Spiritual Witnesses

hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Mormon stories podcast I am your host John delin it is April 27th 2023 and we are now on episode 43 of our series uh titled LDS discussions where we bring on Mike from the website ldsdiscussions.com and do our best to analyze Mormon church truth claims as objectively and as thoughtfully and as dispassionately as we can today we are going to be covering a really important topic and the topic is spiritual Witnesses or Mormon testimonies and uh it's kind of an epistemology discussion about how do we know things and joining us as always on the panel to share with us his wisdom as an adult convert to the Mormon Church who learned more about the church after he left is Mike the founder of the LDS discussions.com website hey Mike hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining us how you feeling today Mike good this is a goofy topic so we're gonna do our best to um kind of go through it and just kind of go through at least from my perspective the the elements of spiritual Witnesses and and um so I know if you're watching this as a Believer I'll just get out of the way this one's a tricky one it's a difficult one but hopefully as you watch it you'll understand that we're not necessarily trying to tell you that what you experienced didn't really happen um because this one this is an episode that when I did the overview on the the website I remember just being like uh this is just kind of a goofy one to do it it made me feel kind of weird because I have to relive some of my own experiences but at the same time we'll get through it together and uh hopefully at the end of it we'll all come out at least even if you don't agree with what we're saying at least understanding where we're coming from absolutely we're going to try and answer the question are emotions reliable you know things to base beliefs upon and or uh evidence our emotions evidence upon which you can base a worldview and I think that's important uh really quickly for those who were just dropping into this episode without having watched the previous 42 episodes uh we have created a podcast feed entitled LDS discussions that on Spotify is both audio and video also on Apple podcasts you can you can just consume the LDS discussions podcast series independ of the Mormon stories podcast feed and you can share it with others independent of the Mormon stories podcast feed in in those ways there's also a playlist on YouTube where on the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel there's a LDS discussions playlist where you can watch all these in succession and have them all grouped we do recommend that if you haven't watched the previous 42 episodes that you consider stopping going back and watching them because they really do build on each other um and uh and and again we hope you share it with with everyone around so that's kind of the LDS discussions intro we are also very grateful to have with us as a part of this series The Nemo the Mormon hey Nemo hi everyone how's it going Nima it's not too bad not too bad I can't complain good Nemo uh has an amazing YouTube channel called Nema the Mormon On Again YouTube Please Subscribe there and also while you're at it please subscribe to the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel and we always appreciate your Super Chat donations and just donating uh through mormonstories.org or you can donate to Nemo he has a donor box link where you where do you find that email donorbox.com forward slash name at the moment hey mother Mormon okay all right so uh Mike how do you want to set up this episode we'll just dive in this one's a goofy one so like I said we'll dive in I mean goofy not in a this is gonna be silly but just an it's it's a tricky one so we'll just kind of dive in and uh give it our best shot all right so let's go to the first slide and so just to basically kick it off this is something if you are a member of the church if you've been a member of the church you've heard um the phrase spiritual witness a lot and it's really hard to necessarily just Define it down to a sentence but a spiritual witness in Mormonism uh effectively is that the Holy Ghost can let you know if something is true through receiving a feeling that will confirm it as true and this is most commonly illustrated by moroni's promise in the Book of Mormon where the reader is asked to pray with the sincere heart and God will manifest the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon through the Holy Ghost to you and we've had an episode on personal revelation where we spoke about how the idea of personal revelation is that you can get like more concrete answers to questions um whereas the spiritual witness typically is a confirmation of the truthfulness of the church or through its leaders or through its doctrines um through a warm feeling so in a lot of ways um a spiritual witness is a feeling you get that you interpret as God confirming to you that something is true or something is false and within the church it's always almost always going to be whether or not the church is true whether or not the Book of Mormon is true um and so in a lot of ways spiritual Witnesses has always been taught to me as a warm feeling a warm feeling in your bosom that warm feeling that makes you just feel connected to the Divine that's confirming to you the truthfulness of something and so that is kind of the framing uh for this episode of as to what we're looking at as opposed to personal revelation which might be something like um you know sitting down and praying and saying um what job should I take and you feel like you're getting an answer from God like a still Small Voice that says you should take you know the first job that you were offered and not this second this is more about confirming the truthfulness of the church itself yeah and I'll just say from and this we make touch on this in some other slides but I'll just from a Mormon perspective there are two things that come to mind in terms of how I was taught uh spiritual experiences work and then how I was taught to teach investigators on my mission how the Holy Ghost and the spirit Works uh the first one is Moroni it's a it's a scripture in in the Book of Mormon in uh the book of Moroni uh chapter 10 verse 4 which basically says that if you want to know if if anything's true but specifically The Book of Mormon uh you can pray about it and if it's true uh Heavenly Father through the gift of the Holy Ghost will cause really intense strong warm feelings to come into your heart A tingle down your spine but but you you will know that something is true when you pray about it and feel this overwhelming sense of emotion and it's something that literally I took so seriously that when I when I read the book of Mormon as a 16 year old I knelt down uh by my bed and prayed to get what uh would be called a spiritual witness and in my case it actually never came I did feel very strong emotions during testimony meetings at church when I would hear choirs sing uh when I would go to youth conference and once very profoundly when I went to a specific General Conference that really resonated with me and that became the foundation of my testimony are these strong emotions that I ended up feeling during other experiment cultural social and musical experiences uh within my Mormon experience but for me moroni's promise failed but I was taught that that's how spiritual experiences work within Mormonism the only the only other thing I'll mention is a scripture that I was taught from the New Testament galatia 5 22-23 was part of the Scripture Mastery uh set of scriptures that I learned when we studied the New Testament one year in early morning Seminary and it basically talks about the fruits of the spirit being love joy peace forbearance kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control and basically what I was taught was that when you're feeling love joy peace kindness goodness in your heart that's the Holy Ghost so um and then and then of course when I went and served a mission we would try and get other people to feel those feelings and immediately if we could get them to feel those feelings show them a film strip of families or forever uh have them read the book of Mormon and pray about it uh teach them hopefully a very charismatic emotional you know discussion within the the Mormon missionary discussions and if we did our job if the song was powerful if the prayer was powerful if the teachings were powerful as soon as an investigator would feel that emotion we would say did you feel it that's the holy ghost telling you that the Church of Jesus Christ LED any Saints is the one true church that is how I was taught spiritual Witnesses and the Holy Ghost work within a Mormon context now Nemo I would love to hear if your experience was similar or if it was different it was similar from a missionary perspective we were taught you know what helping someone understand and when they're feeling the Holy Ghost is the way it's kind of phrase to us and it's essentially yeah teaching them that that positive feeling is that's the Holy Ghost so but I think what you're alluding to here John and what's going to become the Crux of this episode pretty much is just how amorphous this so so it's moroni's promise and things like that are often put forward as an equation um if you do the XYZ and you receive this outcome then it is true uh if you receive this feeling and that feeling is left so open-ended um because it necessarily it must be it's not like it's it's not like it's a very specific feeling you know you will feel like someone has tapped you on the shoulder when you know it's true and that's just it's universally applicable to everyone it's not as cut and dry as that which I think is what lends itself to this whole discussion we're about to have Mike I'm curious how you were taught as an investigator uh the Holy Ghost works yeah Universal experiences um I took the discussions in high school and I was constantly told when you read the book of Mormon at night pray after you read it and ask if it's true um obviously there was a desire from the missionary Sabbath to get me to agree to be baptized and that was not going to happen um not because I didn't believe but because I was living with my parents and at the time I didn't really feel like it would be a good idea to get baptized into the church um until I went to college because I was living with my parents they were not believers they weren't like against the Mormon church or anything it just was one of those things so for me it was more about cultivating that witness of the Book of Mormon and um during the discussions they would always ask if you've been praying every time you read and I'd say yeah and it took weeks before I even felt anything and it was one of those things where I think um I look at it now differently because I look at it through the lens of of everything we're gonna talk about and everything we have talked about in these earlier episodes but you know there was that moment where all of a sudden it was it was weeks of reading a little bit every night I'd read you know a couple chapters a night like 15 20 minutes and um and all of a sudden you know you sit down you pray and you're really thinking about it and I think at that point I was really starting to wonder like I wanted it you know it's like why am I not getting it and then you feel it it's just like that feeling of of inner strength and her peace whatever you want to call it um and then once you get that and you tell the missionaries you felt something all of a sudden they know they know they got you and so then they they go yeah that's it that's it now we gotta do this I'm gonna do that and I think to Nemo's point it is something that's different for everyone some people um might say that it's you know you hear that voice in your head like this is true some people it might be that warm feeling um some people it might be that you're walking through the grocery store and you just have that tingling and you tell that to the mission like yep that's it that's the spirit and um and I'm not trying to downplay I'm just saying that it is really not in any way something that you you're gonna follow this exact path and get to it and so the missionaries really are uh when I took the discussions it was always about like what are your goals you know your goal is to be baptized right and so then they say okay how do we get to there and um what are you doing are you reading and when you read are you praying and when you pray do you feel anything and then as soon as you say you feel something like yep that's it and so um you know for me it did it took a few weeks and I I you know I he's looking back on him like I don't know quite what it was but it was a nice feeling inside like Yep this feels good this feels right and uh and then from there it just kind of you know moved on to to continuing to read and continuing to take the discussions and then eventually get baptized yeah Perfect all right so it sounds like we we shared similar understandings of how the church taught spiritual experiences work what what I'll what I'll introduce now before we show the next slide in the video is what I realized very early on in high school because once I once I started uh feeling very passionately about Mormonism and wanting to share it with kids in high school I grew up in Katy Texas which was a Baptist largely a Baptist town and so you know I'm in a high school with 1600 kids and most of them are Evangelical Christians and so I wanted to Bear My Testimony to them and I was sure that if I beared a solid testimony to them about the church about the Book of Mormon they would feel the Holy Ghost and then they would convert but what I what I very quickly found is I would I would try and talk to them try and get them to read the book of Mormon and they would say John I've already received a spiritual witness that that my church is true like I I went to an altar call and felt the spirit there I was reading the Bible and God told me that my my you know Second Baptist Church of Katie was the true church and all of a sudden I went back to my Seminary teacher and I'm like wait a minute why is God sending them a different Holy Ghost message than I got and then it would quickly descend into well you know Satan is really good at counterfeiting what the Holy Ghost feels what you John felt is the real Holy Ghost but then what they felt is a counterfeit Holy Ghost and because Satan is is very uh deceptive and all of a sudden I thought well that's really hard to know how do I know that they're not right and I actually received the counterfeit satanic inspired Holy Ghost and that's where the epistemology sort of um uh conflict started emerging for me is because I was I was reflective enough to realize that everybody in the end feels like their holy ghost or their spiritual confirmation is legitimate and if I step out of my bias which is my parents and my grandparents and my community and my friends everyone uh pressuring me to be Mormon if I step out of that and try to objectively look at how do we really know what's true that's where the question question comes and that leads us to our next slide Mike do you want to introduce this slide really quick yeah this is just if you are deep into this stuff you've probably seen this video before but to me this was one of those videos uh when I first started doing the Deep dive that was just so powerful because as John said one of the things about being a member of the church is that you are kind of told that these spiritual Witnesses are really kind of unique to Mormonism and so this video is going to highlight how really all different religions and some Cults um utilize the idea of a spiritual witness to discern the truth of their beliefs and so if you've seen it before hopefully you don't mind watching it again if you haven't seen this this really is just such a very powerful look at how common these experiences are between not just religions but but you know what we would all agree are pretty bad Cults and so um when I came across this video I'm watching it and you're just like oh oh oh crap you know like this is not unique and then you start to see the same some of the same elements in how we bear Our Testimony versus how others do um and and I really think it you know this is something we need to watch now at the start of this episode so as we talk about all these different elements afterwards hopefully it helps the helps to make more sense of the fact that it's not unique to Mormonism and it's something that we all are going to deal with in our lives in different ways um not just with with even with just religion in general hey about this video first um for those who are watching it you're going to get it immediately because what you're going to see and hear are a bunch of people lined up Muslims Jews Evangelical Christians Mormons fundamentalist Mormons members of the flds church they're scientologists they're just going to be lined up one after the other burying their testimonies and you may notice some subtle differences between them but but it's only visual cues that tell you what church they belong to I think what I'm going to do Mike and Nemo if you guys don't think this is a bad idea I may audibly mention uh what church uh or religious tradition they're affiliated with just so that those listening will have that cue um you know for you know relative to those who are watching it visually but but in some ways that's part of the profound that's part of the profundity of this video is because what I think you might find is that 60 to 70 percent of these testimonies are almost virtually indistinguishable from each other uh because what it turns out is that everyone who is very committed to a religious tradition um and who Bears testimony about it uses almost identical language to describe what they feel and how they came to feel it and why they feel it so that's that's the first thing the first disclaimer you'll get more um we'll put a link to this video in the show notes but you'll get more from it if you watch it uh but we'll do our best to help that the only other thing I'll say is that the audio leveling on this video is not great Nemo is really annoyed by the audio leveling on this video clip so some clips may be louder than others and we just apologize in advance uh about that and yet Nemo anything else you want to say before uh before we we show this uh show this clip um just that yeah I think what what John said the fact that if you John weren't to mention who is in this or who is saying it or what sect they're from you might not be able to tell I think he's actually telling in itself yeah all right so should we start Mike yeah just give it a shot and like I said this is this is really what we're gonna base the whole rest of the episode on so I think this is really important and if you've never seen it before I really do think this is one that will be a little bit kind of shocking to see yeah and it's like it's like a 12 minute video right Mike so it's a little bit longer okay but it's super important it really is and if you if you have seen it before you could go get a glass of water whatever and come back in 10 minutes but otherwise I really do think this is a must watch for anyone who's trying to kind of figure all this stuff out yeah or just fast forward and we'll include a link to the actual uh to the actual Standalone video we'll include a link to it in the show notes all right here we go let's roll the video I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contest of these parties of religionists I was one day reading the Epistle of James first chapter and fifth verse which reads [Music] any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God I giveth to all men liberally and afraid of not and it shall be given him the best way of finding truth is simply go to the origin of all truth this is a Mormon testimony please now this is who do I have to follow Scientology the Catholic Church to the Prophet Joseph Smith The Seventh-Day Adventists Bang I started to have a very strong feeling now this is Judaism missing something and seeking something and at the same time noticing that he sees the world in a different way it really had such a profound impact on me that I started to do a lot of reading and very quickly reading about Judaism the pieces started to fall together where I just felt like I had found my way home I have a very short answer to people who ask me why on Earth would you want to convert you know to Orthodox Judaism and I say because God told me to having converted not once but Twice first to reform and then to Orthodox Judaism Rabbi shmuli yankovitz is something of an expert on conversions both of my conversions were incredibly intense and transformative and in my experience as a rabbi this is the norm and a friend of mine who was praying for me at that moment came to me to me took pity on me and asked her son to save me and I knew after that that the cancer was gone that I should sin no more and shortly after that I knew I was called to join the Catholic Church a church I'd never stepped foot in so we were doing it meditation myself and this is Jim Jones The People's Temple I felt this explosion of energy go with my spine from behind there's this life bang and I turned around and I saw this picture and I said who is that she goes oh that's Papa Jim he's the most loving man I've ever met in my life and so I knew that that I had to find Jim Jones and people's Temple and finally at one point Seventh-day Adventist God I want you I want truth more than I want this world and once I made that choice I made that surrender all the Tor mile all the struggle everything lifted I had no idea the cross I really had no idea what Jesus Christ had done for me no idea of the Plan of Salvation all I knew is I came face to face with God and he told me this is what I had to do and once I made the choice I didn't have a qualm I didn't have a doubt I'm surprised I'm surprised at such a young age there was something more out there that this website or this book or this topic there's more to it and I remember there was a it was like a voice in my head you know and I realized the prices of God and the goddess or the universe trying to tell me keep going you're almost there you got it just you've hit the mark and you just keep digging you know about it and it's just been such a spiritual journey for me um I love it every single bit of information I read about it there's not one thing that I've read that I'm like oh that I wouldn't do that or that's not how I feel about it um I I love everything about Wicca and about Witchcraft and I really really feel like this is my path my calling in life when I went to a kingdom Jehovah's Witnesses feel the love and sincerity and warmth of everyone in there right away and it put me at ease foreign [Music] Jehovah's done so much for me personally I want to help as many people benefit from that same relationship with our God every day I studied there was like Scientology from the cup of knowledge and I just became more powerful as a spiritual being I just have amazing knowledge and a Viewpoint that is 360 degrees and it just stretches From Here to Eternity we should appreciate the music here I don't waver from because I know exactly what I know and if you just sit there with that and go I am one of the most lucky fortunate beings in the entire universe they feel good there's nothing like that it works really will change your life and it will make the lives of those around you that much better it's extraordinary after I got all the physical stuff handled then I still had all this like worry and concern with it and so I went and I got Dianetics to address it it's not a problem anymore there's no pain there's no I'm not concerned about it I play basketball all the time I run I mean it's almost as if nothing ever happened it is because of Dianetics and that's I know that both my parents Buddhism uh before their track Ashley made a prayer to to Buddha um just to keep their family safe and to make sure that they they were successful in their escape which which I think gave them strength and courage to move forward and to really just find a better a better life for their family he's a bringer of Truth Divine truth I feel that he is the Messiah he's the messenger of God's truth um to help us wake up yes he is just discovered that I've only discovered that yes since I've been on this path through AJ's teachings that's how we come to God he's writing I'm Jesus dealership remember being there and just the intense feeling of some my soul mate someone I feel very connected to suffering immensely um although I feel I suffered more than he did um but just because of the development in love that he had at that time but for myself it was excruciating to watch basically the annihilation of the person that I love the most whatever I think about him now I just cried out I'm starting to have a it's all like an emotional realization of who he is it's just it's overwhelming because I know that only God can save me but at the moment I feel that you know he's saved me through his teachings and his Truth and Love that I haven't experienced through anyone else of course there are times when the spirit Mormon or LDS when I was 14 and prayed about The Book of Mormon I could even get the words out I just felt the spirit and my heart just really strong and and I just felt so filled with light not everything is like that but as as I read the scriptures or as I hear truths at church then I you know it's confirmed to me in my heart that these things are true and so your testimony just grows little by little and so like I'm reading through the book The Book of Mormon and like [Music] and like happiness you know and it's just kind of like impressed on your soul and then the cool thing is it's not something that happens once it's something that happens over over and over again asking God when I went home that night I opened up the Book of Mormon and this morning reading it and I just had this warm feeling come over me that I knew was from God confirming that the Book of Mormon really is true and that it's really his work and because of that I know that the LDS church the Mormon church is the True Church of God it's his work on this Earth I found an archive called the Montana archives and contains the Splinter Group at the LDS church and building in it testified of Jesus Christ it says in the in the preface that I should ask God if it's from him pray about it and he would tell me if it's true I great about it and I um received a confirmatory feeling just like I had felt with the Book of Mormon that the book of hackath is good and true and valuable just like Book of Mormon I couldn't distinguish that feeling