Introduction and Welcome to the Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is March 16, 2022, and we have been waiting a long time and there are a lot of people in the queue waiting for part three of our epic interview series with the one, the only, Rod Meldrum. Hey, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [00:00:23] Hello. Good morning.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] Welcome back to Marmon Stories.

Rodney Meldrum [00:00:26] Good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] How's the response been to your first couple parts?

Rodney Meldrum [00:00:30] Mixed.

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [00:00:32] Actually depends on who you talk to, obviously. But overall pretty good. That it was a good interview and a lot of things were discussed and. Yeah, it's good.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Yeah. Well, just to give kind of the summary for those who are joining us for part three that didn't hear part one and two, Rod Meldrum is known as the. The founder of what is referred to as the heartland model for the Book of Mormon, which is basically a theory that most of the events that take place in the Book of Mormon happened in kind of North America and specifically kind of in the Great Lakes region. Is that right?

Rodney Meldrum [00:01:10] I'd say more of the. The central portion of America, basically. The, the heartland is the reason why we call it Midwest heartland is because that's what it's referred to in general by people in the Midwest, basically.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] So Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri.

Rodney Meldrum [00:01:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:26] Missouri.

Rodney Meldrum [00:01:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] Okay. And, yeah. And the reason why that's interesting is because, and we'll get into this, of course, the Church is kind of throughout its history, and let's even say through a couple hundred years of history, there have been different theories. Originally, maybe there was kind of this idea, and even Joseph Smith seemed to have this understanding that the Book of Mormon took place in all of North, Central and South America. But then in the 1900s, as science started evolving and casting questions on whether the Book of Mormon could have even taken place either in North America or even anywhere there was a branch of Mormon apologetics that started narrowing and narrowing and narrowing and moving the location of where they felt like the Book of Mormon took place. And that ended up being kind of in Mexico, Guatemala, Central America. Let's call that the two cumorah theory of the Book of Mormon or the limited geography theory of the Book of Mormon that kind of places the Book of Mormon happening in Central America. And that's really where farms and the Maxwell Institute and Fair Mormon have all kind of landed. That's their strong view, is that it couldn't probably have happened in North America. But then we've got Rod Meldrum and tens of thousands of supporters or followers, however we want to characterize it, who are now believing and investing emotionally and intellectually in the idea that it really primarily the Book of Mormon happened in North America to the point where Rod holds an annual conference called Book of Mormon Evidences or something to that effect that 7,8000 people would attend, which makes it one of the largest Mormon conferences of any type. You know, thrive. We were really excited to have like 15 or 1700 people. You out number thrive by like a factor of five. And I don't think fair. The Fair Mormon Conference comes anywhere near 7,000.

Rodney Meldrum [00:03:23] No.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] So Rod, basically, Rod's a bigger deal than Mormon stories and fair Mormon combined. That's kind of what I'm saying.

Rodney Meldrum [00:03:31] There's just a lot of people who have a. Have a feeling that this just kind of makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:03:35] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [00:03:36] And so, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:37] So for part one of our interview with Rod, we covered his story of kind of his life, his Mormon journey, and then what got him into, I would say, Mormon apologetics, but also got him into the Mormon heartland theory. And I really enjoyed that. Rod care. And I both agree that Rod's just a nice, sincere guy who's trying to do good. Care. You like Rod, right?

Carah Burrell [00:03:59] Yeah, Yeah, I like that. You also let me, you know, push back and grill you too. And you don't, like, run away crying or anything. You're not like, flipping the tables, like, I'm out of here. So we've had. We had a kind of like a. It was kind of a weird conversation. Rough, but, like, I. I don't get bogged down and, you know, people having differing opinions than me that I, you know, need to throw him out of here. So I don't think he's like that either. So I respect that in you.

Rodney Meldrum [00:04:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] And there's even a comment from Jason, respect to Rod for coming back. And yeah, we respect you for coming on Mormon stories. There's so many Mormon apologists, Patrick Mason, Spencer Fluman, Terrell and Fiona Givens. Richard Bushman don't want to face tough questions and they'll hide behind.

Carah Burrell [00:04:39] Maybe they do. They just are. They're busy, John. I don't have empirical evidence on that.

John Dehlin [00:04:43] Yeah, yeah, you could be right. But I. I think. And John Larsen agrees with me. So it's true that they. They just. They don't want to face the hard questions. And so they claim that it's because we're not nice or because we're critical or whatever. Anyway, Rod, respect to you for facing the tough questions. Part two of our interview with Rod, we was quite emotional because we started just wanting to talk about Rod's theology and Rod's Mormon beliefs. But we quickly got into race and we talked about racism and Mormonism for kind of the whole episode. So we had to rename part two to be kind of Mormonism and Racism with Rodney Meldrum. And that was for me, kind of just like a stressful, slightly disturbing. Not because I'm. Not because I'm claiming anything about, you know, you and racism per se. Just because, like, for people who really study racism and care about that issue.

Rodney Meldrum [00:05:40] Hot topic.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] It's a super hot topic. And some of the positions you were holding, I'm not saying are racist, but would be very. Like some would consider them to be racist. And they were certainly triggering for people of color and for people that really care about and think about these issues. We're not going to re. Adjudicate that one.

Rodney Meldrum [00:05:58] And honestly, that's, that's not part of my main, main, main research area. You know, it's kind of outside of my wheelhouse, my realm of research.

John Dehlin [00:06:06] So, yeah, so disturbing. But I think it was an important episode. And overall the feedback has been that people are glad we did that discussion. Not that they were enjoyed the discussion per se, but that they're glad that that discussion happened. So anyway, that's parts one and two. Today, part three, we are going to try and focus on Rod Meldrum and the Book of Mormon. And that's going to be issues around the Book of Mormon historicity and stuff. And we're also going to talk about the Heartland model and criticisms of it. And I'm going to be clear. Our goal today is not to get into the science of Rodney's positions. Because I'm not a geologist, I'm not an archaeologist, I'm not a geneticist. Carah, I don't think you are either. Maybe you are.

Carah Burrell [00:06:54] Yeah, I've been taking some online classes. No, no, because I think it's. I've listened to lots of things that Rod said before. So it's really difficult if you're like going to say this is true because this such and such person upholds this evidence in this place. We can't fact check that. We don't know if that's correct or not. And so we could just go on and on forever on those things. So it's more just asking questions about what you believe in all these different, like Heartland model areas and stuff. But we'll save the science talk till we have somebody who can come on and talk about science who's more qualified than us.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] How's that sound, Rod?

Rodney Meldrum [00:07:28] That's what you were saying we were going to do, so. Okay, that's good.

John Dehlin [00:07:31] Okay, thanks for being. Go ahead.

Rodney Meldrum [00:07:33] No, go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:07:33] I'm like, barely qualified to run this sound mixer or anything, so, like, just an honor to be here.

John Dehlin [00:07:40] Yeah. And so what we're going to try and do is kind of ask you yes or no questions that just kind of like, make it clear what your positions are and just try to avoid getting into the weeds this time.

Rodney Meldrum [00:07:53] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] And then I hope. I would love to bring Simon Southerton or Thomas Murphy or other scientists back to have a conversation with you and. Or people you want to bring on to actually discuss science. Is that okay?

Rodney Meldrum [00:08:06] Yeah, that sounds good.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] Okay. All right.

Rodney Meldrum [00:08:08] I think. I think your listeners would really enjoy that. Yeah, that's what we're kind of work towards.

Carah Burrell [00:08:14] Cool.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] Yeah. Okay, so I've got a ton of questions that I've assembled both through kind of trying to research this a little bit and from listeners and viewers. And so let's go ahead and start. We probably talked about this a little bit last time, but just, you know, you made it clear that of course you agree with science that, like, matter is eternal, that, like, who knows how long the atoms that make up the Earth have been in existence. But, but just to start again with the question of, like, age of the Earth, my understanding is the Doctrine and Covenants says, I don't know, 7,000, 8,000 years, something like that. Where do you stand on how old the current Earth as it's formed had been organized? How many years do you kind of peg the Earth as being existing in its current form?

Meldrum's Views on the Age of the Earth

Rodney Meldrum [00:09:07] Okay, so first off, just a quick understanding. Joseph Smith is understood as having been or has said that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Matters always existed. So in that sense, things have always been there. The question is, is when was this Earth actually formed? When did it actually take its shape and so forth. And I would say that what we're saying is basically we know from the, from the. We have three different creation accounts, including Abraham and, and Genesis and, and Moses and. And based on those accounts, we had a spiritual creation first and then there was a physical creation. The physical creation was somewhere around 7,000 years. There's twice in the scriptures where it talks about a day to God is a thousand years on the Earth. So it talks about a day. My understanding is from, again, going a little bit into the scientific realm for a second. But, but that the planet, if you will, that God dwells upon is so large that in the same amount of time it takes for it to make One rotation on its axis, which is by best permission a day. Our Earth will have gone around our sun a thousand times. So that being the case, 7,000 years, basically for creation. And we've had about 6,000 years since then. So physical creation somewhere around 13,000 years. And that's from this organization. That's not when the rocks were all initially made.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] Okay, so your general position regarding scientists, modern scientists, that say the Earth is the current Earth with living, you know, animal life has been around for billions of years.

