only Christians can give that answer. What are the Mormon going to say? I don't know when the burning in my bosom stops. It's probably stopped a hundred times, you know, over the course of them being a Mormon. And yet they still hang on.
- [55:04]
C
I had a Birmingham yesterday.
- [55:08]
D
But it'd.
- [55:09]
C
Been a long time since I had some whiskey. So it burnt. Burnt my bosom.
- [55:12]
D
That'll do it. Oh. What did Rod used to say? How do you know it's not the bad pizza you had last night?
- [55:19]
B
I used that actually to a Mormon missionary who did the burning bosom. I was like, it's just feeling. Just whatever.
- [55:27]
D
Anchovies.
- [55:28]
A
That's as old as Charles Dickens. Remember Charles Dickens with Scrooge and these? And he sees Jacob Marley and he's like, you're just an old potato. Just an old potato.
- [55:39]
B
I told this. He never came back. So maybe his bosom still burning.
- [55:44]
D
It's hard to wait three weeks. Well, he brought up Charles Dickens and in my head I'm just like, Dickens is a. That's tough. Tough question.
- [55:57]
A
But he takes a long time to say it.
- [56:00]
B
The interesting. I guess the interesting wrap up here is Christians can do themselves a disservice by making Christianity more like Mormonism, by creating our own burning in the bosom. And so.
- [56:12]
D
Which we do all the time. Stop it.
- [56:15]
B
So, like the validation of your faith is not how well your Christian walk is going, not how happy you are to go to church, not how blessed you feel when you see your family and things like that.
- [56:27]
D
All these things can be true and great. And great.
- [56:30]
B
And I hope. Yeah. And we experience them, but they are not the pivot for whether or not something is true. And so that is. I think that's where when you do, like we've all been saying, when you do comparative religions, that's ultimately where you have to go. You can't just. Just do the. As Bruce was saying, the what's ridiculous battle you have to go to.
- [56:50]
D
Can I do a.
- [56:51]
B
Whose source of information is actually liable.
- [56:54]
D
You know, modern conservative Christians hate that somebody who is a woman will say they're a man because they feel like a man. And that that feeling is an ultimate truth that changes their biology and that we all then have to acknowledge that their biology is what it isn't because they had a feeling. This is no different. If you make your feeling about something the arbiter of truth, the ultimate arbiter of truth in any proposition, it leads you there. And that's why Adam is so annoyed with fideism in this one area, because it makes a special area of knowledge and area of life that is not open to examination by evidence feel good about it either. Once you've done that somewhere, you're open to doing that everywhere and anywhere. And then what you've done in society is you've made the only epistemological benchmark feelings. And this is where we are. Everybody who's a conservative Christian hates it, while at the same time many of them participated in this one area of their life.
- [58:09]
B
Oh for sure.
- [58:10]
C
Can I put a plug in for a blog article that was published Friday?
- [58:14]
D
Yeah, it's a good article. I think I read it before you published it.
- [58:17]
C
Not done in a corner at the 15:17 blog is sort of just my just sort of cursory notes on this as I've been agitated for it over it for like 20 years link. I need to write it.
- [58:28]
B
Book link will be in the show notes.
- [58:32]
C
Perfect.
- [58:33]
D
It was also the main top item on the Daily email today from 1517.
- [58:40]
B
So many of you maybe already have seen it.
- [58:42]
C
I didn't see it.
- [58:42]
D
If not, go sign up for the daily email.
- [58:44]
C
Yeah yeah yeah. Buy some books. Go to the bookstore. Buy some books too. These are the Academy.
- [58:50]
B
The people who make us on YouTube.
- [58:52]
D
Follow us on like and subscribe.
- [58:54]
B
The people slowly hitting in on their podcasts as we as we do this. Hey but we do thank you for listening to this episode of Think of Ella's podcast. We appreciate your time. We will be here next week with a new topic we record out of order with how these things get published. But you know, we will have seen many of you in San Diego in the next week too. So we hope to talk to you, enjoy some live podcasts and some conference talks and things like that. We will catch you next time. Bye. Sa.