Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your co host for today, John Claims and Mike. We're super, super excited to have you back. This is a great series.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:00:13] Yeah, thank you. This will be, this will be a fun one today.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] Yeah. Like, I was reviewing the slides before we started, and who would have thought that Adam and Eve could be, in my view, such a smoking gun? But for Mormonism, I think Adam and Eve is a smoking gun. But. But let's let the viewers and listeners decide. But this is, I think this is literally almost definitionally foundational.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:00:41] Yeah. And you know, it's funny. So we've been doing. I think this is our 11th episode. It might be our 12th, but so 11th or 12th now. And this is a topic that I did not intend to do on the overview at all. And I was kind of going through, you know, I sketched out the topics that I thought were the most important to cover. And, and one of the things that's funny is when you kind of. I know some people hate the word deconstruct. When you deconstruct Mormon truth claims, you don't necessarily usually dive into the biblical ones. And it took me a long time to get there.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:01:09] And then all of a sudden I saw something online. I mentioned it, and Anthony Miller, who you've had on before, who's a really smart dude, messaged me and pointed me to some stuff he had done with you, I think, a couple of years ago. And all of a sudden, in about a 10 minute span, I went from having like one or two sections on biblical scholarship to like six or seven. Because these things are so important, because of the way they're integrated so tightly not just into the Book of Mormon, but all the scriptures within Mormonism. And you need all of these stories in Genesis to be literal history or else everything falls apart right away.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:01:45] And it is because Joseph Smith makes them the foundation of the Book of Mormon and the Book Abraham, Book of Moses, because he makes them the foundation. If they're not historically true, it's a massive problem. And this is a problem that a lot of mainstream churches are dealing with by being willing to say the Bible's not a history book because it's, it's, it's not.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:06] Because we could show that in different ways, Adam and Eve is almost more problematic because of the fact that the story itself is. We'll get into it. But there, the Bible itself tells us that the Adam and Eve story is a late addition, but Joseph Smith didn't know that. And of Course, I wouldn't have known that myself either. But these things are, as I talked about in the early episodes, these are the pieces of the puzzle where you can, all of a sudden, you can kind of see where this is going.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:30] And these are the fingerprints that Joseph Smith leaves on the Book of Mormon's text. Because we can see he's writing this with that 19th century worldview that the Bible is a history book. And as we can see now, that is going to cause him some problems that you just cannot get away from.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] Yeah, yeah. Because with Joseph Smith, Adam is literally engaging in all aspects of the Restoration.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:02:51] Right. And that's a problem.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] And the Doctrine and. Doctrine and Covenants and Book of Mormon are based on the New Testament, which is based on the Old Testament. So it's literally. It's the. It's the foundation of the whole thing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:03:03] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] All right, well, let's jump in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:03:05] Yeah. So this one will be a little more, I think, a little different than what we've done before, since now we're kind of going, we're going to stick with Mormonism, but we're also going to go into the Bible. So everyone I'm sure that's listening is familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. And so we don't have to go into, like, reading the text of it, but just to say that there's the. There's two different creation stories, which. There's one in chapter one, one in chapter two of Genesis that kind of explains the beginning of life on earth. In the traditional view, Adam and Eve were created by God in about 4000 BCE and are the original ancestors to every man, woman and child that's on our earth today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:03:37] And just to point out, most scholars, and even, I'm saying most biblical scholars and all secular scholars would agree this is an ideological myth. An ideological myth just means, effectively that it's like an origin story that is being used to give a community a purpose and to try to understand where they came from. And so the Adam and Eve story in Genesis is effectively an origin story that's being written almost as a way to start the Bible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:07] And Joseph Smith kind of takes this as a literal historical event and because of that, writes it into the scriptures of Mormonism. And that allows us to be able to look at the scriptures of Mormonism and say the truth claims don't hold up, and also helps us to date when it was written, because we can use the versions that Joseph Smith is using and kind of the world that he lives in. Those beliefs are all 19th century in the Book of Mormon. And this is how we're going to kind of approach Adam and Eve as a whole.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's got to be the most familiar story, you know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:04:42] Yeah. I mean, we could obviously read it, but I'm sure everyone watching, I'm sure, is familiar with it, at least to the point where we don't need to go into that, but just, you know, we'll get into some of the specifics as we go. But, you know, we're just going to go over just that main story and how it relates to Mormonism because. And not only that, you know, I mentioned that it also shows in the scriptures. But, you know, as John mentioned earlier, because Joseph Smith is evolving his theology throughout his time as prophet, he is going to make mistakes that contradict his earlier teachings. And this is Adam and Eve is a big example of that. Because even if they're historical, he's still going to mix up his teachings on them as he goes through revelation. But if they're not historical, then it's hugely problematic.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] Yeah. And I'm just going to tell people at the outset that, that David Bachavoy on Mormon Stories has a great episode to dig into the Adam and Eve from a, from a, like a scholarly perspective. And Simon Southerton, we did one with him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:05:34] Yeah. And those are great. David Bacavois, for anyone who's watching this series who has not watched the. I think it's like four episodes with David Bachavoy. You did on. It covers Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham. Those are must listen to or must watch because he is. He can run circles around me. I could not even be in the same world as him as far as understanding the text, because he can tell you what the original Hebrew was saying or what the original Greek was saying. So he can tell you those things off the top of his head. And so his work is extremely important.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:08] And if you are a believer, I would also recommend to people to check out Dan McClellan's TikTok channel. He is the translation supervisor of the church. He. So he works for the church and he's a biblical scholar as well. He has, you know, he has all degrees as well. And so that, you know, listening to David Bockvoy and Dan McClellan and and to see the fact that they agree on almost everything we're going to say today, at least with regards to like, the history of the Bible, obviously there's gonna be differences on maybe on some of the interpretations of like the, the later stuff. But the fact is, this is not something that is going to be disputed by anybody except for, I would argue, like, church leaders correlated church material.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:06:50] And so it's going to make people really uncomfortable because Adam and Eve, I think, cuts a little bit deeper than the Book of Mormon does. I totally get that. And the one thing I'll say at the outset is, as someone who's gone through this and experienced kind of how painful it can be to do this, going through it helps you to understand what the original intent of the authors were for these texts. And in a lot of ways, that sucks from a perspective of someone who went through the church and has understood these truth claims don't hold up or are not what you thought they were.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:21] But there's a lot of value to be taken in the way that the people took them. And so you can find a lot of value in these stories while understanding they're not historical. And while that may be problematic for Mormonism, it does not mean that you cannot take value in it. It does not mean that you cannot take the good from it and leave the bad behind in these biblical stories. And so while it's going to be uncomfortable and painful for some people to listen to these episodes, I just want to let you know there is still a lot of value can take. And even though the truth is going to kind of jolt what you grew up learning or what you were born with being taught, it doesn't mean that everything's bad.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:07:58] And I hope that we can illustrate that as we go through this series to try to point out that there's still a lot of good lessons to be learned here, and there's still a lot of good. It's just that these instances tell us that the truth claims of Mormonism are going to have problems because of it.

John Dehlin [00:08:13] Yeah. All right. Thank you for that.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:08:17] So with that said, it's disclaimer. Well, you know, and again, and we'll, you know, get in this real quick. It's just I hope people understand that, you know, when you watch these episodes, they. They are very uncomfortable and they're very painful for people who are believers.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:08:31] But I hope people can understand. I'm trying really hard to do this with sources that I'm very confident hold up, and not using sources that I think sometimes we see both from a critical and an apologetic standpoint that don't. And so with that said, with Adam and Eve's historicity, you can look at all sorts of fields of study to know that the idea that man and woman began on Earth 6,000 years ago is just not even remotely plausible.

Human Evolution Contradicts a 6,000-Year-Old Adam and Eve

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:08:57] We can look at evolution and just the study of evolution of humans for Homo sapiens shows that modern day humans likely began to evolve in Africa about 315,000 years ago. But the problem is they have fossils that date long before that. So we had now fossils of ape like early human species millions of years ago. That is confirmed through DNA. It's confirmed at looking at the changes of fossils over time. Um, and that's why, you know, I know it's again, this is difficult for a lot of people to accept, but humans share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos. I think I'm saying that right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:09:34] And it's because, not because we're, you know, that my uncle is a chimp, it's because we both likely evolved from a common ancestor long ago. And so they split off, we split off. And so the reason the DNA is so similar is because of that. And we don't to want, I don't want to get into DNA too much. Simon Southern can do that way better than me, and I know he has in his earlier episodes. And. But the thing is you can look at all sorts of areas where you can show markers that are similar in our DNA that tell us that there's just no way that it's a coincidence.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:04] And so that tells us that Adam and Eve were not just pulled, you know, created from dust or out of a rib of a person, but a long process of evolution. And that is why when you look at Genesis, it's mythical and it's not going to kind of jive with what we know today. And as I mentioned, fossil records, we can go as early as like over 3 million years ago. And I can't probably pronounce this correct, but there was one hominin species and they were walking. They have the fossils showing that they were walking on two limbs. And what's really cool is if you ever look at, we went to a dinosaur museum and they had a wall where they had the human skulls over time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:10:46] And you can see the differences. Like you can literally see things like your overbite changes, they think that the overbite evolved so that we could communicate better, so we can make more sounds to communicate with each other better. And so you could see those changes. And so to deny that those changes took place is highly problematic. And those things don't happen overnight. So you're talking about a couple of, you know, upwards of over 3 million years to get from maybe that point where you know, the, you know, the most earliest kind of human form started to where we are today. And all of that is going to happen basically before Adam and Eve's story is even created. And so between evolution and fossil records, we can say with, with absolute certainty that life did not begin on Earth 6,000 years ago.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Yeah. And whether it's Africa or Asia, China, even, even north, central, South America, it's. We have writings, we have drawings, we have, you know, all sorts of things, you know, archaeological, anthropological evidence that goes at least back to 18,000 BCE, the Pleistocene era. Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:11:51] There's just no way. And, and I think some people are starting to find some stuff where they believe that the modern day humans may have come out of Europe. There's like one or two. I mean, it's not the consensus, but there's a couple of studies that are starting to come out. But regardless, none of that is going to be within 6,000 years and none of that is going to be in America. And both of those are highly problematic. And so if we look at DNA, we talked about this in our Book of Mormon in the DNA episode, we have a lot of evidence beyond fossils and beyond archeology and beyond migration patterns to show that people have lived for a long time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:22] And so DNA, if you go on Amazon or any, you know, just go to 23andMe for like 100 bucks now you can get a very detailed DNA test to tell you about your ancestors. And so this is something I did a couple years ago and it's so cool because DNA can show obviously in probably more detailed tests in 23andMe, that humans likely left Africa at least 200,000 years ago. And that's looking at the DNA of people and trying to figure out how far back we can date them and where the earliest humans would date to.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:12:54] And what's really cool about that is again, we talked about this in the Book of Mormon in DNA episode, but the DNA is confirming the archeology and because it's confirming the archeology, that gives us a lot more confidence that those what people would call theories are likely true. And while they may be fine tuned and maybe there will be some, something that comes up someday that tells us maybe it was even earlier somewhere else. So far we're looking at at least 200,000 years ago from the earliest kind of humans as we are leaving Africa, maybe Europe. That is again, you're talking, you know, 194,000 years earlier than the scriptures of Mormonism would tell us people were alive. And that's A huge problem.