Carah Burrell [00:10:54] 4.5 billion years.

John Dehlin [00:10:55] What?

Carah Burrell [00:10:55] 4.5 billion years?

John Dehlin [00:10:56] Yeah. And that animals, living organisms have been on the planet from, you know, from.

Rodney Meldrum [00:11:04] For billions of years beyonds the time. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:06] Yeah. Your, your view on, on billions of years and, and animals living way before Adam and Eve would have been, you know, in the garden. Your response to that would be, what?

Rodney Meldrum [00:11:20] Yeah, that's basically the case. The, the life on the Earth was, that was, was placed here by God just like Adam and Eve were placed here by God. And, and that the, the primary things that, that show a, a longer Earth comes from geology. And we'll address those things when we get into the geology.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] But for you have animals have, have living organisms been on this planet for billions of years?

Rodney Meldrum [00:11:45] No.

John Dehlin [00:11:46] Okay. And, and dinosaur, dinosaur bones, Dinosaurs were that, that scientists would place hundreds of millions of years ago. Carah, did you want to say something?

Carah Burrell [00:11:59] I just wanted to add to that because I grew up always hearing that this Earth was made from other Earths and that dinosaur bones could have been from God, recollecting matter and stuff. So I just wanted to ask if that is something that you believe.

John Dehlin [00:12:10] Did dinosaur bones come from other planets, reconstituted into Earth?

Rodney Meldrum [00:12:15] Yeah, and that's, that's a great question. It's probably the most, you know, the answer that most people use that are in the church that said, you know, well, basically what happened was, is there was other Earths than those, those people, those earths were reconstituted into this Earth. There's only some, there's several problems with that, though. For example, most of the fossils of the Earth, the dinosaur fossil, for example, are found within 200ft of the surface of this Earth. And the crusts that are on this Earth as it is, if it came from another Earth, God would have had to basically take these pieces of these crust, the crustal remnants from another Earth or another planet, then place them on this Earth such that all of them all face up, number one. Number two, if that planet was a little bit different size, then the curvature of those crusts would Be wrong.

Carah Burrell [00:13:05] Okay, so dinosaurs lived on this earth.

Rodney Meldrum [00:13:08] Bottom line, the dinosaurs had to be on this earth. And, and, yeah, but, but I think

John Dehlin [00:13:14] archaeologists, geologists would put the dinosaurs living between hundreds. Yeah, millions to hundreds of millions of years.

Rodney Meldrum [00:13:23] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:13:24] Which doesn't fit the 7,000 year kind of thing.

Rodney Meldrum [00:13:27] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:13:27] So what do you do with that?

Rodney Meldrum [00:13:29] So we have to basically say really you have two options. Either the scriptural creation accounts are correct or science is correct. And trying to reconcile the two of them really in this particular case is impossible. And that all comes down to geology. And how long does it take for dinosaur bones to, to turn into rock?

John Dehlin [00:13:52] I have a question, but, but what's your view on how dinosaurs.

Rodney Meldrum [00:13:57] Yeah, the, the view basically that we have is that dinosaur bones don't take millions of years. In fact, we can show that empirically with, through actual scientific experiments that, that dinosaur bones actually can go from a dinosaur bone into a rock. And it happens in between 48 and 56 hours. It doesn't take millions of years.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] And I would. I'm going to guess and care. I want to get to your question. I'm going to guess. Scientists are going to dispute what you just said, but sure. But for you, how many years ago were dinosaurs roaming the earth for you

Rodney Meldrum [00:14:26] with Adam and Eve?

John Dehlin [00:14:29] So somewhere around 7,000.

Rodney Meldrum [00:14:31] Probably wiped out during the Noah's flood. The Great Deluge.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] So somewhere around 7,000 years ago, dinosaurs and Adam and Eve were coexisting.

Rodney Meldrum [00:14:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:41] And then a flood came and killed off the dinosaurs, just like every ancient

Rodney Meldrum [00:14:46] history says, whether it's the Pope All Vu or the, the Bible or the Quran or, you know, any of those.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] Okay, that. Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:14:54] Okay, so that's really interesting that the first thing that you just said was that a lot of ancient people believe things. I think you and I would both agree. A lot of ancient people believe a lot of things, some of them right or wrong. So that's a fallacious argument. I just want to point that out and just make sure. Understanding history, I'm just saying it's so. God, look at me. I was here. Okay? Yeah, like when I, when I hear that, I'm just like, yeah, I understand, like a lot of people believed a lot of things, but it's like an argument from like a bandwagon fallacy that like, just because a lot of people believed it, you still have to provide the evidence. So we're going to get to that later. So that's just where my mind goes.

Rodney Meldrum [00:15:29] And that also is true with science, Carah. Just because a lot of people believe that things were billions of years. I don't think we want to make it true.

Carah Burrell [00:15:35] No, that's not the road I'm trying to go.

Rodney Meldrum [00:15:36] Want to go there? We can.

Carah Burrell [00:15:38] I'm just going down that road yet. Hold on. Okay, so the first place that I want to go is from this, from what John was talking about. So, Rod, just, just like a pause in the middle.

Rodney Meldrum [00:15:48] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:15:48] Do you think that if the church was restored, let's say Joseph Smith, instead of restoring it in like 1820, let's say he was a man that lived in 1920. Do you think that like the 7,000 year old earth and those ideas that were more available to Joseph Smith's time, that would change, that it would change at all? Or is that straight up just a universal truth that you don't think is influenced by Joseph Smith's day?

Rodney Meldrum [00:16:16] Okay, first off, to presume that I would know what the church would do in 1920 is, is a complete guess. And I didn't think we were here to make guesstimations about things. So. Second thing is that I would say, well, if it did, if the church was restored back in 1920 or in 1920 versus the 1800s, the Bible account of creation doesn't change. That was here long before Joseph Smith and the restoration.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] That's right.

Rodney Meldrum [00:16:46] So, yeah, so, no, I don't think it would have changed.

Carah Burrell [00:16:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:51] Gerardo writes in we love it that Gerardo's. We invited Gerardo to be here, by the way.

Rodney Meldrum [00:16:57] We miss you, man.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] I know. Gerardo writes dinosaurs went extinct about 65 millions ago. Thanks, Gerardo, for giving that fact check.

Rodney Meldrum [00:17:04] Yeah. 65 million is kind of the, the minimum age be much more than that.

John Dehlin [00:17:09] And your view is that's wrong?

Rodney Meldrum [00:17:11] Yeah, it's absolutely wrong. Okay. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:17:12] But that's not based on the evidence. That's based on the scriptures that you believe.

Rodney Meldrum [00:17:17] Trump on both. When we get into the science stuff, we'll show the evidence for that as well.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:17:22] Yeah, because that's the whole point is that you believe that the evidence supports

Rodney Meldrum [00:17:25] the scriptures because it's important to have faith. And that's, that's. I think one of the things that we need to. I'm trying to hopefully portray is that sometimes we just have to have faith because the answers will come. But it's also important to have some answers. We may not have all of the answers and nobody would expect to have all the answers. But the bottom line is, is that we need to have at least some answers.

John Dehlin [00:17:44] Right.

Rodney Meldrum [00:17:45] And they need to be cogent, they need to make. Make sense.

John Dehlin [00:17:47] Okay, yeah, but. But you agree that the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is that dinosaurs. Okay, so you're. You, you are. You and your colleagues are kind of reinterpreting scientific data or coming up with new theories to make it plausible that dinosaurs would have existed 7,000 years ago.

Rodney Meldrum [00:18:11] Yes, that. But also based on actual experimental, repeatable science.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] We'll get into that. Okay, so really quickly. Global flood covering the entire earth, killing off all animal life.

Rodney Meldrum [00:18:24] Yes, absolutely. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Okay, so you, you believe that for sure?

Rodney Meldrum [00:18:29] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:18:29] And that's important. Why is that important to you?

Rodney Meldrum [00:18:32] Because there's. There's over 60 different evidences for a worldwide deluge that we can find in the geological record and, and every ancient history. Again, to Karen's point, I understand. You know, just because a whole bunch of ancient people said things, you know, they were more superstitious or whatever, but the general histories, every one of them talk about a. A great deluge of flood.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] Right? Okay, so.

Rodney Meldrum [00:18:55] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [00:18:56] But again, it's both you, you, you just to show kind of how you come at these things, we talked about this last time. If scripture says it, you're pretty much always going to go with scripture over modern scientific.

Carah Burrell [00:19:09] And that was the kind of question

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:10] I was trying to get over. Not necessarily over, but. But again, I think when push comes to shove.

John Dehlin [00:19:17] When push comes to shove, you're going to go with the literal scriptural interpretation over scientific consensus every time. When push comes to shove. Okay. Is there any instance where you believe scientific consensus when it conflicts with Scripture?

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:34] That is a good question because I don't know every different.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] Can you think of any time you've ever said, nope, on this one, science has got it right and the scriptures have it wrong.

Carah Burrell [00:19:42] Yeah. To read or ask.

John Dehlin [00:19:43] Can you think of any?

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:44] No, actually, because when I went to

Carah Burrell [00:19:46] go to the Mormon Evidence Conference, things

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:48] in the scriptures that you can somehow validate or verify scientifically.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:53] Then I would say no.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] Carol, what were you gonna say?