from anything else that I'd felt previously it was a spiritual confirmation and I remember kneeling down in my living room and just crying I've been searching for another break off LDS group of this work and of this church and and his tonight I got my witness and it's burning within my soul how important this work is and how true it is I know it is and it's hard to believe that just a year ago I was in high school and now I'm in a plural marriage and struggling but I know without a shadow of a doubt but this is the Lord's work that I have finally found it say this in the name of Jesus Christ amen I'm making supplication if you got me to the truth I'll never leave it and I knew in my heart Allah was telling me in my heart that Islam did this this is true and when you write this the correct religion and at that point I had this feeling of um of just peace just that's how I describe it like peace with everywhere within me the outside it gets me a bit now but I had this it was completely different feeling for me and and it's changed my life since that day and and then and I've never looked back since I started praying to really to find the truth it didn't take a long time to to find out that Islam is the truth and that there can't be any other religion in the world and I said please God you are the one who listens who always listen please who do I have to follow to come to you direct Christianity or the muffins I was 100 sure that God has answered my question what is the right way the only right way to come to God Islam and I knew Evan's gate that um it is when I in searching for a long time and I knew it even before I read it when I got those statements I just can stop reading because I knew and ever since I've been in the class there's never been a doubt like when I first met them I knew that what they had to say was true it wasn't something they said or something that I knew inside me I felt uh it was like a recognition instant recognition for me and there was never that in my mind I just wish that people out there could understand how much we feel and know this is real this is not a fantasy I know I didn't have to believe I knew then there's a quote you cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into is that what it said yeah all right yeah so that's a powerful video uh that has really influenced a lot of people Nemo do you have any uh any reactions to that video I mean the bit that really breaks my heart is um is seeing the heavens gate group at the end because you look at the story of the heavensgate group and you realize um most of the people in this video are dead like they're not they're not around anymore because that very firm belief that they just shared with you ultimately LED them to committing mass suicide as a group so these are not I guess what I'm saying with that is these are not trivial feelings no one's trying to trivialize the depth of feeling that these people have we're simply pointing to the fact that lots of different groups have the same feelings and have that same depth of feeling they said certainly that's where I come from with this absolutely yeah Mike anything you want to add no I mean it's just it it was like when I was saying before the video it was an eye-opening video in the sense if you watch it you're like oh my goodness it was really something where you see it not just you know obviously with Heaven's Gate we I think we can all safely call that a cult and they're all repeating the same phrases you know instant recognition was one where I think two at least two of them said it back to back and you think about how in Mormonism we all do use the same kind of wording and we all use the same mannerisms of speech and stuff and that that was something that kind of struck me and then of course uh the LDS break-off group and how um even today is the brighamite branch the main branch of Mormonism um won't do polygamy now it's still Doctrine for eternity but you have these break-off groups where these women are getting spiritual witnesses that they are to be polygamous wives and then all of a sudden I'm looking at that and go well how can I say she's wrong but then also say you know that that someone else is right or someone else is wrong and it just it really does show that um spiritual Witnesses I I think are real we all have them um but to just use them as a way to discern truth I think this video alone tells you it doesn't work unless you believe that God doesn't really have a church that he's he or she is trying to push people to you know this idea that there's a God that's leading everyone to Mormonism really falls apart when you see all of these people coming out so forcefully and saying I was told by God this is where I need to be and I think that is where we run into these problems of using um spiritual and emotional reasoning to to discern truth about what God wants for us two other uh quick things that stuck out to me one was the music I'm sure you mentioned it Nemo if any of you noticed all of those videos pretty much had kind of soft tender emotionally manipulative music playing because that's a component and uh designed to elicit elevation emotion yeah elevation of motion I think we're going to talk about that in a later slide but why why is music needed if if the holy does the Holy Ghost need music or or is there something else going on um is music just a way to manipulate get people to feel things and so it's incorporated as part of the ingredients why would God in the Holy Ghost need music at all but it just so happens that all those different videos use Music the second thing I just want to say is there's kind of a fairness problem here uh um a Justice problem if God is all powerful and all loving why would he make his primary method of knowing which is the spirit or the Holy Ghost why would he make it so easily counterfeitable so easily manipulated so e so so difficult to discern between traditions because you would just think that Mormonism if it were true and if the Holy Ghost were only bearing witness about Mormonism the Mormonism would sweep the globe and dominate but it's not it's not so why is God's truth combined with the the sweet powerful gift of the Holy Ghost why isn't that dominating the world and you could say well people are wicked or Satan is really powerful but then that calls into question God's power God's ability God's plan um because you know I did the math as like a freshman or a sophomore in high school less than one half of one percent of the world's population ends up being Mormon and again what does that say about God abide and the the power and the efficaciousness of his plan if so few of his children end up being able to discern truth through this primary mechanism that God created for can I throw a question out there real quick yeah so so to answer to that I was always taught that I had won the the genetic lottery or I'd won the lottery in the sense that you know I was born into the LDS church and how rare An Occurrence that could be and so that meant we had work to do to make sure that families compared to people could be born into the audience Church um and that was a sentiment shared by at least one person in that video who wasn't LDS who talked about he felt like the most lucky being in the universe I think it was a Scientologist um there's this idea that you're lucky rather than viewing it as oh isn't it convenient that you were born into correct religion that also happens to be the religion that your parents had um it's this idea of well that makes you incredibly lucky um and the other thing was that God spoke to Joseph Smith in a vision that's how it goes That's How The Story Goes so he has the ability to make it very clear which church is correct to one individual but why do we then have to rely on a spiritual witness of that one individual's experience why could God not just give that experience to everyone it's within his abilities yeah all right Mike should we go to the next slide yeah we can go the next slide and kind of dive in and kind of break all this stuff down okay and so what this episode is really going to be looking at is a lot of different elements of what can formulate a spiritual witness along with kind of the concepts the ideas that fallacies however you want to phrase it that also help to both sustain and strengthen and fortify your witness and your testimony and so I said this at the start of the episode and I know this one if you're a Believer it's gonna be kind of difficult because it feels like your kind of lived personal experiences are being kind of broken down into a bunch of these kind of like elements or you know some people will say oh how can you kind of reduce my lived experience down to say chemicals in the brain and that's not really what the purpose of this is It's to try to look at all of the different aspects of the subject that can help to understand why we believe what we believe and also why we are going to kind of retrench and double down on beliefs when we're presented with with evidence and information that kind of contradicts it so again I know this one's gonna be a little tricky for people but we're going to go through a lot of these we're going to go through them um in a little bit uh you know we'll go through them in too too detailed so hopefully they're helpful and and really that's all this episode is about is to try to when I wrote this on the LDS discussions website it was about how do I make sense of my experience so my experience doesn't equal yours but I think that these are elements that we can see through the video we just showed and through like religion and even like Politics as well you could see all of these elements in anything that is really emotionally driven um and it helps us not just to understand our own stuff but to understand others as well yeah so in other words if if it's not the holy ghost that is actually converting people today we're going to explain what it might an alternative explanation for what might be going on if it's not the Holy Ghost yeah and all right so we're just gonna jump right in and just go right into one that carries a lot of baggage with it and just just rip the Band-Aid off and um it's the con concept of indoctrination um in that makes up into spiritual witness and um so a lot of people when you say indoctrination they say oh so you're saying I'm brainwashed and that's not what I'm saying and so what we want to do here is use the Oxford dictionaries definition of what indoctrination is just so we can kind of set that down as the foundation here in the Oxford dictionary says that indoctrination is the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically yeah Oxford so yeah that's that's totally for Nemo right there and um you know this is one of those things that the church teaches members from birth which is to accept their narrative and to only stay within correlated sources and so we have countless countless instances uh where leaders will go on in a general conference talk or in front of the youth and demonize uh the people who read unapproved sources and or what they like to call unreliable sources and it's because we are expected to accept the church's truth claims without any critical thinking pushback or research and so this is a fairly Infamous um statement that was in the Improvement era which was kind of like the old enzyme or liahona from 1945 and it was in the ward teacher's message and it said when our leaders speak the thinking has been done when they propose a plan it is God's plan when they point the way there is no other which is safe when they give direction it should Mark the end of controversy God works in no other way to think otherwise without immediate repentance May cost one his faith May destroy his testimony and leave him a stranger to the king of God and so I was taught this as a member that you stick with the approved correlated sources and when you do that and when you are you know I would use the word conditioned to accept one Outlet's message as truth without any questioning that is the definition of indoctrination and I believe that that has a lot to do with leading us to a spiritual witness because when you're on a path where you can only accept one you know in this case the church's truth claims and you can't go outside of it that's where you're going to end up as as your beliefs and I think that is why if you were to go to people um and this is just I would bet I bet pretty much every every dime I have if you went into a room of 100 people um you know saying their teens or above that are not familiar with Mormonism and he presented the true history of Mormonism along with the churches like say gospel topics essays I would say almost none of them would join because you would realize that absolutely this is not true but if you're raised as a kid and all you know is the gospel not even the gospel episode essays but just the church's manuals and their lessons you're going to say absolutely this is true because this is all I know and so indoctrination is a big one I know it's loaded it's not the same as brainwashing but that's where I think we need to start okay can I can I speak to any active members that may be watching right now what I would ask if you're not happy with that definition uh or with what indoctrination May mean if you think that well Hang on we're not taught to follow these beliefs uncritically We can question we can we can do all these things the key word is critically I would like you in the comments to share with us an example of a time when a general Authority a leader of the church or a lesson manual or any sort of official Church document has said that you should be critical of the beliefs of the LDS Church so please share that if you can find it yeah yeah it's a it's a harsh thing and and and I just think that I'll just want to show that definition one more time the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically yeah you cannot criticize not only can you not ever publicly criticize the scriptures the doctrine the leaders of the church Mormons are sworn in my case with the death oath basically a threat of threat you know throat being slit or being disemboweled you make Oaths not to ever criticize the Lord's anointed that's how serious it is and if you ever publicly criticize the church and specifically its leaders you are faced with excommunication and if you think I'm joking I was excommunicated in 2015 primarily because Mormon stories the podcast and I dared to question and even criticize the leadership and it's not just me it's Bill real it's Kate Kelly it's Sam young it's Jeremy Ronald it's the September 6th so so many so so many public figures have been excommunicated by the church for criticizing it and then if you say well you can't expect a religious tradition to allow critical thinking and to allow its Doctrine or its theology or its leaders to be criticized you only have to look at a Jewish tradition and if you talk to a modern Jew maybe not an ultra-orthodox or Hasidic Jew but certainly a reformed Jew a Reconstructionist Jew even even a a conservative Jew you'll find that they'll say criticism is inextricably linked with with Jewish culture and even with Jewish faith rabbis encourage you to question encourage you to doubt encourage you to critique because they believe that any faith worth pursuing can withstand criticism and doubt and uh you know so I think I think that it's a tough pill to swallow but I think it's undeniable that the Mormon Church forbids any meaningful criticism publicly all right should we go to the next slide yeah and so this one is basically we're going to watch these two videos I one of them is at the beginning of his talk once at the end and this is from um down uh Oaks he did a talk in 2019 um and I'm sorry I think that's actually from 2018 and this is about um doubts and and um trying to you know find answers to tough questions so John if you want you can play the the first video on the left and then play the one on the right right after all right we live in a time of greatly expanded and disseminated information but not all of this information is true we need to be cautious as we seek truth and choose sources for that search we should not consider secular prominence or authority as qualified sources of Truth we should be cautious about relying on information or advice offered by entertainment Stars prominent athletes or Anonymous internet sources expertise in one field should not be taken as expertise on truth in other subjects okay why don't you play the second one we can do them both just before we do that he did he really just say expertise in one field should not be confused with knowledge of Truth in another field oh absolutely so where are the theology degrees and the spiritual uh sort of credentials of any of these men they have sure lots of expertise in in their secular lives but where are there where's their theological training it's rules for thee not for me I mean basically and you know I would imagine from a believer's standpoint you'd say well down down Oaks is a lawyer I believe right and so they'd say well down Oaks is a lawyer but he's given the theological knowledge he needs by God because he's one of God's chosen ones but yeah to your point it it really is kind of absurd and it really becomes absurd when you have this idea that you're going to have your Bishop who could be an accountant he could be a carpenter he could be a stay-at-home dad for all we know and he's going to give you advice on your sex life or on your marriage or on how to find God and you're like well your expertise is on you know maybe it's doing taxes how are you talking to me about how to handle my sex life with my wife or my kids going through a hard time and so it really does show kind of how as I've said so many times these episodes when you apply one thing one area of common from the church or apologetics it just it blows it up because it's just all of a sudden you're like wait apply that own statement to your own church and you're going to find it doesn't work so well and I think that's why as we talk about when you're in the process of indoctrine is saying without thinking through the next few steps of what the implications are yeah yeah sorry I didn't want to cut the flow there I just wanted to pick that point up no you're fine the other one is because basically it's like a 10 minute talk so that that was from the beginning and this is just kind of the end and it kind of bookends it well and basically one Oaks is you know trying to do if you look at the modern era with science specifically Mormonism has come under attack geneticists have shown that the Book of Mormon narrative isn't true regarding the lamanites geologists have have shown that the age of the Earth is billions not six thousand years old as we've talked about in previous episodes uh the global flood couldn't have happened the as we've covered on LDS discussions Noah's Ark couldn't have happened as we've covered on LDS discussions um you know there there are so many anthropological um and and literary uh anachronisms in the Book of Mormon all of it resounding to uh The Book of Mormon not not being a credible historical document and then you've got all the historians that are raining down on Joseph Smith as being king of a peepstone you know treasure Digger and you know the polygamy stuff and basically what what down HX is trying to do here is to kind of put Teflon on the testimonies of all the members saying I don't care what expertise you have I don't care how knowledgeable you are uh you know we as spiritual leaders Trump all knowledge of all kinds is am I getting that wrong Mike no it's fair and it's funny too because his whole thing is expertise in one field should not be considered expertise in another and to your point I agree so if you want to know if Joseph Smith translated the book of Abraham correctly go to an egyptologist not employed by the church and ask them what the papyri fragments we have say what Joseph Smith said they had because we have the source material for at least part of the book of Abraham go to a geneticist who's not employed by the church and say uh does it make sense that the Native Americans that lived in Missouri in the 1830s came from Jerusalem and they would say no that's ridiculous and then we like you say on and on and on so so yes go to the experts in those fields and say do these truth claims hold up you don't have to go to an egyptologist and say what do you think about DNA go to the experts in each subject and down Oaks here I think is saying that but he's saying it to the church because in in the church the only expertise that matters is people who speak for the church that you can trust and so I think in a lot of ways he's unintentionally kind of self-owning himself because he's really kind of saying you should go to the experts but then in the same breath he's like but you shouldn't go to experts outside the church and I feel like that is why I feel this is like the process of indoctrination because you're teaching people to accept only one set of of knowledge uncritically which is those coming from the leaders of the church while telling the people who really are experts in their field that you can't trust them because they're secular and I feel like that is that really to me fits so well with this idea of indoctrinating members to just reject anything else yeah let's go to the next uh next clip for Melrose yeah that's a short one as Elder Jeffrey R Holland urged hold fast to what you already know and stand strong until additional knowledge comes in this church what we know will always Trump what we do not know exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ which is the first principle of the Gospel finally seek help our church leaders love you and seek spiritual guidance to help you we provide many resources such as you will find through lds.org and other supports for gospel study in the home we also have ministering brothers and sisters called to give loving assistance so is the money quote there what we know will always Trump what we don't know I think I heard an audible laugh from Nemo when that when that well he he flip-flops between an open and a close belief system so quickly it'll make your head spin he goes oh wait for new knowledge to come but ignore it if it if it disagrees with what you already know so it's it's very much a closed belief system trying to pretend that it's an open one yeah it's just I mean imagine telling somebody that is going through a hard time that's trying to figure out answers to something that's not Church related you do not allow new information to Trump what you already know I mean my goodness we would Advance nothing in the world I mean if we held fast to the ideas that were wrong because we thought we knew them I mean it's just it's such a horrible horrible manipulative uh piece of advice to give to members who are currently struggling to try to figure out why nothing adds up that the church claims is true and it it's why people you know there's this thing um where people within the church feel like you're being persecuted or being picked on because people are you know talking about this historical she's like it's it's history it's not anti-mormon it's not pro Mormon it's history and down Oaks here is trying to tell members no it's not history because you know what we told you and that's all you need to know and I just it's just it's so manipulative and it's trying to keep you in this box where you only accept them uncritically while everyone else that's experts in the field you're like no we can't trust you even though you've spent your whole life doing this it's just such a horrible if the church was true you would not need to give this talk that's the easiest way to say it yeah and it's it I don't want to go on too much of rain here but it is kind of ridiculous for Mormon church leaders in 2023 to say that what that you could trust them about you know not all knowledge and even Earthly knowledge uh above you know anyone else because they have you know they have gotten it wrong so many times whether it's fighting you know fighting the Civil Rights Movement whether it's fighting the Equal Rights Amendment whether it's claiming the age over the Earth is six thousand years old the global flood saying that organic evolution is Evil saying that the name lamanites were descendants uh you know of of Jews and the Native Americans are descendants of Jews the book of Abraham The Book of Mormon they're just infinite ways where the Mormon church has gotten it wrong over and over and over and over again so it's just it's almost Beyond hubris for them to stand in front of their membership in 2023 and say trust us as authorities above all else because if there's anything that's reliable it's that they've gotten it wrong over and over and over again anyway um should we go and show the next slide Mike yeah we can go to the next one all right let's show the next slide and so you know this one is one that I always actually notice as a member and I don't know why maybe it's because I came from a different background but um and I also might you know I have a lot of teachers in the family um but you know one of the best ways to teach people Concepts and ideas is to repetition is through a repetition and this is something that you'll see everywhere I don't think anyone would disagree with that the more you hear an idea the more willing we are to accept it as truth and that is true just beyond religion we just did an episode on the Transfiguration of Brigham Young we kind of talked a little bit about this where as that story kept being retold people just started to accept it as a truth even though we we know from the historical evidence it never happened and so um within Mormonism you hear that there's all these catchphrases you know right now the Covenant path is one of the phrases you hear over and over again but um the one that really stands out to me is the primary song Follow The Prophet if you sing the full the full song you know these young kids are singing the phrase follow the prophet 54 times in one song and that's you know it's not a typo it's not a miscount um they're singing Follow The Prophet those three words 54 times for those who don't know the song is follow the prophet follow the prophet follow the prophet don't go astray follow the prophet follow the prophet follow the prophet he no those that way and then you'll have that and then the Beat Drops oh no it doesn't okay no but I mean I think that song has 12 verses I think it's I think it's nine verses okay nine verses yeah that's the camera how it goes but yeah it's it's a lot so if you've seen that song all nine verses 54 times you're saying follow the prophet yeah because I think it's like I think it's like 36 times from the from the chorus