John Dehlin [00:13:34] And if I had to restate, it's one thing if, if one branch of, of science confirms a certain timeline, but if, but if genetics and anthropology and archeology and linguistics, they're all lining up, and geology, they're all lining up to, to convey a similar timeline, that's when you know, you know something's pretty solid.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:13:58] Yeah. And this is a slide I added in. This is more of a personal one. But so again, if you do the 23andMe DNA results, they can tell you how much of your percentage of your DNA is Neanderthal. And Gerardo mentioned this on our DNA episode to say he had more than, I think, a higher percentage of people. And I think mine was in the middle or something like that. I think I had like 1.6% Neanderthal DNA. But what's really cool about this is the Neanderthals are dated to have disappeared 40,000 years ago, which means that, again, my DNA can be traced back to 34,000 years prior to Adam and Eve, you know, supposedly being the first humans.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:14:31] But what's really cool about the 23andMe test is they give you traits from your Neanderthal DNA. Now, these are the four traits that they told were the strongest variants in my DNA. One is a worse sense of direction. The second is difficulty discarding rarely used possessions. The third is less likely to have a fear of heights. And the fourth is a better sprinter than distance runner. And all four of those traits are 100% true for me. And the first two, which were the first, the two strongest have literally been told to me my entire life from my family, my friends. My sense of direction is absolutely horrible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:05] And I've been told by my friends and family throughout my whole life. I'm a hoarder. I have crap from middle school that I don't want to throw away because I'm like, I might want to look at that someday. So, again, I realize it's just four data points, but the fact that four data points from my Neanderthal DNA that 23andMe can show are tied to traits that match me perfectly should be an indication that you cannot just throw out DNA because you don't like the dating of it or you don't like the way that the results impact some of our deeply held beliefs. These are really important data points, at least to me, to show me that the Neanderthal DNA that I have, that they can analyze it at least to some degree.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:42] Because these four things, for me personally are so, so dead on that you know, to get all four of those right. It seems significant.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] It's almost like astrology, but. Or tarot cards, but with.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:15:54] Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, and that's the thing, like, you know, we always joke about, like, you know, how tarot card readers and all that and how stupid it is. This is an area where they're looking at our, you know, our genetic, genetic makeup and are able to make conclusions that are right. And so we've got an overview on this when we get way near the end. But I did an overview on, like, if Joseph Smith got it right, who got it wrong? And this is a problem because this is where you got to say, if, if, if Adam and eve were born 6,000 years ago and if the Native Americans are the descendants of the Book of Mormon people, then that means everything we know about this is wrong.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:26] Which means that this 23andMe test, which we can show is correct on so many levels, can't be right. You know what I mean? And that's the, that's when I say you have to balance apologetics. That's the problem. Like, if you want to dismiss DNA and say, well, the dating is off by a ton. We can't trust science, okay, but then you also then have to throw out DNA and everything else we do. And no one's going to do that because we trust DNA, as long as DNA doesn't interfere with our beliefs. And as painful as it is, we have to be willing to accept that even if we want to remain a believer and just say, this doesn't make sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:16:55] But I still choose to believe, and at least that is an intellectually honest approach. But anyways, getting back to the Adam and Eve story, this is really important too, because Adam and Eve is a story that is. We'll get into it in a second, but it's a late addition to the Bible and it's based off of earlier origin myths. And so the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is going to be more tightly tied to the Global Flood, has this story, which I think is really important. It's a story, and I hope I'm not pronouncing this wrong, but Enkindu and Shamhat. So if I pronounce wrong, I'm sorry, but in both, a man is created by, from the soil by a God and lives in a natural setting amongst the animals.

Ancient Near Eastern Origins of the Adam and Eve Story

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:17:33] He is introduced to a woman who tempts him. In both stories, a man accepts food from the woman, covers a naked, covers his nakedness, and must leave his former realm, unable to return the presence of a snake that steals a plant of immortality from the hero later in the epic is another point of similarity.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] And let me just make sure so, so this would have existed prior to the Adam and Eve story being inserted into what becomes the Old Testament.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:17:57] So the Epic of Gilgamesh, I believe, is dated to 1800 BCE and as we'll get into Adam and Eve is likely written in the 6th and 5th century BCE. So this would have been written long before. And this article that I'm quoting, which is on the overview, is giving more of an overview. So I'm sure from an apologetic standpoint, they'd say you're cherry picking details. There's a lot of differences.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:18:17] Again, these are details that are in there that just happened to match the Adam and Eve story. And as we'll get into in our next episode on the Global Flood, we're going to have the same thing with the Epic of Gilgamesh. And as David Bachboy points out, I don't know if I have this in these slides or not, but when he was on your episode, he talked about how a lot of the earlier Babylonian myths find their way into the Bible. And he said, without Babel, there'd be no Bible. This is an instance of it because we have these myths that are making their way into the Bible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:18:42] Just as, and think about this too, the similarity between the Book of Mormon has, as we've talked about in our previous episodes, a lot of 19th century ideas make their way into the Book of Mormon. A lot of 19th century myths and beliefs, such as the Mount Builder myth, make their way into the Book of Mormon. Well, this is no different. This is just a different time. So in the biblical times, they are also pulling earlier myths into the Bible to try to explain where people came from. Because just as in the Book of Mormon, where we're trying to explain where the Native Americans came from, in the Bible, they're trying to explain where do we come from, where do our community come from.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:11] And so these stories are really important, but they're not historical. And so they're, they're in a lot of ways a composite of earlier myths and earlier oral retellings by different communities.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Right? Yeah, it makes sense. It's kind of the, the global worldviews of the day. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:19:28] Yeah. I mean, and they're trying to account for where they are. And so, you know, the Adam and Eve account includes many elements of a fable, including a talking snake, a man that is created out of dust, a woman created by putting the man in a deep sleep to Take a rib. Living to the age of 930 years old. And the name Adam simply means man in Hebrew. Um, so I know that maybe not a huge deal, but, you know, this is a kind of a. A mythical fable where the name Adam is. Is kind of a generic name just to basically say this is the first man, you know. And so if we look at the early writer, and this is really important, and this is, again, something that John.

John Dehlin [00:20:04] Know this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:05] I didn't know this, so I was listening. This is from an episode on. Of Infants on thrones about the 14 fundamentals of following a prophet. So it had nothing to do with this. And they had a believing member on. And one of the fundamentals was, I believe, believing in a literal Adam and Eve. And the believing member was saying how he believed in it. And John Hamer jumped in, who I've mentioned in previous podcasts, and he's been on here a lot. He's awesome. And he just. He asked. He said, how many times do you think the early writers of the Old Testament, the early prophets, mentioned Adam and Eve?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:20:32] And I forgot what the guy said, but, you know, he said, probably not lot. And John Hamer's like, zero. So in the early books of the Old Testament, there's not a single reference to Adam and Eve, but there are 116 mentions of Moses and 100 mentions of David, which tells us they are aware of these early stories being passed down from generation to generation through oral retellings, but they have no knowledge or idea of the Adam and Eve story in the Old Testament until you get to the very late books. And even then it's barely a mention. And that tells us this is a late addition to the Bible. That's a huge thing.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] I had no idea that Adam and Eve weren't mentioned by all those Old Testament prophets.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:21:10] Yeah. And what's funny is when I was doing the overview, you know, of course I'm trying to make sure I've got it right, and because people apologists will say, oh, you know, there's mentions here and there, and we covered in the overview in a little more detail, but there is no specific mention to the Adam and Eve story at all in the early books. And there's, I think, two mentions in the Old Testament later. So the fact is it's not known to the early prophets of the Old Testament. And if you want to say that, you know, it just wasn't something they mentioned. This is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:21:34] This is such a big deal. And again, when we get to the Book of Mormon, it gets Even worse, because in the Book of Mormon it is a huge deal. And so you then would have to explain why did the early prophets think it's no big deal, but then when they get, when they leave Jerusalem, which at that point they would think it's no big deal, they think it's a huge deal. And that is where you start to get into problems when you look at the Book of Mormon as a 19th century text versus the Bible, which, you know, this story is being written in the 6th and 5th century BCE so to have a 19th century perspective in the Book of Mormon tells us a lot about why it's so important then, but is not as important during the Bible.