Carah Burrell [00:19:56] Yeah, because that was.

Rodney Meldrum [00:19:57] What was.

Carah Burrell [00:19:57] I found was really disturbing, to John's point. When I went to the Book of Mormon Evidence Conference and wasn't Dean Sessions, it was the other one. I can't remember. Sorry, I forgot his name. My apologies.

Rodney Meldrum [00:20:06] Could be.

Carah Burrell [00:20:07] And he. He laid out a list of everything that the restored Gospel believes and everything that science believes. And he said, notice how they're all polar opposite. And it seems like that there's a lot of that.

Rodney Meldrum [00:20:18] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:20:18] Yeah, there's a lot of that. So I wanted to ask you, do you believe that do you, do you believe that, like, the restored gospel is always going to be in opposition to, like, they say the earth is this old. We say it's this old. The restored gospel says this. Joseph Smith taught this. You're going to have people like, you know, Darwin who are going to teach the polar opposite that in the year that the church was established is what they said at the conference, that Satan establishes these things. And so I was just like looking at this room of people and I was like, that's kind of a dangerous precedent to set up, saying that the restored gospel is going to be opposite to what the science community says. Like, that's kind of dangerous personally. But. But you can tell me what you think about that.

Critiquing Modern Science and Scripture

Rodney Meldrum [00:20:54] Yeah, well, a couple of quick things about that in, in the. Why there's. There's so many things that, that we could talk about.

Carah Burrell [00:21:00] Just go where your heart tells you.

Rodney Meldrum [00:21:03] Well, one of the things that I'm reminded of is in the, in the Book of Mormon, there's a vision that, that, that Lehi has of a great and spacious building and there's lots of people there. There was, you know, literally, I mean, you kind of get the impression there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, and they're in this building and they're mocking those who are partaking of the fruit, which is the fruit of the gospel, basically the tree, as those who are aware of that. Maybe that would be good to explain that a little bit more. But basically there was a tree and the fruit was really good. And basically people are trying to get to the tree and eat the fruit. And that's kind of the gospel, right? Anyway, so in that building there was all these people and they were laughing and mocking at those who were partaking of the fruit. But if you remember in the dream, the building was. Did it have a foundation?

John Dehlin [00:21:48] It was in the air.

Rodney Meldrum [00:21:49] It was standing as it were in the air. Well, how many buildings that you know of stand in the air? I mean, the bottom line is, is that this is, this is not a, this is not reality. This is some kind of a theoretical thing that they're going. That has no foundation.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Right?

Rodney Meldrum [00:22:03] Buildings have foundations. So back to kind of you feel

John Dehlin [00:22:06] like modern science is the building in the air.

Rodney Meldrum [00:22:10] And if this is one thing, if you have a house of cards. Have you ever seen somebody build a house of cards? Okay. You have all these different cars that are kind of formed the foundation of it. If the foundation is. Got cracks in it, if the foundation's got problems, then all of the Other things are built upon that. And really much of modern science is built on geology. So if geology has a foundational flaw, then it will affect everything. So yes, it will affect many different things. So that's why you, you'd have kind of these polar opposites.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] Okay, okay, I got it.

Rodney Meldrum [00:22:43] And, and also, does evil exist? Does good exist? That's even that question is important because if evil and good both exist, then then you're going to have choices between good and evil.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Okay, so explaining that.

Carah Burrell [00:23:00] Okay, I'm, I'm with you on. I understand where you're going.

John Dehlin [00:23:03] So strains of modern science, to you, geology, for example, organic evolution are best represented maybe by a building in the air that has no foundation or is built on.

Rodney Meldrum [00:23:14] Yeah, a foundation that if it has a crack in it, if there's, if there's something there that it's built upon and that is shown to be false, everything else has to adjust to it. Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] Okay, so really quickly, where did all the water go? When the waters receded, where did all the water go for you?

Rodney Meldrum [00:23:33] Well, it came out of the Earth and went back into the Earth.

John Dehlin [00:23:36] Okay, and so, so you believe the core of the Earth is not molten lava or magma or hot rock. You believe the core of the Earth is what?

Rodney Meldrum [00:23:46] Well, the core of the Earth, according to modern science, basically there is a, there's a solid central core, there's a liquid outer core, there's a mantle and there's a crust. There's four basic layers, if you will, of the Earth. We totally agree with that. The, the, where we, where we differ is in what the material is that makes up those different things. So as an example in modern science, the core of the Earth basically is Some more recent research has actually indicated that the core of the Earth may be a single solid crystal because of what they call anisotropy. Basically the sound waves travel faster in north, south direction than east, west. And so we could get into the details on that. But then outside of that there's a liquid outer core and then there's a mantle which is thought to be basically magma or molten material. And then there's this crust on the outside which is about as thick as a piece of paper on a basketball sized Earth. And that's what constitutes the Earth as we know it. How do we know these different layers? From things like seismic tomography and other.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] But just don't you believe that water, the water receded at a huge chunk of the core of the Earth is water.

Rodney Meldrum [00:25:00] Okay, to explain a little bit more in depth, it's Kind of like this.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] I don't want you. I mean, just, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. Don't you believe that the water receded into the core of the Earth and that's where the water that made the flood came from, was from the core of the Earth.

Rodney Meldrum [00:25:15] It requires a little bit of explanation. So let me, let me ask you just one quick question. Simple question. Does water boil at room temperature? Yes or no?

Carah Burrell [00:25:26] No.

Rodney Meldrum [00:25:27] No. I have a definite no.

John Dehlin [00:25:29] I think it depends on the pressure.

Rodney Meldrum [00:25:32] Exactly. But if I was just to ask you a simple question. Does water boil at room temperature? Most every, most everybody would say, well, no. And then I said, but if I add just three little words to that, you know, in a vacuum, that changes everything. Yeah, because water boils at room temperature if it's in a vacuum.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] But I don't want to get into the science. I just want you to say what the.

Rodney Meldrum [00:25:54] That's. But that can be a gotcha question. See, for. I mean, I could say, well, you said that water doesn't, you know, that water doesn't boil the room temperature. And if I just add the three words in a vacuum, now all of a sudden, what you said, now I can say, well, you're wrong. You see what I'm saying?

Carah Burrell [00:26:08] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [00:26:08] So it's. So yes or no questions can be gotcha questions. And that's the point that I'm trying to make, is that some of these things are more nuanced and there's more information. So yes or no, this isn't a gotcha question.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] I just literally want to know. The water recedes into the Earth.

Rodney Meldrum [00:26:24] I have to have an ability to explain what I'm saying.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] So I think this is a yes or no. The water that filled the whole Earth in the global flood receded into the core of the Earth by your belief, yes or no?

Rodney Meldrum [00:26:38] Yeah, yes, but with this caveat, basically, that we understand that the core of the Earth may actually be a single solid water crystal called water ice, which is at phase 12.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Okay, that's fine. We can talk about that later.

Rodney Meldrum [00:26:52] There's an exterior that's also water, that the mantle isn't just water. And this is where it's critical that that's not. We're not taken out of context here.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] Not just water. There's other stuff.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:02] It's crystalline. Probably the easiest way maybe to explain it would be like a crystalline slushy. Obviously we haven't been there and neither is science. So this is, this is a best guess scenario.

John Dehlin [00:27:13] Water plus other stuff.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:14] So the water came out of the earth during the flood because of a slowing of the rotation rate of the earth and then it came back in when the earth actually self corrected. Perfect.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] Thank you.

Carah Burrell [00:27:24] To set some groundwork. The reason why all of this is important is because Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and everything we're going to get into at the Heartland model does rely on this young kind of earth.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:35] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:27:35] And it relies on like Noah's blood being literal.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:39] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:27:39] And so all of these things are very literal to you. So these, this is important for the entire framework of everything we're going to get.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:44] No, I, I totally get that. I just, I just a yes or no question can be misleading as well.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] Yeah. And I'm not trying to do a gotcha. I'm not trying to do that. But I also do appreciate that I don't want to get into.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:54] We don't have all day.

John Dehlin [00:27:55] Yeah, we don't have all day. So I'm just trying to be efficient to, to lay out what you.

Rodney Meldrum [00:27:59] I will try my best to be quick and efficient about it.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] No, it's good.

Rodney Meldrum [00:28:02] But I don't want to give a wrong answer because that, you know. Yeah, that's just like, that's fine. That example.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] So I'm going to do my best to give you lots of yes or

Carah Burrell [00:28:09] no questions and I'm going to do my best to give you lots of compliments. Like when he walked in and I told him that his shirt like is literally my favorite. So I stole this shirt from my dad and I'm just like, that's a dad shirt. I love that.

Rodney Meldrum [00:28:20] So I love this color. I don't know if you look, if I even look halfway normal in it. You look whatever. In the monitor probably have red face. I don't know.

Carah Burrell [00:28:27] He was a little bit self conscious about his baldness last time and I

Rodney Meldrum [00:28:29] was like a. Yeah, I prefer not to be bald.

Carah Burrell [00:28:32] Don't worry.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] Done yet.