and then like I forgot it was a while ago account but you're counting it you're like this is crazy like these little kids and you know um I don't like usually to tell stories about my own personal stuff but I will say you know one of the things that was really crazy to me was my um Temple experience was horrible as I talked about in a previous episode that I went before 20 uh 2005 2005 and that's when you were naked under the shield and I was touching my naked inner thigh by one of the old Temple workers which was standard at the time during the initials but anyway so that was a horrible experience for me and I remember my kid he was uh pretty young at the time I want to say four and he comes back from church one day and he's like I can't wait to go to the temple someday and in my head I'm thinking to myself you have no idea what the temple is you have no idea what goes inside of it but you're already at four years old being told this is where you need to be and that really is what happens with repetition what happens with indoctrination where this is what this is all you know and um so then you start noticing the things like primary songs you start noticing how when you repeat these things that kids just latch onto it is like yeah this is this is what it is and so um those are things that really did open my eyes up too this is this is going to be kind of a tricky thing because you know how do you you know if you're if you're in the church from the time you're born until you're a teen of course you're gonna think you have to go to the temple because you've been told that for 15 years so repetition is very effective and um so anyways to continue on you know on the flip side if we repeat something enough we will believe it more strongly and so that's why you know the church continues to always ask members to Bear their testimony because it helps you strengthen it and so um Dallin Oaks who I will continue to pick on apparently um said in a 2008 general conference talk another way to seek a testimony seems astonishing when compared with the methods of obtaining other knowledge we gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it and so what he's telling you here is if you can't find your own testimony of the church but you keep bearing it over and over so over and over again eventually you almost convince yourself that you have it and this is something we see in a lot of people in bad situations where when you keep telling yourself something eventually you just go with it because you know you're basically pushing you know pumping yourself up to do it and it's not it's not a good way to discern truth fake it till you make it sounds a bit harsh but it's kind of that sort of concept and then I think the the other the other ways um you know I was I was talking before we came on air about how I get told off for being self-denegrating because people are concerned that I will start to believe the mean things I say about myself to others are actually true and that can be a genuine route towards a depressive state or some you know low mood because you tell yourself things about yourself and you say them often enough you start to believe them and then you start to it starts to change your sort of feelings of self-worth so outside of a spiritual context you can very clearly see how this happens to people so there's no reason to think it wouldn't operate the same in a religious context yeah yeah yeah yeah and I can absolutely confirm that when I was struggling with my testimony I was told just start bearing it and you know it even got to the point where like I said before I did moroni's promise as a 16 year old teenager who was living worthily the witness didn't come uh I went to BYU uh the witness didn't come went you know went into the MCC got called on a mission to Guatemala spent two months in the MTC the witness didn't come went to Guatemala and I'm like about to go give my first uh you know discussion lesson as a missionary and I literally had the thought going into the house for my first missionary discussion in Guatemala I still don't know if the church is true and yet I'm going to be now called for the first time to Bear testimony and you know I'm not going to just say I feel the church is true I hope the church is true I I have to say as a Mormon missionary I know the church is true and immediately the thought came into my mind well I was always taught that a testimony is gained by burying it so I made the decision as a missionary at that point I'm gonna say I know it's true as an Act of Faith and then I've been taught that if I take that Act of Faith then the witness will come later and what I really you know what really happened was I was taught to lie and say that I knew something that I didn't actually know but that's how my quote testimony uh progressed up up through that point all right Mike should we go to the next slide okay yeah so it's pretty similar to the to repetition is this idea of the illusory illusory truth effect wait am I saying that right loose illusory illusory yeah they start over again since we have to edit anyways okay um yeah so kind of similar to the idea of the repetition as the illusory truth effect which is kind of defined um in the following way and this is from Wikipedia I know that's not maybe the greatest definition but they kind of explain it this way they say the illusory truth effect is a tendency to believe information to be correct after repeated exposure this phenomenon was first identified in a 1977 study at Villanova University and Temple University when truth is assessed people rely on whether the information is in line with their understanding of it or if it feels familiar the first condition is logical as people compare new information with what they already know to be true repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new unrepeated statements leading people to believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful and so this is similar to what we've been showing you with how the church kind of says you know you focus on what you know you lean on what you know and so they'd have this study and they took participants and they gave them a list of 60 Questions on three separate occasions and on the second and third time they were given 40 unique questions but 20 of them were the same as the previous and the participants answered that they were more confident of the truth of the statements that they had previously answered with the scores Rising for 4.2 to 4.6 to 4.7 it didn't matter if the statements were actually factually true because a lot of them were some of them weren't but the participants were more confident in them because they were repeating the same answer and it really shows that again if you bear your testimony you're gonna all of a sudden really feel more confident in it and if you're constantly exposed to say the church's own kind of narrative history when you see information that contradicts that your first response is going to be to fall back onto what you've been taught your whole life because that's what's comfortable and so it really does show sometimes that when you're repeatedly exposed to an idea you're going to believe it even if it's not like your own body like knowing that you're kind of intentionally deceiving yourself it's just a natural human reaction and then you've got you've got a couple uh quotes that that utilize the illusory illusory truth effect here yeah I don't know if you and Nemo want to each read one or yeah Nemo you want to go first sure I do boycott okay it is not unusual to have a missionary say how can I bear testimony until I get one how can I testify that God lives that Jesus is the Christ and that the gospel is true if I do not have such a testimony would that not be dishonest oh if I could teach you this one principle a testimony is to be found in the bearing of it all right and that's Boyd K Packer uh implementing literally the illusory truth effect now I'll read Neil L Anderson who's also an apostle for the church he writes to the youth listening today or reading these words in the days ahead I give a specific challenge gain a personal witness of the Prophet Joseph Smith let your voice help fulfill moroni's prophetic words to speak good of the prophet here are two ideas first find scriptures in the Book of Mormon that you feel and know are absolutely true then share them with family and friends um in Family Home Evening Seminary and your young men and young women's classes acknowledging that Joseph was an instrument in God's hands next read the testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith in the pearl of great price or in this pamphlet now in 158 languages you can find it online at lds.org or with the missionaries this is Joseph's own testimony of what actually occurred read it often consider reading the testimony of Joseph Smith in your own voice listening to it regularly and sharing it with friends listening to The Prophet's testimony in your own voice will help bring the witness you seek so basically he's saying repeat Joseph Smith's testimony over and over again in your own voice and you'll quote gain your own testimony and Mike what are you theorizing is actually going to happen well I mean it's just going to reinforce in your head that that's the only way I I I've always found that really like kind of creepy to say like read Joseph's words in your own voice in front of like a mirror watching yourself like repeating as if you're Joseph Smith but either way the the end game is that if you can get people to read this enough and read it enough to the point where they're blocking other other information out if that's all you know then that's what you're going to go with and that really is why um you know I hate to use the word information or the phrase information control but if you can control the narrative if you can control the information it's a lot easier to keep people as the church says in the boat because they're not going to know what else there is and they're certainly going to be more afraid of what else is out there absolutely Nemo anything you want to add I just I think if you looked at Joseph Smith's testimony you might actually start to see some of the phrases that people then use in their own testimonies you know uh they're going to use it as a sort of template of this is the way that it should be done because this is the way that it was done by the the Prophet Joseph Smith yeah yeah I mean it's the same way that you know you go up there and and fast and testimony Sunday and you have that little four-year-old five-year-old kid that walks up there and like I love my mom and dad I'm so grateful that Joseph Smith was a prophet I know this church is true I know Joseph Smith was a prophet I know the Book of Mormon is true the name of Jesus Christ amen and everyone's like oh it's how cute but it's like it's because they're repeating what they know and that really is the the benefit of repetition and the benefit of of hearing um the fast and testimony meeting every Sunday because when you hear that over and over again and you hear people talk about how they they know it's true well that's all you're hearing so you're going to think even more deeply that yeah it's true because these people also are feeling what I'm feeling so it's effective and I'm sure you're going to talk about this later but I've often said that a Mormon testimony feels a lot like social approval because when that kid Bears their testimony they're gonna their parents are gonna love them their parents are going to hug them their teachers are gonna call them out in Sunday school while that testimony you gave or in primary that testimony you gave was so powerful you know and everyone's gonna applaud and congratulate and honor you that's gonna feel super good and then you're going to be associating super positive feelings and approval with uh the behavior of bearing you know saying the words frankly that you've been conditioned to say and reinforcement 100 reinforcement and that takes us to uh a very very important concept uh that that is called elevation emotion tell us what this is yeah and so the idea of elevation emotion is kind of best illustrated by a fast and testimony meeting and so you're in this big group and a member gets up and locks the microphone as they're telling a story they begin to get very emotional and they explain how miraculous the event was that happened to them uh that they experienced and while they're telling a story they're crying and people in the audience begin to feel those same emotions and they interpret those emotions as the spirit confirming to them the truthfulness of the church and of course the person speaking and so um in a shorter way of looking at it emotion is elevation emotion is described as an emotion elicited by witnessing virtuous acts of remarkable moral goodness and so it doesn't have to be religion uh but it is definitely applicable because this is a natural emotion that we feel when we hear about miraculous or morally good stories which is exactly the point of having a fast and testimony meeting uh every first Sunday right absolutely um okay next slide yeah we can go to the next slide because this is also on elevation of motion so I want you um everyone at home or if you're watching this just watch this video it's a short one if you're listening to it you could kind of pick up the gist of it but effectively it's a child whose dog had been lost for two months and he's coming home from school and he's surprised by this dog they've been missing so much and when you watch this video um it's really hard I mean like even when I watch it it's like watching the reunions of like military people seeing their kids again it's hard not to feel some emotions and um this is exactly how the church tells stories how they create videos and those feelings are then used to tell us it's the spirit confirming truth but in reality it's our bodies reacting to what we you know what we're seeing what we're hearing what we're reading and so when you watch this video If you well if you don't feel anything you have a Heart of Stone I'll just tell you that right now because if you don't get don't get a little bit emotional watching a dog reunite with a little kid I you've got no hope challenge accepted yeah well Nemo you're dead inside anyways but um but uh but when you watch this in in this video I have a video on the website of the same thing but it doesn't have this one has a little bit of music too and as John mentioned earlier music is always used in church videos it's very manipulative and it's also used in political ads I'm not saying it's just the church it's just music can really manipulate that's why movies and TV shows are so effective with music um but watch this and just think about how you feel watching it and then think about how you feel at a fast and testimony meaning and then you got to say when you watch this is this confirming the church is true or that you feel very emotional watching a dog reunited with a little boy all right should we play it yeah let's play it British heart I tried to have a dead patent face when I knew you would cut to me but I couldn't help but smile yeah all right turns out Mike it turns out Nemo as a soul after all I'm a real boy yeah it's hot like I mean I'm a huge dog person so those always get me but yeah it's just you know it when I watched that I even just now I've seen this video probably like six or seven times now and you know over the last few years and it's still I always feel like you know really warm inside because you're watching this little kid um reunited with the dog that he'd been missing and I think about you know my experiences with with dogs and all that um and the point is you know that's not God confirming to me anything it's just me feeling really good about seeing something uh that that's really good for this family and so I just feel like that's something we have to be aware of because that's the idea of elevation emotion is you're seeing something that's good and you're feeling it too but does that mean that the church is true or does it mean that you're just reacting to what you're seeing and I think that's something we all have to be aware of because not only is it applicable in religion but you can watch a movie or a TV show and feel it you can watch a political ad and get really angry because the music's all scary or it could feel good because it's all triumphant and you have to be aware of how easy it is for us not just be manipulated intentionally but you know just that our feelings um come from a place within us sometimes that is not not related to to church whatsoever yeah yeah and of course a Mormon or a member of another Faith tradition that believes in the Holy Ghost is going to say well the Holy Ghost can bear a witness about anything if that boy loves his dog and the boy missed his dog um you know they'll go one of two ways they'll either say well the Holy Ghost can bear witness about a dog and a boy's love for a dog the Holy Ghost can bear witness about the truths that are within Islam or the truths within Catholicism or even the truths within Scientology that can still all be the Holy Ghost you know and that's where the Mormons like to talk about the the light the what is it the gift of the Holy Ghost versus The Light of Christ that somehow there's kind of like holy ghost Jr which is like the the holy ghost that everyone in the world can feel but that's different than the gift of the Holy Ghost which can be with you at all times and dwell with you at all times that's an extra special turbo privileged VIP version of the Holy Ghost that only Mormons get when they're ordained you know with the gift of the Holy Ghost after baptism um you know that's one way uh that that they can go um do you guys have a response about that in particularly other than I think that's when you have to then say well we can't make the Holy Ghost the Arbiter of truth then we can't make him the one that reveals truth to you if he is going around revealing those same feelings so the people because it's just far too confusing a system there are as I said earlier there are more like concrete ways God could tell people these truths yeah sorry John what are you saying yeah and and and and one of the things that a Mormon will say also in rebuttal is well there's a difference there's a clear difference between emotion and the Holy Ghost and if you don't know it's almost like the the no no true Scotsman fallacy yeah it's it's just sort of like no no there's a difference between sappy emotion and like the Holy Ghost the Holy Ghost is more powerful it's more real it's more you know what I'm saying and then I'm just like yeah man like tell me again because I don't get it but I mean you need to be able to then quantify that in order to have that argument you've got to be able to say emotion past this point but then how do you measure emotion I'm not a particular emotional person so I'm then worried that I'm not feeling the spirit um or that you know it has to take something pretty strong to make me particularly emotional so then you're like well okay I only have strong emotions in that field so I've got no Continuum to work off so it's just all the Holy Ghost obviously yeah and It's Tricky for individuals and in my in telling continuing my story you know again I mentioned to you all that I I read the book of Mormon cover to cover as a 16 year old I knelt down and prayed I knelt down and prayed twice in the same night because I knelt down prayed didn't get an answer this is going back to the repetition thing God in bed was bummed out felt ripped off because it wasn't easy to read the book of Mormon frankly especially all those Isaiah chapters and all the chapters about war it was brutal so I did it I was busy in honors classes in high school I was on the basketball team like I was I was a busy guy but I read the book anyway and then I pray about I don't get the answer and then I kneel down and pray again and still don't get the answer like I almost was thinking like Joseph Smith mystical thinking that maybe if I tried two or three times it would magically come but what was really confusing was later the Muppet movie came out and I don't know which Muppet movie it was but I was a big Muppet fan a big gym fan and I remember watching one of the Muppet movies and feeling overwhelmed with emotion to the point of wanting to cry and I thought crap why is it that I'm feeling emotionally overwhelmed with positivity when I watched the Muppet movie but I couldn't get that when I was righteous and worthy and was praying about the Book of Mormon and that's when I first it really drove home to me that I don't think any of us really understand the Holy Ghost um yeah it is because it's intentionally unintelligible it's kind of it's it Mormonism did a great thing of making deity tangible where other religions and we we often cite that as a big thing you know well Jesus Christ and God have a body of Flesh and Bone but we've just taken all the intangibility of trinitarian views of God and just put it into the Holy Ghost um so that key part of the the Mormon godhead is just as intangible and ununderstandable and unapproachable and all those things as the Trinity is in in my view yeah absolutely all right Mike should we uh should we go to the next slide yeah that works okay yeah and this is kind of you know summing up a little bit of what we've been talking about but it one of the things that the church does and it really does build our ability to have this witness and this testimony is to emphasize emotion over reason and so as we've been talking about in a lot of these episodes if we apply the same critical thinking to the church's truth claims that we would to any other religion organization politician it would be really easy for everybody to understand why the Book of Mormon is a 19th century document and why the evidence is very clear that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God because of all of the episodes we've done whether it's failed Revelations biblical scholarship issues anachronisms whatever you want to say but in the church we're constantly raised to privilege emotional experiences over critical thinking it's what we talked about a few slides ago when we had the video where they say focus on what you lean on what you know as opposed to what you don't know and in the church I remember being taught this and I know it's it's you know still taught by a lot of people which is when you have a feeling that is good it's God confirming the church is true when you have a feeling that's bad it's you know the adversary trying to pull you away and as I've said on a number of episodes this really does amount to a little bit of a Tales I wouldn't had you lose approach to like evidence because uh when you condition members to retreat from evidence that makes them feel uncomfortable and makes them feel like their beliefs are being attacked you can then present them with the comfort of apologetics and the comfort of church leaders talking in ways that reject critical thinking to try to make those questions go away and that's literally what Dallin Oaks was doing by saying you can't trust the experts unless those experts are us and this is a problem because as we've been talking about throughout these episodes we could show throughout history that feelings are just not a reliable indicator of Truth and in the spiritual Witnesses video that we showed at the beginning you can sense that a warm feeling is never going to be able to discern truth because every single religion and cult have the same experience and when you look at like Jim Jones and the people's Temple and you look at Heaven's Gate you got to go well was God telling them that they're in the right place because if so that's really problematic given as Nemo said earlier how a lot of people in in those groups end up dead and it just shows that they had such a strong conviction that this is from God that they were willing to go through and die for it and that really does make you have to take a step back and go how powerful is God really if God can't tell everyone this is not the right church or this is the right Church it just feels like everybody's on their own path and they're going to confirm what they want and this really does happen when you privilege emotion over evidence and reason am I oh go ahead I was gonna say am I banned from mentioning Jonathan height on the podcast yeah please you know I mean it's not just him human beings are very good at emotionally reasoning we're actually is we're very good at it um and it's a lot of what we do we feel certain ways about things and then we try and justify it those feelings through logic so the church is just tapping into what is already a very human disposition which is to reason emotionally that's just my thoughts oh yeah yeah 100 and and unless you've been raised in in Mormonism you have no idea just how how thickly emotional reasoning has been woven into our culture because you know all you have to do is just have the experience of learning something about the church that you would never learned before like the book of Abraham Papyrus not you know not bearing bearing weight or the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith's polygamy his polyandry you know pick any topic you take that to any Orthodox believing Mormon and you say hey I learned this super disturbing thing that the church acknowledges is true and at first they'll deny it and say it's anti-mormon you know drivel or it's not valid or it's not from the church and then as soon as you're able to show them uh you know that that the church has actually acknowledged the problem first they'll doubt that next they'll doubt that and say Well it must be that pirates hacked into the church and and overwrote their website but if you can get them to acknowledge that the church has validated the the problem that that really challenges more mature truth claims the very next thing they're going to say is well I've had the spiritual witness I know in my heart that it's true so no amount of evidence that you could provide me is ever going to change what I felt and that's that's literally what what you'll experience within the Mormon experience yeah all right Mike should we go to the next slide yeah it's just to point out you know as we've said you know the church has always used emotional reasoning we've already shown some clips kind of highlighting that and it's one of the things I've talked about if the church was true they would tell every member to research their claims using outside sources because they would have the confidence that they would hold up under scrutiny and the reality is that the church uses those talks to demonize outside sources they demonize those who left the church and those who are