John Dehlin [00:22:08] Fascinating. Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:22:10] And so as I mentioned from John Hamer, he talks about how there's no mention of Adam and Eve in the Bible. There's two late in the Old Testament, but none in the early Old Testament prophets. Yet in the Book of Mormon, there are 26 mentions or references to Adam and 28 in the doctrine and Covenants. And again, if you think that the Adam and Eve story is not a literal historical event, it could be possible to have it in the Book of Mormon. But why would the Doctrine and Covenants speak of him as a literal person? And Joseph Smith is expanding on the story in the Book of Mormon and then he writes it back into his revision of Genesis, which becomes the Book of Moses.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:22:49] So in all of these instances, Joseph Smith, through what we're told is kind of like pure revelation, could fix this story. And he never does. He actually expands and makes it even more literal and stronger. And so the biggest problem here is the Book of Ether, which would have originated around 2200 BCE and it speaks of Adam. And so it says in Ether, chapter one. And as I suppose that the first part of this record, which speaks concerning the creation of the world and also of Adam in an account from that time, even to get to the great tower in whatsoever things transpired among the children of men until that time is had among the Jews.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:23:22] And therefore I do not write those things which transpired from the days of Adam until that time. But they are had upon the plates. And whoso findeth them the same will have power that he may get the full account. And so they're doubling down here on a literal Adam and Eve. And so what I'm trying to say is the fact that it's the late addition to the Bible. Joseph Smith doesn't know that. And so then with ether, he's writing it in a 2200 BCE but at this Point, no Old Testament prophet is aware of Adam. There's no, there's no awareness of the Adam and Eve story at this point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:23:50] And so for the Book of Mormon people to have an awareness of it tells us that the earliest the Book of Mormon could have been written would have been like the 6th or 5th century BCE. But really it's written with a 19th century mindset, as we've covered over and over in these previous episodes. And this is a problem when you look at how the Book of Mormon is composed and why we're seeing so many things that are like, this is really anachronistic to the Book of Mormon in the sense that the story was not known to the early prophets, yet the Book of Mormon prophets are just completely aware, not just of the Adam and Eve story, but how it's going to be taken through a Christian view, you know, obviously, what, like another, you know, 700 years after it's written into the Bible. I mean, this is a really big deal.

Mormonism's Literal Reading of Adam and Eve

John Dehlin [00:24:31] Part of what's maddening about Mormonism is they've got this idea of plain and precious truths being taken away from the Bible. So a Mormon who's just not willing to look at evidence and think rationally and consider logic can just always say, well, we have always known the Bible is corrupt, so that's why we need the Book of Mormon, because it gets. It gets things right because the Bible got screwed up.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:24:54] And I think the thing is, like, you know, looking at it from my point of view as a believer, I had that same mindset. And it's not because you want to, you know, it's partly because you don't want to get into it because the implications are huge. Right? So it's really difficult, it's really painful to get into these things. And so from a believer mindset, I totally get it. Like, I get why we fall back on that because we've been taught our whole life. When you come across errors in the Bible, it is because the Bible's translation has been corrupted. The problem is, like, you get that below that surface and then all of a sudden it's like, it's not just the Bible, it's the Book of Mormon that has issues with translation, you know?

John Dehlin [00:25:27] I know.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:25:28] Yeah, I know. Now I'm trying to push back. I'm just saying, like, yeah, the thing is, I get what you're saying because I was there, you know, and as I mentioned before, I'm still technically a member, but before I joined Mormonism as a convert, I was a Protestant background, background. And so when I started to lose faith in Mormonism because of these issues, I fell back on that. And Adam and Eve was one of those things I never really like, necessarily thought of as like this perfectly historical event. I never believed in a global flood that killed all the dogs that never sat with me because that's the dog.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:25:58] I love dogs as a kid. But the fact is that it's really easy, I think, to look back at these stories and just go, they're oral retellings. And so in the Bible, they don't quite get it right. And, and that's actually not a bad approach to take. And a lot of churches are starting to take that to say it's not historical. It gives us oral ethical value.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:26:18] It gives us values to live by. The problem is that Mormonism takes what is not a historical thing and just cements it. It doesn't even just mention it, it cements it. And so because of that, it creates, it creates more of a problem for Mormonism than any other church. And so when I mentioned this, I'll have people say, well, well, why don't you then bash Catholic Church because they believe in. And it's like, because even though the Catholic Church doesn't necessarily say this is not historical, they don't have additional scriptures that nail it down as a literal event. And that is why Mormonism, I think Joseph Smith, you know, he got ahead of himself on these things.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] And so, yeah, 26 mentions in the Book of Mormon.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:26:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:53] And 28 mentions in the Doctrine and Covenants is just, you can't. Mormonism cannot get away from the Adam and Eve.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:00] It can't. And it's going to get worse as we get going. And that's. And that's the problem. You know, it's just like, it's layer upon layer, it just gets worse.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] And also it kind of blows me away to think of Adam and Eve as an anachronism in, in the Book of Mormon because you think about Adam and Eve as being the first humans.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:17] They're going to predate everything. But once you understand what you explained about biblical scholarship and Old Testament scholars, that's mind blowing that the first humans, fable wise, become a necronistic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:29] And you know, we'll get into it.

John Dehlin [00:27:30] It's brilliant. I love it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:31] Yeah, we'll get into a little bit later because there is like, the argument is going to be for sure that from an apologetic standpoint, they'll say, like, maybe it wasn't written down, but the story was known before he left. You Know, because it probably it was written down. I think a lot of scholars say it was written down after he left. But, you know, you can date it as early. I think some people say you can date Genesis as early as like 1000 BCE, but most scholars would say 6th or 5th century. So my guess would be from an apologetic standpoint, you'd say Lehi's family would have known about it even if it wasn't written down.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:27:58] And that's why they keep retelling it. The problem is they're telling it in a 19th century way. And so it's like, even if you want to believe he wouldn't have been, or put another way, it wouldn't have been written down in the same way. And so when he's pulling these same words and the same ideas directly in, that's where you really get into. The version of the story would be anachronistic. And I think the story itself probably is too. But from an apologetic standpoint, that's for sure where they would go.

John Dehlin [00:28:22] Yeah, okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:28:23] And, okay, so basically we've kind of covered this already, but the five books of Moses would be dated to the 6th or even the 5th century BCE, which means while it was possible they were known when Lehi left, it's absolutely an unknown story in the time of Ether. So even if you want to say that Lehi would have known the Book of Ether would have no knowledge of it because that, you know, there's no way it would have been written at 2200 BCE and there is no way it would have been that well known of an orally told story because of the fact that the Old Testament prophets don't know about it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:28:53] So that's where that apologetic would fall up, would just go, you know, and crumble. Because at that point, it's not even an issue of being written down. It's an issue of we have the early Old Testament prophets not talking about it. And that tells us it was not a story that was. If it was known, it certainly wasn't considered as important. And that obviously doesn't make sense because it is such an important story.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:13] So beyond the Book of Mormon, the book Abraham mentions Adam twice in chapter one, and then retells the Yahwist version of the Garden of Eden story in Abraham chapter five, which implements Joseph Smith's change in theology from a single God to a plurality of gods.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:29:31] And in the Book of Abraham, it treats Adam and Eve as literal history. But the Book of Abraham would have been written before 1650 BCE, which is a thousand years before the story of Adam and Eve was developed. And again, because he's pulling directly from the Yahweh, the J source in the Bible, he's pulling from a source that would not have been written for about a thousand years. So even if you want to believe that the story was known again, this is where Joseph Smith is pulling in a source that was written way too late, but he doesn't understand that. And so he pulls it back into these texts, thinking you can just kind of plug and play it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:00] And this, this is anachronistic to use a text that wasn't written for about a thousand more years in a Book of Abraham translation that was purportedly from about 1650 BCE.

John Dehlin [00:30:09] So now we've got Book of Mormon Doctrine and Covenants. Yeah, Abraham.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:13] And that's. And that's just. It's that. And that's. And this is why. And not only that, but like I mentioned, you know, Book Abraham obviously starts to get into the theological changes of the multiple gods, and so you start to see those changes. But even just focusing on Adam and Eve, he's pulling these stories in because he thinks that it's a literal historical record, but he doesn't understand when it was written. And this is why, you know, again, we talk about how you can date the Book of Mormon. These are things that nobody that was writing a scriptural book today would do because they would be able to see it. But he didn't know, and so he assumed it was historical. And that obviously is going to lead to big problems.

John Dehlin [00:30:47] Yeah. Which is. This next slide is kind of mind blowing.

Joseph Smith's Visions and Claims About Adam

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:30:50] Yeah. And so this one is just really important. So beyond the Scriptures, Joseph Smith claims to see Adam in a vision at the Kirtland Temple in DNC 137, Joseph Smith records a vision where he states, I saw Father Adam and Abraham and Michael. This vision, vision is problematic not just for its use of a literal Adam, but because the church would later declare that Adam and Michael are one and the same. Yet he claims to see both. And this is a huge problem. So the future prophet Joseph F. Smith also claims to see Adam and Eve in another vision where he says in DNC138, he says, among the great and mighty ones who were assembled in this vast congregation of the righteous were Father Adam, the ancient of days and Father of all.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:30] And that is going to be a huge problem as we get going here. And so I don't know, do you have anything to add on that one?