Rodney Meldrum [00:28:35] Okay, go ahead, Keep going. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] John Banter. This is banter. Okay. All right, Rod. So what if, if there's a global flood that killed off all mammals and animal life? You know, biologists would say, whether it's genetics or evolution, there's no way that in a six to seven thousand year period, all of them would migrate to all the different places. All the differentiation, the species ation that that carefully happened over literally millions of years. And the fossil record and everything else would simply testify to the fact that just the diversity of species distributed throughout the world after a global flood would make it so that there's no way that all the animals were killed off 7,000 years ago.

Rodney Meldrum [00:29:26] And how would they all fit on the ark? Right, yeah. There's millions of species, and how do they all fit on the ark?

John Dehlin [00:29:32] How would they fit on the ark? But also how would they have all been fed? What would have been done with all their waste? And then there's no way that animals that were let off the ark. Right. 7,000 years ago could have multiplied and species and diversified through species.

Carah Burrell [00:29:51] Can I ask it in the Super.

John Dehlin [00:29:52] Anyway, if you want to jump in.

Carah Burrell [00:29:55] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [00:29:55] I thought you're doing good, but go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:29:56] You're doing good. I want to. Because I'm thinking of it in, like, an actual context of, like, wherever the. Wherever the ark would have landed on

Rodney Meldrum [00:30:04] Mount Mountains of Arat, basically, as the biblical source says.

Carah Burrell [00:30:07] And I just think about, like, dispersing, hopping from there across the Middle east, across. Across Asia, swimming across the ocean to get to Australia and picking up all of their bones along the way to not leave any evidence that they migrated to Australia. So that's one reason that, like, it just seems like that's where they evolved and not that all of these animals in all these different locations didn't just hop off the ark.

John Dehlin [00:30:33] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:30:33] So, like, what do we do about kangaroos?

John Dehlin [00:30:36] So that's. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's a good illustration.

Rodney Meldrum [00:30:39] Maybe to. To go into that a little bit more. The first off, the number of animals that were on the ark, if you think about the number of species that live in the oceans is by far more than the species that live on land. So. So the vast majority of species would have not been on the ark because they. They didn't need to be on the ark. Okay. How. How many species were actually on the ark and how they were fed and what they did with their waste and so forth. Those are questions that. I don't know. I think. I think that there's some. There's some pretty good explanations from that, like at the. The ark encounter and so forth. I haven't been there, but I hope to go there someday. But, you know, there's some things, like some. Some animals, Some species can go into some kind of a stasis that they would be in more of a sleep mode, like bears and things, hibernation things. Some of them don't. But. But how. How kangaroos got to Australia.

Carah Burrell [00:31:35] That's a head scratcher.

Rodney Meldrum [00:31:36] That is a. That is a head scratcher. And I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] Okay. Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:31:41] I love when people say I don't know. I'm like the biggest fan of that sentence.

John Dehlin [00:31:44] It also makes, it also saves a lot of time. So that's fine. You're. For you, that's a, that's a head scratcher the, the species. But you definitely don't believe in organic evolution, that animals have been around for millions and millions of years.

Rodney Meldrum [00:31:57] Okay. When it comes down to evolution, there is a true part of it that, that animals can, and basically all life can adapt to certain things. The part of evolution that, that I would say that I would disagree with is that they can adapt to the point they become a new species. Yeah, for me is the point of,

John Dehlin [00:32:16] for me that's the point of organic evolution.

Rodney Meldrum [00:32:18] Exactly. That's kind of the.

John Dehlin [00:32:19] My dad always says that, oh, I believe in evolution, just not outside of the species. And I'm like, well the thing. Isn't the whole thing called the Origins of Species? Like.

Rodney Meldrum [00:32:27] Yeah, yeah, well that was his book. But, but, but we, but we can actually experience part of. I've actually experienced, you know, some adaptation. I lived in Arizona for a few years and I got to the point where I could go out and golf at like 105 degrees and, and I was okay, but if I was to try to go out and golf right now at 105, my body would just not handle it. You know, so people, people and all kind. Every, every different species has been given, I believe God given abilities to adapt to all kinds of different circumstances and situations. But to actually change from one species to another hasn't been seen in the wild. It hasn't been seen in a laboratory. It's been tried. No, not my opinion. That's, that's all right. I can explain a little bit more about that when we get into that.

John Dehlin [00:33:14] Okay, we'll get some genetics.

Carah Burrell [00:33:15] I have heard otherwise, but that is not the point. This is, this is the rock opinion and whatever you.

John Dehlin [00:33:21] I mean really quickly, we've had two super chats, one from the last Goonie and one from topic discuss on YouTube. We're going to get to the questions that they're asking later, but we're starring them and we're going to incorporate them. But thanks to everyone who donates to super chats on YouTube. That's a really important way that we fund what we do. And you can also donate through stars on Facebook. So thanks everyone for that. Okay, really quick, so the. So we had a really cool geneticist on Mormon stories just last week who talked about the fact that we have Neanderthal DNA in our DNA and You know, in that, in that we would have split off from the Neanderthals tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. So what do you make of the fact that, like credible DNA, that the Church, by the way, is a pioneer in helping to advance the science.

Rodney Meldrum [00:34:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:34:19] That DNA shows without any doubt that we shared genetic materials with Neanderthals which would have existed long before Adam and Eve were ever here. What do you make of that?

Rodney Meldrum [00:34:30] Well, it's the last part of that that we would question. Were they actually here before Adam and Eve? Because that all comes down to fossilization and the.

John Dehlin [00:34:39] No, no, no. It comes fossilization and understanding of genetic migration and mitochondrial DNA. Can you can establish timelines based on changes in DNA over time? So it's not right. I don't think genetics relies solely. I think, I think archaeological and geological evidence complements timelines that geneticists can produce. But I don't think we have to rely on geology or archaeology to establish a genetic timeline for our ancestors.

Rodney Meldrum [00:35:10] Right. So, so that comes down to phylogenetic dating of genetics, basically. And phylogenetic dating is based on some assumptions. And one of those assumptions is that humans and chimps split about 5 to 6 million years ago. And based on that assumption, if you take a look at the rate of mitochondrial DNA mutation, then it provides the long time frames and can explain to some extent the Neanderthals and so forth being here. But it's a combination of the geology and the phylogenetic dating. The only problem is that the phylogenetic dating is based on assumptions. When they actually do the real pedigree dating, which is where they actually take real people and actually see what the actual rate of, of a mutation is. It was 26 times faster than the, than the, than the. So, than the proposed rate.

John Dehlin [00:36:00] So not to be discourteous, we're getting into the science here. I just want to know what you believe. So you, you believe that's the reason why you believe that there were Neanderthals, but that they existed somewhere between now and 7,000 years ago after. And the geneticists, all the geneticists, all the consensus of geneticists, they've got it wrong in terms of how they read the dating of, of those genetic shifts.

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:25] Right. If you actually go with is that

John Dehlin [00:36:27] a yes or no?

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:29] They. Yes, they have it wrong.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] Okay?

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:36:31] So you know more about genetics based

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:33] on the dating of the phylogenetic.

John Dehlin [00:36:35] So you know more about the dating of genetics than the consensus of geneticists worldwide. I've got it wrong.

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:42] I don't, but other geneticists do, and they actually had arguments in Scientific journals about which dating method they should use phylogenetic.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] So can you. Wait, wait, wait.

Rodney Meldrum [00:36:49] Pedigree dating?

John Dehlin [00:36:50] Just quickly, you can show me a peer reviewed journal article. Wait, let me, let me ask the question before you answer. You can show me a peer reviewed journal article where credible geneticists are claiming that Neanderthals existed 7,000 years ago and that's why we share a common genetic ancestry with Neanderthals. You can, you can point a school that will argue that.

Rodney Meldrum [00:37:14] Well, obviously that's great. That's ridiculous to think that you're going to find somebody who's going to say, yeah, that. But I can show you peer reviewed scientific journals where the two different dating methods are actually argued back and forth and they are actually wondering which one are we supposed to use.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] But no credible geneticist is going to argue Neanderthals 7,000 years ago.

Carah Burrell [00:37:31] What I hear you saying, Rod, is that like when science kind of disputes things, you err on the side of faith.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] Yeah, he's already said that.

Rodney Meldrum [00:37:38] Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely.

Carah Burrell [00:37:40] So, so it's just, it's not, it's not to what John said.

Rodney Meldrum [00:37:43] That's not.

Carah Burrell [00:37:43] You're trying to say like, but you'll find a peer reviewed something that'll say it's that. And I think I just draw. It's like it's a toss up. And I'm just gonna go with the faithful answer.

John Dehlin [00:37:51] But he's trying to say both instead

Carah Burrell [00:37:52] of saying that the evidence supports it.

Rodney Meldrum [00:37:54] But it's not just faith, it's space backed up by. No, no, no, no, no.

Carah Burrell [00:37:58] So wait, wait, hold on, John, hold on, hold on one second. So what I hear you saying is like sometimes the evidence will support and back the faith and then if it is a toss up, you're still going to go with faith. Is that accurate?

Rodney Meldrum [00:38:09] If we understand the faith part of it correctly. Which, which we don't always understand that correctly.

John Dehlin [00:38:13] I think he's already said. He's always. I think I asked you that when faith and, and science collide, you're always going to go with faith.

Rodney Meldrum [00:38:20] If they collide, generally speak as a general rule.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] Yes, and I just want to say you're arguing that science, the geneticists disagree on the dating. On dating of, of.