willing to speak up about him and this is a talk from Russell Ballard's uh 2007 talk I believe General Conference and it says you will not get to know if the Book of Mormon is true by trying to prove it archaeologically or by DNA or by anything else religious truth is always confirmed by what you feel and that's the way Heavenly Father answers prayers and you know the thing is the statement that he's making is actually true because that's one of the things you know if you talk to a historian and you say can you prove the Mormon church is true or false they'll say no because that's a theological question you could prove if the truth claims are true or false by evidence and so what Ballard is saying here is technically true which is you can't prove if the church is true but you can prove if the church's claims about the Book of Mormon are true or false by looking at archaeologist archeology DNA um our anachronisms Linguistics whatever you want to say and so they're playing this little game here but at the same time time if you're trying to tell people that it can only be confirmed by what you feel you then have to answer that question of why do people go to Heaven's Gate because they believe God told them that and that gets into the whole thing we've already talked about which is then they'll say it's like special pleading and say Well they're confused they got LED Away by the adversary but you've got the real truth and that leads to some really bad decisions and some really bad um outcomes yeah and I don't know if the no no true Scotsman fallacy applies here but it feels like it does and I don't know the feeling is relevant ironically but uh it's just it's just it my spiritual experience was real yours was was not legitimate anyway did you have any reaction I I agree that and I think it's interesting the game that they've played with the word truth yeah uh prophets always teach the truth you can call them out and say well actually if you say things that are untrue then that's a problem but if they say they always teach truth well truth has this weird spiritual sense in Mormonism um that isn't to do with things being factually correct or incorrect and it's to do with whether they are Spirit actually relevant to the people that receive them that is spiritual truth that is God's truth and light yeah um so they have to play this game where they're like well the Book of Mormon is true what does it mean to be true well it means it's good for you it means it will teach you good things means all those things yeah but like you said you've got to separate that out well are the claims about its historical accuracy true in a factual sense we'll know okay then we have to deal with that yeah another problem the another way the church resolves or tries to resolve this problem is by claiming that the entire purpose of our mortal existence is to be tested and specifically to be tested to see if we will believe even without the evidence so what they've done is they've designed the whole Mormon Plan of Salvation to be around uh belief without evidence and so they they basically say that's the whole point if it were easy if it were easy to believe if heavenly father just provided all the evidence that Jesus lived provided all the evidence that he died for us provided all the evidence that we get resurrected provided all the evidence that the Book of Mormon is true then then it wouldn't be a big deal it wouldn't be a test it wouldn't be any achievement to uh decide to believe the only way it's miraculous and powerful and uh you know heroic to uh to follow uh the the one true church is if you believe without evidence they basically turn it into a virtue blind you know Blind Faith blind obedience um they turn that into a virtue right in this part of the point why does it need to be heroic and and great and excellent and all these laudable things to believe what is just simply true why is that actually a laudable thing if it is just the way things are which is many Mormons if you talk to them like xmlx talks about this she says it's not a belief system it's the way the world is for many Mormons it's just that is the way the world is we lived with God we came here we go to three degrees of glory after we die that is fact and if that is just fact why is it why does it need to be laudable or impressive or difficult to believe that if it's just the way things are in the same way that photosynthesis is just the way plants get energy doesn't need to be laudable or difficult yeah yeah I you know this is an area where I could rant for a long time and I'll try to keep it short but but I hear this all the time and so you you literally talk to people and to your point earlier John you'll go did you know that Joseph Smith got the book of Abraham translation wrong they'll go well I've heard that but if Joseph Smith had gotten it right there'd be no need for Faith and I'm like that's absolutely crazy because it really to me shows that the god of Mormonism is incompetent and weak and we've talked about this in previous episodes but the fact is if God truly wants that his church to be the one church that's gonna you know engulf the world and make it a better place then why is God setting up prophets constantly not just Joseph Smith all the way up until Russell Nelson to look like idiots and and that really is what happens because Joseph Smith translates it wrong Joseph Smith makes Revelations that are wrong Joseph Smith has issues in the Book of Mormon that are clearly written by somebody in the 19th century and so you can then you know from the church's perspective they never started out with the idea of oh it's it you know if Joseph Smith got a wrong it just really uh makes us need to have faith no back then they were like Joseph Smith got this right and if you think he got it wrong you are the you were the problem and now that all of this stuff has forced the church to go oh yeah this these are all completely wrong then they turn the equation upside down on its head and so what I'll say for the probably the tenth time in the series is you know faith is the belief in things that we cannot see that we cannot have evidence for so you can have faith that Jesus was resurrected because we have no we weren't there we can kind of understand how the stories kind of developed but we don't know but faith is not and will never be the belief in spite of the evidence and and that is really where the church tries to drive that wedge but I'm saying right now belief in spite of evidence against it that's not faith that is that's something completely different and so if you want to believe Joseph Smith got the Egyptian Papyrus translation correct because as some apologists will say today that the Egyptians actually used to to translate it the same way as Joseph but then later generations of Egyptians actually changed the language you are in a reality that's just indistinguishable from fraud and so I like again I don't want to rant all day on this but I hate that line of reasoning because it is something that is only done out of complete desperation because you know the history is not on your side and the church used to speak as if the history was on their side so I will just finish this little rant by saying this is how the church used to talk about their self before Google if we have the truth it cannot be harmed by investigation if we have not the truth it ought to be harmed and now today that would be changed to if we have not just if we have not the truth you just don't have enough Faith you know it's just like no you can't have it both ways yeah if we have got the truth or if the truth doesn't bear out then just rely on the emotions that you felt when you were a vulnerable teen or or child and your whole social surroundings were pressuring you to learn and to believe these things the the only other thing I would add is you know you have to kind of analyze what what they're doing because they're saying that God set up a plan where you have to believe without evidence and that's the point but then then you just follow up with the question well how do we know that God set up the plan that way and then they would say well because prophets have told us so yeah and then we'd say well how do we know that they're right and then they'll say well by the gift of the Holy Ghost where you felt some powerful emotions and it's just like well then how do we know that those powerful emotions are true when Jim Jones was able to get his followers to feel powerful emotions as well anyone that's why I say anyone who claims to know the mind of will of God um it's kind of inappropriate because all they're doing is speaking trying to claim Authority um by by getting you to feel things and then trust them but I would just say God if you want to Bear something to me come tell me don't come tell some other dude because if it's just emotions that I'm relying on that's not enough emotions are not enough now to convince me that something's true yeah and if you you know again I if you've commanded another teenage girl to be the wife of a prophet of your church you could have the duty or the decency to go down and tell that girl hey I know you're only 16. I know your mom just died I know your dad just got sent off on a mission I know you're living with the prophet as his adopted daughter but I have commanded you to have sex and marry him but instead Joseph Smith's like hey this is kind of awkward but God told me that he's chosen you to be one of my wives and we can do this or what and I know that sounds snarky because it's meant to be this this is the problem when you have a god that is both all-powerful and completely unable to get to people in a way that is concrete and doesn't lead everybody to different decisions all over the place and again I know I'm being kind of ranty here it's just because I it really drives me nuts when people make this argument of like it's almost like somebody's walking on the street and they fall over they trip on a rock and then they stand up like I meant to do that you're like no you didn't and that's what the church kind of does today we find out that the truth claims are false and they jump up like dude totally part of the place totally by design that Joseph Smith got it all wrong totally it's just it's ridiculous Nemo do you have a quick response before we go to the next slide no I think we need to get to the next slide okay let's do it it's a good one yeah okay so now we're going to kind of switch from kind of the elements that can kind of build a witness to the elements I think that kind of help strengthen and keep one and so this is an area we all suffer from I suffer from and everyone does and it's not unique to religion or Mormonism uh confirmation bias is the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them so you're going to see this in religion politics Sports you'll see it in your family you'll see it in everything and it's almost like um you know we're our brains are wired to immediately question or dismiss anything that doesn't conform to our pre-existing beliefs whereas if it conforms with it our brain's just like yeah let that one in that that's fine it's like you're a bouncer at the bar and if it conforms your belief you're like yep that gets in if it doesn't it's like no you can't come in tonight and um a good example of this would be within the church um they will label anything that disproves the church's truth claims as anti-mormon lies or you're in you know anti-mormon in general and I was told during my first trip to the temple um specifically before we got there they said there's going to be people that are gonna be trying to hand out pamphlets to you about the church but do not engage them because they're all spreading lies that have been answered long ago but they keep doing it anyways and so when I got to the temple I was in my mind I'm like I am not going to look at anyone I'm not going to listen to anyone that tells me a bad thing because I was told before I go that these people are are the bad guys you know and um when Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012 I would often hear you'd hear jokes on late night TV you'd hear people on the news that would bring up something weird about Mormonism and I would immediately think it was designed just to smear Romney and the church as a whole and I just completely shut it up because I'm like nope that doesn't work and I'm not going to deal with it because it's that can't be right and so that's how our brains work where it's almost like you know like I said you have a bouncer at the bar and it's going to let in the stuff that it likes it's going to bounce away the stuff that doesn't and and we all suffer from that in all aspects of Life yeah and to be fair ex-mormons do and and people who leave other religious Traditions do you don't escape confirmation bias no uh just by losing an orthodox faith in a religious tradition so nobody really has the upper hand when it comes to confirmation bias um but but but I think that's just one of the reasons why we have a logical rational brain to counterbalance our emotional brain you just have to you have to figure out a way to have them work in harmony because we we just need to be ever Vigilant that we're prone to uh ignore any evidence that doesn't confirm what we want and we're prone to notice or favor evidence that confirms what we want and and so we just got to be vigilant about it and understand that that's what's going on here but know that we're never going to escape it yeah you know just yeah we're all vulnerable to it yeah being aware of it is is really important and like I said I mean just take away religion just think about like um politics and we don't even get into specifics of politics but you know or look at something like um you have a friend and or you have a co-worker right and the co-worker is annoying to you and so someone comes up to you and like guess what the co-worker did and it's a horrible story you're like I totally believe they did that whereas if they came up to you and they're like that co-worker I just saw them do the most amazingly generous thing I'd be like yeah that's not the right person you know it's it's as basic as that and so it's one of those things where going through all of this has made me more aware of it now I'm not perfect by any stretch I'm still suffering from it as you always will but trying to be more aware of it and saying I don't like that source for this information but I'm going to read it and try to look at what they're saying because I'm trying not to immediately dismiss it because I don't like their conclusion and so it's just I think it's a good tool for life if you can be a little more aware of it both as John said even when you leave the church it's the same thing where someone will come to you and they'll say did you see the Church of this nice thing and your first reaction is oh sure they did but no you know you should try to get that out of your head and say let's read it first and and see if if they did make good progress towards maybe their their policies towards someone or whatever the case might be it's a good tool for life to try to be aware of our own biases yeah can I throw something out there to the ex Mormon Community broadly I still reposed the other day of a quote that was supposedly David A Bednar now that gets shared around he never said whatever I can't remember what the quote was now but he didn't actually say what was in this but because we're inclined to believe because David a bed now has said negative things in the past that he's then said something problematic because we're inclined to believe that all of a sudden we then you know we'll just share that around without thinking about it please don't do that just just don't check these things you know to fact check stuff before you share it this you know just because yeah I'll I'm rambling now but yeah no to me the most inspiring example of this that I'm aware of is the story of Gerald Tanner and the mark Hoffman salamander letter because Gerald and Cedric Tanner by the mid-1980s were known as the world's foremost quote anti-mormons and by anti-mormons we mean most knowledgeable about factual truth history church history LDS church history and willing to acknowledge it that's what we mean now by anti-mormon but back in the day they reviewed as the world's foremost anti-mormons then Mark Hoffman comes out with the forgery uh of a letter you know that that was supposedly written by I think one of the three witnesses that claimed that the Holy Ghost I don't know emerged or that Moroni emerged from a white salamander that ran out of the ground and it was it was a forgery created to discredit uh the three Witnesses Joseph Smith and Mormonism and uh Gerald Tanner would have had every motivation via a confirmation bias to just say well this this document must be true it must be accurate because it hates on Joseph Smith and the three Witnesses in the Book of Mormon and I hate on all of them but he had the presence of mind to trust evidence and data um over his own biases and he was the first person to declare uh before any of the Prophet series of revelators in the church uh Mark Hoffman quote anti-mormon Mark Hoffman was the first to declare Mark Hoffman salamander letter A forgery and uh that that's just an inspiring thing for all of us to remember is it is you never escape the um you never you never Escape confirmation bias so what what can you rely on rely on evidence and rely on rational thought and to the best that you can rely on Experts experts can also uh fail youth scientific method can fail you but you're probably going to get farther towards the truth by relying on evidence reason and experts than you are by relying on your emotions and uh you know uh spiritual leaders that that aren't experts in whatever domain you're trying to study yep and I'm glad Nemo brought it up because it's one of those things where it's like you got to rely on double checking something before you share something even if it does seem too good to be true or even if it doesn't seem it just seems like something that makes sense just do especially on a quote just do a Google quote with it and end quotes it's going to pop up if it's there and if it's from someone like David Bednar it's going to be on the church's website through a story or a transcript I mean it's one of those things where to Nemo's point if you are upset that the church that you believe the church gives false information you've got to make sure that you don't do it yourself and so that is something we all again suffer from because we want to be like oh my goodness I can't believe you said that let's share it but yeah do that take that two minutes and make sure it's real before you before you spread it on if I can scrap an entire episode because the because when I was researching it I discovered that the thing that I had seen that had sparked the idea for the episode turned out not to be true then you cannot share a meme and you can fact check it all right I agree I agree all right let's go to the backfire effect yeah so this one I think is one of the biggest ones that we all suffer from as well and it kind of is an offshoot of the confirmation bias uh that we talked about but a common response we have when we are presented with information that contradicts deeply held beliefs is to either run from the information um and double down on it or to kind of fight back but either way you're kind of retrenching and that doesn't matter if what your beliefs are are correct or not it's just our reaction to being kind of feeling attacked by this new information and um a great illustration of how the backfire effect works is from a study where participants were provided a false story and then given the correct correction to that story and then to see how they reacted to the correction and I don't know if either of you want to read this or I can read it too but go ahead Nemo I can read it that's fine in 2006 Brendan Nyan and Jason rifle at the University of Michigan and Georgia State University created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues the Articles were written in a way which would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in American politics as soon as a person read a fake article researchers then handed over a true article which corrected the first for instance one article suggested the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq the next said the U.S never found them which was the truth those opposed to the war who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second those who supported the war and leaned more towards the conservative Camp tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the second these reactions shouldn't surprise you what should give you pause though is how conservatives felt about the correction after reading that there were no wmds they reported being even more certain than before there actually were wmds and their original beliefs were correct all right Mike yeah I mean it just shows that we are um hardwired to believe certain things and so if you are a member of the church and you've spent your whole life believing that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God that the church is true and all of a sudden someone comes and say gives you the CES letter your first reaction is going to say the Cs letters crap and then you're going to go to church sources and kind of double down that's a natural reaction and so it's one of those things um that we have to be aware of for ourselves because this is a real studied aspect they've done tons of studies to try to understand the backfire effect it's also something if you are a person who has left the church and you want your family to understand what you've learned this is a good reason why you can't just go and throw it in their face you have to be calm and and we'll talk about that in a future episode but it does show that if you are presented with with information that's almost overwhelming your first reaction isn't to go oh my goodness I can't believe that I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet when all this evidence is out there your first reaction is going to say screw you I'm going back into my safe space and I'm going to Double Down especially safely especially if there is a prevailing narrative within your belief system of US versus them or Insider Outsider in group out group Behavior because then what you've been taught is there is a group of people outside your group that are trying to undermine your faith and so then that increases the intensity of the backfire effect because you have in your mind a motivation for why someone would be trying to lie to or why someone would be trying to undermine your uh your thoughts or your beliefs yeah exactly and Mike you've got a slide that actually talks about uh you know the the Adaptive nature of the backfire effect basically yeah and so it's just to point out that you know if it seems crazy to think that our brains are like actively trying to protect us from information that can harm our beliefs but but it does and this is something that has been studied by a lot of different kind of areas of Science and when we were presented with evidence that kind of contradicts our beliefs or says they're wrong our bodies react in the exact same way as if we are being physically attacked it's triggering a fight or flight response and so this is why you'll see this a lot in religion and in politics even within family issues uh people will often double down on a false belief even after being presented with overwhelming evidence or as Kyle McKay would say from the church historian compelling evidence um whether it's something like the Earth being flat um the whole issues with Q Anon or if you look at these overviews about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith or Mormonism as a whole and so the backfire effect is not just a temporary reaction and that's why it is so powerful not just to shaping our thoughts but to keeping us within those belief systems that we were already in and so I don't know if Neymar or John wants to read this this is another um kind of illustration of that you can read that it's so but what makes this especially worrisome is that in the process of exerting effort on dealing with the cognitive dissonance produced by conflicting evidence we actually end up building new memories and new neural connections that further strengthen our original convictions this helps explain such gobsmacking statistics as the fact that despite towering evidence proving otherwise 40 of Americans don't believe the world is more than six thousand years old the backfire effect McRaney points out is also the lifeblood of conspiracy theories he cites the famous neurologists and conspiracy debunker Stephen Novella who argues Believers see contradictory evidence as part of the conspiracy and dismiss lack of confirming evidence as part of the cover-up thus only digging their heels deeper into their position the more counter-evidence they're presented with now did you make me read that just so I would be the one to say that 40 of Americans don't believe the world is more than six thousand years old yes 100 yeah it's a trap it is it was totally a trap but no I mean it's this is something that you'll see again not just with religion but you'll see with politics and we don't need to get into politics because nobody is tuning into here to hear about politics but you'll hear if you go on Twitter especially or if you watch like a cable news show on either side um so much you'll hear people say something like well if they're coming after this person for this reason then they must be on to something and you're like no no they're not and with with this particular incense and Mormonism I'll experience this when I'm talking to people where they'll say I believe the church is true even more now because you are talking about Joseph Smith's polygamy and I'm like well how does one get you to the other but that's the backfire effect which is you're presented with this evidence that's telling you that all of these beliefs you've built up throughout your life are not what they were claimed to have been and so your body's like okay screw it i'm doubling down I'm gonna believe even hard now even though everything around me is telling me that this isn't true and this is a real well-studied thing that impacts all of us in a lot of ways in ways that we don't even think about this is something that's kind of hitting us hitting us subconsciously and it's really hard to be remotely aware of it when it's happening but once you take that step back like obviously if you step away from for Mormonism then all of a sudden you're like oh yeah I totally get it now because we've all experienced this to some degree you know just this