John Dehlin [00:31:37] Yeah, yeah. So. So Joseph's claiming to see someone who now we know doesn't exist. That puts it in the material world. It's one thing to be in the scriptures, but now Joseph is claiming to hang out with the dude. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:31:50] Well, and that's the problem. And again, that's the whole thing. Like if Adam is not. If Adam is a mythological figure and, you know, the apologetic might be that, look, God gave him the revelations that Adam is real because Joseph believed that, all the people around him believed it, and that was the way he could best get his message across. You're like, okay, you know, that's a little goofy for me just because we're supposed to be getting like the plain and precious truth and the most the fullness of the gospel. But even if you want to make that argument, to have him claim to see the literal Adam if he's not a real figure is hugely problematic.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:32:20] And again, I'm sure the apologetic would be like, well, there still was a first human somewhere. But this is where the problem comes because there's no clarification of that. And so when you take a story and just keep drilling it down and down and then cementing it in, you can't then just redefine what like, and this is an area where I get really annoyed when I hear it because I take this stuff at face value. And a lot of apologists will redefine terms. They'll redefine what translation means. They'll redefine, you know, what Adam might mean. They'll redefine what a flood, global flood, local flood. We'll get into that in our next overview.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:32:51] And I'm saying if you take these things at face value, you can show where Joseph Smith, where his mindset is with regard to Adam and Eve and how that is embedded in these scriptures and in this vision. And as I just mentioned, the fact that he's going to call Adam and Michael different people and then later call them the same person again. These are supposed to be revelations from God. So how is he seeing two different people when he's going to call them the same person later? That doesn't work unless you concede that there's an error there.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] And it's not just Joseph Smith, it's Joseph F. Smith. And many, many prophets after Joseph Smith.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] Are going to reference Adam.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:33:26] Yeah. So it's just a big problem. And so if we go to the next slide, this is when we start to get Or. Yeah, this is good. So the church refers to a spot in Missouri as Adam on Day Ammon, which is where Joseph claimed Adam and Eve went after being expelled from the Garden of Eden. So the belief within the Mormon Church is that the ad that Adam and Eve lived in Missouri in the United States. And this obviously has a lot of problems, even if we believe Adam and Eve were a literal event, but if it was not a historical event, but an etiological myth, how could Joseph Smith receive a revelation that Adam and Eve happened to live in the very spot that the early Saints just happened to be settling in. In Missouri at that time?

John Dehlin [00:34:01] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:01] And, you know, it's one of those things where as a believer, you just go, wow, that it's amazing that God led him to the spot. As, you know, looking at it from a blank slate now, I'm like, oh, isn't it convenient that Joseph Smith is using these stories to basically create his theology and to get his followers to believe even stronger? Because not only now are you settling in the church that God is leading in our latter days, but God led us to the spot that Adam and Eve happen to live in. But this is a problem because historically speaking, we know that human life did not begin in America in any way.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:34:33] And to be able to try to, you know, mix that in with. With the rest of this, it just doesn't fit. And so it's almost like, you know, a book that's out of order kind of, because we're starting to see now where these different stories are being added in by Joseph Smith. And then as we look back, you know, take a step back and look from an overhead view, you can start to see they don't fit together and they're very disjointed, especially when you look at the way the Revelations line up.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] Yeah. And that. That idea that. That the Garden of Eden is in Missouri just gets that laugh line in the Book of Mormon musical. Because it's so.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:06] Well, yeah, it's just. And it's funny, you know, like, again, as a convert, that was one of the things I didn't hear that until after I joined the church. And even then I'm like, what? Like, in Missouri? And. And then people would say, oh, yeah, one day we're all going to go back to Missouri. And I'm thinking to myself, like, really? You know, Missouri? And I, you know, I like Missouri. I've been to Missouri a number of times. It's not that. It's just. You would think there'd be more foundational history to that story. And it just turns out that Joseph Smith. And we'll point this out in a later overview on Revelation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:35:31] But a lot of his revelations are like this, where he's just giving revelations that are going to give people more attached to the faith and himself more credibility. Because if you claim to be the one that sees Adam and Eve, if you claim to be the one to see Adam or see God, Moses, it gives you more credibility among your followers. But it also leads to problems because he is saying these things, I think with a certain understanding that at the time, he probably didn't feel like anyone was going to be able to fact check him on, but now we have so much more biblical knowledge, and now all of a sudden you look at and you go, yeah, this is, this is just. It's bad. You know, it's. There's no plausible way to make this work.

John Dehlin [00:36:06] Yeah. What comes to my mind is treasure digging. Remember how it kind of all comes down to treasure digging? It does treasure digging. It was Joseph. If you boil down treasure digging, it's Joseph claiming to have special powers to see things and starts out being treasure, but then it goes to scripture and then it goes to translating things. And. And now he's seeing Adam, you know, and, and Adam Aden diamond in Missouri. He's got to keep his believers and followers thinking and feeling that he can see stuff that they can't, that he can channel knowledge that they can't. I don't want to call it a con, but that's the whole. That's the game is Joseph's got to always be telling people, I've got power to see things. And. And when those things that he sees are problematic over and over and over again.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:36:55] Yeah. And you'll hear all the time people say, oh, he was just really boastful. And so he would kind of tell stories. It's like, but again, if you're telling stories that are debunked, how then do you discern which stories were him being boastful or him, you know, actually getting revelation? Because they both have problems. And so at what point, you know, can you keep saying, oh, this isn't historical, he was just being boastful. This one we haven't proven false yet. So, you know, and that's, again, it's a whole cliche of like speaking as a prophet, speaking as a man, but you got to take them all together.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:37:23] You cannot try to separate the two and say, well, he said this was from God, but you know what? He was probably just trying to help people to better understand what he's doing. It's like, no, you can't have it both ways. And so as we've talked about in these overviews, we have so many of these instances where you cannot separate the two and then have it be consistent. And so also, how do you disprove

