If Joseph got it right, who got it wrong?

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast LDS discussions Edition I am your host for today John delin it is May 25th 2023 and today we are going to be answering the question if Joseph Smith got it wrong sorry if Joseph Smith got it right uh who got it wrong basically uh we are something like 46 or 47 episodes into this LDS discussion Series where uh with my friend Mike and with Nemo and some other special guests we've been analyzing Mormon church truth claims uh as objectively and as neutrally and as evidence-based as we possibly could we're nearing the end of kind of the series as Mike uh envisioned it we um will be taking a break for the summer and then we make may have some a few episodes to kind of uh close things out in the fall uh but um for those of you who want to uh check out this series we really recommend you start from episode one and go sequentially you can access the U Mormon uh the LDS discussions podcast feed either on Spotify in audio or video format as its own podcast you can go to Apple podcast as well and then uh it's integrated into the mor Stories podcast feed or you can go to the Mormon stories podcast YouTube channel and there's a there's a playlist where you can just kind of watch these episodes sequentially um we know that um tens of thousands of people are finding a lot of value in this series and so if this is your first time joining us we hope you'll go back to the beginning and uh and enjoy this series like like so many people are I Nemo and I feel like this series is a game changer uh Mike tends to be a little more self-effacing and uh and doesn't doesn't want to accept that so if you want to tell Mike how much uh this Series has meant to you please email him at LDS discussion uh without aness gmail.com and pour your effusive praise upon this man who uh who is dead inside and I say that jokingly and lovingly and uh make Mike Feel good about what he's he's given all of us hey Mike welcome how's it going welcome to this episode of LDS discussions thanks that's quite the intro for that but yeah thanks and Nemo it's good to have you brother yeah I just want to say I disagree with John I don't think it's impactful at all I've got your back mic speaking for me thank you you you I think I think we've made Mike an honorary Brit because as Nemo tells us it's it's very British to be dead inside is that is that right Deo indeed yes so um if you want to swap that useless old passport of yours out for a shiny blue British one then feel free I'm G have to get dual citizenship maybe so we'll figure it out all right well um today's episode Mike is basically attempting to summarize maybe the previous 46 or 47 or 48 episodes to help people to help distill for people um you know what we've what you've been trying to convey and what we've been trying to convey in this series is that right yeah it's um we've had a couple of episodes that have kind of summarized certain areas like we had an episode that uh summarized Joseph Smith's translations as a whole uh we've had episodes about where Joseph Smith might have gotten his unique Mormon Doctrine where those ideas might have come from and this episode is one as I was doing the overview project I was kind of adding on topics like I think I had said originally I think I was thinking like eight topics it ended up I think at 39 and so I was adding him as I was going cuz I'm like oh I didn't think about that or I didn't about that and this one came from I was reading and I wish I could remember what topic it was I was reading uh something online where people were arguing about some topic of Truth claims of Mormonism and the person who was kind of saying the truth claims didn't hold up because of these different reasons finally just said hey okay fine let's assume he's right but now you have to look at it from if the Mormon Church's truth claims and Joseph Smith's claims are correct look at the implications that are going to impact your life outside of religion and when I when I read that I was like that's a really good point because we so much focus on you know from a Believer standpoint focus on making sure we're defending the faith um looking for evidence that Joseph Smith got it right and as a Critic we're also usually focused on the truth claims themselves and just saying this doesn't make sense and this is why well this is a good thought experiment and starting with looking at what do we need for the church to be true and then flipping it upside down and saying okay now let's assume all of those things are true what does that mean for all of these different aspects of Our Lives that we take for granted as far as being at least solid enough to um kind of accept as not 100% perfect truth especially when you're talking about science but just that we accept as kind of being like um the consensus that we all kind of live by and that for the most part all areas of science are kind of using to build off of all right and just uh just as a friendly reminder we uh we pay mik and Nemo for their participation in these episodes so please uh if you will go to Mormon stories.org click on the Donate button and become a monthly donor if you value this content we would really appreciate that we also would love it if you would subscribe on YouTube or on Facebook to this um to these channels that that's always valuable as well um and of course while you're at it please subscribe to the Nemo the Mormon uh YouTube channel and support Nemo in his important work as well Nemo anything you want to say before we jump into the slides no I think a way you could possibly look at this is um I guess if if we're wrong in the assertion we've made that Joseph Smith is wrong then yeah who uh who else is wrong because it wouldn't just be us then because the things you'd have to just prove for us to be wrong would be egyptology would be Linguistics Etc yeah okay all right Mike should we dive in yeah all right here we go here's slide one yeah and so just you know kind of as what we said if if you've been following Along on this kind of series you've now watched well over 40 episodes covering a very wide range of topics whether it's Joseph Smith time as a treasure Digger um all the way up to revelations in the church today in Modern Times And so it's kind of hard for us to try to kind of wrap this up and kind of find ways to make these kind of Recaps a little more relevant and so what I'm hoping is that we did a good enough job outlining why we believe without any reasonable doubt that the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints can be proven to be false with real tangible evidence we've shown that in every episode and most of it's all through church sources and documents and in this episode we want to as I said do this in two different ways so we're going to kind of go through some slides saying you know this is what you need to believe for the church to be true because there are truth claims that are made that are IND doctrinal scriptures whether it's the Book of Mormon book of Abraham Doctrine and Covenants um that we believe to be the word of God and then as I said earlier we're going to kind of flip that upside down and say okay now if Joseph Smith did get it right then who got it wrong and as Nemo said that's a question that's important because we often times will as a Believer will say well the critics got it wrong that's the end of the story and it's like it's not and that's the problem because this does have truth claims with implications Beyond Mormonism and this is something I never thought about early in my faith Journey or doing the Deep dive in all this stuff because you don't really think about the implications outside of this little box we're looking into as far as you know religion and Truth claims but it's really important to evaluate the truth claims of Mormonism by looking at what we do know outside of Mormonism and then trying to kind of see how it is compatible one way or the other and you know as Nemo said it's easy for an apologist to say that Joseph Smith's Claims can be true if we just look at them at the right way and that the critics are wrong but what they neglect to do is to outline what those implications would be and I've talked about that in a lot of episodes when I say that when you try to create one apologetic over here you're now creating a problem over here and so when we talk the best example is the tight versus loose translation of the book Mormon and you'll say okay well anachronisms well Joseph Smith was using a loose translation obviously and he was able to put his own 19th century worldview Into the Book of Mormon it's kind of a co-author and that's why there's anachronisms but then on the flip side there are areas of the Book of Mormon that need to be a tight translation we did a whole episode on this and and basically this episode is kind of trying to take that on a more overhead view and say you can't have it both way so you got to be able to if you're going to create truth claims and apologetics apply them not just to Mormonism but to the world as a whole and it's got to be consistent because otherwise you're going to see real quickly that that that's why apologetics simply don't hold up because they don't look at the implications beyond the little Target they're trying to strike absolutely um I just think it's I think it's really important when somebody starts to doubt or question Mormonism immediately they go to Fair Mormon or you know the gospel topics essays or a book of Mormon uh you know uh Book of Mormon evidences or whatever it's called Book of Mormon Central or any of the classic apologetic sites and I think to be to have intellectual Integrity you have to kind of not just look at each tree individually which apologists tend to want to do you have to look at the entire Forest if you want to have intellectual integrity and what I mean by that is it it's not just Joseph Smith polyandry it's not just the problems with the book of Abraham it's not just the treasure digging in the folk magic and the and the peep Stone in the Hat it's not just Joseph Smith lying to Emma and the church it's not just the problems uh the problems with the Book of Mormon the anachronisms the DNA the geography problems it's looking at all of that together including the racism the sexism the homophobia you have to put it all into the same basket and then weigh it together and that's what I like about this episode is that basically is we're going to be drawing the extensions out if you accept Mormon doctr Mormon theology Mormon history is true what are you going to be what do you have to reject right can I just throw something in there please because it's it's big you've made a really good point John like this is this is big and a lot of people can be overwhelmed by it and it's the reason this is over 40 episodes long this series and I'm quite proud to be part of it it's it's a good resource for all of this but the thing to remember is particularly for those that were born in the church is you didn't learn all this in W go yeah it wasn't overwhelming to you you were taught it over years you were taught it through primary songs Through Seminary through church every Sunday bit by bit by bit and you had this entire worldview constructed and so to deconstruct that will take time and it will be big and scary and overwhelming and that's what apologists will play on to say ah well we'll just get you to focus on one issue because that feels manageable and then we'll just dissect that issue and make it go away but and the thing they don't want you to do and the thing they convince you isn't necessary but unfortunately it is is to look at the entire Forest not just one tree because an entire Forest of a religious system was built up if that makes sense absolutely all right well let's go and go to the next slide Mike yeah and this is just you know to kind of start this episode we want to look at the things that as we've talked about our previous episodes you kind of have to believe if you want to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and so you know at the end of the series if Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God everything falls apart and I think any believing member of the church would agree with that and so it means that I should probably tackle this at the very end of our episode but we want to do it first because at the as we've talked about it all begins with Joseph Smith and you know one of the big things we talked about this in our first Vision episode we have to believe that Joseph Smith really had a first Vision in 1820 where he saw both God and Jesus even as the evidence is is overwhelming that he did not believe they were separate beings until the mid 1830s never wrote any account down until 1832 and at that point only claimed to see one personage and actually revised the Bible to strengthen the idea that they were one instead of clarifying they were separate beings we we covered all that in the episode so if you haven't watched that one please do because I think the revisions to the Bible might be the biggest element to knowing that Joseph Smith had no idea they were separate beings and this doesn't even get into the details that we talked about with the revivals um that is around his house didn't occur until 1824 which throws a timeline all into doubt um we then have to believe that the priesthood restoration occurred with John the Baptist being there for the ironic priesthood and Peter James and John for the mesic priesthood and as we talked about in the priesthood episodes um the problem is that we could show that using the church's own documents Revelations and story you know timeline that these stories were later Creations that were retrofitted back into the history even changing a revelation from God I think two Revelations from God to make them fit and um as we talked about even Joseph Smith was not ordained to a higher priest until 1831 2 years after he was claimed to have received it and to say this the problem is an understatement given that the church claims to be the only one on earth with the ability and the authority to perform these ordinances and so right off the bat these are two things you have to believe to be historical and credible in order to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet and right off the bat we're seeing holes but these are like I would say the two founding um elements of Joseph Smith's kind of Miracle stories that you have to accept as a member of the church and if I can just remind people of a quote by beloved Mormon prophet Gordon B hinley he has quoted as saying well we have nothing to hide our history book is an open book they may find what they are looking for but the fact is the history of the church is clear and open and leads to Faith and strength and virtues but then he goes on to say our whole strength rests on the validity of that first Vision it either occurred or it did not occur if it did not then this work is a fraud and that's Gordon be Hinkley if it did then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens and and then again president Gordon minkley says each of us has to face the matter either the church is true or it is a fraud there's no middle ground it is the Church and Kingdom of God or it is nothing um and and so you know that's not that's not us being dramatic there are a lot of progressive Mormons these days that want to basically say well okay maybe the book of Abraham isn't quite uh scripture and maybe the Book of Mormon is mythical in a metaphor you know maybe maybe this isn't the one true church but maybe we're one of many Faith Traditions but all Faith Traditions deserve respect well that's not what prophet you know Gordon beh Hinkley said he said either it's exactly what it claims to be or it's one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on mankind are we overstating that Nemo no I I wanted to address that as well in in just saying that you know you have to believe these things and a lot of people will push back and say no I can be nuanced I can believe something else but in reality you have to believe it because that is the the script of Mormonism that is what the prophets are teaching so that is orthodox Mormonism is what G be Hinkley taught there yeah I think so all right well let's go to the next slide um which is around um let me make sure we be treasure digging yeah oh no um okay yeah here's the next slide go for yeah this is oh yeah okay this is one we covered I believe in our F this our first episode and Joseph Smith treasure digging as we talked about that episode as we talked about in the episodes following that plays a prominent role in The Book of Mormon that you cannot deny once you know the history Joseph's treasure digging uh the methods were not used just to find the gold plates but to translate The Book of Mormon as we have it today using the very same peep SL year stone that he claimed to uh see bury treasure with and so that means that in order for us to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God we have to believe that treasure digging was a legitimate way to actually see buried objects and even though Joseph Smith never was able to find or retrieve any of the promised Treasures we have to believe that he could at least see them because as the treasure digging company's Seer um which is what Joseph's role was was he was the Seer of the treasure digging company which basically meant the group of people that were performing in these digs he was the person that was ordained or at least labeled as the person that could see the the buried objects um we have to believe that Joseph had that ability because we are also told that that is the exact same method he used to find the gold plates that were buried in Hill kamur um and also to translate The Book of Mormon itself and so if Joseph Smith could not see buryed treasure then he could not locate the gold plates as stated he could not see through his pe/ shearstone when they were left um when the the gold plates were left hidden in a log as he told Emma and certainly could not translate The Book of Mormon off the very same rock in a hat that he claimed to find Buri treasure with and so as we talked about in that episode I know one of the apologetic responses is to say that God Was preparing Joseph by letting him think he could see bered treasure with a stone but that argument makes no sense because the Book of Mormon itself has a translation method uh plan that did not require Joseph's treasure digging a rock in a hat yet Joseph still used the treasure digging methods anyway so to some degree you have to believe that treasure digging is a real legitimate credible way to find lost or buried objects against literally every single shred of evidence or documentation we have that no one could ever find anything um and the few that did we could later see um a lot of stories where people would go to these areas and plant um little things that they would find to get people to pay them to dig into the bigger ones which of course they would never find anything so but you need to believe that God uh actually gave Joseph this power because of the fact that Joseph is going to use that same method to translate The Book of Mormon even though we're also told that God prepared an alternate way to do it which Joseph neglected to use yeah and if you look at apologetic arguments you know the Theo like you said the apologetic argument is that you know I think Richard Bushman is is credited with making this argument in his book Joseph Smith in the beginnings of early Mormonism where he basically theorizes that maybe God needed Joseph to have some practice with his Revelation skills and so the folk magic treasure digging peep Stone stuff was just the way that Joseph kind of sharpened his chops to then be able to do the Book of Mormon there are a couple problems with that the you know the the biggest problem with that is it's a rewriting of the narrative which we covered in in our previous episodes because if you if you look in first of all why did the church hide this from the membership for over 150 years if it's that simple if it's if it's just a matter of God's you know God's experimenting with Joseph why was the church afraid why did it keep existence of the peep Stone why did it deny Joseph Smith's involvement in folk magic for 150 years but then if you look at what hbi the one of the church's early Chief apologists if you look at what he said which we covered in previous episodes he himself said that if this when he was denying that Joseph Smith used a peep Stone and engaged in folk Magic and was even you know um charged with crimes if all of this this was true then it would be the most devastating you know case against Mormonism