week just yesterday or today I received an email from a a super faithful church member in Oregon who's losing his faith and he's a physician and he was talking about how once he discovered problems with the church he just felt like he had to go to all his believing family and tell them what he learned and then he was really upset at their reactions and uh that we did an entire series on this topic on the gift of the Mormon faith crisis podcast which you can find at mormonfaithcrisis.com it's 100 free uh Natasha Helfer and I and Margie just wanted to give the learning away because people need it but you know it's such a common it's such a Mormon thing to do and it's such a common thing for questioning Mormons to do to want to share what they're learning with their believing family and friends especially when it's troubling historical stuff but you know what what many questioning Mormons naively expect is as soon as they educate their believing family and friends about Joseph's polygamy or you know the the stone in the Hat or the book of Abraham or whatever it is that it's going to cause their believing family members to agree and then to start doubting as well and and we just have to remind them time and time again that when when whether it's abortion rights or or gun control or global warming or political parties regardless of where you come down on the issue when you present somebody with evidence that contradicts their point of view especially when that point of view is is intricate intricately woven into their identity conflicting factual evidence is actually going to strengthen their belief in their position not weaken it and that's just kind of human nature and it's why we it's why we advise questioning and doubting and non-believing Mormons to just sort of like not feel like it's their job to to deprogram or to instill doubt or to try to start their family members down the path of questioning what you're most likely going to do is actually end up strengthening their beliefs and their resolve and certainly that's not the outcome that you desire what do you think Nemo I I to me it points to almost a slight deep lack of understanding of ourselves because it's almost as though and I I when I went through this myself you discover all these things about the church and then you really you think well it's had this effect on me so surely it's going to have that effect on someone else so if I just share it with them they'll have to same reaction but what we fail to understand or take into account because of almost a lack of self-reflection or a or a you know a blind spot in that space is that well there's a series of events that have meant that this information had this effect on me at this time and those other people haven't gone through that series of events whatever that may be so they're in a different place so far from being as convincing as it was to you it actually elicits a backfire effect and I understand why that'd be confusing but that would be part of the reason I would think yeah and the one thing that was like John said this is for me when I started to go down the the rabbit hole or whatever you want to call it I experienced this and it is shocking because you you see all this stuff um the book Abraham for example you can look at and say Here's what Joseph Smith translated here's what it actually says here's the source material which was recovered from the what was thought to be lost in the fire you show that to someone and you expect them to be like holy crap how did Joseph Smith get it wrong but the reality is we are as members of the Mormon church I don't wanna I hate I know this term is controversially safe but we're vaccinated against this the church throughout your life is giving you these these vaccinations when they tell you even the elect will fall there must needs be opposition in all things uh Joseph Smith was spoken of for good and evil they're constantly reinforcing this idea that you are going to be presented with people that are going to try to tear down your faith and therefore when that happens not only is your brain all you know trying to make you fight or run you've got all of this reinforcement from the church which is saying we told you this was going to happen and now you're seeing it and now you need to double down and be even stronger and so when you're on the outside you're like this is this is absurd like this is concrete tangible evidence but at the same time from a believer's perspective they are going into both human responses that are very natural and all of the conditioning the church has done since we're born and so as John said this idea that you could just go to someone and kind of machine gun all this information at them it's going to backfire it's happened to me it's happened to so many other people and it takes a long time before you realize that that is just an approach that's going to work you know one out of 100 times in 99 out of the 100 times you're going to make things worse it's also why I get a little bit annoyed when people accuse me on Mormon stories or even us on LDS discussions of like trying to take people's Faith away you literally can't take people's Faith away most of the time uh you know people just have to have their own Journeys so whether it's Mormon stories or LDS discussions or Nemo the Mormon or whatever we're not doing any of this to take people out of the church because you can't do that people will find their way Faith or non-faith on their own the best we can do is is what what we're trying to do which is to provide support for those who need it um but but other than that the best you can really ever do is just put information out there and when people are ready they'll take an interest in it but but this idea of like proactively seeking to destroy people's faith it really is not a thing it doesn't work it certainly isn't what motivates me no I mean I you get I get that accusation all the time and my first response is always if my goal was to try to tear people away from the church I'd be doing a much different thing I don't actively go out and bother people on social media I don't actively go out and see somebody who's posting some burying their testimony be like you know it's all false right or I don't go out and correct people constantly like um there's a lot of uh people on Tick Tock or Instagram or Facebook or whatever that are posting uh faithful material that is just factually incorrect I could spend my days doing that trying to make sure people are seeing that that are in the church and so when people accuse me of that my response is always one I I would do things differently and two a lot of people that come after me angrily I'll eventually just say look if you're ever ready to have this conversation I'm here if you're not that's fine but there's there's no point so to what John's saying is you you learn early on that if somebody's not ready to hear this there is nothing you can say that will change your mind and people will have said to me a lot actually there's not a single thing you could ever say that would change my mind and at that point why even bother so these episodes were put together well these overview on the website was put together because someone asked me to do it and then these episodes came apart or came together because I figured that since I had done that work this would be a good way to get it out there for people who are ready but yeah until you're ready there's no point in watching this because it's just going to make you upset and that's not gonna make me it doesn't make me happy it doesn't make me happy when someone says I listened to your episode and you're a complete piece of whatever I mean that's not the point the point is when you're ready for it and you want to know this it's here until then don't worry about it yeah yeah and and I'll just say a final illustration of this is that both of my parents so I'm John delin I've lost my faith 20 years ago I think the church some would say the church views me as their number one enemy I don't think of myself that way but my two parents still still believe in the church still attend the church I have two siblings one living The Sibling that passed away died a Believer knowing all about Mormon stories and everything I do my sister um is still a devout Orthodox believing member um you know the the author letter for my wife you guys have heard of a letter to my wife or letter for my wife right like it was an alternative to the CES letter his wife never even was willing to read the letter that he wrote for her um because I understand she still believes to this day and Mike I think you're a good example your your wife still believes right like yeah I mean like you just if anyone could take people out of a religion it would be maybe those here on the podcast and and again people just have their own Journey I don't know if you've had the same experience I don't know what you guys are doing wrong all my family left when I left I'm kidding I'm kidding uh yeah I've still got active believing family members and you know they know what I do and they know what yeah about all this stuff so yeah it's just everyone's on and the thing that sucks is um and you guys probably all know there's a type of degree but when I first went down the rabbit hole um I had no one really to talk to and so that sucks because you don't realize that there's kind of a fairly nice robust Community online when you first find this out and so you want to talk to the people in your family because you have no one else to talk to and the reality is that is the worst thing you could do especially early on and we're gonna do an episode at some point near the end of the series that kind of talks about at least my experience and what I've learned from other people but yeah I would say in short the best things you can do would be to try to find an online community or a local community that you could talk to to get that frustration out because you need to find an outlet somewhere right because you can hold it in um and then on the flip side when you're talking about family you don't go to your family and you say hey did you know Joseph Smith married two 14 year old girls he sent um one girl's uh dad away after her mom died lived in the house and then you know used tactics that are similar to grooming uh to get her to marry him that's not gonna work but you could try to ask gentle questions like hey I'm really struggling with this I didn't realize that Joseph Smith married two 14 year old girls and it really doesn't make sense within the rules of DNC 132 do you have any understanding of that because that at least is going to have your family member at least at first not feel like they're being punched in the face now they may eventually go I don't want to deal with this but um it really is something that unfortunately most of us are going to learn the hard way which is you can't you can't make people believe um that their core beliefs are wrong with evidence it just doesn't work and I know there's a lot of famous sayings like you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into but it's true it's a cliche because it's true and so for anyone who is watching this or listening to this that is a who has left the church and you have believing family the only thing I could tell you is to take it slow be gentle ask questions and don't expect them to respond to it with the kind of um desire that you maybe you dove into the evidence with because you're just not going to get it and you're only going to be disappointed at the end of it and I know that um might be a disappointing thing and it certainly is for for for me because I I really think that obviously evidences is more important than um blind belief but that's how it is and so you have to work with what you have you have to work with our brains being so defensive and so I know we're probably going on this a little bit long but it is important because I know a lot of you are listening and you're probably in situations like that whether it's a spouse or a kid or a parent or even your your neighbors and it's just you have to remember the mindset you had as a Believer and that is really hard and I failed at that when I first went through it because I was so upset about what I learned but the reality is you have to be able to calm down and process this a bit before you even try to approach it with people because the minute you get emotional then the other person's gonna get pissed off and they're going to run away so I mean you have to be careful you have to be gentle and you have to remember you were you are now in a different place than they were but you used to be there and try to uh picture that you're communicating with your you know your younger self because you would not have responded well to it either so it it's a it's just such a tricky thing and you just have to be gentle yeah and I'll even I'll even take it one step further I'm not sure it's ethical to try and take people's Faith away I in fact I'm pretty confident it's not ethical we're none of us are smart enough to know whether someone needs their belief whether it's helping them whether uh whether their life wouldn't do as well without their beliefs I just I just think it's we want respect if we're questioning or doubting or have lost our faith we want respect we want to be supported in our choices and it's hypocritical for us uh to not extend the same courtesies that we want um let alone you could do harm because I don't think it's just a automatic um guarantee that if somebody loses their faith their lives can improve that's not always what happens and so it's just best overall ethically to just let people think and believe as they see fit and kind of let them have their own Journey now going on to the next Slide the next slide is a really really crucial concept that helps to explain why beliefs are so entrenched and it's called the sun cost fallacy so take that away Mike yeah and so this one's a really important one it's it's another one that we don't always think about because you're not aware it's happening and so the sun cost fallacy is basically something that's going to impact just about every decision we make and it could be on a lot of things it could be on your finances could be on time spent it could be on just dedication or loyalty and so um in an everyday example a family may purchase tickets to a baseball game Sorry Nemo I know baseball's not big over there and it does access to yeah it should uh well maybe after several Innings um they're finding out the game's not enjoyable maybe their team's down by a lot maybe they're just not having fun maybe the sun's on their face whatever the case might be so at that point they have some options they could accept the waste of money on the ticket price and watching the remainder of the game without enjoyment or they could accept the waste of money on the ticket and leave and then go do something else that's more fun and The Economist will suggest that since the second option involves suffering only in one way which is that you wasted money while the first option involves suffering in both ways you're wasting money and you're not having fun that option two would be the preferable Choice um in either case the ticket buyer has already paid for the price of the ticket so that part of the decision should no longer affect the future choices you make but if the ticket buyer regrets buying the ticket the current decision should be based on whether or not they want to see the game at all regardless of the price just as if they would go to see a free baseball game because they've already spent the money however many people would feel obligated to stay for the rest of the game despite not really wanting to perhaps because they feel like doing otherwise would be wasting the money they spend on the ticket they may feel that the point of no return has passed and economists regardless behavior is irrational because it is right it's inefficient because it misallocates Resources by taking irrelevant information to account which is the fact that you've already spent the money you cannot get that back so now it's how do you make the best of a bad situation and this is a long-winded example to say that we oftentimes are going to use our past experiences or what uh like I said either spent money time finances loyalty whatever uh it's going to impact our future decisions even though that money's already gone and people will often think on the life decisions that they could have taken um had they not for example pursued education that they didn't because they said did missionary service or you know employment they would have gained but they didn't because they remained at home raising children instead all these sorts of things and they think well you know I gave all that up so why not just see it through um and it's it's an idea baked into Mormonism certain idea of enduring to the end right it's it's scriptural enjoy you endure it well is is what you're encouraged to do and so it's this idea of even if it's bad you should still carry on you should still keep going because there is some sort of uh prestige in seeing it through to the end when in reality what might be more beneficial is to take the time you have remaining to uh do the best things for you yeah but this is this is a particularly sad and dark reality of of a faith crisis as I've experienced it because you meet these 50s 60s 70 year olds and it applies to 30 and 40 year olds as well where they're like you know their grandparents by this point they not only raised their kids in the church but they raised their grandkids they paid sometimes hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in tithing they've given their entire lives to the church and so the the possibility sort of the reality in your 60s or 70s uh of like admitting to yourself that maybe you not only gave your entire life to something that turned out to not be true and or to be fraudulent from some people's perspective but that you raised your kids and your grandkids in it and passed it along that's a huge difficult pill for many to swallow and then then if you accept that reality then you're faced that that however many remaining years you have left you have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and rebuild for many many many people that's a psychological bridge too far and it's just way easier to say nope I'm doubling down uh you know just kind of shake their head and just recommit to the church because it's it for many it's just too painful to to acknowledge uh that maybe they that they were fooled and gave their life to something that wasn't true so that's a painful one it's a painful one yeah yeah it's really difficult I mean I I can't necessarily speak to that because I worked a lot of this out when I was maybe 23 I think I was a real whipper snapper um but you know I've had people in their 60s reach out to me and say you know I don't know what to do because I know that it's not true or I know the truth about the church now and but I just don't know what I'd do without it it's my entire Social Circle it's everything I've known so at the moment I'm just gonna carry on and then then I can't judge them for that I wouldn't judge them for that you know even even if they admit to themselves that it's not what they thought it was you know it it's gonna make their life more comfortable I think it speaks back to what you're saying earlier John about how we don't know if people losing their faith it's not guaranteed that it's gonna make their life better and in particularly in the case of people that are older it very well may not yeah yeah well let's go to the next slide which is how the Sun cost fallacy applies to Mormonism yeah and so we touched on this a little bit but you know most of us were raised in the church uh some of people like me were converts and so you're around the church for years sometimes decades many decades sometimes and then you realize that the truth claims are demonstrably false and the problem is that many of us will look back at all the time we spent with the church the tithing money we gave the spiritual experiences that we felt under those earlier teachings and we're factoring all of that into our decision even after we know that there are severe problems with the truth claims of the church and so as in our last example while it's in completely irrational to incorporate our past contributions and experiences in light of new information about the church it's very common and very human to use the past to influence our ability to walk away once we know the church is not true and so in other words even you know though the time tithing money and spiritual experiences are in the past and we can now kind of look at that as basically something that's kind of a sunk cost because it's gone it makes it incredibly hard to walk away and to admit to ourselves that the church is not true because of the fact that we're like we put so much in and so as you guys both already said to to walk away you have to be able to kind of cut that cord from that past and that's really hard to do not to mention the fact that you have um sunk costs in emotional ties whether it's with your family whether it's with your friends whether you've built a community whether you especially if you're in Utah and you've moved into an area and you've built a practice or whatever and you've got a real strong need for Community there are a lot of things Beyond just money that apply to the sunk cost um fallacy and so it's it's it makes it really hard for us to have a rational ability to make a conclusion because of the fact that we're so focused on things that have already happened and this this ends up being one of the most sensitive and probably angering aspects of leaving Mormonism for reasons of you know truth claims or investigation or social justice because it it's the tendency of the Orthodox believing Mormon to stereotype people who leave as being weak as as being not able to cut it as having never believed in the first place there are all sorts of false stereotypes that Orthodox believe you Mormons Levy um on those who leave as if the it's a character flaw uh to to leave Mormonism like like you can't cut it but the truth is what I've seen is it it can be such a courageous act to be in your 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and to swallow this pill and to face the rejection of parents and siblings and children or grandparents or potential Financial um costs uh potentially you lose your marriage potentially your children cut off your access to your own grandchildren like the costs and the risks can be so severe of leaving a high demand religion that uh I I think it's it's usually an act of great courage not an act of weakness and facing looking this sunk cost fallacy idea in the eyes and deciding you're gonna leave anyway um is it can is really under any circumstances I think even if you still believe in the church I think you should be able if you're an empathetic person you should be able to get to the point where you can see it as a respectable Act of Courage even if you disagree with the conclusions that the person might raise that's what I think yeah yeah all right should we go to the next slide yeah we can go to the next one all right so the next slide is uh the the uh the reality of or the dynamic of motivated reasoning yeah and so this is similar to confirmation bias but motivation motivated reasoning is kind of the process by which our minds actively consciously or unconsciously allow motivational or emotional biases to affect how new information is perceived and so individuals tend to favor evidence that coincides with their current beliefs and reject any new information that contradicts them despite contrary evidence and so a great example would be as if you gave um if you were presented with a CS letter but instead of reading the CES letter you immediately begin seeking out apologetic Works instead because immediately your thought is well the CES that are must be garbage because it's opposition to the church so I'm going to go and only read through the lens of people who reviewed it so maybe they read the fair Mormon one maybe they read the Jim Bennett one and so they'll take the Jim Bennett reply at face value to attempt to debunk the Cs letter because the Jim Bennett reply um agrees with you whereas the Cs letter would create cognitive dissonance and so um the outcome of motivated reasoning really is strengthen your own belief regardless of there being substantial evidence that there's contradicting that there's evidence contradicting those beliefs because you're only seeking out the information that bolsters your belief while actively looking to reduce and marginalizing um the evidence that contradicts your belief and thereby you're trying to reduce that cognitive dissonance that arrives when you come across that new information so motivated reasoning really it's just that you are really acting in a way to have that motivate to prove it true as opposed to just get to the truth yeah Nemo any comments on motivated reasoning I'm trying to think of an example but I maybe won't use one uh maybe just give a warning instead that it's not something that is exclusive to members of the church it is a trap that those that leave the church could just as easily fall into oh yeah uh were there to be evidence that puts the church in a better light than they had thought that it stood in on a particular issue or topic um so just I I'm become really aware recently and I've always tried to be very aware of making sure that we don't allow logical fallacies to push us uh even though we are claiming to seek after the truth and are looking at the truth games of the church more objectively now and looking at things from a logical standpoint that means we have to apply that same logic to our own thought processes too and keep ourselves accountable there yeah 100 is it you know um my example is a CS letter and going to say the Jim Bennett reply well if someone gives you the Jim Bennett reply in your first thought as well I'm not going to read that garbage I'm going to immediately look at more critical stuff well then you're doing the same thing and so it's really a trap that we all fall into and I know I have at times and there have been times where someone will send me a link I'm just like oh my goodness I've read this before this is such trash and then I'm like no no read it make sure it's actually what you've read before not something new because you don't want to just dismiss things and then seek out information that's going to uh kind of contradict what they're sending you you should at least take that at face value but even having gone through this like you said Nemo for for years of reading this stuff I do fall into that trap and so it is