John Dehlin [00:37:43] that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were in Missouri? Unless you have command science, there's no one around him that's going to be able to go, no, it's not. It's in Israel. It's like, no, no, you can't. So it's always safe to make a pronouncement like that. And, you know, until science comes along, basically.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:38:02] Yeah. And one of the things that they talk about with the Book of Mormon, and it's one of those things where it's, it's awkward to America, to Americans, and it's awkward to me, like, it's even awkward now to talk about this is. The Book of Mormon is incredibly focused on American exceptionalism.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:38:18] And I love living here and I love this country. So it's weird for me to be like, yeah, the Book of Mormon is a little bit too heavy on America. Like, it's too much. It's like a. It's like a love letter to America. It talks about how this is the chosen land, the promised Land. It was set aside just for us today because America is going to be the lead, you know, the best place in the world. You know, the New Jerusalem and all that. And that is why you start to see things like, well, Adam and Eve couldn't have been in the old World because this is the Promised Land, this is the New Zion, New Jerusalem.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:38:49] And so you get that American exceptionalism all throughout the Book of Mormon, all throughout the Revelations. And I hate that because I really love this country. But then at the same time, I'm like, it might be a little bit too much. And those are the fingerprints that come from someone who's in that 19th century mindset of this is the best place in the world, you know, and anyways, can you go back 1, 1 slide real quick? Yeah, so I didn't read the bottom yet. So we're talking about Adam and Eve, Missouri. And complicating that problem is DNC116, which labels Adam as the ancient of days, which is likely where the Adam God doctrine originated.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:23] And DNC is a short one, but it says Spring Hill is named by the Lord Adam on diamond, because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit people, or the ancient of days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the Prophet. So if you go to the next slide, this will go into that a little better. But the Problem is that the Ancient of Days that's referred to in Daniel is God, it's not Adam. And it's pretty clear if you actually read Daniel 7 in context. So in Daniel 7 it says, I beheld till the thrones were cast down. In the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:39:57] His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. Thousands, thousands ministered under him, and 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. The judgment was set and the books were opened.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:40:12] Again. The point here is if we want to say that the Ancient of Days was Adam, it would put Adam higher than Jesus in the kind of like the structure of the Godhead here. And so every biblical scholar that's not Mormon will tell you that the Ancient of days in Daniel 7 is God sitting on his throne. It's not Adam. And this is a huge mistake that Joseph Smith makes, which we're dealing with still today with the Adam Gan doctrine, which has remnants in our church. It's obviously a really big deal in fundamentalist LDS offshoots. And just again, thinking about it logically, if the Ancient of Days is Adam, then Adam is now higher than Jesus.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:40:45] And if that's the case, then what is that revelation from Joseph Smith saying? Wouldn't it, I mean, like you call it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but Jesus then would, would then report to Adam. That's that. And that's. That's why you can't get away from the Adam God doctrine. It's baked into the Scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:41:01] Yeah, makes sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:03] And this is one that I think is really interesting, and it's one of those ones I didn't really come across until I started in the overview. But what's really interesting is that Joseph Smith never makes the connection of Adam being the Ancient of Days until Sidney Rigdon mentions it in the May 1834 evening and Morning Star when he writes in chapter 24 of Isaiah and 23 verse, the prophet, after having described one of the great, greatest desolations ever pronounced on the head of any generation of men, says, then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before his ancients gloriously, we have before seen that this reign was to last a thousand years, and his ancients before of whom he was to reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem gloriously were all the redeemed from among men of Every tongue, language, kindred, and people.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:41:49] According to Daniel, he was to come to the Ancient of Days. Here he is said to reign before his ancients, that is all the saints from our Father Adam down. For who could the Ancient of Days be but our Father Adam? Surely none other. He was the first who lived in days and must be the Ancient of Days. And to whom would the Savior come, but to the Father of all the race and then receive his kingdom in which he was to reign before or with his ancients gloriously. Let it here be remarked that it is said to be in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, where the Lord is to reign before his ancients gloriously.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:22] So Sidney Rigdon is saying that Adam is the Ancient of Days, and this is in May of 1834. And this is gonna be really interesting. We see this with other areas where Joseph Smith is like a sponge and he's pulling from all of these people around him. And if you go to the next slide, these two will tie together really nicely. And then I'll shut up for a second.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:42:41] But Joseph Smith is going to revise DNC 27 when they go from being the Book of Commandments to. To the Doctrine and Covenants. But Joseph Smith is actually going to add this concept into a revelation when he's making these changes. So in DNC 27, Joseph Smith is going to make a lot of additions, as you can see on the photo. That's a photo done by the Tanners to kind of outline all of the words being added into the original revelation from God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:43:08] This originally was about only drinking wine with sacrament that was made new among you. But in these changes, Joseph Smith seeks to create a line of authority from Adam down to Joseph Smith, along with the keys of the priesthood. Within these changes is the following text in the voice of God and also with Michael or Adam, the father of all, the Prince of all, the Ancient of Days. So, right. You know, a year after Sidney Rigdon writes this, in May 1834, Joseph Smith is adding it into a revelation from God that was previously given. He's putting it in the voice of God that Adam is the Ancient of Days.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Yeah. So is God revealing stuff to Joseph or is Joseph a spongebob picking up things he hears from, you know, whether Swedenborg or, you know, Ethan Smith or Sidney Rigdon?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:43:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:52] Like, you know, I mean, this just provides more evidence for what Terrell Givens now wants to say, that Joseph was an inspired syncretist or a spine.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:43:59] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] Is God revealing or is it Joseph just doing bricolage? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:44:04] Yeah, I mean, that's just. I mean, you can literally see and, and we'll show this when we do the precinct overview. But Sidney Rigdon brings in the idea of the Melchizedek priesthood, and all of a sudden it slowly works its way in. The Melchizedek priesthood was not there in the original Book of Mormon. And so you start to see these things and all of a sudden Joseph then retrofits it in the voice of God, which creates all sorts of issues. Because then, you know, Joseph Smith is writing his revelations to claim in this case that he's getting a later.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:44:28] I think, I think Richard Bushman said something like about the priesthood, but you could apply it here that he gets a better understanding of what he experienced later on, and that's why he makes the changes. But it also just happens to fit his outside teachings. It's not like he's getting these, these changes to the revelation before he changes his teaching. It's his changes in the teachings come. Then the retrofitting comes back later to match it. And that is a massive problem that we see with a lot of these concepts. And it's why we can date these concepts to Joseph Smith and why we can show through a timeline that not only are they evolving, but they're evolving in a really natural way that make perfect sense when you look, take them at face value and when you have the.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] When you have the documentation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:45:06] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:45:07] See, you know, what, what leads to the changes? I'm dying. I'm hoping that you have a Melchizedek priesthood episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:45:16] We do, yeah, we do. They'll be coming pretty soon, actually. Well, once we get, once we get through the Bible stuff, it'll be. Be pretty quick. So. And then, you know, like just we're kind of saying, but. So this is again where Joseph Smith is retrofitting ideas in the voice of God. And the one point I'll make on the slide, again, this is a huge problem. This revelation calls Adam or Michael the ancient days. So he's calling Adam and Michael the same person, but as we mentioned before, he had already claimed in a vision to see.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:45:43] See them separately. So now in 1835, he's proclaiming them to be the same person, which means these little details are getting mixed up. And so how can you claim to see both of them when in a revelation from God you're saying Adam or Michael, meaning they're the same person, are the ancient days? I mean, that's a huge problem to say you're seeing them separately. It's like the Elias And Elijah problem where he claims to see Elias and Elijah in the temple and they're the same person with a different translation. And so one's a Greek, one's a Hebrew.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:46:12] If you claim to see two people, you know, that's a massive problem. And so from an apologetic standpoint, they'll say, well, it's a title, it's not the name of a person. But regardless, here we can see he's saying Adam or Michael, the ancient days, saying they're the same person, yet seeing them separately, that tells you that somewhere along the lines Joseph Smith is making it up or having an error that God is giving to him through a vision or revelation. Neither of which is a good, good thing to go by.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] And I'm just, I'm thinking of just a meta observation that, that all this doctrine and theology leading to Adam God theory is building up around a historical figure that never existed in the first place. So not only, yeah, not only is the doctrine self contradictory.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:46:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:46:56] And silly. And now the churches abandoned it and backtracked, but this whole mountain is built, is built on a foundation of Adam didn't exist.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] So it's all silliness, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:10] It's all, well, I mean, and that's the thing. It's like again, we'll, you know, we've kind of touched on before. But this is why it's not as big a problem for any other church, because every other church can say this is not necessarily 100% literal history, but there's value to it. But Mormonism takes it and just hammers it and hammers it directly into the ground and says, this is the foundation that we're going to build off of. But when you build off a foundation that you've created in the Mormonism, the scriptures of Mormonism create a foundation that's not historical. Then nothing you put on top of that is historical nothing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:47:38] And so that means the Book of Mormon's not historical Book of Abraham, doctrine and covenants. But that also means his visions are. And so, you know, from an apologetic standpoint, you might say, like Jim Bennett, I think we'll get into the global flood. He'll say, well, it doesn't matter if you believe in a local or globalized. It's not really the point. It's like. But it is because once you get away from the teachings of the foundational teachings of the church to then redefine it as well, we don't have to believe in it being historical. Then all of a sudden you've redefined the entire church. The entire truth claims of the church

John Dehlin [00:48:06] in a way that you've undermined the scriptures.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:08] Yeah. All of it.

John Dehlin [00:48:10] Authority. You've undermined everything. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:13] And that's just it. And so for me, it's like, okay, well, if you're going to do that, then you're. Then what are you left with? Because then you could go to any church, because then any church could say it's not historical, but it's good. Well, Mormonism, if that's really the Mormonism truth claim is not. We're not historical. Mormonism's truth claim is we've got the only true history, we've got the only true scripture, we've got the only true living prophet, and we're good. But if all those first things fall away, it's really problematic.

John Dehlin [00:48:36] Joseph's innovation was he made everything material. He made everything literal and physical. And it started with the plates, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] Oh, no. I mean, it started for us. It started with God and Jesus literally appearing. But we know that came later anyway.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:48:51] Yeah, well, no, and to that point, you can actually take it one step further because not only did Joseph Smith make it all material, but Joseph Smith's gift, which was a good one, is that he had the charisma and the creativity to not only make it material, but to make it personal to you, to make it tied to you, so you could tie it to America, to Missouri, where they happen to be. And so not only is he really good at making these things material, but he's really good at then making material in a way that matters to you personally. And if you can do that, that gets you more involved and that you see that today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:49:18] I mean. I mean, I know there's that meme out there where it's like every prophet and they're telling the kids, you are the chosen generation. It's always about, you are the chosen generation. You are the ones we've been waiting for. And it's because that personal attachment that we put between being in the true church in the latter days and being living in this time, in this place in America, you know, they try to do that because it's a really effective way to build belief.

Brigham Young and the Adam-God Doctrine

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:49:45] So anyways, this is, as I mentioned, by calling by Joseph Smith saying that Michael or Adam of the ancient days, it leads to the Adam God doctrine. And this is from Brigham Young. And we're going to get into it because even though it's not the Book of Mormon, but it is Adam and Eve in Mormonism. And so this is from Brigham Young in 1852. And I'm sure some people listening have heard versions of this quote. But he says, now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, saint and sinner. When our father Adam came into the Garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body and brought Eve one of his wives with him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:16] One of his wives, just noting that he helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael the Archangel, the ancient of days, about whom holy men have written and spoken. He is our Father and our God and the only God with whom we have to do.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:29] Every man upon the earth, professing Christians and non professing must hear it and will know it sooner or later. They came here, organized the raw material, and arranged in their order the herbs of the field, the trees, the apple, the peach, the plum, the pear, and every other fruit that is desirable and good for man. The seed was brought from another sphere and planted in this earth. The thistle, the thorn, the briar, and the obnoxious weed did not appear until after the earth was cursed. When Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became mortal from its effects, and therefore their offspring were mortal.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:50:59] So Brigham Young is saying without question that Adam is our God and was anciently polygamist, which is another problem and another reason why fundamentalists like to cling to this so much. But this is coming from Joseph Smith. And that's why when people say Adam God is a Brigham Young thing, you could go, no, it's not. It's a Joseph Smith things we just talked about in the previous one that Joseph Smith calls Adam. And also with Michael or Adam, the father of all, the Prince of all, are the ancient of days. I mean, that's the problem.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] And so Young would not be as forceful or as assertive about the Adam God doctrine if you know about him historically. He didn't even want to call himself a prophet. Brigham Young didn't even want to call himself a prophet because he respected Joseph so much that he just wanted to be known as a president.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:47] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] As I understand it, I think that's fair. So Brigham would not have been so forceful about Adam God if he hadn't gotten that directly from Joseph.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:51:56] Yeah, that's. That's just it. And so, you know, again, when people say Adam God was just Brigham Young, it's like, no, it's not. And that, that I think is kind of a deflection that we make because we. The church works so hard. They will throw. They will throw Brigham Young under the bus all day, every day if they need to do it to protect Joseph's infallibility. And this is where you see that because Joseph Smith literally writes that Michael is the Ancient of Days and Michael is Adam. And that leads to Brigham Young making the correct assumption that that means that Adam's our God. And again, if you want to believe that God speaks to the prophets of this church, then you'd have to say, why is God not correcting this?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:52:31] Because he doesn't. And, you know, we've gotten into this in previous episodes. I just want to point out again that this is a really important thing, and we believe in the Mormon Church that God sent an angel down to Joseph to tell him that he will be killed if he doesn't have sexual relations with young polygamous brides, yet he lets this one go. And I'm not trying to be facetious here. I'm literally saying you have to look at what is important enough for God to send angels down within the theology of Mormonism and what's not. And so we have Adam God, and we'll get into some of the racist stuff that Brigham Young really implements. All of it is left alone. And that is another sign that there is a communication barrier between these prophets and God.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] Totally.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:09] And to make this point even further, you know, again, the church likes to say, well, Brigham Young speaking as a man, and this was just a theory. It's Adam God. Theory is not doctrine. This was taught in the temple. So this was literally taught in the temple, the Mormon Temple. And it was written down by Brigham Young's secretary as part of the script. And so every person at the temple was told, father Adam's oldest son, Jesus the Savior, who is the heir of the family, is Father Adam's first begotten in the spirit world and the only begotten according to the flesh as it is written.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:53:39] Adam in his definitive divinity, having gone back into the spirit world and come into the spirit to Mary as she conceived. And she conceived. For when Adam and Eve got through with their work in this earth, they did not lay their bodies down in the dust, but returned to the spirit world from whence they came. So if you want again to believe when the Mormon Church says that the doctrine of the Temple never changes and all of that, and that you get pure revelation in the temple. This was in the temple. And this is telling every member. And again, this was removed pretty quickly because a lot of other leaders of the church did not agree with this.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:09] But the prophet of the Church, Brigham Young, put this into the temple. And again, if you want to believe that God is going to sit by and let someone put something in the temple that is incorrect. You've got to then balance that with all of these issues.