ever why was why did hly say that why was that the position um back in the 60s uh if if it's no big deal and if it's just God's miraculous work this is a perfect case study for Mormon apologists reeling and then redefining the narrative and lowering and lowering and lowering the bar um to justify the inconvenient history as it comes out Nemo do you want to add anything to that no we can move right on to the next slide I think all right let's go to the next slide go ahead go ahead Mike uh you need to unmute yourself Mike dang it uh we talk about this in previous episodes but for the book of Mor to be true there had to have hand gold plates with reformed Egyptian engraved directly on them um there also must have been interpreters buried with the plates as Joseph Smith claimed to receive and recover physical literal interpreter stones and the problem that we've talked about is that the I the witness testimony uh is shaky about whether they saw the plates with their physical or spiritual eyes and because Joseph Smith never even used the plates to translate the book of as we have it today the gold plat story has massive problems um and as we talked about in the gold plates episode uh the idea of long records being engraved on metal plates is entirely anachronistic because there is no evidence of any long records on metal plates and we talked about the piy tablets we'll um reference them again later in the episode but effectively that is an apologetic response to say aha there was Engravings on gold plates but as we talked about there were three plates with 200 Words which is a huge problem with the Book of Mormon um furthermore there's no evidence of reformed Egyptian and the problems with the gold plates um supposedly containing material that would not be written prior to Lehi leaving such as duter Isaiah New Testament material the long ending of Mark and Beyond the gold plates we still have other problematic areas that have to be true for the Book of Mormon to be an ancient authentic record um as we talked about in our episodes on biblical scholarship The Book of Mormon relies heavily on Genesis being a literal historical account of the creation of the world and as we've learned since that is not how Genesis uh the the history of Genesis from a Biblical scholarship standpoint uh points to them being ideological myths and that is entirely problematic for a church that's going to create scriptures in the 19th century that's going to cement myth as history yeah and if I could just summarize like you know we we have interviewed on Mormon stories podcast and we referred to this interview on the CDs discussion series we've interviewed probably one of the most prominent egyptologist egyptologists or Scholars of egyptology in the history of the world in Dr Robert Ridner and what he has confirmed is that there's no evidence that anything called reformed Egyptian ever existed and that would be the consensus among uh the the top Egyptian scholars in the world so do we believe Joseph Smith that that that some thing called reformed Egyptian existed even though we now know that that he kept the plates from anyone ever seeing them from ever testing that and we know that the Book of Mormon has 10 to 20 major foundational problems not to mention all the other problems with with Mormon Theology and Doctrine do we believe Joseph Smith and that claim of reformed Egyptian existing or do we believe you know centuries of Egyptian Scholars who say that that language is a fiction it just simply doesn't exist I think that's a really important question Nemo anything Dad no I think um I'm going to be a pretty boring guest this episode because John keeps reading my mind and and saying all right I'm going to kick it to next time I'll kick it to you first and then I'll go all right thanks thanks for that gentlemanly suggestion we'll go to Nemo first before iine all right Mike let's go to the next one yeah and this is just to kind of Branch off our last slide these are biblical stories that must be literal history for the Book of Mormon to be true um Adam and Eve must be real people that lived about 6,000 years ago in Missouri um although the in Missouri part necessarily is not Book of Mormon Centric as most as later Joseph Revelation um that Noah was a real person that lived through through a global flood that cleared out theer amas to leave it unpopulated for the Book of Mormon to to take place um that the Tower of Babel was a real story where the jedite interpreters uh that Joseph Smith would would claim to get with the gold plates were created um that Isaiah was just one author so that I could all be on the brass plates that would go with Lehi that Jesus gave a literal Sermon on the Mount that would be repeated almost verbatim in the Americas like a stump speech with just a few things changed um and that the long ending of Mark must have been the original ending they have been lost for hundreds of years before being reattached by later scribes without any changes um or wholesale alterations to the ending and so those are a bunch of areas where biblical scholarship is telling us there are problems with the way Mormonism has uh basically integrated them and all of those would then have to basically be uh against a consensus which you know we'll get into more in the second half of this episode These are big problems we did an episode on each one of these just highlight just how interwoven they are within Mormonism and why that tells us that these scriptures within Mormonism are not historical whether or not you find Value in them that's a different question but from a his historicity standpoint um they need all of these things to be true and all of these things have been shown um to have massive problems all right Nemo any reactions yeah this is a uniquely Mormon problem because apologist might try and kick this back well Christians also have to deal with the fact that Adam and Eve wasn't literal they have to deal with the Tower of B story they have to deal with all these things but they have dealt with them many branches of Christianity have have many biblical Scholars the whole field of biblical scholarship is dedicated to working these things out there are biblical Scholars who are faithful Christians who examine these things and are able to accept that different authors were involved in Isaiah for example whereas because the Book of Mormon takes these things and puts them in a document that claims to have a singular divine origin and a very tight origin story that story then can't be changed and adjusted when it's discovered outside of Joseph Smith's own time period where these things were thought to be true that they are no longer true and that there's different stories that's the problem here separate to Christianity more broadly I love it all right and neemo I consider flattering that I would even share 20% of the brilliant thoughts that you would have so uh you do me a great honor all right Mike let's go to the next slide and this is uh kind of looking at what the text of the book a Mormon itself requires to be true ancient credible har look at it and so these are a few key things that come out in the Book of Mormon that we need to be true for to be historical and one is that the Native Americans came to America from Jerusalem um even though as we've talked about our DN DNA episode the DNA studies are clear that that is not how the how the Americans were populated um that there were battles with hundreds of thousands of people um where they died without leaving as much as a single shred of evidence all of the weapons The Book of Mormon talks about they just disappeared um that Native Americans knew about Jesus Christ before anyone in the old world knew of Jesus Christ um and that the Book of Mormon people engaged in Treasure digging uh knew of New Testament material before it was written and had the Hebrew Bible before it was compiled and so all of these things are further problems that come as Nemo said from a uniquely Mormon Pro uh standpoint whereas you're cementing this history uh as literal history and now you kind of can't get out of it whereas as Nemo said other branches of Christianity can say yeah the global flood probably didn't happen it was probably localized not really a big deal whereas with Mormonism it's a huge deal because you need the Americas to be wiped out in order for um The Book of Mormon to make sense and so these are all again problem after problem after problem that you now need to believe are true for the Book of Mormon to be true and for Joseph Smith to be a prophet reactions Nemo yeah uh what's what's really interesting I find about that is that it undermines archaeology in many ways like the battles that were F without leaving a trace but some of that can be chalked up to Miracles I.E certain teachings that come from the new test You could argue that an omnipotent God placed those teachings in the hands of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas even though they hadn't been penned by their actual authors yet and God guided those later authors to write exactly the same thing it's a bit of a stretch but you can you can certainly go there but the things I think that are really interesting and important are the the archaeological evidences um that are completely lacking and the sort of genetic evidences that are completely lacking for the historical Narrative of the book and woman what I'd like to add is that you know you know one of the maybe one of the more disrespectful things that that some of us have been saying in the past few decades is um you know is that the Book of Mormon comes across a lot like a Bible fanfiction now I I didn't learn what the term fanfiction meant um until probably 10 years ago but for those of you who don't know fanfiction would be you know an example would be like me writing a book about Frodo and bilb bagin and Gandalf basically taking the Lord of the Rings universe and then not as an original author but as a fan of the fiction doing some sort of an extension another example would be Harry Potter if I wrote a biography of you know Dumbledore um somehow I got the rights from JK Rowling to do that that would that's what fanfiction is and in that sense uh it's it I think what's probably most accurate a a most accurate way of making sense of the Book of Mormon really is that Joseph Smith was a huge fan of the Bible particularly of the Old Testament and there were all these doubts and questions and problems that were being debated in 19th century early 19th century you know Northeastern United States and so what Joseph Smith did as his next gig once he knew that he couldn't keep treasure digging with folkman magic he knew he needed a new profession is he wrote the Book of Mormon pretending it as sort of this massive um effort of pseudepigrapha which is writing in the name of an author or a respected person he wrote some Bible fanfiction that borrowed heavily from the Old and New Testament but then tried to apply it to an American context uh Fanfictions been going on for centuries it seems to be what Joseph Smith did and that but that becomes a problem because as you just said Mike if if we know that the Old Testament um is not a literal history as we've shown in the LDS discussion series there's no there's no evidence that a literal Adam and Eve existed that there's no evidence of a global flood um there's no evidence in fact there's counter evidence to all these things there's no evidence that uh the Tower of Babel happened um and there's no evidence that Moses existed and you know at some point we know that that Jews emerged um but but the whole foundation of the Old Testament is likely to have been fiction um you know borrowed from Babylonian myths Etc and then you you sort of extend into the New Testament times whether or not you believe in a literal Jesus and and that the Bible is an accurate extension the New Testament is an accurate extension of the Old Testament or an authentic extension of the Old Testament the old test is problematic and so if if if the Bible is problematic and then the Book of Mormon is more um fiction based on a book that is is of questionable legitimacy you've really got a problem and then when you add to that the problems in the Book of Mormon including uh DNA and the wars and the the cursings and uh all the historical and geographical and and and linguistic problems it's just uh it's just um it's invalid Foundation upon invalid Foundation upon invalid foundation and at what point does it all kind of crumble um all right Mike let's go ahead and go to the next slide yeah and so this is kind of like we've done so many episodes that have covered this in more detail but these are just a few things kind of looking Beyond The Book of Mormon that we need to believe for Joseph Smith to be a prophet of God and so one is that um Joseph Smith didn't actually translate the book Abraham correctly or incorrectly but that God was actually just giving him a revelation uh that was riddled with 19th century material including a patriarchal blessing recorded just prior to the book Abraham production that ended up in material that was supposed to be written by Abraham um that the Masonic ceremony truly was the original endowment that was corrupted over the years before Joseph Smith restored it weeks after learning the Masonic ceremony uh that God would command Joseph Smith to enter into polygamy using biblical justifications that contradict the actual biblical story such as um Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham in the Bible versus the book of or sorry the DNC 132 saying that it was actually God that commanded Abraham to take Hagar even though that's not in the Bible anywhere um or that God would tell Joseph Smith through Revelation that the lamanites were on the border of Missouri and could be identified by their dark skin the Revelation doesn't say they could be identified by their dark skin but they just say the that the lates around the border of Missouri and that border just happened to be where the Native Americans were living um even though as we talk about DNA tells us they did not come from Jerusalem and so these are all areas where Joseph Smith is pulling things that he's saying are coming from God um and and they're just not panning out and um to John's earlier point when you talk about fanfiction or pseudepigrapha and um he used Harry Potter as an example or Lord of the Rings what whatever you want to use um and then John said something like if I got the rights to um Hagrid or whatever I think you're talking about or Dumbledore right and you write a book but but what really is the difference here is that Joseph Smith it's not like he's getting the rights and telling people he's writing an extension of it he's telling people that he's writing it from God and so uh it would be like John waiting until JK Rawling died and then said oh my goodness guys I got a lost manuscript from JK Rawling about this life of Dumbledore and it was actually by her but I'm just the one that's bringing it forth because I'm I'm the only one that had access to it and and that's really where you get into bigger problems because Joseph Smith is presenting this as if it's directly from God directly off the gold plates being translated in a way that cannot be corrupted so when you find all of these problems that's where you have all these apologetics that jump in because you're trying to figure out how is Joseph Smith making these claims that are being riddled with problems over and over again from all these fields of study and that's why this exercise is so good because now we got to look at all of these things every one of these things has to line up or else you've got massive problems and we've already detailed I don't know 15 or 20 things that different fields of study are telling us simply don't hold up Nemo anything to add yeah a point I'm going to be making a I think during this episode uh to give our friend Neil Anderson a bit of help I'm going to give Brother Joseph A Break um I'm going to you know going to be making this point a lot about how a lot of this just comes from Joseph Smith's worldview at the time it comes from a lot of the beliefs that were around him at the time I think that's one of the important things that we've done in these episodes and I'd encourage you to go back and have a look at the episodes that cover the sort of the cultural soup that Joseph Smith was swimming around in um so many of these ideas were present in his day um and so you can't blame him necessarily you can't say oh where did you get these ideas from either you can't say oh did he just think them about a thin no they were around him and he put them into his new religion yeah I think one of the points I've heard before is if you could if you could find people who don't know anything about Mormonism who don't know anything about the Book of Mormon and you gave them the Book of Mormon and you said can you read this and let me know what you think about it being authentic and when you think it was written you don't tell them anything you don't you don't Poison the Well you don't do any of that they're going to come back and they're going to say this was written in the 19th century because it's got ideas that are very prevalent in the 19th century and yet nothing after and it's also changing a lot of the stuff that was before in order to fit those 19th century ideas and so that is one of the problems with Mormonism is that everything that Joseph Smith is doing his fingerprints are all over it not just as being the author but as ex like you could tell exactly when it was written it's the same thing as we covered in the back deing prophecies episode about the Book of Daniel because you could look at the the scholars can look at the book Daniel and date it within I believe like a 5-year window because of because they know when the prophecies go from specific to vague to wrong and the Book of Mormon does the exact same stuff it's got a lot of stuff in there that um prophecies at end right when the Book of Mormon is written and stories about Joseph Smith's lifetime that again just happened to end when the book of Mormon's being written and so um yeah you know you could give Brother Joseph a break because it's all part of his worldview but it's also important because that is what would lead anyone who is not affiliated with the church to go yeah this is exactly when it was written because the text is screaming to us I'm this is being written in the 19th century and I'll just add that you talk to someone like Richard Bushman in 2023 he'll admit it he'll say even Patrick Mason Patrick Mason Richard Bushman you know Jan Reese pick pick your sort of Neo apologetic scholar in 2023 they will tell you that the Book of Mormon reads like a 19th century document and that's code language for saying it's not a literal translation of Golden Plates um you know and that's when Progressive Mormonism will try and talk about postmodern ISM and and sort of like myth and symbolism and what do words mean and what is a taper and what is a horse and what is steel um because if you take Joseph at his word um that the Book of Mormon is a literal history that was literally translated by the gift and power of God uh it it becomes super problematic so whenever you hear uh is sort of like it it reads A Lot Like A 19th century document what you have what you really have as faithful Mormon Scholars admitting that it that that the Book of Mormon isn't what Joseph claimed it was in my view in my and I'll I'll I'll read Richard bushman's quote real quick because it's it is very telling he says um there is phrasing everywhere long phrases that if you Google them you will find them in 19th century writings the Theology of the Book of Mormon is very much 19th century Theology and it reads like a 19th century understanding of the Hebrew Bible as an Old Testament so I mean that is as clear as day as Richard Bushman saying yeah this is written in the 19th century with 19th century ideas these ideas are not coming from the ancient world they're coming from the 19th century and when you have historians uh within the church who are willing to admit it that's a pretty good sign that everyone outside of the church is like yeah of course that that's what we've been saying for a long time and when you have a book presented as being an ancient record Being translated directly through the power of God you have problems when you then have to say well it's not really directly through God it's also through Joseph and it's not an ancient record it's kind of an ancient record that's been kind of like you know co-mingled with with current Theology and then all of a sudden it kind of feels like the philosophies of men mingled with scripture to me and and I