something to be aware of to say am I now guilty of the thing that I'm I'm saying others are and it's really difficult because a lot even where you're doing it but yeah we do need to um when we're talking about Mormonism if you've left the church you everyone needs to do a better job of being more careful on I would argue what sources that they trust what information they pass along to make sure it's actually credible and on a solid ground as opposed to some of the things you see sent around that are shaky at best and so I do think we all can do better on that for sure yeah to give people to give people another illustration of motivated reasoning the bet the best example that comes to my mind is when you know once once Mormons uh you know once Mormons become aware of Joseph Smith's polygamy um and especially his PL his uh polygamy with 14 15 16 year olds the apologetic response is to quickly uh want to say that Joseph Smith didn't have sex with the 14 15 and 16 year olds and uh or to say that they were marriages spiritual marriages but not marriages in any carnal or flesh fleshly sense and for me that's a that's that's an example a clear example of motivated reasoning why in the world would every Prophet from Brigham Young on have sex with all his plural wives um why would why would you know the Book of Mormon say that that the purpose of polygamy would be to raise up a righteous seed or to have posterity everything about polygamy points towards sex with the wives that you marry so what in the world would make an apologist want to say that the 14 15 and 16 year old wives would be an exception to that the answer is motivated reasoning motivated reasoning being this sounds too bad we gotta come up with apologetic reasons because it just feels cringy when there's no reason to even go down those paths and again Nemo I like your point we as post-mormons um are are are way too quick as well to fall prey to motivated reasoning and and you know we don't learn the lessons of what we've come from if we fall prey to it in our situation so the perfect example would be the salamander letter how many ex-mormons were so excited to hear about the mark Hoffman forgery of the salamander letter because it appeared to discredit the church when in reality the the wise the wise one was Gerald Tanner who had every reason to want to embrace the salamander letter but knew of his own and our own proclivity towards motivated reasoning and instead applied his critical thinking skills to actually debunk the forgery that was the salamander letter um when everybody else especially out of the church was eager to glom onto it and when the church leaders themselves were eager to buy it to hide it so that it wouldn't embarrass the church anyway yeah it's a motivated reasoning super a super important one and I'm glad we're talking about it yeah all right well uh let's go ahead and go to the next slide which is circular reasoning yeah this is one you know I know this sometimes we we kind of joke about this but you know we see offense the apologists make the argument that a problem in the Book of Mormon is not a problem because Joseph Smith was a prophet and because of that the Book of Mormon is true and we've all heard this I think we've all I mean if you've left the church you've probably heard people joke about this but is it you know as a member I heard very similar statements so they'll say I know Joseph Smith was a prophet so the Book of Mormon is true I know the Book of Mormon is true so Joseph Smith was a prophet and so this is horrible logic it's just it's completely irrational it really is in no way making sense as far as Discerning truth but it does work to keep us from questioning because church leaders always want to tap into that area that you do have faith um that you need to bolster when you find problems and so if we keep working in this circle that always leads to that predetermined conclusion it keeps us from looking at the underlying problem in an objective manner so a lot of times we're going to get to this on our next episode on doubts but you'll hear church leaders go yeah yeah they are there are some problems with the Book of Mormon but we already know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and therefore we don't have to worry about those little problems and I think that we see that a lot in the circular reasoning which is a good way to kind of effectively short-circuit our critical thinking by just trying to skip you on to the reverse of it to make you uh basically uh to diminish any of those those doubts you have when you start coming across this information absolutely need money any thoughts you want to share in circular reasoning there's a great image that goes around online it's a picture of an extension cord plugged into itself yeah and it perfectly illustrates the idea of um circular reasoning uh there's there's not much else to say really other than it is used a lot to bolster up the truth claims of the church and um once you can spot it it's really useful to be able to do so look up examples online is what I'd encourage people to do yeah yep yeah yeah and it's just so common that just this whole like the the church is true because I you know I got a witness of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Mormon's true and then it's like yeah but there's problems with the Book of Mormon and then it's like yeah well I have it you know but I got a testimony of the Book of Mormon so it must be true um it it it doesn't bear intellectual or rational scrutiny but but that's the thing we have to again realize belief is not a rational Enterprise in fact by definition belief is is irrational and even even the leaders of Faith Traditions will say this isn't about knowledge this isn't about evidence I mean on the one hand they'll say truth is the most important thing and that the truth has been restored but but when they talk about epistemologies they'll just say there's there's there's worldly knowledge and then there's spiritual knowledge and we've already discussed that by spiritual knowledge they mean emotional um you know emotional elevation and so um while while we as people who try and employ critical thinking in a religious or spiritual context are going to feel inclined to be frustrated with things like uh you know circular reasoning and motivated reasoning we just have to remember that that belief is an emotional thing and so any attempt to you know any attempt to rely on logic or reasoning is not only most often doomed to fail but it's something we just can't expect Believers to really take seriously or invest in because it was never about it was never really about truth and evidence to begin with and I think Mike your story of conversion um might might illustrate that as well as you've talked about before yeah that's true I mean and it's something that as I've said on some of these other ones you don't see it until you're away from it you know it's it's Cinemas point the extension cord example is is one you can find online and it's true because you don't see that the extension code is plugged into itself until you've stepped away and you go oh okay now I kind of understand it and so these are things we need to be aware of but at the same time um it's not going to be effective to run to somebody who's a Believer and say hey do you know that you're using circular reasoning because they're not going to care yeah so I've just found a really good example online and I can read it through so it's Back to the Future from 1985 is a good movie why because it's an 80s movie why are 80s movies good because that's the future is from the 80s and it's a good movie right so you see how you end up at the beginning again so that's uh that's a solid example of a circular argument to take away we do there yeah yeah that's good thanks Nemo all right let's jump to the next uh factor that influences people's testimonies and world view the bend the bandwagon effect tell us about that Mike this is one that's kind of goofy because it's it's invoked a lot by apologetics but an area that leaders will often go to when a member is struggling with their testimony is to invoke what is known as the bandwagon effect and so this is another cognitive bias where we adapt to the church's teaching because of our families communities and our leaders all accepting of these teachings and so um on the flip side this is also used by leaders as evidence of the church's truthfulness because if you were to say the Book of Mormon is demonstrably a 19th century document that is not historical a response you'll often here is if that's the case why have millions of people found comfort and spiritual witness from The Book of Mormon and so when you say that the appeal can be quite strong to this bandwagon effect which is you know to say if your entire Community believes this how in the world can they all be wrong and the problem is that while it Taps into both our need to be included and our desire to be on the right path um you could use this for any other religion that's larger than the Mormon church and so I you hear this a lot lot to say millions of people believe it and they can't all be you know gullible people and it's like that's not the argument anyone's making in the first place but if you want to make that argument why wouldn't you go well then billions of people believe these other things um and so while it does put you on the right path um it does um it puts you on the path to having a testimony and that's why when you have these fast and testimony meetings and you have this room full of you know one to 200 people all bearing their testimonies you get that feeling of like I've got to be on the right track because look at all these people who believe the same way I do yeah it's uh known as an appeal to popularity uh also it's another a way of talking about it yeah and I think it it can be when it comes to your base needs as a human being it can be quite a sensible thing in that you know everyone else in the tribe doesn't drink from that dirty water so I won't drink from that dirty water and that seems logical but when it comes to things far more complex than that people aren't always right just because there's more of them that will do something you know it's that typical thing that you say to your to the parents say to kids if your friends all jumped off a cliff would you go too you know it's it's we we try and teach it to our children just because everyone else is doing something doesn't mean that you should be doing it too so there's there's a there's the collective wisdom that makes humans great and uh that can be very useful but Collective Behavior maybe is not uh something that's to be as lauded perhaps yeah and I think there are psychological they're probably evolutionary reasons for why you know we pay attention because you know if if a bunch of people are doing something especially those around us especially people we love and people we care about there's probably some sort of evolutionary benefit to to checking it out to being open to it and to following suit um you know one of the best books I've ever read in in the understanding of Faith crisis con context is uh the book oh guys help me out it's it's the book about species um yeah sapiens and sapiens talks about how the ability to cooperate at the level of tens tens or hundreds of thousands or even Millions is what separates uh Homo sapiens from all the other animal species there's no other species that can have a million people collaborating on on us on a single project like you know like the atom bomb but it's our mutual ability to share myths and heroes and stories and beliefs that allows us to unify and so um you know if you can get a million people to believe something or five million people or 17 million people to all believe something you've got a lot of power there or in the case of a country 200 million or a billion people if you can get a billion people on the same page you've got a lot of power um and so if if tribes Thrive by gaining and keeping their power then there's a strong motivation for people to all kind of get on the same page to see what everybody else thinks and believes and to jump on board and the opposite is also true there's a lot of um disincentive to go against the grain to go against the tribe to defect or to you know betray the tribe or to step away and to take opposing your antagonistic beliefs and that's why Heretics or apostates are viewed as more dangerous to a tribe than our Outsiders who are who are enemies Nemo's showing the book sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari it's a classic Nemo do you have anything to say about it oh yeah yeah yeah no it's a great book um I've read it near the time I started to discover things about the church it puts a lot of things into perspective um and it's kind of what I was alluding at when I was talking about the water earlier is that you know one of the great things human beings were able to do is that we didn't have to learn everything from scratch every time we were able to pass on information and pass on habits and and uh procedures um through storytelling and then later through writing that made us very powerful because you didn't have to start from scratch every time but the problem with that now is that we live in such big communities and there's such big groups of people um that you know it's not those intimate groups that it started off as where you could kind of trust everyone to be doing uh what was in everyone's best interests yeah all right let's go let's go ahead and go to the next slide which is special pleading and this one we've we've covered in a few episodes because this one's really important especially within Mormonism and this is a favorite of yours Mike well it is because this is something you see all the time especially with apologetics but the idea of special pleading is basically it's a cognitive fallacy where we allow for exceptions to problems in order to avoid dealing with the fact that they are in fact problems and so a very technical definition would be uh for special pleading as to applying standards principles and or rules to other people or circumstances while making oneself or certain circumstances exempt from the same critical criteria without providing adequate justification special pleading is often a result of strong emotional beliefs that interfere with reason and as we've mentioned throughout this series a perfect example of special pleading is with polygamy in the church we often excuse the way Joseph Smith implemented polygamy by trying to find excuses for the way he pressured young women to marry him while holding other leaders who have pressured their young followers into sexual relationships such as David koresh David Berg or Warren Jeffs accountable and the reality is all of these leaders follow the same pattern when manipulating young women to submit to the proposals in the name of God but we recoil at the other leaders because ours was really from God and so this is something you see all the time where you'll say well yeah I can't believe that these people were using Tech tactics that are um the textbook definition of grouping but when Joseph Smith did it with Lucy Walker that was okay because God wanted him to do it and so special pleading effectively is excusing horrible Behavior or in Joseph Smith's you know case even incorrect translations um bad failed Revelations because you need to privilege your beliefs while on the flip side you're more than willing to go out and criticize anyone else who does it because you could see it without those biases and when you see without those biases you could see immediately that they're getting it wrong yeah absolutely it kind of comes in with the leaders of the church as well with this whole rules for thee but not for me type thing where they expect the members of the church to be honest they lay out honesty as a big high standard for members but then aren't honest themselves and you know damn late jokes expect well the church expects members to repent and members to own up to their mistakes and then Daniel says the church does not seek apologies nor does it give them so again that's well because we are the church because we are God's chosen servants we don't have to do this but you as members of this church do so it's rules for you but not for us they get to special plead their way out of it yeah and it's not just with religion either it's just one that you see throughout religion even see with sports I mean you could so as you turn on talk radio and you've got people are defending a player on your local sports team who did something horrible because you're rooting for that tribe for that team and then someone else on your your rival team does it and they're like give them the chair get them out of here you know so it's uh it it's something we're all going to suffer from it always but you see it so much with apologetics and that is why I mentioned a lot because you can't you can't accept bad behavior or incorrect Revelations from your church just because you want your church to be true while at the same time being able to see it with others it just doesn't it's not logical in any way and it certainly wouldn't pass you know any kind of intellectual honesty or consistency I think it's helpful I think it's helpful to give examples too like we're trying to do and one that comes to my mind and I apologize that this is self-referential um and it's also me being candid and vulnerable and transparent there have been some attacks over the years about how you know the open stores Foundation the non-profit that runs Mormon stories uh you know how much money it brings in or how much I'm compensated in terms of my salary that you know that to use a non-profit in in this way and to have the leader of a non-profit get compensated at whatever level I get compensated that somehow that's super unethical and bad and then you look at you look at the Mormon church and it's worth like 250 billion dollars and we know that its leaders are making six figures across the board and and and it's just weird to see apologists completely criticize a podcast or a non-profit that literally gives its content away for free that when people pay it's purely because they're fighting value there's no coercion there's no pressure and somehow it's evil and diabolical what we're doing making money doing social media to try and help people where they don't even stop to think about the fact that the church is literally up to a quarter of a trillion dollar organization where all its top leaders are making massive amounts of money but but they don't they don't bat an eye is that an example of special pleading well certainly I mean yeah I I've mentioned the example and I won't go through the whole things I know I've done at least one other episode but I was with believing members and it was during the 2020 primaries and it was a candidate who had lied about their past um and so their whole backstory was that I'll just say it doesn't matter it was Elizabeth Warren she had said that she was fired from being a teacher because she became pregnant and that was really what she wrote in her book that kind of launched her kind of mission to be a politician and then it turned out she had an interview that was done before that book came out where she said flat out she quit being a teacher because she wanted to spend time with her kid and so I was around believing members and they were like you cannot lie about this stuff when you have Google around I remember one of them actually turned around kind of laughed he said can't do that with Google anymore and now if I had said the same thing would apply to Joseph Smith's first Vision or the priesthood restoration they would have thrown me out and so that is special pleading words they could see it with Elizabeth Warren they're like yeah she changed her story therefore she's not trustworthy now if you say that about Joseph Smith they'd say no no because Joseph Smith was a prophet and so it really just comes down to the fact that we will excuse bad behavior incorrect information false promises all that things when we have that desire to root for the church or for a politician or for a sports team and and when it's the other way around your critical thinking is is full on because you don't care about the person or you may want to to see them fail and so it really just shows like you said John people are going to come after you or me or anyone else because they don't like what we're doing whereas when the church does the same thing like say file a false SEC forms to hide their wealth that like wow they were just practicing Biblical tithing even though it isn't actually Biblical tithing but you know that's okay because I believe the church you know what I mean so yeah it's a mess it's it's like um sorry I've just drawn a blank there I had a point to make and I've just completely forgotten you'll it'll come to you anymore let us know what it does yeah okay so special pleading is the next logical I've got it got it got it I knew it all right go for it so it's it's the reason the church has to push in group out group narratives so much because by making we focus a lot on the effects that has on the out group you know it makes it alienates people it makes us distrustful of others but the other effect of in-group out group thinking and behavior is that it makes you bend things through logical fallacies like this in support of your in-group because you want your in-group to be correct it Taps into that tribalistic part of of human behavior you want your group to be right you want your group to be safe and so anything that's perceived as an attack on your group you'll use all your available mental faculties to dismiss or get rid of um and that's where the church puts such a heavy emphasis on this in-group out group Behavior to my mind yep yeah I hope that was worth it yeah absolutely all right let's go to the next one uh which is appeals to Authority yeah this is one that is going to help bolster your your testimony because you're constantly being conditioned to basically appeal your identity and your beliefs to those who you hold an authority and so um as we had mentioned before in the primary song Follow The Prophet the young children sing the phrase follow the prophet 54 times in one song almost every general conference talk will mention how inspired the current leaders and especially the current prophet of the church are and if you listen to General Conference there have been times where Russell M Nelson has been quoted more than Jesus has and we have confirmed yeah and they will say that you have to obey their teachings in Revelations because they speak for God and the church's own manual makes it clear it says obedience is the first law of heaven when they say obedience they'll say obedience to God but what they really mean is obedience to the leaders who claim to speak for God and this is a terrible lesson because this is ripe for those in authority to abuse their power the church will then state that they also say that obedience is only required if it's a choice The Obedience has to be voluntary but as we've mentioned in previous episodes how much of a choice do you have when you're being told by those you Revere as prophets that God is commanding these actions and a great example of course would be when you're told that you are to marry and have sex with the prophet because an angel came to the prophet and said that they were commanded to marry them or you will be responsible for the prophet's death do you really have the the choice to be obedient or not and I would argue you don't and so we could go to 2023 now and you listen to general conference talks and you'll constantly hear all of the leaders basically um Pat themselves and Pat each other on the back uh by quoting them and talking about how inspired they are and that is a signal to you that you need to obey their teachings and respect I don't do Eric Cartman here but respect their Authority um and so it really does condition and strengthen our testimony when you're told from the from the age of being a primary kid follow the prophet follow the prophet whatever you do follow the prophet uh I think this is this the problem though with the type of authority it's been appealed to I could appeal to Richard Dawkins an argument and say Richard Dawkins says this and that's technically an appeal to Authority because I'm saying my argument's right because Richard Dawkins says so the what can be done though is you can look at his research you can look at his authority and question his authority the problem is when that Authority you're appealing to is deity is God how are you meant to undermine that Authority how are you meant to even just look into that authority to question it how are you meant to question the authority of a deity um that's the problem with a lot of this uh which I know leads perfectly into a point John loves to make about the the ability to say you speak for God and how problematic that is yeah yeah the other thing I just want to mention there's a couple uh well there's at least one reference that I want to kind of make everybody aware of um and uh and and basically it's one of the most important studies ever um oh my gosh my brain I I needed a second it's the uh it's the electroshock study done out of Yale by Milgram the Milgram study um it's it's if you've never studied the Stanley Milgram study um it's called obedience uh to Authority I'm pulling it up right now it was basically in a a study hell I think it was designed in the 50s designed to try and explain how the Holocaust happened because uh it's one thing that a you know a maniac like Adolf Hitler can arise and gain power but but that only explains one crazy person how do you explain an entire nation falling under Hitler's Rule and you know uh executing all the commands that Hitler demanded including the gas Chambers and mass executions and so the study by Stanley Milgram um which is known as The Obedience to Authority experiment is one that everyone should uh study they basically uh you know faked a um faked an experiment that was supposed to be about learning where uh your your job is to observe somebody who you think is actually learning but every time that they get a question wrong you as the participant in the study was supposed to administer um an electric shock to the learner as a way to study you know supposedly the impact of electric shock as an aversive stimuli uh or as a punishment to getting an answer wrong but it was all contrived to see to what extent somebody is willing to do something truly Evil under the pressure of external Authority and so they've got this this uh participant in the study who's wearing the white lab coat with a with the clipboard and he's standing over the participant