Rodney Meldrum [00:38:33] And it's in theory, scientific journals.

John Dehlin [00:38:35] But that's very different from saying that they would agree that, that Neanderthals split from humans six to 7,000 years ago. And I can guarantee you, yeah, they don't. There's no geneticist.

Rodney Meldrum [00:38:48] I agree with that. But if the foundation of their Research is that they relied on phylogenetic dating and instead. If you instead insert the actual observed rate of mutation in pedigree dating, then you have to go back and reassert.

John Dehlin [00:39:04] Right, But I just re.

Rodney Meldrum [00:39:05] Look at it and they don't do that, John. This is the point. They don't go back and take the data, I'm guessing, and insert it into it and say, okay, now, based on this data, and actually one time they did it. I can show you the scientific journal that says this, that the most common recent ancestor of all human beings, they call it mitochondrial Eve. I can show you the physical. It was in the. In the journal Nature. And they said if we use that dating, then that means that Eve would have lived Approximately, get this, 6,000 years ago. Yeah, that's in the scientific journal Nature, which is the. So we will bring this one in the world.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] We'll bring on geneticists to review the evidence that you're putting forth. That's fine. I just wanted to establish what I believe, John.

Rodney Meldrum [00:39:46] That's what I'm saying.

John Dehlin [00:39:47] Okay. So, yeah, and we can. We can have Simon Southerton respond directly to that.

Carah Burrell [00:39:54] Do you want me to, like, coordinate with Rod and if he does mention something like that, we put it in the show notes?

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Sure, please. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:40:00] All right, we'll coordinate.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] Okay. So what do you make of the fact that archaeologists and geologists are finding evidence of humans existing long before 7,000 years ago? Whether it's writings on cave walls, whether it's the fossil record, whether. Whether it's writing, just hard evidence of civilization dating 10 to 18,000 years ago, not 7,000 years ago. What do you make of that?

Rodney Meldrum [00:40:31] It comes down to dating. Come down to geology. And if geology's got it wrong, then everything has to change.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:40:38] Communism is just dating and dating, you know,

Rodney Meldrum [00:40:42] would that be online dating or some other form of dating?

Carah Burrell [00:40:46] You know, there's about everything.

John Dehlin [00:40:49] So, like, even in North America, there's evidence of. Of humans existing 12 to 18,000 years ago.

Rodney Meldrum [00:40:56] It's the same argument as the dinosaurs, really.

Carah Burrell [00:40:58] Right, right.

Rodney Meldrum [00:40:59] I mean, it's the same thing. If the dating is wrong, it's wrong. And so if you can show that the dating is somehow flawed, that there's some underlying assumptions that have been made in the dating process that can be shown to have potential issues, then yes, it's going to change everything because it's like a house of cards. All of. All of the main sciences, not all of them, but most of the natural sciences, are based on the underlying assumption that the Earth is billions of years Old.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] And so, I mean, we've already kind of made this point, but I just want to remake it again. What you've put yourself in the position of doing is basically saying, Rod Meldrum and your colleagues who are doing this type of writing and thinking are, no, no, no science better than the consensus of geologists, the consensus of geneticists, the consensus of archaeologists, that somehow you guys are. Are claiming that several of the major scientific, scientific disciplines are all fundamentally in error, but you and some other dudes in, in Utah and Idaho and whatever actually have it. Have the science. Right? And that's just. Do you acknowledge that that's a pretty audacious.

Rodney Meldrum [00:42:13] I couldn't believe it myself, honestly, when we first started doing the universal model, I'm like, how could. Wait a minute. How could tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of scientists with billions of dollars of funding all over the world, how could it be possible that they might be wrong?

Carah Burrell [00:42:31] Can I ask you why you think they might be wrong? Like, directly? I want to ask you that question directly because last time we were on and you said that, like, you know, 97% of scientists or whatever identify as atheists. Do you think that there's something, I know, maybe nefarious going on that, like, you know, God has the. Like I was mentioning earlier, God's ideas are on the other side. And maybe science is just led by godless atheists that are not like, what, what. What is the reason why so many science in that consensus have it wrong?

Rodney Meldrum [00:43:01] Okay, well, in answer to your question, well, not a direct answer to your question, but you asked, what about Satan? Well, is Satan real? Well, I think that Satan is real. I think that there is actually good and evil in the world and there has to be choices so that we make different choices in our lives. Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:17] So is Satan tempting the scientists to give bad science to take away faith?

Rodney Meldrum [00:43:23] I did not say that that was a question. But there have been that struggle between religion and science for many. You acknowledge that. Right? Okay, so there's a.

John Dehlin [00:43:35] But that doesn't have to be because

Rodney Meldrum [00:43:37] science was actually coming from.

John Dehlin [00:43:38] That doesn't have to be because science hates religion. It could be because religion was advancing worldviews in the material world that turned out to not be correct. So it wasn't that science was trying to destroy religion. Science was simply saying what religion has been teaching about the age of the Earth and mankind is not right based on the evidence.

Rodney Meldrum [00:43:59] But there are some scientists who, in an effort to try to get back at their religious upbringings or so forth, may have an agenda to put forward a science basically that would go directly against that. I think what we've found, this is maybe best way to explain this. I think what we've had before, we've had kind of semi true religion, partially true, and then we've had partially true science. Because science isn't all wrong. There's much of science that has it right. And when it's based on the data and observations, it's going to be more right than when you go into theoretical stuff. But these two have been at loggerheads with each other. And so you have religionists who have tried to basically put down science. I mean, you've seen that. We know that that happens. We had people who used religion to pound science down, said, well, no, this is the way we believe it. But then we've also had science who's been used as a hammer to force religion into submission.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] But what science to care, what science motive to be coming up with all this evidence that undermines literally.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:05] That's the hard part about knowing what people's motives are.

John Dehlin [00:45:07] Okay, so you don't know. You can say, I don't know. But do you believe it?

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:10] I believe that there are people who have an agenda to tear down religion.

John Dehlin [00:45:15] So scientists are sitting around thinking, how can I massage or manipulate the.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:18] There are some scientists that absolutely do that. Yes. Not everybody, but some.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:23] And maybe to just give you one, one quick example, could it also be

John Dehlin [00:45:27] that Satan and his angels are tempting scientists to.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:31] I don't know about that.

Carah Burrell [00:45:33] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:34] I mean, but, but I think that there are people who want.

Carah Burrell [00:45:38] Oh, I have a follow up question.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:39] There are some people who want to tear down faith and, and probably. Can I, can we go into just one quick example about, about that.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] Are you.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:48] This is the underlying foundational principle that I think we need to kind of understand.

Carah Burrell [00:45:52] The floor is yours, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [00:45:54] Okay, but that would be important probably to, to, to do that. So a lot of people don't know. And, and maybe we got to do this. But, but to. Okay, sorry. In fact, should we take it just, can we take just a, just a quick break? Because I could pull up some slides that might be helpful.

Carah Burrell [00:46:13] We're live streaming, so we can't. But. Okay, I'm, I'm here with you.

Rodney Meldrum [00:46:16] All right, well, I'll just, I'll just

Carah Burrell [00:46:18] kind of over for a second.

Rodney Meldrum [00:46:19] Okay. Okay. So a lot of people are not really familiar with the big picture of modern science. Okay. And I have some things that. It's going to be real important. I think that we actually bring this up. So maybe we didn't need to hook up my computer so we can actually see this. Because that way. That way you can see the quote in context in the actual book that I'm referencing.

Carah Burrell [00:46:45] Why don't we just do this? Just explain it as the words that you want, and then if you feel like later or in this next episode.

Rodney Meldrum [00:46:51] Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:46:51] That you need to do that, I want to make sure that you can explain yourself how you want, but just to the point of, like, what is science's reason for.

Rodney Meldrum [00:46:58] Okay, so. So the big picture of basically originally religion, if you will, as we understand it, based on the Bible and other other historical documents, is that, that, that, you know, there was an Adam and Eve, the animals and things were placed here on the earth, and then it's kind of gone forth from there. But the, the big picture of modern science is. And this is something. I think that John really probably ought to hear this part of it, or else he's not going to know about it.

Carah Burrell [00:47:28] I'll. I will listen and repeat it to him.

Rodney Meldrum [00:47:31] Okay. But the big picture of modern science is essentially that you have that humans came from lower life forms, less advanced, and over the course of time, it has. They've gotten progressively more and more advanced. Right. Which came from still lower life forms. The. The very beginnings of life, which actually came from a chemical soup, basically, if you will, some kind of amino acids and things like that, which all resulted from chemicals which resulted from a big bang that everything ultimately came from a big bang that happened. And this is the other. And this is the last portion that's really kind of interesting. And that is that. And this is. This is one thing that you don't really see a lot of people discussing. And that is the. The final thing. Where did the big bang come from? And according to modern science, everything came from. Guess what?

Carah Burrell [00:48:30] Nothing.

Rodney Meldrum [00:48:31] Nothing. That's right. Nothing.

Carah Burrell [00:48:33] And I won't do what I've. Because I've heard other interviews where I won't do what I've heard other people do where they say science just doesn't say that. Because I do agree there are some people who said that. Yeah. But I also think that there are some don't.

Rodney Meldrum [00:48:45] Who was it that basically said that everything came from nothing through the big bang?