think to anyone else that's reading this without that predetermined conclusion that tells you the church must be true all right well let's jump to the next slide let's turn everything upside down that's fun that sounds fun yeah so now um this is one of those things like I said this was one of those kind of aha moments when I was doing the Deep dive I you're always told that you're only looking at what the church gets wrong and that you need to focus on the things the church gets right and the reality is that if the church's foundational truth claims are not true it doesn't matter what they get right today because if we're talking about truth and is this church the one true church of god if if the foundation is untrue then what they're doing today they could be doing good they could be doing bad but it's not going to be truer from God because you know as we've talked about it's fruit of the poisonous tree kind of a thing and every religion gets some stuff right that's why you hear this phrase I'm sure if you're listening or watching this podcast you've heard this phrase which is um what's unique about Mormonism isn't good and what's good about Mormonism isn't unique and that comes from the very simple fact that the church today is doing good stuff and a lot of what they're doing that's good other churches are doing businesses are doing organizations community commities are all doing and on the flip side there's a lot of unique things that Mormonism has created with their doctrines that is causing harm um and that causes pain for people and and so that is where there's this kind of different balance and the point is that for the sake of argument we're now for the rest of this episode going to assume the church is true and we're now going to look at and say okay Joseph Smith got it right the Mormon Church really is the one true church on on Earth but what does that mean for the world as we know it and this is another way to evaluate the claims of the the church because if they are correct then a lot of what we feel like we know uh in life outside of religion in different fields of study are unquestionably wrong and so um in some ways this episode is going to feel like a Bizarro version of the first part because uh oh Nemo John just John just did you wrong on that one keep going I oh you have to pull the slide back up but yeah this will feel like a Bizarro episode because we want to take everything we just did in that first part of the episode and flip it upside down to see what that would look like uh for everything else we know outside of Mormonism and this is an area I've been harping on this whole series which is when you try to fix one problem with apologetics you have to then carry it through and say okay what does that do as far as impacting other areas of the church and other areas of the world as well all right Nemo why are you laughing so I just quote that out of the corner of my eye I think I've been I think I've been outed as a man who eats Doritos directly from the bag there is nothing wrong with that no nothing wrong with that at all it was the second time I saw you do it so I just had to share it with the world so someone's got to grab a screenshot of that and then show the world and our listeners are like what in the fetch are they all talking about yeah so for for those that were listening come on to YouTube and watch but essentially I lifted the ends of a big bag of Doritos up and tilted the crumbs out into my mouth to save every last delicious which is the best part of the bag by the way oh yeah if you're not doing that if you're not doing doing that you were doing it wrong I'm not but if you're doing that after having shared that bag with other individuals you are doing something incredibly wrong that is a so low activity people that gets into a different keep it hygienic yeah okay and apparently before we go to the next slide I'll tell you one thing I've been told to give some levity to this podcast is if you buy a bag of Doritos you open it from the upside down which actually fits into the theme of this episode because if you open it from the upside down all of the spices and seasoning that has settled at the bottom will then get redistributed back to the top you're welcome no I disagree because if you start from the top then you work your way down and you're starting to get bored but then they start to get more flavorsome so you keep going well there's that too that's what you want we might need to do an episode on Dorito eating I think we do yeah we do Kinder hook plate shaped Doritos yes yes all right sorry I I have completely and successfully derailed our entire conversation the people love it they love it yeah that's what they come here for and anyone who hasn't done that with a bag of Doritos I'm telling you you're do it wrong they come for the Mormonism they stay for the banter exactly all right well let's jump into let's let's now start answering the questions of this presentation um and let's start with the first slide Mike do you wanna do you want to do you want to jump this yeah and this is one I know this is going to feel a little bit charged but this is a problem because as we did our uh talk about our we did two episodes on kind of the history of race and the priesthood and all that the Mormon church there they have three scriptures that all make clear that people of dark skin or black skin are have that because they were cursed by God and so in the Book of Mormon we have dark skinned because uh you know they they broke off from the Nephites and in the book of Moses it's because you know Cain killed Abel and so it's the curse of Cain and the Book of Abraham solidifies it by talking about they had the curse that you know pres that they were not allowed to have the priesthood and so this is an issue within Mormonism that is unique to Mormonism although other Christian branches especially during the times of slavery use that as justification but this is something that is still canonized today in the Mormon church if you believe that all of those scriptures are directly from God and that they're true people with dark skin or black skin have that because their ancestors were cursed by God Nemo she other than the the quite racist figures we've got on the screen um shows some quite troubling worldviews that have been pointed towards black people in the past but it it it is problematic that the world has progressed so much and the idea that if Mormonism is true then I mean from this perspective I guess you from another perspective you view is regressing you'd have say oh well we have to regress a lot of that progress and come back to an otherizing sort of worldview where we look at people as less than because of the color of their skin which by and large in many parts of the Western World we've sort of moved past in many ways um but if moralism is true then scripturally and by the authority of God we need to undo that progress yeah it's a it's kind of a repulsive and a distasteful um reality I didn't even like saying it but but but that that that's something that we've covered now multiple times in this LDS discussion series Joseph Smith couldn't create scripture without incorporating the super racist uh you know doctrine of the curse of King and that includes the book of Abraham that includes the book of Moses that includes the doctrine of covenants literally if he had translated the Kinderhook plates I'm sure the curse of Cain would have been incorporated into that as well am I going too far Mike well I mean it's just it we it it's tough because I know this is a really touchy subject but if you read the scriptures and you take them in face value for what they are and you especially look at them at the context of where Joseph is pulling these ideas from The Book of Mormon the book of Moses the book of Abraham are by the very definition white supremacist ideas I know how charged that is but if you read the definition of white supremacy it's the idea that one color of skin is is favored above others and the Book of Mormon tells you that the white and delights of Nephites were the chosen ones of God and I know that there's times where you know God kind of talks about the lamanites being you know more righteous than the Nephites all that but let's be honest the book If you ask especially if you go back like 10 or 12 years before you know the internet kind of made this a little bit more unsavory if you went back and said the knightes the white people were were the the good ones it's yeah yeah and I there was a a thread on on Twitter by Lindsey Hansen Park where she talked about how missionaries came to her house and were doing the discussions with her kid um because they're not active in the church and they were kind of just being nice to let them do the discussions and and bring them in and give them something to eat or whatever and she had actually asked the missionaries uh oh yeah uh the lamanites were the brown people because they were cursed or whatever and the mission like yeah exactly you know and and that is the belief and the Book of Moses it it cements the idea of white supremacy into the Bible that was Joseph's revision of the Bible where he makes clear to go back and make black skin a a curse of God a curse from God and so today we try to redefine what curse means and what skin means and we' covered all that in our episodes but at the end of the day these are still canonized scriptures that make clear that white skin is favored from favored of God and and it's uncomfortable but it it it's right there it's it's you cannot do that away un unless you read find words and we talked about that a lot already but we need to cover it because if he got it right then yes people with dark or black skin have ancestors that were cursed by God and that takes us oh go ahead neemo so just to put something out there John you said he probably would have put a cursing or a racist cursing into the Kinder hook plates yeah well he did CU he mentions them coming through the loin of ham and it was the curse of ham that's found in the book of Abraham so so even so even the K plates he he had to inject he couldn't help inject the curse of Kan in there beautiful beautiful well that's a good segue to our next slide Mike yeah and so this is what we talk about with the Book of Mormons so if the Mormon church is true Native Americans were cursed at some point with dark skin to make them loome and un enticing to to the white and delightsome knites and you might again feel like it's charged to say un enticing to the white and delightsome knites but those are words that are in the Book of Mormon and all of the Book of Mormon artwork even now but especially up until um I believe like 10 15 years ago the Book of Mormon children stories that was published by the church would actually say that they you know their skin was cursed because they were um you know not righteous and it has pictures of basically Savage Native Americans um and and the church is captioning it with they they had you know cursed skin and so this is the 19th century belief that the Native Americans are they anyo holding it up right now and so you know we're not making this up and this is this is the this my copy this is my copy from when I was a child yeah I mean so I think they changed it like 20 years ago or something or 15 years ago but Book of Mormon children stories teaches kids that Native Americans have dark skin because they were not righteous and God cursed them this is a 19th century idea that the white settlers came to America and they saw these dark skinned you know Native Americans are like who are these Savages why aren't they as sophisticated as we are and they built up this mountain Builder myth story that we talked about where basically they came up with this idea that there was this white Superior race killed off by the dark skin Savage Indians and that is why there's all these mounds and guess what all of that works its way into the Book of Mormon even though that's all a myth that has been proven false by all of the historical evidence of America so this is racism brought into what is supposed to be an ancient authentic text directly translated by God that we know simply is based on a really horrifically incorrect racist myth Nemo yeah if you look at people that aren't what would be described as weird I think it's Western educated industrialized something and Democratic I never remember what the r stands for but it's a category basically of people like me like John rich I think rich is what it is I think I think it's what it is um but yeah this idea that actually they came and looked at Native Americans where why aren't they as sophisticated as we are it's ironic now that people in that category actually look to things like Eastern wisdom and Eastern philosophy and ancient wisdoms and things like stoicism all those sort things we look to those for help now with a lot of the problems of our modern technological age and a lot of the uh mental health challenges that come with living in the world that we live in and and I think that again shows just how backwards some of the thinking was at the time of Joseph Smith when they come over and see these people living quite an organic sort of Life uh not to sound too hippie dippy but you know living quite fulfilling lives uh sort of in harmony with with what was going on around them and and just generally have been living that way for a long time they're viewed as Savages um at that time whereas now some people actually would look at that and view it as quite an idelic life and wish to kind of return to it yeah great Point Nemo and then I'll just I'll just add the the the point that uh it's not just this lonite curse uh Native American dark skinn curse isn't something just that Joseph Smith taught back then or that is in the Book of Mormon but isn't really believe today if you travel to Central America Mexico South America or uh the Polynesian Islands uh including Hawaii Tonga um you know even New Zealand the Maui there you'll find that that all of the dark skinned Latin Americans and or Polynesian Mormons self-identify as lamanites uh it's not metaphorical they believe they are the blood descendants of layman and lemu who were by according to the Book of Mormon curse with dark skin because of their wickedness and that their dark skin is lome and that white skin is preferable and on Mormon stories we've covered um you know uh Native American and Polynesian Mormons talking about how they believed as a child growing up that their dark skin um was indicative of inferiority and how they hoped and were taught to hope that if they were righteous enough their dark skin would over time we're not making that up it's a modern it's a modern belief and a modern teaching Joseph F Smith went to the people in New Zealand and told them they were the descendants of hagoth who is a a figure from The Book of Mormon who built a boat and sailed off somewhere um so you know they were teaching these people which is a weird kind of cultural appropriation and I don't think we need to necessarily go into the damage it does to these people and so of their connection to their ancestry by having this other narrative put upon them so now all of a sudden they they're disconnected from their auth authentic ancestry believing a false a historically false narrative about the origin of their people yeah and um Spencer Kimbell General Conference in 1960 this is a quote I know we mentioned our previous episode but he says basically this is um the the Mormon church was taking uh Native American kids and and having them live with with Mormon families to teach them the gospel and the belief was they would make them white and delightsome so here Spencer W Kimble at General Conference in October of 1960 says the little member girl 16 sitting between the dark father and mother and it was evident she was several Shades lighter than her parents these young members of the church are changing to whiteness and Delight somen so I mean this is yeah this is something that was taught until it became so toxic that the church had to basically turn around and go yeah we we never actually meant that skin change we didn't mean skin men skin even though they're telling us decade after decade after decade that literally we believe if you have dark skin and you join the church you're going to be as white as can be in the eternities which is such a weird thing to say um to someone who has you know actually pride in their family like if you have a family with black skin and you're like hey if you join our church and you're righteous we're going to make your skin white it's but that's what they taught you know that is not us making it up and uh one other point I'll make is that you would mentioned you kind of touched on this John but um John lson in one of his earlier Mormon Expressions episode made a point that I never really thought of but when the Book of Mormon describes the lonit they're dark skinned they're Savage right all of the way that they talk about in the book ofor and the way they dress all of the stuff they were all that stuff it is very reminiscent of the iroy Indian tribe which happened to live in New York during Joseph Smith's Lifetime and so that's another area where you can look at that and go here's Joseph Smith incorporating his you know 1830s um worldview Into the Book of Mormon um in a way that seems creative but it's really not because he's just describing the Native American tribes are all around him at that time and just kind of putting it back into uh The Book of Mormon using the myth of the mountain Builder myth and so so that's another thing to think of uh when you read the descriptions of the lamanites it it really does match what the Native Americans lived like in the time that Joseph Smith was alive all right um let's go and go to the next slide and Mike I'm I'm and Nemo I'm sneaking this in on you guys because neither of you have seen the slide yet but I just have to add it so I'll go ahead and do the slide if Joseph Smith got it right Native Americans were allowed to practice Christianity before Jesus Christ was even born and before Jews themselves were allowed to know the name of Jesus Christ and to do things like baptize confirm the gift of the Holy Ghost Etc and that that is one of the for me one of the biggest smoking guns of the Book of Mormon is you have pre you know you have people on an entirely different continent um before the birth of Jesus Christ who are supposed to be descendants of Israelites literally baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ confirming people in the name of Jesus Christ teaching Christian doctrines four or 500 years before Christ was even born how does that make any sense in the universe if anyone was going to be given a sort of like advanced notice about the name of Jesus Christ uh let alone what his teachings were it would be the people that shared the blood of Jesus Christ in their veins which would be the ancient Jews but somehow God didn't feel like it was necessary to let the actual Jews know the name of Jesus Christ who were by the way performing annual rituals anticipating the coming of the Messiah yet they weren't allowed to know the the date and the N the date of Jesus Christ's coming and his name and his teachings and his order ordinances they were stuck performing you know Moses and abrahamic based rituals um hundreds of years before the Native Americans it just makes no sense and and Mike and neemo I apologize for throwing that in without your consent you've just thrown to mind the apologetic that I heard as a Seminary Student for this which was uh kind of twofold was first had the Jews been more righteous when Moses went up to the mountain they would have been acting like this too um is first Port of Call they would have got this stuff earlier they would have been like the Book of Mormon people but they weren't so they had to live the law of Moses for a long time and then two the Jews were The Fall Guys um who had to end up Killing Jesus so they had to be kept in the dark whereas other civilizations on other parts of the world were able to know because the Jews were the ones that would end up having to kill him so if they knew they might not do it those were the Apologetics I heard as a teenager and that's fine Nemo if you wanted if you want to now Advance those apologetics my point is just to ask viewers and listeners how much sense does that make oh it it doesn't my point is I'm putting that out there and saying yeah do you really buy that because I bought it as a Believer but thinking back on it now doesn't make a ton of sense really yeah Mike anything you want to add to that Mike well no I mean obviously for the exercise we're doing here we're accepting to your point that that's