John Dehlin [00:54:22] Really quick, how does. What is a writing in a journal of some dude named John Nuttall? How does that tie to the temple? I'm not getting the connection.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:31] Well, he was Brigham Young's secretary, and so they wrote the scripts down so that they could have people present them in the temple. And so this is just writing down the script for Brigham Young so that the temple workers could read it to them.

John Dehlin [00:54:40] Okay, so.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:41] So this is.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] I don't think writing is what Young is saying. Yes. Into the temple.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:54:47] Yeah, so. So Nettle is writing down. I think they were trying to perfect the. The script of the temple for this stuff. And so he's writing down all of the scripts for these different parts of the temple ceremony. And so I don't think I have

John Dehlin [00:54:57] the actual script of the temple ceremony back then.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:55:01] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:55:02] I'm not sure that'd be interesting because I. That'd be interesting to see.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:55:05] I believe they did. I think if that's. I think this is. This is when they're trying to get a standardized script for the temple ceremony. And so that. This is at the lecture at the Veil. And so they wrote it down because Brigham is. Is basically. This is kind of like Joseph Smith having a scribe. This is the secretary writing it down to make sure they perfect it.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] Okay, got it, got it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:55:22] And so, like I said, that's a huge deal. And so, you know, to kind of clarify, we've kind of hinted on this, but the church's stance on Adam and Eve has been that they are literal historical characters who appeared 6,000 years ago. And Bruce R. McConkie, in a 1981 speech at BYU, said, The fall of Adam and the atonement of Christ are linked together inseparably, everlastingly, never to be parted. They are as much a part of the same body as are the head and the heart. And each plays its part in the eternal scheme of things. The fall of Adam brought temporal and spiritual death into the world, and the atonement of Christ ransomed men from these two deaths by bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of men. This makes the fall as essential a part of the plan of salvation as the very atonement itself.

John Dehlin [00:56:05] Yeah. And if it's the temple's based on it, the Scriptures are based on it. Joseph to now, all the prophet seers and revelators, it's all Adam. It's all rooted in Adam.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:15] It is. I mean, you can't get away from it.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] From it. That's why. That's why I started this episode by saying it's so foundational. It is one of the Mormon scriptures and the Bible and all the prophetic utterances and the freaking temple ceremony. It's everywhere. It's.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:30] It is. I mean, it's just, it's. It's embedded and you can't separate it because of the fact that Joseph Smith, as prophet, made it so literal.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to get too excited about this, but maybe in some ways, Adam is the smoking gun of Mormonism. I mean, so foundational. Like, you could say the Book of Mormon is the keystone.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:56:51] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:52] And the Book of Mormon is based on the Bible, which is based on Adam. And so it's all the scriptures, Adam, Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants. It sinks the Book of Abraham, it sinks the temple ceremony, and it sinks every prophet from Joseph to now.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:07] Yeah, I mean, that's like. For me, it's tough because, like, with Adam and Eve, you said it earlier, it's like you can't prove it wasn't a Missouri. And so I think that's why you would have a hard time, like, arguing it's smoking gun. But it is, because unless you can show all of the evidence that tells us it's not historical, unless you could find a good rebuttal for that that actually fits within what we know today, then. Yeah, I mean, it just shows that Joseph Smith is trying to, as David Bach would say, actualize the Adam and Eve story to the people in his community, to the early members of the church through the Book of Mormon, through all the other scriptures, through the revelations.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:57:41] And if it's not true, then Joseph Smith is making it up or God is tricking him, neither of those are good. And if you want to argue God's tricking him, that gets even more problematic because not only is God tricking him, but he's confusing him because he's having Joseph see the tube in one vision and then say the same in another. And so, yeah, that's the problem.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] And that's really where Adam sinks the articles of faith, too. We got to throw those in.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:04] Yeah, I mean, it's just all of it is tied. And that's why when I started the series with you, I kept saying, like, you have to take every episode and just put it on top of the next, on top of the next, on top of the next, because they all fit together. And this again is the same patterns you see in the Book of Mormon where he's pulling outside influences directly into the text. Well, he believes this to be a historical thing because at that time most people believed it to be literal history.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:58:25] And now that we know it's not, it just falls apart. And so going more present 2015 Elder Jeffrey R. Holland made this statement at General Conference. It is in our increasingly secular society, it is as uncommon as it is unfashionable to speak of Adam and Eve or the Garden of Eden or of a fortunate fall into mortality. Nevertheless, the simple truth is that we cannot fully comprehend the atonement and the resurrection of Christ and we will not adequately appreciate the unique purpose of his birth or his death. In other words, there is no way to truly celebrate Christmas or Easter without understanding that there was an actual Adam and Eve who fell from an actual Eden with all of the consequences that fall carried with it.

Modern Church Leaders on Adam, Eve, and Evolution

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:59:05] I do not know the details of what happened on this planet before that, but I do know that these two were created under the divine hand of God.

John Dehlin [00:59:11] And, and I've talked to, I've talked to Elder Holland. I had lunch with them twice back in the day. And this is, this is how Holland talks. He's like, he gave me this analogy. Once you throw a rock in a pond.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [00:59:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] And the, the ripples are strongest the closer to the, to where the rock enters the water and the ripples are weaker the farther the way out. And he, he was making analogy to a literal belief versus a progressive non literal belief. And, and for him, Adam and Eve is absolute, are absolutely literal. And your commitment to the gospel, the way that the impact that the church has on you is going to be a lot. It's going to be watered down if you start taking things like Adam and Eve.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:00] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] I mean, instead of literally.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:02] And that's just that, I mean, the problem is when you build, you know, when you build a house on a foundation and all of a sudden, you know, 10 years later you say the foundation is all cracked, but we can still work with what we got. It's like, no, you can't. And that's the problem. Yeah, that's the whole thing. If you make Joseph Smith making it such a literal event in a literal doctrine where you see them in visions, I mean, you can't separate. And so Jeffrey Holland. Right. When you take that away, you are going further back in the ripples because there's nothing really to hold on to that differentiates you from any other Christian church.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:00:33] At that point. Because now you're saying our scriptures and that were produced by Joseph Smith are not historical. Well, then what are you left with? You know, all of the, and again, we don't need to go on a tangent, but yeah, all of the uniquely Mormon things are tied to this. And so if the temple ceremony is not from God, then why are we wearing, you know, church required underwear? Why are we giving them 10% to go there? You know, why are we doing all of these things?

John Dehlin [01:01:01] Are we getting sealed there?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:01:03] Yeah. And so again, we could.

John Dehlin [01:01:04] Yeah, yeah. But also I just want to make a, I want to just call people's attention to something. What we're seeing in 2022 is a slow motion sleight of hand, bait and switch. Because what you, what you're, what you're seeing now is the church is slowly empowering Patrick Mason Terrell and Fiona Givens, Spencer Fluman and a bunch of progressive Mormons to start introducing the idea. Well, you don't have to take it all literally. And they're trying to kind of fork people, create space for a forked theology where, where orthodox, conservative, traditional Mormons can continue believing literally, else their faith falls apart and they leave the church. But they also are introducing the space for a liberal, progressive, non literal theology because the prior is not sustainable in the long run, especially to younger generations that care about science and facts and evidence. Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:02:11] Yeah. I mean, yeah. And that's the thing, like I could, well, you, you know, way more than I do. But I, you know, for the emails I get, most of them are from people that are like 25 and under because they're young enough to, where they're coming across as naturally. Young people talk to each other more than adults do about this stuff. And they're also in more of a, not just a space to, to be willing to accept new evidence, but they're in a, a culture where they, they do value these things a little more than when we were maybe younger. And so, you know, the church has to create that space.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:02:38] The problem is, you know, can you create the space in a way that's being honest to the evidence as opposed to just saying we disagree with you that, that it's not historical, but there's still, still a space for you, you know, and, and that does also create that conflict that we're seeing now between like the progressives and the more hardline members where there is that battle. You see it a lot online. And you know, this is where I think to me, you, you can't take the hardline approach anymore. Unless you're willing to redefine the evidence and, and throw away what you don't like. And that's just not again, to me, I can't do that because it's not intellectually honest.

John Dehlin [01:03:10] The hardline world, the hardline position puts you in la la land where you're.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:15] It does.