who is supposed to be administering shock to the person getting uh getting the answers wrong and in each time the person supposedly gets a question wrong he's supposed to turn up the electric shock and then administer the shock and he hears what he believes to be a person on the other side of the wall like screaming and writhing in pain and to jump to the end of the study over 60 percent of the participants were willing to administer what they believed was a lethal um a lethal dosage or charge of electricity on what they believed was a participant if there was a person in Authority telling them you must continue the experiment you must continue the experiment and what the what so what the obedience to Authority sort of book and study shows is just how influenceable we are how amenable we are to Authority um we're it's scary how much we're willing to do um if if we believe that a legitimate Authority um is is making us or pressuring us to do what they want us to do so this is a real one because it's almost the ability to kind of offload your responsibility onto the authority figure whoever that may be you know you just go oh well they're making me do it and so you kind of yeah you you offload that responsibility onto them yeah and and what we talked about I think at the beginning of this episode was uh those quotes I believe from Dallin Oaks where he's basically selling you that um an authority in a field say egyptology is only an authority if they speak for with the church so that not only do you need to obey Authority but you also have to obey the people that are determined to be Authority so say for example um we did all of those well you did all those episodes with Dr Robert Ridner well he's one of the foremost or he was when he was alive one of the most foremost experts in egyptology in the world but from the church's perspective he's not an authority because they have Kerry molstein and John Gee and so it really is not just an appeal to Authority but it's an appeal to predetermined Authority and that also leads to bad things because you now have um people within the church trusting say Carrie milstein as an authority on Egyptian studies when in reality he's using his credentials to push Theology and so that is where you also get to really bad beliefs and if you go for further back you know also uh bad outcomes for people especially if you talk about polygamy um you know a Mountain Meadows all those things come from this belief that the authorities of the church want you to do certain things brilliant all right let's go to the next slide which is the use of fear and uncertainty yeah and so we're gonna our next episode is gonna be on how the Mormon Church handles doubts uh but one way to keep a testimony from breaking is to make the subject uh the the member of the church too afraid of what will happen if they leave and so this is why you hear talks all the time about staying in the boat not rehearsing your doubts with others the empty chair in the Celestial Kingdom where you should have been or Russell Ballard's famous where will you go talk and so these talks are not given by accident they are tapping into our very natural fear of leaving all we've known behind by making us afraid of what lurks beyond that and so we'll play this little clip but yeah this is something that will bolster your testimony because you're afraid of what happens if you don't have it all right so this is M Russell Ballard uh yes and the talk is to whom shall we go right yeah all right here we go if any one of you is faltering in your faith I ask you the same question that Peter asked to whom shall you go if you choose to become inactive or to leave the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where will you go what will you do the decision to walk no more with the church members and the Lord's chosen leaders will have a long-term impact that cannot always be seen right now there may be some Doctrine some policy some bit of History that puts you at odds with your faith and you may feel that the one only way to resolve that inner turmoil right now is to walk no more with the Saints if you live as long as I have you will come to know that things have a way of resolving themselves all right Mike it's just these talks are designed to make you afraid of leaving it and it really does um the next episode will have a whole lot more on this because we're going to focus really on how the church handles doubts and how they talk especially to the youth but this is this idea that if you walk away from from the Mormon Church you're walking away from God which is not true you know the Mormon church needs God God never needed the Mormon church that's why Mormonism had no basis in in this world until you know the 1830s um and it just really shows that you can leverage this this this fear of what will happen if you leave and you see this all the time in movies where you know someone finally walks away and they're like you won't be anything without me you walk away you're done here and it's like that's what the church does in the movies we're like oh that's a bad guy but in the church like oh my goodness look how christ-like that is and I'm I'm being facetious here but this really is a horrible tactic instead of saying where will you go you should say hey you got questions let's give you some answers but instead they're like don't ask questions research is not the answer and if you do leave you got nothing left and I just I hate it I really hate this approach it's also what narcissists say to people it's what abusive people say in relationships if you leave me you won't have anything where will you go and and my kind of facetious response that I put at the beginning of my Mormon meme review episodes for a long time was the clip from Napoleon Dynamite actually he says where will you go what will you do Napoleon goes wherever I feel like gosh right yeah and that's that's almost the response it's like well I'll go wherever I want then I'll go wherever I wherever I want to go there's there's more to this world than what he's offering there is and that's the thing like it's like The Truman Show you know you're walking up to the door and they're like if you go through that door and then Truman opens the door of course that's this big wide world out there and that really is similar to how leaving the world view of Mormonism is the world of world view of Mormonism is you're in this box and you can't leave the box and they constantly tell you not to leave the box and then you leave the Box you're like oh wow there's actually a really cool world out there and to me Nemo's point and I'm not being facetious here at all this is something that you do see in abusive relationships where they're like you're nothing without me where are you going to go if you leave here you have nothing and it's just to hear this from a Church of God that cannot actually give us answers but constantly gives this kind of a reinforcement I I really hate this because it does work on people it does keep people afraid to leave and it does bolster your testimony not because you are getting answers to your questions but because you're afraid of what happens if you go further into them yeah and I'm repeating but but the The Telltale sign of an abusive partner is when they say you're nothing without me you'll never survive without me what you want is a partner who will build you up so that you will be you will Thrive with or without their presence in your life that's somebody who truly cares about you that's somebody who truly wants the best for you somebody who is is invested in your self-efficacy some research that I recommend people look into is is the the research of Marty Seligman he's most known for his work in what's called positive psychology but but he came up um studying this idea of learned helplessness where they had where they keep dogs within a certain sort of um you know prescribed area and shock them um to the point where even when they removed the barriers to exit the shocks themselves and even when they removed the shocks they remain in a circumscribed uh you know spatial area because they've learned uh to be to be helpless and you know that's just that's just a dangerous sign whether it's a spouse whether it's a church whether it's a business uh you do not anything that tries to engender within you a sense of dependence on them or a sense of lower self-efficacy such that you don't believe in your self-efficacy but instead you believe in your weakness and in your helplessness I say run away run away from that organization yep I agree or or person yeah all right uh the next the next slide that we are looking at is the use of equivocation yeah and this is uh one last uh bias and fallacy I want to cover and it basically is it's the fallacy of deliberately failing to Define one's terms or knowingly and deliberately using words in a different sense than the one the audience will understand and this is one that is very common with the church days we've covered in so many of these previous episodes where they changed the meaning of words they changed the meaning of their own scriptures in attempt to neutralize the problems with church history and doctrines when members come to realize that the conclusion of these problems is that the church is not true and so um some of the easiest examples of this are when the church now says that translation doesn't mean translation has tips to brother Jake um skin doesn't mean human skin um the new and Everlasting Covenant doesn't mean the new and Everlasting Covenant of polygamy or that when Joseph Smith used what they how they quote carefully worded denials when saying he could see but only one wife when he was accused of practicing polygamy while he was married where he was already married to I believe at least 20 at that point and so it really is the church constantly um will basically change the the rules of the game in order to try to make these problems go away and that's why I've said so many times in these episodes that you have to take these issues at face value you have to take them you know the church often um argues that uh critics use presentism right so we're we're about we're looking at Joseph Smith's time through 2023 lenses and what they don't realize is oftentimes they're doing the exact same thing in Reverse which is they're trying to change what they did to make it work today and I just I have to say that when you try to do that it's just a really dishonest approach and it does keep people from digging deeper into these problems when you say well why did the why did the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses talk about God cursing people's skin dark uh to make sure that the white people knew not to be around them and they're like well skin doesn't mean skin it's more of a like an aura or maybe it's their clothes we don't know don't worry about it that is crap because it's all there it's still canonized it's still there Joseph Smith taught it very clearly and it just it drives me nuts when you try to use this this word game that often is accused um a leveled on critics it's like for the for the maths people out there I guess it's like an algebraic formula where you know it's it's understood what the values of everything involved are and you get an outcome and then the church turns around says no actually we've just decided now that the value of x is different so your answer's wrong so well hang on I I solved it based on what was presented to me what was most clear and apparent and what everyone else would understand by it so just because you're coming in and saying actually you know it means something different so that your conclusion can't be right that's not that's not how that works it's not it's like everyone else understands what the word horse means but if you want to stay a believing Mormon in the in the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon then you have to believe that a horse is one of these things a little tape here which just doesn't work no you can't just about words and and um the one that drives me nuts was the book Abraham you'll say Joseph Smith translate the book Abraham no he didn't yeah he did he never said it I'm like here are journal entries showing that he's saying he translated oh well that was in the early part he did all of it before the Egyptian outfit okay well here's journal entries from the from the 1840s where he's finishing it and saying we're finished translating and they're like well translation what does what does translation really mean and you're just like this is absurd it really is a it's a word game and it's used all the time especially when you start to have doubts and so people have these these testimonies and they're like I'm having trouble with the fact that God himself called this a new and Everlasting Covenant and John Taylor got a revelation from God saying it's Everlasting and now the church is saying that's not what he meant and it's just you so then you have all these little these little sleight of hands here to try to create this this you know this this fallacy equivocation of of all this it just it doesn't work and it's used often in conjunction with the sort of no true Scotsman fallacy and with shifting goal posts another logical fallacy the idea that well okay so yeah he did translate it but it was earlier okay well then someone else wrote it down it wasn't actually him oh okay if there's always a reason why The Logical conclusion that you came to based on the fact that you'd agreed to at the time then has to change they're changing the goal posts it's not that you're now all of a sudden wrong they have to find a way in which your logical conclusion somehow isn't logical anymore and so I say they and I guess the reason I say that is because it's useful I think for people listening now to be able to hear this I've done presentations on this before about logical fallacies it's really important to hear to be able to hear and recognize logical fallacies as they're going on in a in a discussion with family friends but also it's really important to be able to hear them coming out of your own mouth so I I guess I'd encourage you also to you know think up your own logical fallacies based on these ones um as a little bit of homework and you know try saying them out loud to yourself and hearing what it sounds like when you come up with these things because it's it's good to be able to recognize when other people are using logical fallacies but it's also good to recognize when you're doing it yourself so that you can think better and reason better and have discussions yep I agree we've we've referenced this subtly or indirectly but for me the boldest reframe maybe I'm aware of in recent times is how people like Spencer fluman and others have started to refer to the Book of Mormon no longer as a translation but as Revelation and that's a you know an orthodox member might not really get what's going on there but as soon as you move away from calling the Book of Mormon a translation which is what Joseph claimed it was and you moved to calling it a revelation you're basically claiming you're trying to you're trying to escape the fact that there's so many anachronisms in it that the mechanics of of producing it which we've talked about here on LDS discussions in depth with the stone and the hat and the plates not being in the room is so problematic that that that translation and then you add to that that the book of Abraham's a failed translation the book of Moses is a failed translation the Joseph Smith translation the Bible is a failed translation it's obvious why the church is running away from the term translation um but but then you don't you don't really understand when they start moving towards describing it as a revelation what they're really doing but what they're really doing is trying to put lipstick on a pig they're trying to cover up all the problems and Escape by saying we don't know the mystery series of how Joseph came up with the Book of Mormon it's a revelation you know that but but but once you understand the use of equivocation you can see what's going on there by the way when people like Spencer flewman or Taro Gibbons or whatever when they do this I don't think they think they're equivocating I think they're using the other one of the other Concepts that we discussed in a previous slide they're simply using motivated reasoning to try and come up with uh with a plausible explanation you don't even need conscious intentions to deceive once you start combining um these logical fallacies together you can have well-intended people unconsciously using motivated reasoning to equivocate and and everybody's intentions are good and that's what makes religion so resilient and so persistent and in some ways you know if it's harmful religion it makes it so pernicious is you don't even need intentional Bad actors you just need people who are sincere believers who want what's best for everybody unconsciously employing these tools or these logical fallacies is that fair to say Mike yeah I mean it's like we've we've talked about this a few times in these episodes but in Nemo kind of referenced it a minute ago you have like these equations right and so X Plus y equals whatever and with apologetics it's X Plus y equals the church is true and so when you're talking about say like you know the book Abraham translation from an apologetic standpoint you're like well the the the conclusion is fixed the church is true and Kerry molstein admits this so he's saying okay what do I need to put in X what do I need to put in y to equal the church is true I mean Carrie milstein will play this a week into our episode on apologetics if we played it before in the book of Abraham literally says that's how he views uh church history he says I start with the conclusion and I fit the data and the evidence in there and so you could say on one hand we'll carry mostenes being intentionally dishonest because he's admitting what he's doing on the other hand to your point he believes that he's doing God's work and so he's not I don't think he's sitting there in the corner at home going hahaha I tricked another one today I think he's thinking how do I make this work because I need it to work and um again it's a horrible way to to to discern truth and to get the truth but if your equation is fixed yeah you're going to change the variables however you need to do it in order to keep that conclusion fixed and that's like I said it's not a good way to do it but honest people do it to make it work yeah well let's go ahead and take to the next slide then speaking of people who do it to make it work let's talk about former Mormon General Authority Paul Dunn yeah and so if you've never heard of Paul H Dunn he was a general Authority in the 1980s he was a very popular speaker in the Mormon Church uh Dunn told some of the most amazing and Faith promoting stories about baseball and War and I guarantee you that many members felt the spirit as he gave talks about how he was preserved by the Lord as bullets tore through his clothing and flew all around him the problem however was that Paul H Dunn was caught lying about his stories um after he initially tried to downplay his embellishments by comparing them to Jesus telling Parables he finally released a statement uh to the church through church owned media he said I have been accused of various activities on becoming a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I confess that I have not always been accurate in my public talks and writings furthermore I have indulged in other activities inconsistent with the high and sacred office which I have held for all of these I feel a deep sense of remorse and ask forgiveness of any whom I may have offended my brethren of the general authorities over a long period of time have conducted in-depth investigations of the charges made against me they have weighed the evidence they have censured at me and placed a heavy penalty upon me and this is done was the first Apostle to be given uh the Emeritus status and he was removed from being a public figure in the church but this is to me one of the best examples of showing how spiritual witnesses can be manipulated because I guarantee people listening to his talks felt God and felt that elevation emotion that spiritual witness over a story that wasn't true and once you realize that can happen to you it's really easy to understand how we have these experiences through our lives and we frame them as being directly from God when in reality a lot of the times it's just ourselves reacting to either stuff that's going on in our own lives or to what we're hearing from other people yeah was he definitely an apostle was he a ga he's not an apostle it says on the slide he was an apostle she wanted to clear that up okay sorry I don't know why I put that in there yeah no and I'll just say Not only was he a general Authority he was probably the most beloved of all the general authorities uh because he was so charismatic and funny and witty if you went to Deseret Book back in the day there would literally be an entire wall of of talks on tape you know the um Nemo Once Upon a Time uh MP3s didn't exist okay there wasn't YouTube there wasn't the internet there were these and this is before there were CDs have you ever heard of CDs Nemo I I I it may have done is that like yeah is that like Blu-ray okay before CDs there were cassette tapes and you would put the cassette tapes in and hit play and you would listen to different music then when you have to wind them back you'd use a pencil through the middle and turn it right see I know this stuff anyway Paul Dunn made a fortune I think off of these cassette tapes that you would buy at Deseret Book of like a really charismatic compelling spiritually uplifting spiritual experiences that he had had playing professional baseball uh you know fighting in war and um and so he was super beloved and the only problem with all of that is that he was making it up and I'll just say that there's a Mormon stories episode uh where we tell the entire story of Paul it's done and frankly because you're younger and because you're a convert Mike I'm surprised you've heard of Paul Dunn well I only heard about it after after I started doing the research oh yeah I I didn't know anything about Paul Dunn because I think uh I don't know when this all happened so it's 1991 I I joined in yeah it was it was in the it was in the late 90s yeah I was late 90s when I joined so I yeah I never heard about this at all but what is important about Paul HD and sorry just to shoehorn my own agenda in here but what is important about Paul h10 is it it's a precedent for when a church leader gets caught lying they can be given Emeritus status and released just bear that in mind yeah yeah I mean on the one hand it was cool that the the church did put him on Emeritus status what's not cool is is that they were forced to do it um by standstill magazine and by the media um you know and um and I'm sure there have been other general authorities that didn't get caught who were also you know telling untruths but there's some that are still members of the church's General Authority system now that are telling lies there are some that may it would be a prophet would that take us to the next slide Michael yes the next slide yeah and so you know uh our last episode we talked about the Transfiguration of Brigham Young which was a story that explains why Brigham Young was God's chosen successor and as we talked about it was not even a story that was invented until seven years later and the same could be said of those who have had spiritual confirmations uh listening to Russell Nelson's Miracle stories that have now been proven excuse me to either be exaggerations or outright Fabrications such as the story of the lady in the Hat which we're not going to get to today but we are going to do an episode uh soon on Russell Nelson's Miracle stories or the the plane that was spiraling down to a very quick death and so we're gonna play a little clip here and and listen to the music and listen to how this uh elicits elevation emotion just imagine how many people had spiritual Witnesses um hearing this story from from Russell Nelson all right let's this is the peace and hope of Easter uh Mormon church president uh Russell M Nelson I've had I've had some Unforgettable moments while traveling one occurred years ago while flying to the inauguration of a university president where I was to offer the invocation it was a short flight in a small two-engine plane we were halfway to our destination when the right Edge and suddenly exploded spewing flaming fuel all over the right side of the plane the plane was on fire careening to the Earth in a spiral dive I expected to die miraculously the dive extinguished the fire the pilot was able to restore power to the other engine and make a safe landing and I actually made it to the inauguration on time throughout that dramatic unexpected experience I was surprisingly calm my entire life flashed before me while approaching what seemed to be certain death I was at peace I knew that my wife and I were sealed to each other eternally and our children were sealed to us thanks to the Lord I knew we would all be together again I was at peace ready to meet my maker what's wrong with that that sounds like a really inspiring story Mike yeah and it really does it's got the music it's got the imagery it's got the the pacing uh by by Russell Nelson as he tells it and the problem is that the story did not happen the way he tells it um and we're gonna get to this in a future episode but they finally um threw some really good detective work by the uh disgust Mormonism board uh they found the uh I forgot what they would call it but the flight record of the plane he was on and they experienced that plane experience no outer damage um they it did make a precautionary Landing but it was not an emergency landing because it had some engine Feathering and so this idea that it had some spiral dive with an exploding Engine with oil flying all over the windows it just didn't happen and it was really interesting to me about the story is that Russell Nelson has a habit in his stories as we'll get to in this episode of making himself the hero um and making himself really God's chosen one by being saved and protected specifically by God and so the story as you watch this as a member you're going to get that good warm feeling because you're like holy crap this guy really is the prophet of God because he he was through this experience and he was super calm and um in some instances where he tells a story he talks about the woman across from being absolutely hysterical and it's you know it's about how he's so calm and resolved whereas this other woman who doesn't have the church is hysterical because