true that the Native Americans knew of Jesus before the old world did and I would just say that as we've seen with within Mormonism and we you can even document this slightly we do like the 116 Pages episode I mean the reason is because the Old Testament was written before Jesus was born whereas the book of one was written after Jesus was born so it's a lot easier to to backfill the story but yeah I mean it that's that's basically what it comes down to is just just that Joseph Smith knew the ending when writing the beginning and so he was able to do that yeah and the thing we we need to point out is that although these people seem to miraculously know about Jesus Christ all the time they seem to forget miraculously halfway through the book when exactly it was he was going to turn up again because of the way the Book of Mormon was written um and it's is also its distinct forms of Christianity it's Methodist or oh sorry it's Protestant Christianity from Joseph Smith's time that appears in the Book of Mormon um which is again what's Wild like we we've gone through it but you know King Benjamin's sermon is a perfect example of a Methodist sermon um yeah yeah even based on one around Joseph Smith time yeah so it's not even just that they knew of Jesus it's like they knew of a Chris you know christology that was hundreds of years later in development and it makes its way into so I mean it's it's just like knowing of Jesus is a big problem but there's like a lot of problems beyond that when you start peeling back the layers and so yeah it's it's we covered that in the 116 Pages episode the anachronisms episode um but yeah I mean to John's point it doesn't make sense unless you kind of look at you know when the book of morm was composed versus when the Old Testament was composed and then all of a sudden it's the same thing we talk about with the Book of Daniel and backd prophecy all of a sudden Joseph Smith can can back fill that in and as Nemo pointed out which we did in the6 16 Pages episode because he wrote the beginning of the Book of Mormon at the after he wrote the ending he then tries to to backfill it even more to match the ending but then that runs into problems into the middle of the Book of Mormon when all a sudden they lose track when Jesus is coming which again tells you that Joseph Smith was the author of the book Mor because of the fact that it has no continuity um or at least it it lacks continuity in that in that area which makes no sense if you really believe this is the savior of the world and all of a sudden they kind of lose track of when he's coming and all that all right well let's go and go to the next slide if the Mormon church is true organic evolution is false yeah and this is just straightforward Joseph Fielding Smith declared If evolution is true the church is false and you know if the Mormon church is true everything we know about evolution is wrong and this is an area where you really can't have it both ways and um I know some people say he was speaking as a man and it's not really like in the canonized Doctrine because most of the canonized Doctrine was written before Evolution discussion was really prominent but if the Mormon church is true uh you know science and DNA tell us that homo sapiens have lived for at least 200,000 years with much evidence pointing to earlier species of humans that have been around for possibly 5 to seven million years uh we have evidences of I believe tools that go back like 1.8 million years little hand tools and within the Mormon church we are told that Adam and Eve were the first humans around 6,000 years ago in Missouri and so if evolution is true the church is false and on the other hand if the church is true then Evolution must be false which means that everything we currently know about the history of evolution genetics all of that is wrong and there's just no way around it when you have it from the direct words of not just Joseph Fielding Smith but you have Russell M Nelson say um to think that man evolved from one species to another is to me incomprehensible man has always been man dogs have always been dogs monkeys have always been monkeys it's just the way genetics work and again I know apologists will say they're speaking as men but I believe this is an area um because of the fact that Joseph Smith also cements Adam and Eve as you know 6,000 years ago um as the first humans when you have all of this other um history and evidence Evolution can't be real and then we'd have to find another explanation for all of these um remains that we're finding and tools and all of that other stuff and just because Russell and Nelson can't comprehend it doesn't mean it's not true you know he it's incomprehensible to him based on his very specific set of worldviews the worldview that we're as we're currently for this thought experiment saying is true um but when you apply that to other things it's equally problematic that's not a good way to to look at the world is like well if I can't understand it therefore it can't be true I don't understand how a lot of things around me work doesn't mean that they don't work or they aren't true it's incomprehensible to me in many ways how you know coding in computers works I couldn't code anything but it doesn't mean it's untrue yeah I don't know sorry that that just irks me a little bit he's an intelligent man he's a heart surgeon um you know that that was a bit of an unintelligent thing for him to say really and and the final thing I'll just say is there's there's going to be a lot of Orthodox believing Mormon and Christian listeners that are going to say oh great well I hate Evolution evolution is clearly a bad thing so that's a that's a that's a mark in mormonism's favor if if if uh Evolution has to be false if the Mormon church is true because Christians have been primed to hate and believe in evolution and to feel like it's demeaning to think that humans might have evolved from a or share An ancestry with let's just say apes or or chimpanzees and all I can say is you have to you have to invalidate many of the major uh streams of scientific um of of modern day science you have to overturn biology geology archaeology you know so many you know chemistry you have to overturn so many um pillars of modern science if you're going to throw out Evolution so yeah if any of these people need genetic therapy for any sort of disease or problem that's going to be difficult for them because that's based on a field of science which they if if they accept the book of woman as true for example or even just the broader Christian Community like you said that that taught this way then that's undermined because a lot of a lot of our understanding of genetics a lot of our ability to treat genetic problems uh based on our understanding of how Evolution works and and how humans came to be yeah it it also impacts like the biblical stories like the global flood when you talk to people who understand how Evolution Works they can tell you that you can't have a global flood 2,000 years ago that wiped out all all land species because we couldn't have all of the repopulation of the world and all of the new species that have been created in that short window of time and so it it really is it's an area and I guess that's why evolution is such a Hot Topic because it's an area that has implications for so many aspects and so depending on where your belief is with regards to like a literal uh Genesis this is going to have great great implications um but as Nemo said earlier just because you can't really understand how that would work doesn't mean it's not happening and so uh it's just an area that if we're going to take the approach that the Mormon church is true we have to throw out everything we know about Evolution and that is going to have a lot of impacts as Nemo said about all these other areas that has given us a lot more understanding and medicine and and where we came from and all of a sudden we got to throw that out and go nope that's actually wrong when the reality is we know it's actually helped a lot of people's lives especially when you talk about stuff as he just said with you know therapy and all that and um you know it this is where we're getting into this problem now when we start with the equation that is true you now have to reconcile that with other areas and we're going to see it's just really hard to do all right well let's speaking of Science and of evolution let's go to DNA yeah and so the ENT entire premise of the Book of Mormon is to have a record to provide to the descendants of the lamanites to bring them back to Christ and the revelations from God to Joseph Smith make clear that the Native Americans are identified by God as the lamanites and obviously the way they know that is because they're Native Americans with dark skin um and as we talked about in our episode on DNA study after study makes clear that the Native Americans originated in Asia and not Jerusalem I know Jerusalem's technically Asia but not you know it's like not in that area of Asia and um the Americas began being populated T they believe like 30 plus thousand years ago with no interruptions of population due to a global flood and this is a point that is effectively concealed by the church in their essay uh which is why they use the theories of bottleneck genetic drift you know all of those different ways to explain how the Book of Mormon got it wrong but actually got it right and um what this means is that the people identified by Joseph Smith via God as the descendants of the lamanites are not descended from Jerusalem which means the book of Mormon's main premise is false and so just like evolution for the book of Mor to be true everything we know about population genetics must be false and uh the apologetic response is that the book of Mor people were just a small part of a larger Community um but we would still see remnants of that DNA in all of the different testing we've done and more importantly the text of the Book of Mormon contradicts the idea uh from apologetics that they were just part of a larger uh civilization as well as the direct quotes from the prophets seers and revelators of the church and just as we were saying if the church is true everything we've learned about DNA has to be false because it would mean that the very basic study of DNA to understand where we are from is not reliable which means that every Mormon that does their 23 and me their ancestry.com test all of those different things they're not reliable because if they were it would also show the church is not true it's kind of um you know when I we did our 23m me test we were talking with believing members and we're talking about all of our ancestry and how far back it goes and what percentage of our DNA is Neanderthal and all a sudden you just want to be like well if we have you know 1.5% neand DNA from 40,000 years ago the Book of Mormon and Mormonism all their truth claims fall apart cuz we are believing that Adam and Eve were the first human 6,000 years ago and so that's why you need to have this intellectual consistency um where if you're going to uh as a beleving member take a DNA uh test and and look at those results and and take them as oh this is so cool I know where my ancestry came from well you then have to take it a step further and say what does that say about my core beliefs within my church because they are not going to be cohesive and so you have to then um for this exercise say well I believe the church is true so this result can't be real and just throw it out because it obviously is getting it wrong somehow Nemo yeah you you have the problem that they could start to cherry pick and say well no okay geneticists and people that study DNA are correct about Gat andc they're correct about what my DNA is made of okay maybe they're correct about RNA and how my DNA you know replicates and codes itself and but they're they're wrong about then those basic things and understanding that okay well if I take the coding of my entire DNA if I take it all of it written out as a human being and I put it next to a an ape and oh okay it's 93% similar or whatever it might be they they say oh well that's not true we can't be related we can't take the the conclusion from that that would mean we're related because the book of morrum because this is all the church is true but then how can they rely on that base part of the study of of what DNA is made of when it comes to medicine again I just I bring it back to modern medicine and how that has benefited everyone and it's based on the same Concepts and ideas and theories that prove that we have been around a lot longer than the book of woman in the church would indicate all right you can't really cherry pick it they're not really separable absolutely all right well let's go to the next uh point which is about Linguistics yeah and this is one we talked about more in the episode on the Tower of Babel in the Book of Mormon but if there is no l no sorry no literal Tower Babel story The Book of Mormon cannot can just cannot be a literal historical record and we talked about this because the Book of Mormon incorporates the Tower of Babel as a literal event which basically is how we get the interpreters so if there is no um Tower Babel that leads to the jedite story which leads to the interpreters which we are told would bury with the gold plates if that didn't happen then obviously Joseph Smith couldn't be telling us the truth and as we talked about when we talk about the Book of Mormon there are no non-lds linguist linguists that would support the idea that the to I should I should say there are no uh no religious lingu linguists that would support the idea of the tower Babel being historical due to the very simple fact that there are languages that were around prior to the Tower of Babel time frame that went through without any confusion kind of like we talk about the Global flood we could see continuation we could see the evolution of those Languages by studying history and so if the church is true and that means the Tower of Babel story has to be true which means everything we know about the evolution and creation of languages is wrong and this is another area where it's just difficult because we have actual tangible evidence to show how languages have evolved grown spread throughout history but if the church is true that everything we know about that is wrong and it might seem like a small thing but this is like the whole study of like how languages through civilizations came to be and it would have to be completely incorrect all the evidence we believe we have must be wrong because the church has to be true and the Book of Mormon must be true Nemo give us enough time and we'll be speaking different languages you American English and British English are already slightly different they're still what you call mutually intelligible but give it long enough and they will drift apart and that's the case with language of any kind is that people will language is a living thing people speak it slightly differently we all have our elects we all speak differently and so over time these things through region or more broadly by countries deviate and change and grow and develop so how long were people around before the Tower of Babel how did they manage to keep one language this entire time that doesn't really make sense for it then to be confounded um and and it's not long enough on on the flip side for these vast array of languages or with their different roots to have all then come about again and we can trace them to specific geographical areas as to where they started so it it just it doesn't work on so many levels with the study of linguistics and again the study of linguistics has been useful in so many fields that if you're going to discount it you have to then discount all the benefits that it brings to Modern Life yeah yeah all right let's go to the next slide yeah and so you know piggybacking off the tower Babel uh The Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses all require a global flood to be a real real historical event for the scriptures of Mormonism to make sense and just like the Tower of Babel there is just too much evidence that there was no Global flood as we covered in the episode on the global flood in the scriptures of Mormonism which is way back when excuse me and if the church is true again once everything we know about archaeology carbon dating uh it's just it's just wrong and so if science cannot date scientists cannot date sediment to correctly show that there could not have been an earth altering event like the global flood then they clearly would have everything else wrong uh when they're talking about dating because they use dating in in in sediment and all that to kind of know um how these things have changed over the years and that also kind of tells you there was no world altering flood and we can now date the arrival of humans in Americas to about 25 to 35,000 years ago which again cannot be true if a global flood had wiped them out entirely because we would have seen that that complete uh halt in in that population that civilation uh civilization that would then not kind of get kickstarted again you know until the Book of Mormon starts and so we would have records of this massive Extinction event and it's just not there and on the flip side there's a lot of evidence of civilizations that Thrive and continue to grow throughout those tens of thousands of years and I know from you know one of the things I was talking about with Nemo and John before the episode is I don't want to be accused of false biners like it's this that but so this might feel like oversimplified but these are very clear truth claims that are made by the church in canonized scriptures and if they are true all of these areas of science that we've learned so much from over the last you know couple like say couple hundreds of years especially they all have to be false because they're getting things wrong like like carbon dating um looking at like where this flood could have happened uh skeletal remains archology if those are all wrong then what could we possibly trust from those fields of of study but then we don't want to trust those fields of study because they undermine other truth claims of the Mormon Church you know if the Mormon church is true archaeologists don't know what they're doing because they were never able to find any of the remnants of the great big battles that happened around the hill kamora the millions of people that died there they weren't able to find them so you know from this point of view that the book of Mor is true those archaeologists have to be undermined because they weren't able to find the evidence yeah it's the same way that Mormon apologists will attack carbon dating as a science they say well it's not very ACC accurate um knowing for well that it's still accurate within the time limits necessary to disprove their hypothesis but yep that's a tangent no that's great okay yeah and I'll just refer our viewers and listeners to our episode on on uh you know the global flood and on the Tyra Babel um so that you can just understand that and on Evolution and all that because we we've done a lot of groundw work before we kind of make uh these sorts of assertions and you may not understand why it's significant uh to say that that something like Evolution or the tiwer of Babel or the global flood are are wrong so please again go back and check out our um our previous episodes okay should we go to the next uh to the next slide Mike y okay in this one you know one of the most testable truth claims of Joseph Smith timeus Prophet was the translation of the book of Abraham uh because we have the source material for at least the beginning of the book Abraham and we covered all that in our book of Abraham miniseries we can compare what Joseph Smith claimed the Papyrus said against what egyptologists know it said because the Rosetta Stone helped crack what was long lost to be a thought what was thought to be a long lost language and um the new information as we talked about did not go well for Joseph Smith's claims to being able to translate ancient languages as Joseph Smith not only got the text wrong but even translated the characters in fact simil three incorrectly which Scholars could evaluate even before we found uh before the church was returned the Papyrus fragments that were long uh thought to be lost on a fire and you know for the book Abraham translation to be correct everything we know about the Egyptian language has to be wrong and this means the Rosetta Stone must be wrong or at least our interpretation of the Rosetta Stone must be wrong because the language does not match what Joseph Smith through the gift and power of God told us it would