Carah Burrell [00:48:51] It doesn't.

Rodney Meldrum [00:48:52] Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking is. Is science.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] No, no, no, no, no. Stephen Hawking is a scientist. He's not science.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:01] He. He was in Time magazine as the. As.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] That's fine. But that. I'm just telling you it's a straw man. One scientist is not science.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:09] But I understand what you mean.

Carah Burrell [00:49:11] I'm trying to understand what you mean.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:12] Time magazine says he was the man of the century.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] I guarantee you any good scientist, smartest

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:17] man that probably ever lived, he's been.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] I'm just telling you, in my view, this is a straw man. Any good scientist would say one scientist is.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:24] So, so, so you think that all the scientists disagree with Stephen Hawking?

John Dehlin [00:49:28] I'm saying. I'm saying that I think this is a rogue.

Carah Burrell [00:49:31] I think they would say that he,

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:32] they hold him up as quasi.

John Dehlin [00:49:35] But that. I think you're taking him out of context and I think we're in a rabbit hole.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:40] Well, that's, that's the reason why I was going to. I wanted to bring up my slides because I could show you in his book where he says unequivocally that everything came from nothing. So I have to.

John Dehlin [00:49:50] It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Hold on.

Rodney Meldrum [00:49:52] If you're going to believe in modern science, then you have to go all the way there, John. Which means that you basically, you have to agree that he's. He is the epitome of science and he says that everything. Go ahead, Karen.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] You go for sure.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:02] So you're denying science. Right. So are you denying science then? Because Stephen Hawking.

John Dehlin [00:50:06] Okay, I'm gonna let Care respond, and then I'm gonna respond car you respond.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:09] You see the problem, what we have.

John Dehlin [00:50:11] No, no, no.

Carah Burrell [00:50:11] I love talking about this. I do. I really like it. So the thing is. So Rod, you just said that he is science. He is science.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:21] He's like the face of science.

Carah Burrell [00:50:22] He's the face of science. I want you to. I want you to think on what you just said. No one person can represent a methodology. He's somebody who has spent time in that methodology, but he isn't that methodology. So.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:37] Well, he's not the, you know, he's not the.

Carah Burrell [00:50:40] He's not the method, so.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:43] But he is. But you have to admit he's probably the biggest influencer of all of science, for sure. Yes or no?

Carah Burrell [00:50:49] Yeah, he's. He's.

Rodney Meldrum [00:50:50] He's Time magazine. He's Time magazine scientist of the century.

John Dehlin [00:50:55] He is that. He is the biggest influence maybe in a certain type of physics, but no, Darwin, like, there's so many other scientists

Rodney Meldrum [00:51:02] that are more influential people who were living. Now he.

John Dehlin [00:51:05] Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [00:51:06] All I'm trying to say is that I think what kind of. What I'm hearing is like you're, you're trying to look for Somebody who represents science to say something so that you have, like, kind of more wiggle room. But if I were to be. I think if we were. Let me ask it this quick, this question. Do you think. Keep Stephen Hawking out of this. Let's say that he had a bad day and he forgot to take his pills. And he said, just forget. Just pretend that we're going to put him to.

Rodney Meldrum [00:51:35] But he put it in his book.

Carah Burrell [00:51:36] He put it in his book. Sorry.

Rodney Meldrum [00:51:37] He wasn't having a bad day for a second. This is his belief.

Carah Burrell [00:51:40] Do you believe, though, Wait, Rod, do you believe that if you could pull 1,000 scientists from all different maybe backgrounds that they would agree that that is true, that it all came from nothing?

John Dehlin [00:51:52] Do you think that's, what, a thousand speculation? You don't know?

Rodney Meldrum [00:51:56] Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously I don't know, but. But I would have to say this. I didn't see anybody pushing back on Stephen Hawking and from his book saying that everything came from nothing.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] Okay?

Rodney Meldrum [00:52:07] So that. And that. And that clearly is not something that's observable. It's not repeatable. And that's not science. It is philosophy.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] So, Rod, you've made your point. Carah, do you have a response to Rod's point? And then I want to make a response to Rod's point.

Carah Burrell [00:52:17] Yeah. No, but it's. I still just want to make sure that I don't lose that point I just made.

John Dehlin [00:52:28] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:52:28] That a person isn't a methodology. Science is a methodology. A person can spend their life in it, but that is not something to actually uphold is like a representative of what all scientists believe is just. I don't want to make sure that point's lost.

John Dehlin [00:52:43] That is a brilliant point. That science is a methodology. Thank you. That is brilliant. It's a way of.

Carah Burrell [00:52:49] I can barely run the soundboard, but I know some things.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] It's a way of trying. Let me. Let me respond. Please, let me respond.

Rodney Meldrum [00:52:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:57] Okay. Science is a methodology to try and make sense of the evidence that we're able to collect, period.

Rodney Meldrum [00:53:03] Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [00:53:04] Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] And no one scientist represents science or science consensus or that methodology. And what it seems like you're trying to do. Let me. Please let me finish. It seems like what you're trying to say is Stephen Hawking is a really important guy that a lot of people respect. I was able to find one thing that he said that you may or may not be taking out of context because I haven't read the original sources. And then you want to use that as kind of Like a bludgeon to then to try and invalidate a large body of science. And I'm just saying that's okay if that's what you are doing. And I'm just gonna say that is a massive straw man. That is. That is not. Is not logical or does not make sense on a gazillion levels. Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Stephen Hawking said that or not. Because what matter it. It. It's just like what one guy said about one opinion that maybe he's respected, maybe he wrote it in a book. But that doesn't change Carah's point, which is that science is a methodology. And secondly, it doesn't mean that that is what science believes. It just means that's what you interpreted to be what Stephen Hawking wrote in a book. That's all you. That's the only point you made.

Rodney Meldrum [00:54:22] But the problem is is that he's not the only one. In fact they have. The other books were written by John Krauss. So wait a universe from nothing.

John Dehlin [00:54:29] We'll bring on.

Rodney Meldrum [00:54:29] It will bring on anybody who is. Who has gone in any scientists who have gone and basically tried to refute Stephen Hawking's ide. Everything came from.

Carah Burrell [00:54:38] You know, that's okay.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] So let's note that in the show notes.

Rodney Meldrum [00:54:40] So it's all.

Carah Burrell [00:54:41] The point of this whole rigamarole is to say what Rod believes about what other scientists believe. So what is the. You said that that was more part of the big picture of the framework.

Rodney Meldrum [00:54:51] If I explain just a little bit. I think we should move on how difference between data and the.

John Dehlin [00:54:56] I don't think so. Let's do that conversation with an actual scientist here.

Carah Burrell [00:55:01] Put a pin in it.

John Dehlin [00:55:02] And Carah, we'll remember it. You and Jen will put in the show notes his quote from Stephen Hawking.

Carah Burrell [00:55:07] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:08] And what you're asserting and so forth.

John Dehlin [00:55:10] And then we can have a scientist respond to that.

Carah Burrell [00:55:13] Okay. Because we're an hour in and we haven't got to the heartland mom yet.

John Dehlin [00:55:15] And I'm really working hard to get there. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to you. I'm trying to be respectful to you and actually talk about the things that you want to talk about.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:24] But the reason context either.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] I don't think we are.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:27] Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [00:55:28] But.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:28] But you've given me that. I appreciate that.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] But for me we have to talk about Adam and Eve. Global Flood.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:34] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:55:36] Genetics and evolution. Because all of that impacts the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] Which is why you care about it?

Carah Burrell [00:55:42] Get such snazzy outfits. This is all.

John Dehlin [00:55:46] Okay. All right, so I think seven items.

The Mound Builder Myth and Ancient Israelites

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] I love it.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:50] Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] Okay, so let's, let's sort of switch to Book of Mormon now.

Rodney Meldrum [00:55:57] Yay.

John Dehlin [00:55:58] Yeah. You like that? Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [00:56:00] I love it.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] But we're going to start, we're going to start before the Book of Mormon because Joseph Smith is, you know, is that whole thing attributed as the creator revealer or author of the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [00:56:11] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] So I'm going to just, we're going to talk a little bit of Joseph Smith history prior to the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [00:56:15] Okay, awesome.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] So first of all, I'm sure you are familiar with the mound builder myth.

Rodney Meldrum [00:56:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] And I'm going to restate my understanding of it really quick.

Rodney Meldrum [00:56:26] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] Decades or even 100 years before Joseph Smith, there was a well established theory that kind of went something like this. You know, white colonizers of, of Northern America were stumbling on these ruins that were really impressive. But there's no way as they're sort of like displacing and even killing Native Americans to, to populate the lands. It was not in their wheelhouse or their conceptualization that these dark skinned people, savages in their word, I'm using air quotes there could have ever done anything really sophisticated or advanced.

Rodney Meldrum [00:57:10] Right.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] So it must have been white skinned people who did all the cool advanced stuff. And that's where the mound builder myth came up which was that. That there was a dark skinned set of Native Americans and a light skinned set of Native Americans. And it must have been been the light skinned Native Americans that killed off the dark skinned Native Americans. But it was the light skinned ones that had done all the cool advanced, you know, building of buildings and art and, and language and civilization. That was the mound builder myth. That a light, light skinned.

Rodney Meldrum [00:57:50] That.