John Dehlin [01:03:15] I mean, it's putting you up there with like Santa and the Easter Bunny. If you're a fundamentalist, orthodox, literal believing Mormon, your theology is indistinguishable from the Easter Bunny in Santa Claus. It is. And there are Tolkien and Harry Potter. You know, it's all the same fantasyland stuff.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:03:37] Well, I mean, you know, again, I know that that's like going to be very offensive to believing members. I would just say that like this stuff is really painful to have to dive into because once you get every layer, it's like, you know, I know the phrase like peeling an onion, right. But every layer just tells you that there's. It's less and less and less likely that this is even possible. And with Adam and Eve, to believe in a 6,000 year old earth at this point is basically denying everything we know in.

John Dehlin [01:04:03] About reality, about, about.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:05] Yeah, about, about our world, about, about how people have evolved and how we've, we've been able to, to grow communities and all that. And so it just. As we do these overviews, it'll be more apparent that 6,000 year worldview is just, it's just impossible. And so, yeah, and to what you said about Patrick Mason, this is kind of leaning into as well, which is good. So Fair Mormon concedes that the church consistently insists that there is a historical atom, which is obviously true, but then they offer space for members to take a metaphorical approach as well. And so this is from Fair Mormon, beyond the experience, I'm sorry, beyond the existence of a historical atom.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:04:38] The rest of it can be understood literally or metaphorically or more commonly as a mixture of these extreme positions. The problem here is that where Pharisee. This is me speaking from our overview project. The problem here is that where Pharisee's metaphorical use of Adam and Eve, the story, they're speaking about the story of the rib being used to create the woman. So they cite Spencer Kimball saying modern prophets have taught that the creation of woman from the rib of the man is to be taken figuratively. So they're not talking about, they're kind of carefully choosing the words here to say that you can believe in some of it metaphorically, but they're really citing the church, saying that the rib creating the woman is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:05:15] Is not like a real thing. And Brigham Young, I think, also said that too. And so Fair takes this quote to say, you could take both views. And then they say, as we find the approach that resonates with our own understanding and our own spiritual witness. I think that as long as we try to answer the question of what the scriptures are trying to teach us, we will reasonably do well. We will do reasonably well. It is only when we try to assert something through the text that was never intended that we run into trouble. And yeah, that last part's where I just. Where I really zoned in when I was reading it.

John Dehlin [01:05:46] Yeah, yeah. And it's just so really. It's so super weird to see that Fair is. And this is why I get grouchy with apologists. I think if I'm grouchy, I think sometimes I'm more. This is wrongly placed anger. But sometimes I get more grouchy with apologists than I do the Brethren themselves, because they're enabled. They're kind of the point of contact, of enabling the bait and switch right there and again. It's like the puppet, the puppet master. And I don't even think the Brethren are doing this intentionally. But clearly the Brethren support Fair Mormon or Fair Latter Day Saints. Clearly, clearly the Brethren support the Maxwell Institute and Patrick Mason and the Givens. But. But because they're on the front lines telling people this stuff.

FAIR Mormon Apologetics and Essential Truth Claims

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:36] Oh, you know, literal if you want to, but metaphorical if you want to. But that's in isolation. Because what they're not also adding in, isolating this point specifically is, is that it. It unra. It causes. It causes everything else to unravel. And we're.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:52] It does.

John Dehlin [01:06:53] Now we're beating a dead horse.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:06:54] But no, it's. It's fine. And that's why, like I said, I, I really zoned in when I was, When I first read this quote and I saw that last bar where it says where we run in trying to assert something through the text that was never intended is where we run into trouble. And that will lead to our next slide.

John Dehlin [01:07:06] That's gaslighting, man.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:07] It is. And so the next slide will kind of explain why that's a problem, because this is where Joseph Smith is going to run into trouble because he is absolutely asserting that the Adam and Eve story is a literal historical event into his own scriptures when it was likely never meant to be received that way. One of the things you'll hear if you listen to like David Bachavoy, there's another scholar who's been doing some. He actually has some great work on Adam and Eve and Mormonism named Colby Townsend. And I've listened to interviews with them, and they talk about this all the time. These stories were not meant to be, like, perfect history when they were written at that time.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:07:39] And so the fact is, Joseph Smith is taking a story that was probably never meant to be believed by those communities at that time as literal history, and he's writing it into new scriptures as history. And as Fair Mormon says, this is where he's running into trouble. And so because he's doing this, Ferrer is then going to maintain that the issue of the first man is a flexible concept in that part of the LDS view of Adam comes from this historical figure as a historical figure, but part of the LDS view comes from the ways in which Adam is just like ourselves. And often this comparison intended by the text is presented as a metaphor.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:13] And it's like, yes, that's the whole thing. But the problem is, Fair Mormon will say this to you, but look at the scriptures, look at the revelations, and tell me where Joseph Smith, in any of the revelations or scriptures is giving any space to have this be believed as a metaphorical story. It just doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:08:29] No, no. When you're saying, hey, Adam and Eve hung out here in Missouri, this is Adam Adam, and yeah, it's just metaphor town. You've completely. Metaphor.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:08:40] That's the thing. He was never there. And so now, and this is, you know, to your point earlier, and I'll be quick, but what really bothers me about apologetics is that you're redefining what was intended. What you're. You're now saying, this is what I think Joseph Smith might have meant to say. But we know what Joseph Smith meant to say. We have revelations that are from God. So you can't say that Joseph Smith meant to say something else because these are revelations that he's claiming are from God. So if those are wrong, you can't just say, well, maybe he meant it more metaphorically. You got to say he got it wrong because he didn't have the information we have today.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:09:11] That's what gets me mad about apologetics, because they're trying to. In this, in this section, I'm reading from Fair. It's almost like you go to a car dealership and the salesperson realizes you're about to leave, and they will tell you anything they need to tell you to keep you in that showroom. And so fair Mormon now is willing to make concessions to keep you in the showroom, but they know full well that what those concessions are making just do not actually work. And just like, you know, a car dealer salesperson might tell you things about the car to keep you there, then his head, he knows really aren't true, or, you know, maybe the most accurate, but you're, you're doing whatever you can, you're throwing Hail Marys up, just stay in the room, stay in the boat, as the church would say.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:09:48] And, and that's what bothers me because these things do not hold up from the fact that, like I said, there's no space anywhere for this to be, to be a metaphor. It's just, it doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [01:09:57] Yeah, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:09:58] And so we'll keep going with the fair Mormon response. And so as we just said, it's not presented as a metaphor anywhere within the Mormon scriptures. And if we're going to say that the rib is a metaphor, then surely we're talking about the serpent as well. And then if you could see those two elements are metaphorical, then of course, then how can you then say Adam lived to 930 years old and just happened to be the first man on earth with a name that means man in Hebrew? All of those things are mythical elements. All those things are, you know, again, if you're going to say one thing's a metaphor, you gotta say they all are because they all have suffer from similar problems.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:10:30] And then fair gives this list of what they think is more essential than others and what is non negotiable when working out the, you know, evolution and Adam and Eve and all that. And so I'm summarizing a bit here, you can see it in the overview project in more detail. But they say that what's non negotiable is that Adam and Eve being literal historical people, being the first in a line of priesthood holding patriarchs, the fall being what started around 600,000 or, sorry, 6,000 years of the earth's temporal existence, Adam and Eve being the first spirit children of God and that the perfection of the gods that made us.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:06] And so what they're basically saying is like, look, you could say that the snake, the serpent's mythical, you could say the creation story itself is mythical. But as long as you believe that Adam and Eve really did live at some point in time about 6,000 years ago, and that they were spirit children, we're okay. And so they're basically saying you can basically just carve out all of these truth claims as long as you just Focus on those things that will keep, keep you tied to the core beliefs of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:11:33] But, and to me, this is like saying, okay, you don't have to believe in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, but you have to believe in Frodo and you know, Smeagol and you know, the Balrog. You have to believe in those and Mordor, but you don't have to believe in the Shire or in, you know, the Ents. It's just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:11:55] Well, yeah, it's. And again, I know like, you know, I know that's like such an offensive thing when, when, when we make those comparisons to someone who might be watching this as a believer. But no, I'm not saying, I'm just saying like metaphors.

John Dehlin [01:12:04] I know that kind of tease out the implications of what they're doing here because it's, it's intellectually dishonest.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:12:12] That's. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:12] Intellectually disingenuous what they're doing. And I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm trying to illustrate the intellectual dishonesty and the deception of what they're doing.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:12:23] Yeah. And, and I think to your point, it's like they're trying to create this space in this world by saying just ignore all these problems surrounding this core. But if you just take everything else and take these few little cherry pick data points and even those have problems because they're still saying that Adam and Eve began the, the temporal fall 6,000 years ago. So what they're saying is, what they're saying without saying it is that people lived long before Adam and Eve, but they were pre Adamites, which is one of the, the ways the church has tried to get around the scientific problems is to say that there were people that lived here longer than 6,000 years ago, but basically they were soulless creatures that just wandered the earth and not until Adam and Eve did people have a soul.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:12:57] And that's highly offensive just at the thought that we have these millions of people who have lived before 6,000 years and we're just saying basically like they're these soulless savages walking around the earth. It's really weird when you think about the implications of trying to say that only people after a literal Adam and Eve were able to kind of connect or communicate.

John Dehlin [01:13:20] You know, they're all God's creation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:22] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:13:23] So whoever Adam and Eve's parents were, I, I mean Adam and Eve had language according to the Bible.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:29] Right. And that's the other problem.