which means that every other document that has been translated hang on one second guys I'm so sorry Nemo do you want to go ahead and jump in here for a second um and maybe finish the slide yeah go and finish the slide so for the book of Abram to be correct go from there yeah yeah yeah okay for the book of Abraham translation to be correct everything we know about the Egyptian language has to be wrong in other words the Rosetta Stone must be wrong because the language does not match what Joseph Smith thought through God uh told us it would which means that every other document that has been translated has actually been translated incorrectly because we know that the the book of Abraham Papyrus actually translates to the book of Abraham text again this is something that would defy any rational logical thought but is necessary if we had to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God Not only would the Egyptian language have to be wrong but again the dating of ancient documents would be wrong because even the church admits that the papy fragments dat were much later than Joseph Smith claimed they did when declaring that the scrolls are written by Abraham by his hand upon Papyrus the the implications of this again would be huge but absolutely required for the church to be true and I want to say something interesting that I've just picked up on there which is that the church admits the correct dates of these Papyrus so what do we do now when we're saying well in order for the church to be true these things have to be false and we would have to take everything we know about ancient Egypt and actually translate it using what Joseph Smith said to the bits on the Papyrus meant which means we'd have to take his bits of the Papyrus and then apply them wherever else we see them and say this actually means the firmament or or whatever what do we do when the church admits that he wasn't right what do we do with that because then the only conclusion you can draw from that is that the church is admitting the veracity of these egyptological studies or these uh studies of the date of these things so the church is saying that it isn't true the church is by tacit admission admitting that their claims aren't true because they're admitting the veracity of these modern Sciences yeah that's big yeah it is it's huge it's the same reason they changed sorry to steal your thunder where you were going but no no it's perfect and it's also good because we just talked about DNA and and the fact is the DNA studies are so robust and so overwhelming that the church had to change the introduction to you know were the what I forgot the word primarily uh descended from the Native Americans to among them and so to your point we're doing this exercise like the church is true so these things must be false but we can see areas where even the church itself has made changes is based on science that we are also told not to trust and that really does show you uh I believe how reliable and strong um the evidence is because the church is not going to make these kinds of changes or admissions especially talking about the book of Abraham unless they really have nowhere else to go and so from an apologetic standpoint they'll say well the Rosetta Stone can be correct because Joseph Smith wasn't actually translating he was getting a revelation and that is the apologetic we covered in our book of Abraham series but at the same time when you take that approach you then have to say well why is Joseph Smith telling everyone that he's translating over and over it's always translating translating translating and so that again just goes into you know the church changing the story because of the fact that they need to get away from the fact that he translated incorrectly um that would not be an argument they would have made had the rose set of stone um not been found and we didn't wouldn't have known the Egyptian language um the true translation of it in the first place all right anything else you want to say Mike about uh about this slide or we are we good to go to the next one no I think we're good okay so the next slide is biblical scholarship is now completely wrong yeah and this is one you we harp shouldn't say harped on WE we've talked about this a lot throughout the series and I mentioned this in the first part of this episode but over the last few hundred years we've had some amazing advances in biblical scholarship by looking at the different Scrolls and the different manuscripts and uh learning about archaeology and learning about so much about these these civilizations and you know one of the things we talked about we've learned that Isaiah was written by multiple authors um we believe three some still will go with just two with you know the original Isaiah and the the dudo Isaiah and then some believe there's like a tro or trto Isaiah um the original ending of Mark was added on by a later scribe and that's something that obviously plays heavily Into the Book of Mormon and that Genesis was compiled from multiple sources and that the King James Bible contains many translation errors and so if we're starting with the conclusion that the church is true these advances in bibl biblical scholarship have to be wrong because Joseph Smith brings uh the parts of dudo Isaiah Into the Book of Mormon and references even to the third Isaiah those are written after Lehi left and the scholarship behind the idea of dter Isaiah would have to be wrong because of the fact that it needs to be before Lehi left but the evidences all point to most almost all Scholars now conceding um that there's definitely dter Isaiah and likely a third Isaiah as well and as we talked about because Joseph Smith is incorporating so much of the King James Bible directly into the Book of Mormon it would mean that the biblical scholarship that claims that those are translation errors must be wrong unless you want to then take the approach that some will take such as Michael Ashen say Joseph's actually a co-author but then again that goes against Joseph's claims when he was writing it that he never said he was a co-author you know it was all through the gift and power of God and it would also mean that Joseph Smith bringing the long ending of Mark Into the Book of Mormon must mean that that was always really part of Mark but it was just lost for 100 couple 100 years and then restored later it would also mean that the bible really was composed in a codex form before Lehi left even though scholarship has shown the idea of a codex having all of these things in one bound book did not exist until long after Lehi left it would also mean that Elias and Elijah are two distinctly different people um along with all the other different topics we covered about how biblical scholarship impacts not just the Book of Mormon but all of the scriptures of Mormonism as well Nemo no I'll let you go first on this one John oh I'm I'm good yeah I'm good I'm good okay I think we're can uh I mean what what we're basically what we're basically showing I mean it's like Joseph Smith or you know centuries of Egyptian scholarship you know Joseph Smith or centuries of biblical scholarship that Jews and Christians alike now overwhelmingly support and you know what point are we going to just say Joseph ol got it right or you know Joseph Trump's Joseph is like this Divine trump card that that trumps everything upon which modern society is built or are we going to sort of say how about another possibility is that Joseph got it wrong and uh modern science modern scholarship um kind of get kind of is actually who got it right you know this is not like an appeal to popularity this is not all these people are right therefore Joseph's wrong or there's more people on this side therefore Joseph Smith is wrong it's that the views and opinions on this side are backed up by the scientific method of uh repeatability of you know hypothesi hypothesis all that sort of stuff the scientific method is involved here whereas Joseph Smith is just making claims um and those claims are testable by the people on this side no it's it's like do you believe in you know reason do you believe in logic do you believe in the scientific method do you believe in evidence do you believe in modern scholarship modern Academia and modern science and all the different disciplines that the pillars of modern society or Joseph Smith an uneducated farm boy who grew up in the early 1800s but it's not just Joseph Smith it's God to those people you got to remember that like that that is that is the the thing we're actually looking at it's like Joseph Smith who channeled a deity and that's the weight that those people taking sorry yeah well but I was just say my Christian and and other believing friends would say you can still believe in God and believe in science and believe in academics and and believe in reason and logic but not believe in Mormonism right yeah MH yeah yeah all right let's go to the next slide Mike yeah and this one we've talked about multiple episodes as well but the idea that records were written on gold plates in this time frame especially in the new world is just simply anachronistic and there are no records of writings on metal in the Americas in this time and even in the old world the writings are tiny amounts of text and so fair Morman probably cites the piy tablets that are pictured on the right if you're if you're watching if you're listening it's it's three tablets we've covered them in previous episodes uh they have writing on them and fair Mormon actually puts them as one of their best evidences for the Book of Mormon but what they don't tell you is is that when you actually look into these plates these contain literally a tiny fraction of what's on the Book of Mormon and that's why we don't have any records of long amounts of text being written on metal or gold plates but on Scrolls instead these three plates of the piery tablets contain about 200 words of text meaning the book of Mor would need over 1,000 words 1,000 uh tablets of gold to contain the same amount of text and so if the book ofor is true Not only would a codex have been needed to exist long before they that we know they were used or at least that we we have evidence that they were used but vast records on gold plates must have occurred and that means that everything we know about recordkeeping in ancient times is wrong um along with our knowledge of the use of codex for long records and and as we'll point out um as we point out in the previous episodes does it make sense that there's just simply no uh Records on metal plates that existed with any kind of long-term history and yet the Book of Mormon uh just happens to bring it up which was kind of this idea at the time uh that I believe kind of somewhat of an outgrowth of treasure digging as well the idea they're on gold plates and they're buried and and all that but just the fact that we've never seen them anywhere else and yet we're kind of given the impression through the book of Mor that this is just the way it was done didn't we work out in that episode that um for the plates and everything to have been the size that J Smith said that he was and the dimensions and and and so forth that you would been missing per plate 10,000 words I think something like a University dissertation essentially yeah you would need in the thing was we we kind of talked about like how many you know with the size that they would be and kind of the amount of characters you could fit and the amount of text on each plate would have just been insane like you wouldn't there's no way to do it and then of course the apologetic would be like well they're written on symbols and then God's translating them but then you're also like well nobody in their world would be like here's two paragraphs of text I'm going write a little circle with a dash through it you know what I mean like and that that's really where you just get into huge problems when you try to get into this idea that like reformed Egyptian is somehow condensed beyond all kind of Common Sense and yeah when you especially and and that's especially if you're going to use this piy tablet as evidence as Fair Mormon does then you have to then take that implication one step further and say okay what does that mean for the Book of Mormon and that's really what this episode is about is trying to say okay let's give Fair Mormon the benefit of Doubt and say these piery tablets are proof okay take it a step further what does that mean for the book of oh it needs over you know a thousand plates and and then all of a sudden you're like that doesn't make any sense and no one's carrying around a thousand plates you know to go bury them it just doesn't work like just think about what that would mean to carry around a thousand metal plates it's it's absurd it it just becomes cartoonish when you start to drill down into what is needed for this to work all right let's go ahead and go to the next slide which is if the word of wisdom is true yeah and this is just you know as an investigator of the church when doing the discussions I was this is one that was told to me a lot which is that Joseph Smith was one of the first people that ever knew that alcohol and tobacco were harmful to our health before anyone else could have possibly known and um to to since learn that Joseph was effectively lifting the teachings of the temperance movement which was right next to him in Ohio it actually makes a lot of sense as to where the word of wisdom came from but a lot of the text of the actual original Revelation is just factually wrong um we would see that hot drinks cause health problems today such as hot chocolate coffee uh soup and tea but instead we have study after study showing the health benefits of coffee while the church has allowed beverages such as soda and energy drinks carry way more potential health problems um if the church is true then most of what we know about nutrition is wrong even though the evidence only continues to mount against the church's claims on the word of wisdom not only does the original text of DNC 89 get it wrong but their reinterpretations are even worse because they don't even mention coffee and tea in the original Revelation and the church today bans both for arbitrary reasons and as we talked about it's about hot drinks but you can't drink iced coffee it really gets into this area that just makes no sense and so the the church needs the word of wisdom to be upheld by nutrition to be a true Revelation from God but even in their sa interpretation they're still getting it wrong and so if the church is true then a lot of what we know about nutrition is wrong and it's hard to believe and and there are people that really do believe when you talk to believing members about studies showing that tea has been having huge benefits especially when you look at uh countries like China and and Asia as a whole and they're like well you know someday they'll figure out that it really isn't and and so that is kind of the mindset you run up against but so far everything we're seeing is just that a lot of not just DN c89 but the reinterpretations just don't line up with being um some sort of nutritional wisdom that we couldn't have known at the time and so I I I think this is one where if the church is true you really have to rethink a lot of these studies in science on nutrition Nemo yeah uh I've I just found a meme that I saw once upon a time um it's a couple of more missionaries stood and uh someone basically lays out how the word wisdom works and I think it's worth sharing Catherine ated sodas are okay but coffee and tea are forbidden because the word of wisdom discourages hot drinks it's not about the caffeine but hot chocolate is okay despite being hot because hot drinks really means brewed drinks iced tea and iced coffee are forbidden despite being cold because they're brewed but herbal teas hot or iced are okay despite being brewed because there's no caffeine but then caffeinated sodas are okay but coffee and tea are forbidden because it's about hot drinks not about the caffeine it's this weird circular logic that goes goes round and round about this whole argument and and again it's not an old thing that's just being carried on by the DI hard members you've got people over the pulpit in conference saying because of one cup of coffee they weren't able to be with their children uh in the temple and whatnot so y it's a big deal yeah John yeah that's good um and again check out the word of wisdom episode if you want more details about what we're talking about but so much of so much of what Joseph Smith gave us is we're just commonly debated or understood beliefs and theories there's an episode we did on on the influences of of you know on Joseph Smith and on Mormonism and the word of wisdom is just one of many many many commonly held uh movements or Dynamics or understandings or theories that that like a sponge or you know as as Terell given would say as an inspired syncretist Joseph sort of combined or merged or imported into Mormonism and not to be a a hypocrite having just downed a massive bag of Doritos but diabetes is a huge problem in the Western World um and the book and the word wisdom doesn't address possibly one of the most danger one of the kind of most unhealthy substances we're dealing with at the moment which is sugar in fact like the slide said uh as I've observed firsthand um massive sodas are not good for you but they're perfectly permitted by the word of wisdom yeah yep problem okay well let's go to uh a topic that was lampooned in The Book of Mormon musical to accept that Joseph Smith got it right at the Mormon church is true you have to believe that Adam and Eve lived in Missouri yeah and this is just it's similar to the DNA example which is that Joseph proclaimed that Adam and Eve were lived in Missouri uh which contradicts every single piece of evidence that shows that homo sapiens came out of Africa um I know there are some studies that are showing that there might be some origins in Europe but either way we're there's nothing at all to suggest that human life began in Missouri and um if you're watching this the picture on the right that's Church artwork um I put this as Missouri on in there just on the text because when you look at that you would never say oh that looks like you know ancient Missouri but that's what the implications of Joseph's Missi Revelations are from God and so if the church is true and Joseph Smith is truly restoring uh long lost truth through God and everything we know about the origins of humans is wrong because they actually began 6,000 years ago in Missouri and there is a reason this isn't taught in church anymore and it's because it's so ridiculous against the overwhelming evidence that we have uh but at the same time this is still a revelation that Joseph Smith claimed was from God and if he was a prophet you have to believe that human life began 6,000 years ago in Missouri I I there's no way around this Nemo do you do you think that's overstating it no I think that's it's fine and I've spoken to church geneticists and DNA researches about you know the origin of human life first the claim of Jackson count Missouri and there's there's no real good arguments so you have to throw the modern understanding of the evolution of humankind they this addresses this links back to the problems with Evolution this will throw Evolution under the bus this will throw DNA studies under the bus um because all of a sudden where human beings started and then fanned out into the world from the locations just shifted by a few thousand miles uh from you know Africa to uh North America which takes us to the next slide which is that if you believe in Joseph Smith and the Mormon church then you have to believe that the Earth is about 6,000 years old Mike yeah so the church recently has began to kind of argue through apologetics that there were these pre-adamites who lived on the earth before Adam and Eve um so basically Adam and Eve were created by God but there were these pre-adamites were almost it's almost like God was kind of tinkering with how to get it right it's almost like you're trying to create like the perfect formula for a meal and so you've got all these iterations and they they basically are just meaningless and then you finally get the real one and the evidence is showing that this Theory really only comes about because church leaders began to realize that the 6,000 yearold belief is untenable and this is compounded by Joseph Smith stating in DNC 77 that the Earth is 6,000 years old and we are now in the winding up scene and so the the question asked to him is what are we to understand by the book which John saw which was sealed on the back with Seven Seals and Joseph Smith says we are to