John Dehlin [00:57:50] Sorry, that a dark skinned. I'm. You're right, I saw, I said that wrong. That a dark skinned set of Native Americans killed off the light skinned set of Native Americans who were the ones that were responsible for all the advanced stuff.

Rodney Meldrum [00:58:04] That's the Book of Mormon story. But that's not really what, you know, what the, the general consensus of the day was that mound builder mythology, as I understand. Can I maybe explain just a little nuance.

John Dehlin [00:58:15] Let's finish what I understand and then I'll have you respond. Okay. So the mound builder myth had a dark skinned set of Native Americans killing off a light skinned set of Native Americans. That's my understanding of it. And that, that this was published in somewhere up to 10 or 20 books in the decades prior to, to Joseph Smith coming up with the Book of Mormon. And so that would be a clear explanation for the Lamanite Nephite kind of narrative in the Book of Mormon that it would have been something that Joseph Smith would have absorbed from view of the Hebrews, which had. And other types of sources. So what are your thoughts on the mound builder myth and the dark skinned, light skin theory? And then there's a second part of that which is that it's also viewed as a very racist sort of idea that dark skinned people couldn't have done the cool scientific stuff. So it must have been the light skinned. So there's two parts to that.

Rodney Meldrum [00:59:18] Okay, let me just kind of address the, the mound builder myth as I understand it basically from my research. And that is essentially, you know, there, there's a lot of the Europeans when they came here to America, they knew the Bible and they knew that there was a, you know, there's this dispersion that happened about 722 BC by the Assyrians. They attacked the northern tribes of Israel. They were dispersed out and so forth. And so there was this desire to say, well, who are these people? Where did they go? You know, the 10 tribes, where are they? Mountain builder myth was essentially saying that it was the 10 tribes that came over here and built all these big cities and so forth. That, and, and that, that they were trying to show forth evidence of the 10 tribes dispersal by coming here in America. And then, and then later on it was these, you know, these Native Americans that came in and, and wiped them out and so forth and that, and so that was kind of the mound building death. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:15] So the white, so the white skinned,

Rodney Meldrum [01:00:18] the, the Caucasian basically, Hebrews if you will, had somehow made it here to America and then that somehow they got wiped out by the dark skinned people who they found here now.

John Dehlin [01:00:30] Okay, right. Yeah. And that. Okay, thank you for that clarification. I think I'm okay with that interpretation. Yeah, I know you've studied this more than me.

Rodney Meldrum [01:00:38] Right.

John Dehlin [01:00:38] But, but, but the general narrative that a dark skinned group kills off the light skinned group is and basically predated Joseph Smith.

Rodney Meldrum [01:00:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:47] And it was not an original idea. It was something that a lot of authors had written about.

Rodney Meldrum [01:00:51] Right. Because everybody was saying, well, where's, where's the 10 tribes? You know, what's going on? You know, where's that? This long before Joseph Smith, ever since the Bible was published, basically. And so the idea was is that, well, when they came here that what they found, the Native Americans were in a situation where they're primarily kind of hunter gathering. You know, we didn't see Native Americans living in big, you know, cities and so forth. Typically they were more tribal.

John Dehlin [01:01:16] That's in North America.

Rodney Meldrum [01:01:17] In North America. Right, In North America.

Carah Burrell [01:01:19] Right.

Rodney Meldrum [01:01:19] And. And so kind of the idea was as well, well, gosh, you know, but. But we do find some evidences of big civilizations here. We have like Cahokia there and, and St. Louis, which wasn't known really at the time. But there's other mounds and mounds depending. Mounds everywhere. In fact, one of the interesting things is that the sheer number of mounds shows that there had to be a pretty major civilization.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:01:40] You know, back in the, back in. In the late 1700s or the 1800s, there were. There were maps that were made actually late 1800s, actually. Cyrus Thomas map shows like 250,000 mound sites. But today, but the latest research, there's a book called the Ancient American Mounds and Earthworks that's illustrated encyclopedia of Native American Mounds and Earthworks. And according to that, the authors of that book, there's over 1 million mound sites. And many of those mound sites have multiple mounds. We're talking 2, 3 million mounds. That's not a small organ, a small group.

John Dehlin [01:02:17] You don't need to dig into that.

Rodney Meldrum [01:02:18] There's at the point that I made

Carah Burrell [01:02:19] millions, you need to dig into it. That's for the archaeologists. Right.

Rodney Meldrum [01:02:23] But. But the point that I'm making here is that it was thought that the Native Americans had never achieved anything close to civilization. And that. And then. And you're right, it's very racist, actually came from Darwinian evolution. And the book called Ancient Societies, which was written by Lewis Henry Morgan, in which he actually says that all societies go through three stages of development. He says they start off as ignorant savages. And that's where the term ignorant savages was applied to the Native Americans. It was because of his book.

Carah Burrell [01:02:52] I was wrong.

Rodney Meldrum [01:02:53] And then after that, they move up to civilization. Excuse me, to barbarism and then up to that to civilization or, you know, marvelous us. And so that was what the book was about.

Carah Burrell [01:03:07] What's it called again?

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:07] It's called Ancient Society.

Carah Burrell [01:03:10] When was it published?

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:11] It was back in the 1800s. Well, my question is Lewis Henry Morgan, by the way, he actually had many correspondences directly with guy that you guys are probably familiar with over in Europe, names Charles Darwin.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Right. But even, even if, even if evolution has been used in bad ways, including Hitler using eugenics.

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:31] To justify genocide.

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:33] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:33] That, that doesn't discredit it. That doesn't necessarily invalidate evolution as an

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:39] explanation for people can use anything for good or for bad.

John Dehlin [01:03:43] Okay, my, the purpose of my question was to just ask if you acknowledge that this light skin, dark skin thing,

Rodney Meldrum [01:03:52] it was being bantered about. Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:03:55] That, that, that Joseph could have easily gotten that narrative that he incorporates into the Book of Mormon from the mound builder myth.

Rodney Meldrum [01:04:04] If you were alive and you were somewhat interested in these kinds of things, you probably would be familiar with the, the, the whole. Because they were finding these, these mounds all over, people are trying to find an explanation why what are these mounds? Because we don't see the Native Americans making the mounds today. So it must have been somebody else. And that was kind of the general idea was, is it was probably the ten tribes.

John Dehlin [01:04:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:04:27] Okay, so those missed explanation though is very different from the ten tribes explanation as you, as you're well aware. Yeah, I mean the Book of Mormon isn't talking about the 10 tribes, but

John Dehlin [01:04:36] there's, but I'm, I'm unaware of any evidence that Hebrews were living in that, that the tribes of Israel came over to the United States, you know, to, to North America, Central or South America.

Rodney Meldrum [01:04:48] That's what I'm here for, John.

John Dehlin [01:04:51] Okay. All right, so, okay, so you acknowledge that the mound builder myth predated Joseph Smith and that that could have been the source for where he gets the idea of dark skin and light skinned.

Rodney Meldrum [01:05:01] It was clearly something that was being bantered about in his time frame. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:05] And you, you acknowledge that it's viewed as a very racist theory. Now, the dark.

Rodney Meldrum [01:05:10] Because it was racist, but because Central

John Dehlin [01:05:14] and South America, Mexico, Central, they were agrarian cultures. They developed corn, they developed tomatoes, they developed beans, they domesticated animals and all the temples and massive cities. We are to respect our Native American ancestors, not to think they were savages.

Rodney Meldrum [01:05:32] And to that point that you're making, I think this is really critical because I love our Native American brothers and so forth and sisters, all of them. Yeah, but the, the, the situation that the Europeans found the Native Americans in. See, they said, well they're, they're just a bunch of hunter gatherers. But what they don't realize is that this civilization had just undergone the, one of the biggest depopulations in human history because of the, because of their lack of natural immunity to disease and so forth. They died like flies. When Europeans brought over certain dis. And by estimations about 75 to 80, sometimes even some. I've heard estimates up to 90% of their population died. And so I give this example to people living today. What if tomorrow morning 90% of everybody woke up dead?

John Dehlin [01:06:23] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:06:24] How would our civilization react to that? If all of a sudden we didn't have people to run our energy grid and drive the trucks and move the stuff, how soon would it take for our civilization to completely collapse into basically a hunter gatherer society? That's what the Native Americans had just gone, undergone. And so then the Europeans come over and they're a bunch of hunter gatherers. The assumption was is that because of evolution and uniformitarianism. Well, that must be the way it's always been. And that's not the case. They were highly civilized. They made these massive mounds and this huge civilization and then they collapsed.

John Dehlin [01:06:59] But do you believe Israelis, you can't sustain. Do you believe Israelites made the mounds or Native Americans made the mounds?

Carah Burrell [01:07:05] Mounds.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:06] The Native Americans aren't Israelites and they made the mounds.

John Dehlin [01:07:09] For you, they're white.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:10] For you, the name of people of God.

John Dehlin [01:07:13] Let me just Book A Mormon is correct.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:15] They are Israelites.

John Dehlin [01:07:16] I just want to ask the question.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:17] You believe that white Israelites made the North American mounds both white and dark.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:25] If the Book of Mormon is correct, then you have both. You have a light skinned and a dark skinned people.

John Dehlin [01:07:30] But primarily Nephites.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:34] Yeah, I would say primarily the Nephites.