John Dehlin [01:13:30] They could think, they could feel, they could pro, you know, they could make Children, they had a civilization and yet God's like, no, you're all just like, when you die, you don't have any soul. Yeah, somehow the chemistry of their body, you can introduce the spirit to the children of these parents when they've been involved for a million years.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:13:51] It's just, and it's just problem, you

John Dehlin [01:13:53] know, because again, the John Larsen episode we just did on the plan of salvation and how it makes, it makes, doesn't make a lot of sense.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:00] And that's the problem because you try to, they're trying now to create this scenario that can fit with the science we have about the length of the age of the earth, the, the way we could tell people were here long before 6,000 years. And to make it work, they're just basically trying to wrap it around the truth claims. But the problem is the truth claims are not true. And so when the truth claims aren't true, if you wrap stuff around it, it's not going to make it any more true. It's just basically going to make it even messier. And so now we have all of these teachings where they'll kind of redefine things to try to make it work.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:28] But every time you redefine something, you're creating a problem elsewhere. And we've covered this in every overview because it happens with every topic that their apologists are redefining and they're reshifting and they're, they're moving the target. But every time you do that, you're creating problems elsewhere. And they don't want to acknowledge that because they're trying to keep the person reading that fair Mormon article laser focused on their data point so that they'll say, you know what? People smarter than me, I thought about it, I'm going to walk away. And that's my problem is I'm trying in these overviews as hard as I can to give the apologetic response, the church response.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:14:59] What I found, at least you have all three points they're with, they just, they reframe it in a way that just doesn't work. And so anyways, so remember that they're saying Freyr says you have to believe in a 6,000 year old temporal existence. And this is from DNC 77. Question. This is Joseph Smith giving answers to some questions about doctrine. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals. And Joseph says we are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries and the works of God, the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:15:30] During the 7,000 years of its continuance or its temporal existence. And so they say, what are we to understand by the seven seals which, 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 and also the second thousand years and so on till the 7th. And so Joseph Smith is saying that the earth is 7,000 years, you know, 6,000 years old at the time the Book of Mormon's written. And that basically, you know, the last thousand years of the final thousand years.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:15:57] And I don't know, I just don't know how to get around this. You know, there's no mention of the earth having these populations before Adam and Eve. And again, if you want to believe that Joseph Smith is the, the foundational prophet of the Church of the latter days, these are the things that would tell us that he's a prophet. If he came out and said, God actually revealed to me that people lived here long before Adam and Eve, but they were pre Adamites, that would have been revolutionary at the time and it would have been proven with science. But instead he goes backwards and he goes backwards, which creates problems.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:24] It's like in football and you hand the ball to the running back and instead of running backwards, he's trying to find these openings and so he keeps running backwards, these big loops and all of sudden he gets tackled for a 12 yard loss. That's what Joseph Smith is doing here because he's not giving us anything that is going to be proven true. He's giving a lot that's proven false. And there's just no way around that.

John Dehlin [01:16:42] And it's encoded in Scripture.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:44] Yeah, in the voice of God.

John Dehlin [01:16:45] Yeah, in the voice of God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:47] Yeah, that's just it.

John Dehlin [01:16:48] Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:16:49] And then Fair addresses the problem I mentioned earlier about the ancient days, which leads to the Adam God theory and all that God doctrine. And the response is more geared towards the Adam God doctrine. But I wanted to read some of this because they begin the response by saying the real question should be how does one justify their interpretation of ancient of days in Daniel as only God? And then the author of the response cites one non LDS scholar who contends that the phrase ancient of days in reference to God is unprecedented in the Hebrew text. And again, just to point out, if this were the case, why did Joseph Smith not make any note or change when revising Daniel in the Joseph Smith translation?

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:17:27] This would be another area where he could make that clarification in the translation and neglects to do it. And if you read Daniel 7 in context, as we already have. I put above earlier in the slides, it's referring to God in every way. And the phrase ancient of days only appears in the book of Daniel. So the use of that phrase is unprecedented anywhere, not just in Hebrew text. It's only mentioned the one time. And so Joseph Smith is creating a theology around that one phrase because, of course, it was a phrase that led to some mystery. But to cite one scholar, that's like when you, you know, when they used to do the.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:00] The trials about smoking. And you could find a scientist who'd go on the stand and say smoking wasn't, you know, gonna intentionally kill people. Or, you know, back 30, 40 years ago, you could have, you know, and so you can always find one scholar who is going to agree with you on these things. What I'm saying is the overwhelming. I'm talking like every single scholar, except for probably this one, they could find clear. And we read the text earlier. It's talking about God, not Adam. And so to keep telling us that what we're seeing with our own eyes and what we're reading with our, you know, with our brains is not true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:27] It's just frustrating. And so just to put a bow on this, we'll cover this as we go in other subjects. But this is an area where apologists are defending an idea that simply goes against all the evidence and the consensus. And one thing I'll ask you to do, if you don't believe me, is just to do a quick Google search about the ancient of days, and they will all refer to God, because if you read Daniel 7, it is quite obviously God sitting upon his throne, the white robes, all of that stuff. And so just to say the only way Adam is the ancient of days is if Adam is God.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:18:56] Which is why that is the doctrine that was created by Joseph Smith, really, and then really picked up on by Brigham Young, because Joseph is saying Adam and Michael are the ancient days, which is God in the Bible. So Brigham Young picks on it and expands it. And that's like I said earlier, you can't brush that away as Brigham speaking as a man, because not only did Joseph Smith bring it in through revelation, but God allowed it to be inserted into their temple ceremony.

John Dehlin [01:19:19] And we know that he got it from Sidney Rigdon. Anyway.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:21] Yes. And it all. And that's the thing. And so you have this evolution of this idea. And again, at no point did God come and say, you know, Joseph, my servant, I am here to command you to fix something or whatever. There's Nothing. There's no evidence that God in any way did anything except strengthen this argument. And so you can't make it go away by saying Brigham spoke as a man because it starts. Started with Joseph, possibly Sydney Rigden, Sidney Rigdon, as you mentioned.

John Dehlin [01:19:47] Yeah. All right, well, that brings us to the conclusion. Yeah, we made it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:19:52] We did. And so, yeah, this isn't bad. And so the scriptures and revelations of Mormonism require a literal, historical Adam and Eve, and the evidence tells us that it's an etiological myth. And again, this is inside and outside the Bible. And so outside the Bible, as we talked about DNA and archaeology, and then inside, just looking at the fact that none of the Old Testament prophets knew about it early until the very late books, and there's only two mentions even then.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:17] And we talked about the evolving theology, which starts with potentially Sidney rigdon's article in 1834, which leads Joseph Smith to claim to see both Michael and Adam in 1835 vision, but then he claims they're the same person when he redoes the 1836 revelation.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:35] So again, you just have this inconsistency and this evolution that tells us that this is a changing idea. And, you know, just to tie it up, the Mormon Church demands a literal Adam and Eve story, even as apologists now on the outside are trying to give us flexibility.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:20:50] And we cover this with the tight and loose translation episode about the Book of Mormon. But the point is, you cannot go between those two positions and stay intellectually honest when you're actually addressing the scriptures of Mormonism. You could do it with the Bible, because I think with the Bible, you can say that these people didn't understand this as history, but because Joseph Smith hammers this into the foundation as history, you can't have it both ways. You can't tell people, you know, believe that it's mythical if you want, but at the same time, have all of the scriptures telling us that it absolutely happened.

John Dehlin [01:21:20] Yeah. And then not to just pile on, but. But, you know, if you just think about the episodes we've already done, whether it's the last 116 pages, the golden plates, the treasure digging, you know, DNA, like, you just. And we're gonna do 40 more. Yeah, you just. You. You just see problem after problem after problem after problem, and then the probability, as we've mentioned before, you have to multiply the fractions of the probability to. To then come. Come to a conclusion as to whether or not it all adds up. And it's just.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:21:54] Yeah, that's. That's Just it.

John Dehlin [01:21:55] Everything is Swiss cheese. Everything is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:21:57] That's just it. I mean, at some point, you know, like I said, that's why when I started, I kept saying, take these in totality. I know we're doing them every week, we're doing a new topic, but as we do them, you got to keep them in mind because they all tie together. The Adam and Eve story is going to tie together in the way the Book of Mormon was composed into the way the surrounding influences went into the Book of Mormon. And all of those things go together in a way that actually makes a lot of sense when you look at them together, as opposed to trying to piece them all out individually, which is what, you know, if you read the CES letter replies from Jim Bennett, from Fair.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:22:27] And to be fair, I mean, they're trying to reply point to point. But it's a lot easier when you're doing point to point, to jump between apologetics than it is when you're trying to take them all on at once. And that's why I'm trying to refer back to earlier episodes, to point out that when you take an approach in one way, it's going to cause problems elsewhere so that people that are watching this or listening to this can understand that these are not isolated issues. These are issues that really flow throughout. And each one of these problems actually creates more problems later on. And it's just. You can't just use apologetics to make them all go away in any kind of consistent or intellectually consistent way.

John Dehlin [01:23:00] I love it. Well, Mike, today's been brilliant. Thank you so much. What do we got? What are a couple things we have next?

Series Wrap-Up and Listener Support

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:23:06] Well, so now we've kind of transitioned into a little bit of biblical scholarship. So we're going to do, obviously, today's Adam and Eve, we've got the Global Flood is going to be next, Tower of Babel, we've got Deutero, Isaiah, Long ending of Mark, Sermon on the Mount. And those are all really important. And they're all going to show us the same kinds of things that we went over today and with the Book of Mormon, where you can see how Joseph Smith is using material that wasn't available to him, using ideas that aren't backed up by history and really hammering them in as historical, literal, perfectly done things. And those are problems when you look at the way the truth claims go with the way Joseph Smith reveals this stuff.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] Beautiful. All right, Mike, you've been brilliant. Thank you so much.

Mike (LDS Discussions) [01:23:45] See you guys next week.

John Dehlin [01:23:46] And listeners and viewers, thanks for joining us. Today on Mormon Stories. We hope you're enjoying this, this series. We've got dozens and dozens more to go, but we, we want to thank all of you who donate financially to make this series possible. We couldn't do this without you. But also, we lose donors every month.

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