understand that it contains the revealed will Mysteries and the works of God the hidden messages of his economy concerning this Earth during the 7,000 years of its continuance or its temporal existence and then he says what are we to understand by the Seven Seals with which it was sealed he says we are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first Thousand Years and the second also of the second thousand years and so on until the seventh and so apologists contend that we can uh just assume Joseph Smith didn't mean that that included the creative and Preparatory period but then you also have to say the humans who existed for millions of years on Earth were merely like this Preparatory collateral damage right that's Paving the way from Adam and Eve and so if the church is true everything we know about the Earth's dating about life on Earth prior to 6,000 years ago is just simply wrong and so the apologists try to shift kind of like what the meaning is of Thousand Years they'll say well thousand years is more of a symbolic um instead of actually meaning literally a thousand years it's kind of more just meaning an overall time period but at the same time you got Joseph saying it from God you would think if it was Revelation from God he wouldn't have to you know we're supposed to speak in the manner of our understanding so why would he not say um in the first period of time in the instead he's very specific because again that's what a lot of people believe that that each of these um are 1,000 years of each seal this is not something that's unique to Joseph and so if the church is true the Earth is really just 6,000 years old and that's a problem if you carry that out to other aspects of basically everything we know about the world yeah and if you go to the scriptures um it's it's even more kind of laid out even more plainly than that if you go to the Bible dictionary to the chronological tables 4,000 BC fall of Adam so there you go so 4,000 BC yep 6 ,23 years ago Adam and Eve fell and left the Garden of Eden and like you said all the Apologetics about how long they were in there and all that other stuff is is to one side but that's where the church pegs the date yeah yeah and so this takes us to a slide that I've snuck in here that neither of you have seen nor pre-approved and I hope stop sneaking in on me like this jump I I did a few of them today but basically what all of this amounts to is that if Mormonism is is true most major fields of science are substantively wrong and ill-founded and what I have for those who are just listening is you know a photo on you a series of photos on the left-hand side that include Albert Einstein Dr Robert Ridner egyptologist archaeologist Michael Co from Yale Charles Darwin Madam cury you know they're all in the leftand side and then it's versus sort of Joseph Smith D H Oaks Russell M Nelson and and iring and and you know some people are going to call this ridiculous or unfair but that's really what this amounts to are you going to believe the overwhelming body and history of of Science and the scientific method and scholarship or are you going to believe these dudes that are predominantly from Utah or you know in Joseph's case an uneducated Farm Boy from upstate New York you have to kind of pick one or the other because you really can't choose both and to you you know to to the point mik you and Nemo were making modern Mormon apologists are going to try and explain away things um like the 6,000 year old Earth that Joseph Smith claimed or what you know the the Joseph's claimed that he was translating Golden Plates and they're going to talk about um some sort of inspired theory of uh um you know some some other apologetic Theory to make it so it doesn't need to be a translation it could be in Revelation but why are we needing to completely redefine the words that Joseph Smith gave us um it it shouldn't be necessary his his statements his doctrines his theologies if they come from God if he has any value or worth at all his Revelations his doctrines his theories should stand the scrutiny of you know a mere Century of of Science and of scholarship but it it it wasn't it wasn't even 10 or 20 years after Joseph Smith's Revelations where science and and scholarship started disproving many of his core theories and beliefs and that just doesn't make sense M go the problem with such a new religious movement is that it exists as a direct contemporary with scientific thought and understanding and and theorizing um whereas the thing that generic Christianity and Judaism and other religions like that have on their side is how old they are and you can kind of explain away back to ideas and understandings of the time and these sorts of things but but Mormonism is just too new in that sense yeah too new they kept too many records they kept too many newspaper headlines it's just that's the problem you you know these episodes we've done a lot of especially when we talk about like First Vision priesthood restoration we're focusing on materials the church has we're not just pulling random people who don't like the church and saying aha look at these guys we're saying look at Joseph Smith's Evolution on these stories look at how he changed this look at how the Transfiguration of Brigham Young was completely we the these are all things that come from being a new religion that keeps a lot of records and that makes a lot of claims because Joseph Smith believed he had answers to everything if he was asked a question he would give you an answer like if if you know you talk about um the recent General Conference when the Mormon Church gets up and says we know you want to know by heavenly mother but we don't know anything more than the 500w gospel topics entry on our website says so stop asking Joseph Smith would get up there and be like oh I know everything about her sit down I'm going to tell you about her and that really is a difference because we know today the leaders today know that these claims are going to be tested and they're going to be proven false because they know they don't know Joseph Smith I think I mean if you read his his writings he believed the world was ending so he's just going for it and and it really shows um like you said the difference between being a religion that is old without a ton of documents that you can really just draw directly from and being a brand new religion making a lot of claims based on what you know in that time frame um that are going to be tested in the centuries after and it it just shows that at some point you have to either say we're going to stick with that 1830s mindset of Joseph Smith and we're going to ignore all the evidence we have because we believe the church is true or you got to say all of these things are showing us this isn't true and this is really the whole point of this episode is now we're saying we're staying on that side where the church is true and now you've got a lot of you got this massive mess on the other side you've got to reconcile somehow yep and uh yeah and if that isn't enough uh let's go ahead and go to the next slide which is about the Masonic ceremony yeah and we've covered this one in a few episodes we have an episode on on basically M masonry and the temple endowment but Joseph Smith is going to largely lift the Masonic ceremony when creating the endowment and during this time there were many claims that Joseph Smith was restoring a corrupted endowment which was carried directly from Solomon's Temple and these are very early teachings from a lot of people um and the problem is fair Mormon even admits that Solomon's Temple had nothing to do with the the endowment but it was instead used for animal sacrifice and we covered this in a previous episode but this is a question and answer and they say wouldn't it be more correct to say that masonry came out of the endowment and the fair Mormon uh I don't know his first name his last name is Kerney and he says would GRE Greg KY Greg Kerney okay he says it would be if you believe that Freemasonry has a continuous historical line from King Solomon's Temple to the current unfortunately there is no historical evidence to support a continuous functioning line from Solomon's Temple to the present we know what went on in Solomon's Temple it was the ritualistic slaughter of animals and so you know to make that worse the Masonic ceremony did not even originate until long after that which means that the endowment ceremony could not have been restoring either Solomon's Temple or some early uncorrupted version of the temple that was passed down through the Masonic ceremony and so for the temple ceremony to be come directly from God we have to ignore this evidence and declar that Joseph's Mis teachings that he was restoring a corrupted endowment ceremony that the May that the m since carried over time is true and that Solomon's Temple originally looked like the endowment ceremony that the church introduced about 180 years ago so this goes against everything we've learned since Joseph Smith it goes against everything we've learned about Solomon's Temple but again it has to be wrong um if the temple ceremony was restored by God as claimed by the church in Joseph Smith and this is another area where to Nemo's point it's almost like it's too new of a religion to make these claims that we can then through the next few hundred years get more and more information on and go yeah that's not it all what it was but Joseph Smith was very clear that he was restoring a corrupted endowment I mean you'll find Masons who will tell you that the story about Solomon's Temple is just their origin myth and that actually they come from 14th century stone masons you know like that that members of the organization will tell you that it's not like they believe that too so the only person who's really saying that that is the truth behind Freemasonry is Joseph Smith and those who then sort of um propagate that narrative yeah yeah and uh oh go ahead John and this is just a pattern that repeats with with Judaism most most modern Jews are going to agree that it's unlikely that Moses or Abraham ever existed or at least they'll admit there isn't evidence that they really existed most modern Christians as we already mentioned are going to agree that that Mark didn't write Mark Luke didn't write Luke John didn't write John Matthew didn't write Matthew like you know all of all of modern most most if not all of the credible modern Christians or Jews are going to admit that the Tower of Babel didn't happen that Adam and Eve didn't exist that the Earth is billions of years old and yet Joseph Smith and Mormonism want to hang on to all that just like they want to hold on to the idea that the Masonic Lodge Temple ceremony was practiced by Solomon and Jews um you know a thousand plus years before Jesus when Jews themselves are going to disagree and Masons themselves are going to disagree yeah you know yeah it goes back to that point I was making earlier that because mormonism's boxed itself into a corner where things have to happen as they literally say they happened there's no rle room for them to say yeah Moses probably wasn't a real person but there's still value in the Books of Moses uh Abraham wasn't a real person but there's still value in those stories uh you know you can look at the Bible that way and a lot of modern Christians look at the Bible that way um because you know they can say well whoever those authors were they were clearly inspired by a Christian message and those are the teachings I hold on to but because the Book of Mormon and all the things Joseph Smith claimed he got them directly from God it becomes very problematic when the holders of the things that he borrowed from disagree with his interpretation of it that's right that's right and you know uh Nemo made a really good point earlier about the book of Abraham when he talked about how even the church by ad that the Papyrus is dated much later is kind of accepting the science which really complicates the need to even say it's true and and we read this in the episode um with Joseph Smith in in the temple but this is the Mormon Church's gospel topics essay on masonry and it says by Joseph Smith's day the boundaries between masonry's early European history and its founding myths and traditions had long since been blurred and so what they're basically saying is that what Nemo said is the idea this came from Solomon's Temple Was An Origin myth that was completely not historical and that got blurred over time as all ideological misdo and Joseph Smith as he's making these promises in the by the gift and power of God cannot see the difference between history and myth and so the church is literally saying that they got blurred and Joseph Smith couldn't tell the difference and that is a really good indicator that the church is kind of saying yeah Joseph Smith didn't know what he was talking about but if the church is true then then you got to ask why is God telling Joseph Smith that this is the original endowment when even the church today is like yeah no this is not at all what it is and that really is where we're seeing these problems kind of compound on each other all right let's go ahead and go to the next slide um which is that if Mormonism is true polygamy polyandry and even 14-year-old marriages to child Brides um are from God and that the Bible got Abraham's story wrong all right yeah so I think John snuck a few adjectives into the title there but um so you know we we talk about polygamy a lot in our episodes and um it's hard to know exactly what to make of polygamy from the Bible itself because or beyond the B beyond the text itself but Joseph Smith specifically States in doctrine of covenants 132 that God commanded Abraham to enter into polygamy when the Bible tells us it was Sarah who told Abraham to take Hagar to conceive a child and so if the revelation of DNC 132 is correct then much of the Bible is just not accurate in that God is commanding these ancient prophets to enter into polygamy when there's absolutely no record of it in the Bible you know there is um there are people that will say that polygamy was kind of like a cultural practice but there's no part in the Bible where God's like we need these civilizations to enter into pgy that's just not there and so if the church is true we have to believe that that's just somehow left out of the Bible by later scribes who are either embarrassed by it or because the cultural norms have changed they've just gotten rid of it um but that we also have to believe that God was so concerned about polygamy that he sent an angel with a drawn sword to make sure Joseph Smith was marrying and having sex with enough young women and yet not concerned about incorrect doctrines on members with black skin LGBT members or creating a bank that would fail uh shortly after launch and so that's another area where you go in the Mormon Church you have to believe that the the god of Mormonism is so concerned about polygamy he going to send with an angel with a drawn sword to make sure it's getting done right but not at all concerned about the systematic racism um getting the book of Abraham translation wrong misrepresenting biblical scholarship in that again is one of those areas where if you want to accept the church as true you got to kind of try to find out how to reconcile this very disjointed priority of goddess I guess would be the way i' phrase it and also you've got the problem where early in the Book of Mormon polygamy is condemned the whole idea of taking polygamous wives is condemned early on in the book of Mor so Joseph Smith translates this book where he puts his head in the Hat and he reads the characters from the stone and then he reads them out loud and they're written down and he can't move on till it's right so it's a tight translation so that was absolutely what God wanted him to write in that book and then God would go on to contradict it a few years later by telling him actually no polygamy's chill now go do that yeah it and and uh I done a an image on I think on Twitter but you know what's what's amazing is if you look at the the change between the Book of Mormon and how it talks about polygamy DNC 132 which obviously uh contradicts the The Book of Mormon with regard to how God justifies polygamy as opposed to you know finding it to be an Abomination and then the happiness letter which is Joseph Smith's letter to Nancy rigon which we did an episode on it really shows this really weird progression of Joseph Smith's um how he frames polygamy through the voice of God and what's amazing is I've talked about this in our previous episodes but you know in the happiness letter he says to Nancy rigton that anyone who opposes I I'm going to botch the words a little bit but basically anyone who would oppose polygamy knows the order of Heaven only in part and then you look at um The Book of Mormon I think he says anyone who calls it an Abomination or abhorent would know that order of Heaven only in part then the Book of Mormon literally has God saying that and so you could see that Joseph Smith here to get the justification for polygamy is literally throwing the god of the Book of Mormon under the bus and it really just shows that if the church is true all of these things just to reconcile those you you're going to twist yourself into a pretzel and and and it really starts to show you the Fingerprints of the person writing these things uh are doing so in order to get what they need to get you know in this case you know polygamous wives which for me takes us to the next slide that again neither you Mike nor Nemo have pre-approved I'm going to I'm going to share the slide and then I'll ask you guys to tell me whether you're okay with what it say bloody loose bloody Loose Cannon isn't he am I'm a loose canon today but I just wanted to provide a tiny bit of input and and these words are going to come across as really harsh so Mike and Nemo I'll let you check me on it but what all what to me what all of this means is that if Joseph Smith got it right if the Mormon church is true then God the creator of the universe ended up choosing a man meaning Joseph Smith who repeatedly behaved you know in a in a way in a manner that would be indistinguishable from an actual fraud and and again these are very severe words as a sexual predator to be his meaning God's most important prophet in history and what I mean by that is just very simple if John dein in 2023 or David Kesh or Jim Jones or David misovich or elron hubard you know pick pick somebody in the modern times if they claim to see God um but then changed the story significantly over time if they claimed to if if they had a history a criminal history uh which Joseph Smith did and if they engaged in sketchy folk magic behaviors prior to claiming to start a church which people like Elon hubber and and um Keith rener and others actually did you know if if they claim to produce scripture that was translated from ancient texts but then modern uh Scholars revealed these translations to be completely inaccurate and if any man started uh in addition to an existing wife started taking other men's wives uh teenage girls 14year olds motherdaughter pairs sister pairs started taking them to wife secretly having sex with them and then lying about it not just to their own spouse but to the general public if anybody behaved as as Joseph Smith did in modern times they would not only be uh disbelieved by Mormons as frauds as criminals but they would likely be incarcerated for life and yet somehow because we have been taught these things as Mormons from infancy and because we have all these warm feelings and hymns and testimony meetings and grandparents who bear solemn testimony of the truthfulness of Joseph Smith because we have all that cultural priming all that cultural context to condition us to love and believe in Joseph Smith then we give Joseph Smith a pass when we learn about his actual Behavior but but my point is my question to you Mike and Nemo is how is Joseph Smith's Behavior in any way distinguishable from a charlatan or from a sexual predator Mike I'll let you go first well I mean as we've talked about in these episodes I believe that he used fraudulent practices we can show that uh if you go back to our treasure digging episode we literally have a story from Josiah Stow who was a believer in Joseph's ability as a treasure Digger so he's a a positive Source he tells a story about how Joseph Smith after they're doing this long dig because remember he's on trial because Jose sto's nephew I believe uh realizes that this is not right and so he takes Joseph Smith to court and Josiah sto tells the story about how Joseph Smith says he could see through the stone in the Hat uh that the buried treasure is is buried deep