she doesn't know what's going to happen um but it didn't happen this way and so if you got that spiritual feeling listening to the story and you thought it was from God well again this story is not the way it claimed to have been and it shows how easily manipulated we are by music by imagery and by stories that didn't happen yeah and I'm sorry I couldn't help myself but but say it didn't happen halfway through and that's why he was able to remain calm because it's so frustrating uh it's so frustrating that he's lied about this to people and and that I've done a video on it myself about showing how this isn't true and people will defend it they'll defend it to the hill because they have as we've discussed through all those logical fallacies a need for it to be true because at some point and in some way it bolstered their testimony and so now once it comes out that it's not true they can't square that and that's not fair to them it's not fair to have people build their faith on things that aren't true yeah that's just it and um if you read some of the responses to um rfm and Bill real did an episode on Mormonism live about the the flight of death as I believe they call it um you'll see the comments and they'll say well engine Feathering could be an engine failure which could cause the plane to spiral and the fire was put out by the spiraling so there wouldn't be any external damage and you're like think of all the steps you have to take to get to that point um if a play If an engine explodes in in one of the accounts he gives he talks about oil flying everywhere there's going to be external damage to the plane the report says no external damage to the plane see you're immediately on in a very problematic thing and then you talk about this planing to spiral to extinguish the flames and then Nelson is Nemo said then Nelson's like well it was super calm and again I just you know maybe there would be someone if a plane spiraling to to its death that would just be sitting there like yeah but I'm good uh I just I feel like as we'll see in this episode with Nelson he is the type of person who wants to make himself the hero and the chosen one of every story and I know that's gonna be upsetting to Believers but as I said we'll talk about that in episode there's there's four really good examples of his Miracle stories that have either well I'll give you guys a tease if you if you're not familiar with this one of the stories he made up so badly and it was all miraculous elements they were made up so badly that it was published in a book by desert books they had to stop the printing of that book to remove the story because the people involved in this story came out and when the excerpt was released and said yeah that didn't happen so Nelson has a problem with the truth and so when you hear these stories and you get that spiritual feeling you then have to go why am I getting a spiritual feeling from God for a story that didn't actually happen yeah yep it's a problem and Elder Holland I think has been has been caught lying several times too and Nemo I think I think this goes back to something you were alluding to Nemo you we've referred to this previously but you've put together a document that that you've sent to your local leadership and even to Elder Oaks I believe or or more chronicling untruths told by several church leaders is that right yeah we can put a link in the description but uh yes three and a half thousand Word document that outlines lies told by several of the current Quorum the 12 and and first presidency lies that they told over the pulpit in their position as prophecies and revelators it's it's not it's it is a systemic problem within the current leadership of the Church of lying for the Lord this idea that if they lie with the intent of bolstering people's Faith then it's fine there's this justification of their dishonesty which is extremely problematic um and we did an episode together John where we saw Daniel's response after he promised to investigate those lies and I think it's safe to say it was somewhat wanting yeah all right well let's go to your find is this the final slide in the episode final slide yeah all right yeah this is um it's certainly not me trying to Bear My Testimony or my witness of leaving but you know I had mentioned before that I had spiritual confirmations of the Book of Mormon as an investigator and I did they did come right away um I remember reading a few chapters a night and praying about it and I think it took about two to three weeks before I started to get that warm feeling uh before going to bed that the Book of Mormon was true and now that I've come to believe that the Book of Mormon is not true and not ancient or historical I have that common conundrum we all have of trying to figure out how to make sense of those feelings and is this something you hear from Members all the time and you'll hear phrases like I cannot deny the experiences I've had how can I turn away from the witness I receive from God I see those pretty much every day on Twitter and this was something that was particularly noteworthy um because as I began putting ldsdiscussions.com together um and and so just to give this quick story I um and put this this website together at the time it had the annotated essays I think I maybe had started doing the Saints chapter by chapter it wasn't a ton of stuff and I'm sitting there one night and I was in a not great mood um I think I had had a rough discussion about church stuff that day actually which was kind of even crazier because I didn't have discussions about church stuff all that often um and so I'm sitting there it was like 11 o'clock at night I'm working on the laptop with my day job stuff and all of a sudden I get this uh my phone buzzes I have a um an email so I opened up the email and it was um from I and again keep in mind at this point the website's brand new I was getting maybe like two emails a week at most and uh I look at my phone I open the email and the first and last name of the person emailing were the first and last name of my kid and so I immediately thought it was someone from my in-laws playing a joke on me because they knew where I was and I thought maybe they were trying to screw with me on the website and um open up the email and uh it had an email from someone who was struggling with some church claims and they had some questions about polygamy from the annotated essay on the website and so I'm reading the email and I'm very skeptical thinking of course this has got to be someone screwing with me and I get to the signature they left their their signature in uh from where they emailed from from their their job and again had the same first and last name as my kid and I noticed that they had the same area code as me for their phone number and I thought there there's just no way um I live in an area where Mormonism is completely irrelevant um so there's no way that you'd get an email when I get one to two a week from someone with the first and last name of my kid in the exact same phone number so I'm I'm sure someone's screwing with me at this point so I email back and and um kind of gave some of the the links in sources for what they were asking and I just kind of said like where do you live you know because I was like I said I was pretty pretty uh suspicious and sure enough this person lives uh 12 15 minutes from me and is a real person and you know we've become friends since we kept in touch and gone to lunch a bunch of times and it just shows that sometimes when you're in a really dark place and you get this this thing that happens to you like this where out of nowhere I get this email um from someone that lives 12 to 15 minutes away and again like in my kids school there's I think two or three kids that go go to Mormon you know a Mormon church so it's irrelevant you know one percent maybe and to get an email from someone that's 12 to 15 minutes away at that moment when I was feeling like crap um if you heard that story and that story ultimately ultimately brought me back to church I have no doubt that would be a story that I could tell uh at any church service and get people feeling the utmost spirit and I would I would I would make a bet that you you'd hear that story repeated if it was ever kind of heard by stake presidents or whatever because it's a one in a million shot to have someone email on a day where something bad happened with church stuff that lives 12 to 15 minutes away from me with the same same first and last name as my kid obviously the same last name is me so I just you know that was one of those moments where on one hand I'm like okay this is God telling me I'm on the right track with this website and then on the other hand I'm like no it's not it's just a coincidence but to me that was one of those moments where I really I Goosebumps yeah and all it takes yeah no go ahead all it takes for coincidence to become confirmation is just the right bias yeah in the right situation yeah and that's what it was and and I did I had that moment where I'm like holy crap like there's something this is impossible like I really I mean no joke I'm kind of feeling it now actually like Goosebumps because it was a moment um if you ever watched the show Lost um one of one of the famous scenes in Lost was the end of the first season and um John Locke who's one of the main characters just kind of lost all faith and everything he's believing in this island also the Light shoots up you know and it really is like that where you get this moment and to Nemo's point you combine that coincidence with my mindset I was in with the fact that it was really I mean you're like it really was like a one in a million thing to have somebody that close by same first and last name and so to me that's also a cautionary tale to read too much and to experience this and to to attribute experiences to God because I would attribute that to God as a believer in saying that's leading me on the path I should be on and and it really is something that stuck with me because like I said the Nemo Nemo pointed out it is full of my own interpretations my own biases and the situation I was in but that to me was as powerful an experience as I ever had in the church because of the fact that it came at the moment I needed it and from someone local that I could talk to and just let me know that I was helping people at the website and so that really did feel like you know as strong as spiritual witness as you can get and to me that feels like a good way to end this episode because it shows that to me that I don't believe that's a witness from God that the website is is what I should be doing but I think that also helps it to show that you cannot attribute um feelings that come from within to God especially when you find out later that what those feelings were based on is not what you thought they were yeah Nemo do you do you have similar stories from your experience or background that that makes you relate to what what Mike's talking about yeah I mean I have ones particularly from when I was a very Orthodox uh believer of you know coincidences that make you think the holy spirit is watching over you or or such um but even even now you know it's not a one in a million someone sharing my name but it's uh meeting someone uh in a place where you wouldn't expect to meet someone who knows what I do and what I'm doing on YouTube and they they talk to me about you know how what I'm doing is helping them or XYZ you know you you have these experiences with people all the day and I often say to people who challenge me about spiritual experiences you know they'll say to you well you can't deny your spiritual experiences and often people will say well I can't deny my spiritual experiences and the way I look at it is they are no longer they are they are still that they are experiences but they are no longer evidence and I think that's that's the delineation that a lot of people will begin to make is that their spiritual experiences were still moments of spiritual emotional uplift but they are not necessarily evidence of the truthfulness of the LDS church in the way that they were yeah yeah and I'll just add you know I remember on the one hand I've referred to this before praying about the Book of Mormon reading the book of Mormon taking moroni's promise as a 16 year old praying about it getting no answer praying a second time getting no answer and feeling frustrated about that but then at some point my junior senior year of high school watching a general conference and feeling this overwhelming you know a set of emotions that I at the time I associated with God and the Holy Ghost and the truthfulness of the church um and that was something that probably lifted me you know up and bolstered me for many many years um and like others I'm I'm forced to ask what was that if it wasn't Holy Ghost if it wasn't a witness that the church is is true what was it and it can be the truth is it could be a lot of things first of all if you're a believing Mormon and you've had spiritual witnesses that testify to you that the Mormon church is true my answer is well then stay in the church and keep believing in it if it's working for you if you're happy in the church and if those experiences are precious to you I don't think any of us here on the podcast are trying to say from this episode then stop believing and and reinterpret those beliefs if belief is working for you if you're happy and healthy then just keep believing whatever you believe whatever it's based on uh because we're all just trying to get through the day and we're just trying to get through this life in one piece you know um but you know if if you if you if the church isn't working for you if Orthodox belief isn't working for you and you've had these um spiritual experiences that you cherish one option is just to say they're still valid they were still from God they were still Divine but maybe you interpreted them you know maybe you were conditioned in the church to interpret them in a certain way that now you can look back and say you know what I interpreted them under the influence in ways that I don't necessarily have to now hold to they can still be from God God they can still be Witnesses of concepts of Love or Divinity or truth or goodness they could have still been spiritual experiences but but that extra baggage of interpreting them to mean that the church is true well maybe I over interpreted them so that's one option you have is to hold to them but realize that maybe you over interpreted them and then of course there are other things you could do which is to say it's elevated emotion it's just my brain um you know and you could recontextualize them in other ways if you want to and all I can say is do whatever you feel is best and we're not here to tell you I don't know I hopefully Mike and Nemo you'll agree with me the purpose of this episode was not to get you to discard the sacred experiences that you've had it's simply to help you understand how the brain works how emotions work how social psychology works so that you can make whatever decisions in your life make most sense to you make most sense to you and lead to the highest health and well-being for you whatever that may be yeah and it can also help stop people being possibly judgmental towards those of other faiths or confused about those of other faiths who also have these same stated feelings and experiences because it gives them room to kind of say well I can understand the mechanisms by which they may have also felt these things now because they understand the social psychology a bit more and the sort of anthropological reasons for these things if that makes sense no I I think that's perfect because we started this episode with that 12 minute video of all the other face giving their own testimony and obviously some are Cults in there like Jim Jones and all that um but it really is to just as all these episodes are is to show people um what we know from you know whether it's science or history or however you want to say it so that we can make better decisions and to jump Point people get really mad when you talk about Witnesses and that's why I tried to do this episode in a more clinical technical way as opposed to trying to dissect someone's witness because my experiences um as a member of the church my experiences before joining the church my experiences since leaving the church those are all still experiences I had and I don't know how to attribute them sometimes um but the fact is knowing these things helps me to understand kind of how things work when you come across information that you don't like it also helps you to better understand that everyone's having these same experiences so you don't feel like you're the one and only church that's getting this direct confirmation from God and at the end of the day you're going to do with it what you want but I think it's important for people to understand this because one thing I want to make clear is while I don't want to tell everyone oh your witness is just chemicals in your brain I don't believe that I think we all have reasons for having these experiences but what I don't like is how the Mormon Church tells you what your emotions are the Mormon Church tells you they Define your experiences for you and they're defining them in a way that Stacks a deck for them so I'm not telling you you should run away from the church and never look back I'm saying that what the church is presenting as what a witness is is not quite what we now know it is and you need to be able to make your own decisions with more information and then at that point you're going to do with it what you want I've said that in so many episodes all I can do is put out there what I've learned how I've processed it and what I think are solid concrete evidences for these different topics and then at the end of the day if you still want to believe believe that's your choice if you want to walk away that's your choice and and that's I mean for me this is how it helped me hopefully it helps other people that was really the one and only goal of of doing these episodes with you was to try to put out what had helped me and what other people had said had helped them on the website in a way that people can can watch and pick and choose and do with it what they will well beautiful well uh this is going to be one of the longer episodes from this LDS discussion series but I think it's one of the most important ones so I hope people have valued it I hope people have enjoyed it uh the the show the show notes list is very long but I want to just point out a few uh resources that I think people will really find valuable I've told you guys about this before but there's a multi-part series on Mormon stories called the psychology of religion with Dr James Nagel i s and it's got It's one of the first Mormon stories series that had PowerPoint slides uh to illustrate visuals to illustrate an episode and it's absolutely a top 50 Mormon stories episode I hope everyone will check it out uh we'll include a link to that in the show notes I also want to remind people of Luna Lindsay Corbin's amazing series called examining Mormon mind control or recovering agency from Luna Luna Lindsay Corbin's amazing book by that same name recovering agency it's just it's about these 31 Flavors of undue influence that uh impact people I also want to refer people to a classic book in the field of psychology Mike and Nemo I'm wondering if you guys have ever heard of this book it's called influence the psychology of persuasion by Robert cialdini and this was a book that I was uh asked to read when I was getting my PHD in social psychology but um if you if you go to the book and you look at what it's about it's about things like reciprocation commitment and consistency social proof Authority scarcity it basically um you know takes these Concepts out of the charged religious context text and just teaches you how these psychology psychological Concepts can be used to manipulated um and it's not even really talking about the religious context it's talking about sales and business and marketing and how all of these concepts are used to just persuade and manipulate in The Human Condition so so these along with several other links in the show notes we want to refer people to if they want to study these sorts of things more all right uh Mike and Nemo any any final words before we we sign out I I'm always suspicious of any book that tells me how many copies they've sold on the cover because is that not just an appeal to popularity it is right anyway yeah thanks for having me on again I really enjoy these discussions and I try my best to be fair um and I think it's a discussion worth worth having and I just hope that there are people coming to this with a uh an open belief system meaning that they're willing to take in new information and see how it fits into their sort of moral Paradigm and and things um and if you're coming to this more closed then I understand and um I hope you'll revisit when when you are a bit more open and please uh while you're while you're subscribing to the Mormon stories podcast YouTube Channel please go over and subscribe to the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel and become a monthly donor to Nemo because uh he's doing important work he's doing a full-time and he needs your support and his his incredible work is worthy of your financial support would you disagree with me Nemo well I I can't really that would be weird but I will say that I left the sunk cost of my you know my degree and everything that I trained for and the medical job that I had um I left that sunk cost and it was difficult uh to pursue this full time so your support is is welcome and there's a final example of sunk cost fallacy for you because if I'd stayed just because I'd done a degree in it then I never would have got to do this full time which I very much enjoy yeah all right Mike any final words no I just I apologize to anyone who made it all the way through this episode just because it is a long one but I think it's a good one and um I think what Nemo said was a really great point which is if you're coming to this with an open mind hopefully you're not going to be upset by what you're hearing and if if somehow you came to us with a closed mind you're still with us now hopefully um maybe this is something in the future you can revisit um with kind of some more time to kind of maybe maybe some of these things will click as you're having conversations with other people or you're listening to general conference talks because a lot of these things are kind of over overarching terms and um they will apply and you'll see them in other areas of life too so I just I hope it was valuable uh to people out there just because I know it was a long one but we thought it was important to cover this in a way that wasn't trying to come off as is is trying to dissect people's Witnesses but more so to look at it and say how can we have our emotions bolstered and strengthened and in some cases manipulated in um and I think it's an important thing for us to know as Nemo said not just for for church but you know we we do this when you watch ads or when you watch um stories on the news or when you watch political ads all of those things are designed to get at the right emotional response and so this is really important not just for for Mormonism and so if you made it this far like I said I apologize for being so long but I hope you found it valuable yep and make sure and check out ldsdiscusions.com for Mike's uh wonderful essays and of course if you want to consume all of this series you can go to Spotify or apple podcasts and check out the dedicated LDS discussions podcast feeds there you can do video or audio on Spotify you can do audio on Apple podcasts and of course we have a playlist on our YouTube channel on Mormon stories podcast where you can watch all of these episodes in succession and you can refer others to them as well and also please consider donating to Mormon stories go to mormonstories.org click on the Donate button become a monthly donor we we compensate Mike and Nemo for their participation in these episodes as well as my own and we need your compensation we we believe it's important to compensate uh creators and so we need your support to keep this sort of stuff going so please do become a monthly donor and support us and hopefully we'll keep Mike and Nemo around a long time creating more great content all right fellas and Mike I guess I guess we should talk about what's next on our list I'm looking at the list right now um anything you want to say about what's ahead I think the next episode we're going to do is on doubts and I think it will tie in nicely to this one just because it's going to look at how the church frames those with doubts and how they kind of use different tactics to keep us from doubting um we're gonna have an episode on apologetics we're gonna have an episode on if Joseph Smith got it right who got it wrong and I think that's a really important way to look at these these topics as we start to kind of wrap up at least for now um because it really is important to to kind of take the equation that we often hear in church is to say Joseph Smith got it right and say okay if that's the case what do we what are we getting wrong in the broader sense of the world and then we're going to do an episode on Russell Nelson's Miracle stories which we referenced earlier and I think that one's gonna be a fun one too all right yeah and and Mike we're going to be doing a few more and then you're going to be taking a sabbatical for the summer and then hopefully we'll have you back in the fall to do some other trailing episodes as well um I I I I realize we need one on Joseph Smith martyrdom I don't think we really covered that there's several things about his martyrdom that I think deserved their own episode we've talked about I still want to do one on the on the three Witnesses and the a Witnesses and the spiritual eyes I know that uh you've got some strong feelings about that but there's a there's another list there's Financial stuff we can do we hope to not only finish this year off strong but to have you come back next year and do some final trailing episodes but this has been an amazing series Mike so Mike we can't thank you enough in Nemo as well thanks fellas yeah thanks for those who have who have stood by and listened to this many episodes that's uh I can't even imagine listening to myself that long so everyone who has yeah all right all right thanks Brethren and thanks for joining us today on Mormon stories LDS discussion Edition LDS discussions Edition please share these episodes with everybody please be kind to each other be good to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stores podcast take care