in the ground with a feather and wouldn't you know it the next day they go to dig and they find the feather but no treasure and so Joseph Smith's like oh man that sucks the treasure got sunk down to the ground by the guardian Spirit but the feather was there so you know I'm I'm I'm the real deal right and I'm being factious because as we talked about feathers have a life uh underground of I believe like three to six months before they fully decompose so if Barry treasure was with a feather deep in the ground there's no way in the world it's going to be there when Joseph Smith digs long after to uncover this Berry treasure so Joseph Smith right there in a story from a positive source is using outright fraud there's no way around that and then you look at the polygamy stuff and we talked about this in our episode uh episodes on polygamy but Joseph Smith used tactics that are textbook grooming tactics and predatory tactics so you might sit there and go oh my goodness sexual predator is such a load of word but it it by by its definition it fits if you look at the Lucy walker story um Joseph Smith um Lucy Walker's uh mother dies and she's got what like 10 K there's 10 kids in the family or there's a lot of kids so Joseph goes to the father and says leave the older children with me and the younger children we're going to have with another family and I'm going to send you off on a mission to get your head right because you just lost your wife and as Lucy is living with the Smith family Joseph is teaching her secretly about polygamy after she loses her mom she has no father to talk to and she's in this vulnerable position as a 15-year-old girl and Joseph Smith teaching her about polygamy in secret and then after a while proposes to her she says no or she you know kind of hesitates and then he goes back to her sometime later and says you have 24 hours or the gates will be closed forever which means the gates to exaltation through doing this and she um then uh goes I believe two or three sleepless nights feels like she gets a confirmation marries them has sex with them all of those things are predatorial grooming tactics and so when people use the word groomer that is by like literally textbook definition grooming and so um I don't want to be long-winded here but just to say that yes there's evidence that Joseph Smith engaged in outright intentional fraud in his treasure digging days then there's evidence that what he was doing as profit was fraudulent when you look at the book of Abraham um when you look at other aspects where he's making these claims that are obviously not true and then when you look at polygamy there's evidence and accounts that show Joseph Smith you using tactics that would be absolutely considered grooming today by members of the church by people outside of the church and so they're loaded terms but they fit and so when you hear members of the church go and you hear this all the time they'll say if God had waited for a perfect person to lead the church then how could I ever hope to live up to it and I feel like that is the most um it makes me sad because that is what your condition to believe in the church to think that you if you find fault with Joseph Smith then you're not any better we talked about that in our episode on um I believe the one on doubts where the current church historian is like could you have done any better and my answer is yes oh my goodness yes because I would not do this and um yeah it's a really it makes me upset because I hear that all the time where you bring it up about J so Smith will say well he was an imperfect person and if God had chosen someone perfect how could I ever hope to live up to it and it's like you just if it was anyone else outside the church to your point John theyd say that guy belongs in jail but Joseph Smith that's like oh my goodness he was imperfect just like me and it's like no no no he was a groomer who was using outright fraud and he is not just like you and the only reason we're trying to make that connection is to keep you from running because you realize that there are so many red flags here and so I apologize for my Tang I just want to make clear that when we use these terms ter fraud and predatorial behavior they are backed up by evidence and I'd also refer people to the happiness letter episode which also helps to illustrate Mike's Point Nemo anything you want to add yeah I was just going to say the happiness letter and Helen Mar Kimble that's enough to give him the sexual predator title and Thena the treasure digging I steal Nemo's Thunder I don't mean that's it's fine great minds Nemo great minds can I um oh do I still have it up go ahead uh yeah I've got I just I I don't have it on the screen but I just want to read this this is what I was referencing earlier so in the Book of Mormon it says behold David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines which thing was abominal before me sayeth the Lord right that's really clear so we know that DNC 132 then says that God Justified them having it which is really weird considering he's calling it abominable in the book of morma but in the happiness letter he says this is what he's saying to Nancy Rigden after she reject rejects his proposal he says if we seek first the kingdom of God all good things will be added so with Solomon so that's your that's your flag right there that this is about polygamy first he asked wisdom and God gave it him and with it every desire of his heart even things which might be considered abominable to all though all who understand the order of Heaven only in part but which in reality were right because God gave in sanction by special Revelation and so this is a tactic that go Joseph Smith is using the voice of God to tell Nancy rigon that yeah sure the Book of Mormon says that uh polygamy is abominable but the people who say that only know Heaven only in part and if you marry and have sex with me then you are going to understand this right because I getting special Revelation just like Solomon did and those are tactics that are I mean as John said those are used by every charlatan who sleeps with their followers and so to then turn around and say that it's different because it's Joseph Smith that's um as we talked about that's special pleading and and I just wanted to read that because it really reiterates that the tactics Joseph Smith are using are very textbook grooming and also predatorial behavior and and to say otherwise I think really as we've talked about in this episode it's flipping those definitions upside down because you just don't want it to be true amen all right um which takes us to uh the next slide that I've added which which is sort of I'll I'll just describe it is saying the quiet part out loud and and ironically what I'm about to say was was said out loud you know whether it's by Bruce armak coni or Joseph fing Smith or even the Book of Mormon um and it's only in the in the recent few decades that the Mormon church has sort of backed off this very bold assumption to the point where Modern Mormons would be really hesitant to ever admit this out loud but I think it's it's a face value face valid true which is that if Joseph Smith was right all non LDS or non-mormon Creeds and churches ultimately are an Abomination before God and all non-mormon church or LDS marriages and religious ordinances are invalid this means that non-mormon marriages don't count in heaven non-mormon baptisms don't count in heaven um it all is uh it all is you know worthless is um is not valid is invalid is false um and and you know it seems like a very bigoted thing to say it seems like a very elitist thing to say it seems like a very judgmental thing to say but I it is yeah but I I just want to find any any active believing Mormon to contradict me that in heaven a Catholic baptism doesn't count that in heaven a a Evangelical Christian baptism doesn't count that a Jewish marriage is dissolved d i i challenge any active believing Mormon to to contradict me there uh because they'll be literally contradicting the entire reason we do baptisms for the dead or or Temple ceilings for the dead it's because we have to spend our lives and the Millennium uh performing these ordinances because Joseph Smith himself declared them as invalid yeah uh can I just add something on to that yeah which is and and I don't want to get too into this because it's quite sensitive and I haven't quite thought about enough to really get into a debate about it so I want to tread lightly here but there was a problem for a while with uh the descendants of the family members of Holocaust victims being upset that the that they were being baptized posthumously as members of the church right the proxy ordinances were being done for them rightly so they were upset by that and so the church said they would stop doing it but that's said actually quite interesting that the church said they would stopped because what the church is then saying is because of this elitist view that John's just put out which is absolutely explicit almost within Mormon teaches but certainly implicit they've said right well the 6 million Jews that died as a result of the Holocaust they just I guess aren't getting Eternal salvation that is then the Mormon view because they said well in order to um appease the sensitivities of those are still alive those who are understandably upset we will not allow those people to be Poss must be baptized but what that is saying within Mormon Doctrine is just those people aren't going to the Celestial Kingdom and I don't as a believing member I'd love if you're watching this to put in the comments how you would balance that like I would love to hear how you balance that is is that all right John what do you think of that yeah let's get Mike in well I was just GNA say uh we did our episode with Russell Nelson's Miracle stories and rfm was on there and he had a quote from I think Russell Nelson's first autobiography that he read where he literally talks about how Russell Nelson goes to the Holocaust site and he says something along the lines of these are a lot of people we can baptize to save you know and so there is this view within Mormonism that yeah we got to clean up the messes of all these other religions and um you know to Nemo's point it's this all is this is a very sensitive area but this is what Joseph Smith claims during the first Vision he says I was answered that I must join none of them for they were all wrong and the personage who addressed me said that all their Creed were an abomination in his sight and those professors were all corrupt that they draw near to me with their lips but their hearts are far from me they teach for doctrines the Commandments of men having a form of godliness but they deny the power thereof and so fair Mormon actually says Joseph did not claim that the churches of the day were an Abomination he was told their Creeds were an Abomination and so if you look up the definition of creed in the Oxford dictionary it says a system of Christian or other religious belief a faith in other words you know the basis of a church and so fair Mormon here is playing this word game of Joseph didn't say the churches were an Abomination but just everything they stood for was and so well Joseph didn't say anything Jesus said it that's true yeah exactly so so fair Mormon here is trying to be like look guys Jesus didn't say that that the the churches were Abomination just every part of them was it'd be like you know I it's like Mike is not an Abomination just his hair his mouth his eyes his skin his bones his heart his lungs yeah just those bits I I didn't say that so and so is ugly I just said that their face reminded me of a car wreck and their body looks like you know but I'm just saying like that is the most like ridiculous stance for fair to say because they know full well what Creeds mean they know full well the context in which which Jesus apparently is saying it to Joseph Smith and so yeah if the church is true then God told Joseph Smith every other church is an Abomination everything they stand for is an Abomination every other um tradition or practice they have is an Abomination before me and just think about what that what that means it's horrible yeah and so I've got a an image here of like the pope ordaining someone and it's crossed out with an X and a bunch of Muslims you know at the Haj um you know and that's crossed out and a bunch of Jews observing Judaism at the Wailing Wall and it's crossed out like it's deeply offensive to say the quiet part of Mormonism out loud which is that every other religious tradition is invalid and an Abomination now of course Mormons will try and soft pedal that like Gordon be Hinkley once said and say well let's just see what good they have and see if we can add to it but that's not then Brad Wilcox and his ilk will just tread right in it and say Well they're just playing Church yep I was just going to say that right so there are people that will say the quiet part out loud and it's deeply offensive when they do and the public backlash to that should proves your point John that when you say that quiet part out loud everyone kicks off sorry yeah but but I will say Brad Wilcox went out and he's been giving this talk over and over how all the other churches are in his quot is they're just playing Church in other words they're getting married but they're not really getting married because it's all meaningless right they're doing ordinations and baptisms but they mean nothing because we have it they don't right that's an US versus them that's a Mormon exceptionalism but then Brad Wilcox didn't he just get promoted at the last General Conference like he got into a higher position so yeah to to to Nemo's point when that came out um I believe they took the talk off YouTube they kind of took Brad will Cox they canceled a bunch of his speaking things because all of a sudden they're like holy crap these things he's saying are horrible but then they quietly him later because he's saying what the church believes it's like um the same thing Oliver cryy uh makes up the priesthood restoration story and a few months later he gets elevated to the number two in the church because he lied for the sake of Joseph Smith which elevated Joseph Smith so Joseph Smith rewarded him by being number two and you're saying the same thing here to Nemo's point you don't say it out loud but you don't get punished for it because it's what they believe yeah all right well uh believe it or not I have yet another slide that you guys haven't seen and that you have not consented to but for me it's an important summation of the points we're making if is going cold I know we're almost done if Joseph Smith got it right then modern-day LDS church Revelation is really an amalg amalgamation of openly understood early 19th century social dynamics that um and that God's hand selected modern-day prophets get it wrong on the really important things uh as often as they get it right and that God's holy and chosen prophets often cave to social pressure so whether it's uh you know the reversal of the of the priesthood ban on on black people whether it's the cancellation of the practice of polygamy whether it's the reversal of the LGBT exclusion policy between uh 2015 and 2019 um you know pick any of those things and many many others uh including you know Mormon doctrines denunciation of the Catholic Church as the great of all the Earth and and the the great and abominable Church you know pick your essential Mormon Doctrine uh it's as if the Book of Mormon musical got it right that God conveniently changes his mind whenever social pressure gets intense enough and a modern example would be you know when a whistleblower reveals that the Mormon church has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets then all of a sudden the Mormon Church um starts to care about its philanthropic offerings but before that uh it gave very little if any charitable contributions with its hoarding of massive wealth so so Mike do you do you feel okay about this uh this summation or do you want to correct it or object no I mean we we I think from all of our episodes this really is what it comes down to is that the prophet seers and revelators of the church are limited to whatever knowledge is around them their worldview limits them and and that's why we talked about uh even in a in a more modern term Wendy Nelson uh when she gave her interview after Russell Nelson became Prophet was like he's become Unleashed he can do the things he always wanted to do but now that he's presentent he can do them it basically is every profit is a product of their time and that's why the church is now saying that they age poorly because they are literally products of their time they don't they can't see the future fut they can't predict what's going to happen and so they're limited to whatever worldview they've been in their whole life and so they are always going to be an amalgamation of whatever they've learned and most of the time they've learned within the bubble of Mormonism and so you can't expect them to get it right more than they get it wrong because they're just dudes that are just imposing their worldview in the name of God they're not actually speaking for God and if they were um like we we've talked about you'd expect more and more stuff to get right so I hope that to me that's really I think for me it's a quick way I'm usually long longwinded in these answers but I don't think you need to say much more than that Nemo do you think I'm overstating it with the slide be honest oh you want you want honesty CU you get honesty no um I think I think it's actually to me very interesting this idea where you said that it was 19th century ideas and one of the arguments people might make is that well that's why God waited for that time because it's those ideas that need to be restored and that also works with the idea that Joseph Smith himself believed that the end of the world was nigh but the problem is the end of the world has been nigh for the past 200 years and the world keeps changing and I think Mormonism as it started then is then not designed to catch up with the world that's changed so much Joseph Smith could have never envisaged just how much the world would change from when he established the church so it wasn't set up to to deal with this sort of social change that we've seen um that would be that would be my thought I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to say that that's what's going on here yeah yeah all right so we've just got a couple slides left but some of these I think are just really crucial this takes us to one other conclusion that I arrived at literally in high school that it just that I put on my shelf I basically just divided the number of active Mormons in the world by the total number of people in the world and realized that if Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church got it right that the the all powerful creator of the universe God's Eternal plan ends up only being enjoyed in life by 0.0625% of his children that that God Almighty who loves everyone and who is all powerful who could create any plan in the in the universe for his offspring creates a plan where less than 0.0625% of his children get to be members of his one true and Only Living Church now of course that's supported by Jesus's teachings you know exclusive teachings and you could almost say racist or you know um sort of a highly selective teachings that narrow is the gate and few shall there be that find it um and of course the highly selective chosen narrative that the Jews you know of all people the Jews were the chosen people on Earth forget about the Native Americans forget about the Asians forget about the Africans it was the Jews who God preferred um again it's the Mormons who God prefers and the problem with that is it leaves out 99.99 plus perc of of the living people on the Earth is you know again this is saying the quiet part out loud but but Nemo do you think I'm overstating that everyone wants to be the main character in their own story don't they and it's it's interesting that God actively rejected the plan that would have brought all his children home which means he is clearly playing favorites and if you ever do you remember that bumper sticker I don't know whether you ever saw it out in Utah you must have seen it my uncle had one on his van said Jesus loves you but I'm his favorite yeah that's good and I think there's extra layers to that when you're Mor because like we know there is a clear favoritism here because he chose to send me to a family in nor point not 6 to 5% of the population um so as I was told in youth you won the genetic Lottery you were extremely lucky to be born into a Latter-Day Saint family and at the time you take that to mean oh isn't that wonderful and now I need to share it with other people but actually what that means is that statistically we're we're fairly insignificant as a religion and it doesn't make sense that God would only want this many of his children to return back to live with him unless he just doesn't love a lot of them yeah yep yeah Mike what what do you want to add anything I would just you know I pointed this out in previous episodes but for me one of the biggest uh I don't know if I don't know if shelf would be a way to put it but here we have you know this idea that we have this God that loves everyone and all God wants to do is to get us on the path back to to the Mormon church right and so then you have like say the book of Abraham where Joseph Smith should be um shown to be correct with time that his translation is correct and yet we have the opposite and so the church will then say well if Joseph Smith translated the Papyrus correctly there'd be no need for Faith and I'm thinking to myself if you have a God that really wants you wants all of his children back to come back to him why is he having his Prophet out there looking like an idiot you know and and so it would' be like if I was running a company that was trying to sell whatever and all of my salese were out there just being proven incorrect all the time they would look at the salespeople and say what are you doing but they would look at me and go what kind of plan do you have when you're sending them out there to say stuff that is just completely untrue and I guess that's where I just go does it make sense that God wants all of us and loves all of us equally and wants all of us to come back to him yet at the same time is having the prophet get wrong over and over again which makes people not want to go back to him and I think that is to me something that once it got into my head I started noticing it more and more and it should be um the argument that you need faith and that's why God set Joseph Smith up to get the book of Abraham wrong I think really is a giant red flag to say yeah this is either Joseph Smith making it up or God really sucks at at basically trying to get people back to him because the god of Mormonism looks very powerless and very incompetent unless you then realize that it's not actually God it's just the people who claim to speak for him yep which which for me brings me to the final slide that you guys haven't seen um that I really do think is is an essential part of Mormonism because you present this whole you know 48 episode or 50 episode series to Progressive Mormons or apologetic Mormons and they'll say Mike Nemo you're proving our point the whole purpose of this existence is to have faith if God made it obvious if God made it consistent if God made it fact-based or evidencebased there'd be no reason to believe so not only is God going to not provide the evidence um you know of belief he's going to even put landmines in your way of belief like making his core Mormon scripture um un undermined by science and choosing as the head of his religion someone who behaves behaves indistinguishably from a chartin and a sexual predator and what that leads to is the sort of conclusion that if Joseph Smith and the Mormonism got it right then the Mormon God is a trickster God it's a god that is actually not just going to make it hard to believe he's going to literally put bombs and Hand Grenades and landmines in your path on the journey uh to uh exaltation to blow you up at any moment and I would add to that the CES letter Mormon stories podcast LDS discussions you know Nemo the Mormon God's going to just literally make it super easy for his chosen people we we've already got it down to 0.0625% of God's chosen people and even them are going to be peeled away in the latter Days by a PDF in CS letter or by a podcast with Mormon stories or by a website with LDS discussions or a YouTube channel with neemo the Mormon um how fragile is God's plan you know cuz cuz all of us are accused Nemo you're you're accused Mike LDS discussions you're accused of like destroying people's Faith Mormon stories I'm accused all the time of like destroying people's Faith well if John or Mike or Nemo can literally destroy the faith of tens of thousands of modern day Latter Day Saints who are saved by the way according to Mormon Doctrine saved for the last days to usher in uh the return of Jesus Christ based on their valiance in the pre-existence if we can can ultimately undermine God's Eternal plan well then God is a trickster God and some would say he's not much of a god at all have I overstated that Mike yeah I mean we we've talked about this in in so many episodes but that's the problem that really comes from apologetics because you'll say Joseph Smith translated the book Abraham incorrectly he didn't realize it was just a common funerary text and then they go well yeah God didn't want you to think it was correct because then there'd be no need for Faith because you just know and it's like what kind of world are you in where you're falling back to basically saying yeah of course God had Joseph get it wrong you idiot if he got it right then everybody would just join the church we'd be one happy family and I'm like yeah that's just right so you know again I to me it's not I I and I agree with you because I I think I I know I've used the phrase trickster God a lot too but to me it's more like the god of Mormonism really is the people who speak for the god of Mormonism and it just comes to this thing where it's always it can't be God getting it wrong so it's got to be that God needed to get you to get to you to be deceived so that you could learn a lesson and it just kind of at some point you just go is it really that the god of Mormonism is so inept to as position that he keeps getting things wrong through His prophets or is it just that the people who claim to speak for him don't really speak for him and yeah I just I feel like it's some point you just when you you almost want to like when someone tells you that you want to say repeat that again but now instead of saying the Book of Mormon and Mormonism you just thr on Scientology or Catholicism or Budd whatever other religion and they would realize how stupid it sounds could John can you go back a slide yeah um I made an edit but I don't know whether it will come through in time oh let me let me escape and then go back in there you go okay let me now now let me show the slide go ahead Nemo cool so I added to the end of that he's a Traer God and he seems indifferent to us coming back to him cuz he was ready to cast off a third of his children from his presence to start with then he made it so only 0.06 to 5% of his children ever made it into the religion he says we'll get them back to him then he makes it really easy for them deceive in fact actively seems to be involved in trying to deceive them and trip them up and and stop them getting back so it's kind of just like he's enjoying his peace and quiet sorry to be flippant but it's kind of like he's just chilling up there and he just doesn't want us back yeah almost no it like I I think I said this in a previous episode I'm pretty sure I did but the god of Mormonism is really if you if you viewed the god of Mormonism as a father you'd be like that's a really horribly abusive manipulative bad father and I know how how just sharp that sounds to a Believer but just imagine you have a kid and you really want this kid to be on the right path and to love and you just keep tricking him and making him believe things that he finds out to be false and then you blame him for finding it out it just doesn't make sense and then you're like oh you found out that that was wrong well have fun you know being separated from me for eternity it just doesn't make sense until you get to the point where you realize that the people who are writing these things and coming up with these ideas are just making it up and again I know that sounds very like a polemic and all that but it just at some point to Nemo's part it when you really think of the god of Mormonism and and how little he seems to care about whether or not people come back to him because he's throwing out all of these horribly wrong claims through His prophets it just doesn't add up in any way it does not and uh that leads us to the final slide of today's presentation we we finally reached it so Mike what's your conclusion to this entire episode yeah and just you know I think if you've watched all of these episodes this is somewhat of a recap there's obviously some new stuff too but so I think at some level it might feel kind of like a weird thought experiment to kind of start with what the church needs to have to be true and then kind of flip it upside down but I really think it's an important one because we need to think about all of the things that had to have hap have happened for Joseph to be a prophet of God and for the Book of Mormon Moses Abraham doctrine of covenants to be ancient or at least true records with some you know obvious DNC is not ancient and on the other hand we have to think of the implications are if those are true and it's one of those things I've talked about a lot on these episodes which is when you have apologetics and you try to attempt to solve one issue you're often creating other problems elsewhere that you don't actually ever intend to deal with and um with Mormonism that really is problematic because this as Nemo said they're a new religion very well documented they make very testable truth claims and over these last few hundred years we've been able to assess so many of them uh through so many fields of study as we talked about genetics Linguistics egyptology biblical scholarship archaeology textual criticism and so many more and so it's one thing to look at this through the lens of whether or not Joseph Smith got it wrong as we've kind of been doing through these earlier episodes but it's almost just as problematic if we start with the assumption that he got it right and then apply it to everything outside of Mormonism because it really shows not just how the truth claims don't hold up by their own evidence but if they were true how much chaos it would send everything else we that we kind of take for granted in our daily lives um and and I think that is for me a good way to kind of look at some of these issues is almost a recap to say let's just start with the equation being that it's correct and try to find out how we're going to make it balance out on the other side with everything else we know about the world and it just doesn't work yeah it's like I have to I have to say Okay this is my conclusion it's it's the kry Molin argument it's like the book and woman is true and everything that comes from is true and so I'll take all my evidence and make it fit that narrative you're like okay how do I have to shape and bend and twist and mold the world to make the Book of Mormon work that's what we've looked at in a nutshell in this episode and I think it's it's been a really interesting thought experiment for me for us to go right how do we have to shift the world change the world to make the Book of Mormon work and the truth claims of the LDS church work yep and the way I'd summarize is you know one of the most common metaphors in doubting question questioning or disbelieving Mormonism is this metaphor of a shelf that you basically you know you're taught one version of Mormonism from childhood or in Mike's case as soon as you're baptized and then like every subsequent year as a Mormon you are ultimately discovering things that are either the opposite of what you were taught or that you were never taught that are just confirming to the church's truth claims and so what you do is you take each problematic item and you put it on a metaphorical shelf you put poly on a shelf you put racism on a shelf you put DNA on a shelf you put the Book of Mormon problems the book of Abraham problems you put misogyny and LGBT issues and you just keep putting them on the Shelf until your shelf collapses and I just remember in the early 2000s as I was starting to really have a major Faith crisis years before I started Mormon stories I had never allowed myself to ask just a very basic question what if the Mormon church is a n true because um I I had all of these questions and problems mounting and so I was spending all of this time studying apologetic arguments that that would force me to um put my brain into a pretzel to try and make the Mormon Church true to answer a thousand pin Pricks or a thousand beas thingss as Richard Bushman once described it to me in contorted convoluted science invalidating ways and ethically and morally inval inv invalidating ways I had to do all of that contortionism to make the Mormon Church come out as still true or I could just sort of come up with one simple answer that makes it all make sense everything makes sense if you look at the Mormon church through the lens of it simply not being true and I think that's kind of what the entire LDS discussions project is is possibly suggesting as neutrally and as objectively as we've tried to be I think we're all asking the question what if the simplest answer what if aam's razor points us to the possible conclusion that it just isn't true and is that too bold Mike Nemo have I have I jumped the shark no no it's just it's that's what I mean at some point you just go what would you say if it was another religion and and to your point what makes the most sense and if you have to constantly redefine words or you constantly have to say other people are wrong in order to continue to make the church true then the problem at some point is going to be on you because you're just not willing to to see what's going on and I think my dogs agree with me on that one NE Mo anything you want to say to conclude no just that uh I I don't know why I say that I say no and then say something we all do it we all do it yeah it's bad I I don't like this I I don't enjoy this I don't take joy in it um but as a logical exercise I think it's been very thorough and very um fairly conclusive that if you if you if you take into account all the things that you have to discredit and disprove and disagree with for the Book of Mormon and the truth claims of the ls Church to be correct then ultimately you're left with one conclusion yeah all right and it sucks but that's what it is I mean at some point it's you know there I'll say one thing before we got to go I don't know if any of you have watched the show Scrubs it's a awesome show that was on I think it ended about 10 years ago but it was a medical kind of like comedy with drama and there's an episode of Brendan Fraser he's a guest star and he's um sick and they don't know what's wrong and so the main character JD played by Zack Brath gets the results and they're bad so he goes back to the guy and he's like I need you to rerun this test and the guy says do you want me to rerun them because you think I got them wrong or because you hope I got them wrong and he says cuz I hope you got them wrong and and I think you see a lot of that with Mormonism where you see this evidence that tells you it's not what it claims to be and you're just like no no no just redo it because I I I I know that it's probably right but I just can't get to that point of admitting to myself that I need to look at my my my um my beliefs here and as Nemo said it sucks it's not fun to do these episodes it's not fun to talk about polygamy and to talk about the priesthood restoration the ban on those with black skin but at the same time for me putting the information out there for other people to deal with it in this you know hopefully in a more Gentle Way than I did when I was going through it is the reason I wanted to do these episodes and the reason I did the overview was because someone asked me to it's not because I woke up one day and said I'm going to burn this church to the ground or I'm going to kill someone's belief it was because a family member said I want you to put this together for me so I can see all of it at once and that's why I did I didn't do it to make money I didn't do it to be famous I didn't do it to be influential on on you know post Mormon spaces I did it because I was asked to by somebody that wanted to see it and so it sucks and I feel burned out doing these episodes because it is very tough because I think about my experiences I think about people I know think about Nemo and John and all these people I've talked to and how much pain it's caused and how much pain it's caused with their families and I you know so when we do these thought exercises it's not like I'm sitting there or Neo sitting there John sitting there smiling go oh my goodness this is really going to get someone it's just how for me it helped make sense of it and so I hope if you're watching this and you are a Believer you can at least understand in no way did I wake up wanting to do this to to tear away someone's faith I did it because I was asked to and because this is how it made sense to me and how going through the Deep dive was really a painful experience in in in a lot of ways I'm hoping that this can help someone else going through it today at least shorts kind of shorten some of that Pain by being able to get deeper into some of these issues than it took me to do it and so if I can lessen someone's anguish and um pain and and torment over these issues just a little bit then it's worth it and so I just hope if you're a Believer you can understand that and I hope if you're not a Believer anymore and you're watching this you're getting something out of it that has helped the experience of going through this just a little bit better because it sucks no matter which way you cut it and I'm going to end also as we begun by encouraging those of you who have appreciated all these LDS discussions episodes to now in addition to the LDS discussions. comom website and the essays that are up there if you appreciate or value what we've done please drop Mike a line at LDS discussion no s gmail.com and let him know uh because Mike probably doesn't understand how profound this Series has impacted people and how important his work truly has been um and then also I just want to uh I want to encourage people to subscribe on YouTube subscribe on Facebook donate to Mormon stories podcast at mormonstories.org click on the Donate button become a monthly donor and then finally I want to encourage believing Mormons or um apologetic Mormons if you think we have gotten something wrong today if you think we've jumped the shark if you think we took things too far if one of these slides you think is factually inaccurate or unfair I want you to challenge us write us email us let us know um you can email me at Mormon stories atgmailcom you can email Mike at LDS discussion gmail.com you can email Nemo Nemo theem Morman gmail.com and tell us where we got it wrong and we'll do an episode and we'll correct the error of our ways publicly if in any way what we have asserted today is factually inaccurate is that fair Nemo and Mike are you guys on board yeah absolutely all right always works for me yep okay well that concludes today's episode it was a bit longer but I think the things that we talked about today and the things that we added I think are really important things to discuss so thanks Nemo and Mike for enduring my additions to the slide deck Nemo we we adore you and your Insight and wisdom please subscribe to Nemo the Morman YouTube channel and donate to Nemo at uh donorbox.org Nemo the Mormon um and and please continue to support not just Nemo but the entire Brit vasion of uh Mormon and postmormon British YouTubers and podcasters they all do amazing work thanks again Nemo we love you absolute pleasure thank you very much for having me thanks all right and Mike we adore and appreciate you check out Mike's work at ldsd discussion.citation to possibly coming back in the fall of 2023 and um we've got a list of at least eight or 10 more episodes that we've asked Mike we've commiss commissioned Mike to consider writing and preparing and if Mike can recover from his burnout then over the summer of 2023 Mike will add at least a few more episodes to our Canon to complete the LDS discussions project um Endeavor so anyway thanks for joining us today on Mormon stories podcast thank you for your support thanks to Maven and Julia and herard and the open stories Foundation board and all of those who make Mormon stories in the open stories Foundation possible we couldn't do it without you and to conclude please be good to each other please be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast on Nemo the Mormon and on the LDS discussions Mormon stories series take care everybody see you soon