Carah Burrell [01:07:36] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] So that's where, that is where a lot of modern archaeologists are going to take offense that you believe that you believe that white Israelites and dark and, and some darts, they're all brothers.

Rodney Meldrum [01:07:51] Right. I mean, the Book of Mormon is true. They're not two races, they're the same race. They're just. Some of them have darker skin because they intermarried with Asiatic people and that were already here. And so they had a darker skin, darker features. And, and, but they were all the same. I mean, let's face it, Lehigh and his family, they're all the same family, whether the Lamanites or the Nephites, they're all the same family. Correct.

John Dehlin [01:08:16] So you. So when it talks, when the Book of Mormon. I don't want to go back into the race debate, but when the Book of Mormon talks about God giving them a mark or turning the Lamanite skin dark because of wickedness so that they would appear repulsive to their white counterparts,

Rodney Meldrum [01:08:36] what was the wicked.

John Dehlin [01:08:37] Are you believing that it was, it was the Israelites intermingling and having children with the extant dark skinned Native Americans that introduced God's curse to the Lamanites?

Rodney Meldrum [01:08:56] Yeah. When you say Native Americans, basically. Yes, they were, they were Asiatic people that were here or to the Israelites.

John Dehlin [01:09:03] So, so let me just get this straight. Israelites come over, they're white, they build a bunch of cool stuff. God wants to curse the, the bad ones. And so he has them marry and intermingle with extant dark skinned Native Americans or, and that's how, that's how the cur. But that's how the.

Rodney Meldrum [01:09:25] Let me, let me just clarify just really quickly. So it's not. So basically when they, when they arrive here, they're Israelites and Israelites are Caucasians.

John Dehlin [01:09:32] They're white Israelites, in your view? Well, because I, most of the people

Rodney Meldrum [01:09:36] I've talked to are primarily white, John.

John Dehlin [01:09:38] I mean, most people I talked to say that Jesus was brown skinned. That's one thing I didn't mention last.

Rodney Meldrum [01:09:43] Olive skin, whatever you want to call

John Dehlin [01:09:45] it, you know, not white, dark skin.

Rodney Meldrum [01:09:49] Okay, well, I mean we, we can try to talk about skin color as being race thing, but bottom line is they were Hebrews. And, and, and within it, within the Hebrew population, you're going to have lighter skinned people, darker skinned people. It's the same in almost every race. I mean, some, some races have, you know, some races have very dark skin and, and medium skin. And so skin color is not an indicative necessarily always of just a particular race. So bottom line. So you have the, in the Book of Mormon account, you have Hebrews which are Caucasians, right? Then they come over here. Then the, when you say, when you talk about the curse, what was the curse about, John? It was about the Lamanites. I believe this. Now this is, this is me. Okay, So I believe that the Lamanites broke their covenant to intermarry with their own people, their own kindred, I think is what it's called in the, in, in the scriptures. And then because of breaking that covenant to marry within their own kindred, they married outside of that. They made Asiatic people who have the darker features. And so their children are going to have darker features because it's genetically dominant.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] So God would have given.

Rodney Meldrum [01:10:58] The Nephites didn't do that. They intermarried with each other.

John Dehlin [01:11:01] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:11:02] And so they remained basically Caucasian, or Hebrew if you want to call it that.

Lamanites, Native Americans, and Racial Theories

John Dehlin [01:11:06] So let me restate this.

Rodney Meldrum [01:11:08] So it's not so much a curse as it is a mark that they had broken their covenant and intermarried outside of their people.

John Dehlin [01:11:14] Okay, so let me restate. So white descendants of Layman and Lemuel who were Israeli were commanded by God never to have sex with or marry the dark skinned extant Native Americans that

Rodney Meldrum [01:11:32] were living here, it was their kindred. So that's the reason why Abraham went to a specific place to have, you know, find a wife for Isaac?

John Dehlin [01:11:41] No, but what did I. What did I say that was wrong? God commanded the white skinned descendants of Laman and Lemuel to not intermarry or have sex with the dark skinned Asiatic extant Native Americans that they were living with. How is that?

Rodney Meldrum [01:11:58] No, no, it was. It was the Nephites that were said they were commanded not to intermarry with their Lamanite brethren who had intermixed with the Asiatic.

John Dehlin [01:12:06] But you're saying that God did not want the descendants of Layman and Lemuel to intermarry with the dark skinned Asiatic Native Americans and they violated God's covenant.

Rodney Meldrum [01:12:21] Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:22] By intermarrying with dark skinned Asiatic extant Native Americans.

Rodney Meldrum [01:12:27] I don't know if the Asiatic people were specifically dark skinned, but I'm assuming that they probably were.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] So what I just said is.

Rodney Meldrum [01:12:33] Mongolians.

John Dehlin [01:12:34] What I just said that God would have said, hey, all you white Israelis that came over on the boat and

Rodney Meldrum [01:12:40] have made covenants with me and don't marry the dark people direct descendants from Abraham. So Abraham carries that covenant.

John Dehlin [01:12:46] Okay, no, I get that, but I just. I'm asking you, this is yes or no. God said white skinned Israelite don't intermarry

Rodney Meldrum [01:12:54] with non covenant people with dark, dark skinned. No, no dark skinned. Anything about dark skin said non covenant people. That was the reason for it being considered a curse, I think, is because they were intermarrying with people who were not of the Abrahamic covenant.

John Dehlin [01:13:08] But the Book of Mormon said that's not what the Book of Mormon says, in my understanding. And Carrie, you can correct me if I'm wrong. What the Book of Mormon seems to say is we're going to put a curse on a curse of dark skin on the descendants of Laman and Lemuel so that they will be repugnant and ugly to the white skinned Nephites.

Rodney Meldrum [01:13:31] We're going to jump right into the race thing again here for.

John Dehlin [01:13:34] Well, you can just tell me if that's what you believe.

Carah Burrell [01:13:35] Can I intervene for a second?

Rodney Meldrum [01:13:36] No.

Carah Burrell [01:13:37] So what I hear Rod saying is that they were not supposed to intermarry with the covenant people with the non covenant people. Sorry, non covenant people Covenant and non covenant do not go together.

Rodney Meldrum [01:13:45] Right.

Carah Burrell [01:13:46] And the sign of somebody not being in the covenant is they broke the

Rodney Meldrum [01:13:50] covenant, intermarried with people outside of the Abrahamic covenant. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Therefore, they intermarried with the Asiatic people who are already here, who had the darker skin and darker features. And so their children, you know, had those features.

Carah Burrell [01:14:05] Okay. Do you mind if I ask a different question?

John Dehlin [01:14:08] Well, are you changing the subject?

Carah Burrell [01:14:09] Yeah, because people are saying we're circling the drain, and I do not want to do that again.

Rodney Meldrum [01:14:12] Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:13] But I think. I think we. I think we've already.

Rodney Meldrum [01:14:16] Yeah, we kind of beat that horse pretty good.

Carah Burrell [01:14:18] Okay, so do you believe. Who do you believe was living the law of Moses at the time? So.

Rodney Meldrum [01:14:24] Well, the Nephites were living the lives of Moses. We know that. But the Lamanites may have continued to do that. There's some indication that they may have continued that for at least a while, but I think that they lost it after a while.

Carah Burrell [01:14:34] Right. So in Alma, chapter 25, verse 13, says, Yea, they did keep the law of Moses. And we're talking about. Yeah, the. You said Lamanites, right?

Rodney Meldrum [01:14:46] The Nephites. And maybe some of the Lamanites were still doing that.

Carah Burrell [01:14:49] Yeah. And so. And so we're just. We're just asking.

Rodney Meldrum [01:14:53] The Lamanites were at least aware of the law of Moses. And. And we know that for a couple of reasons. For one of the reasons, for example, when the. When the Gadian robbers came to. Came to war against the Nephites, and it was really surprising that they had nothing but a lamb skin about their loins. Well, why would they choose a. Why a lamb skin? There's probably more deer and. And so forth in America than there would be lambs. Why did they choose a lamb skin? I think it's because they were directly mocking the Nephites who were using the lambs as sacrificial animals. And by killing their lambs, they actually put it on their loins. They were actually mocking the. The Nephites religious rituals to. To sacrifice a lamb.

Carah Burrell [01:15:34] Let me. Let me ask you this, though. So in your estimation. So I just wanted to pull up. This is Rod's book.

Rodney Meldrum [01:15:42] Annotated.

Carah Burrell [01:15:43] Annotated Book of Mormon. And if you go through it, there's just lots of pictures of like, we were talking about Israeli things along that the Native Americans that Europeans. So in your. And your. In your worldview that the Israelis eventually be. Are what we understand to be the Native Americans. And so there's pictures I can hold up to the camera if you guys want. But yeah, so there's pictures of like the different locks that, you know, people

Rodney Meldrum [01:16:17] who've been living long past, they take their hair. Yeah, yeah. But basically There's Native Americans.

Carah Burrell [01:16:24] If you guys can't see if you're listening on audio, there's, you know, Native Americans today. These pictures are probably taken 1908, the earliest pictures of Native Americans. And they have braids going down the side of their head. And they have like, braids on the top of their head that is similar to like this, like looking like an Orthodox Jewish man or some. Something in. Yeah. Orthodox Jew.

Rodney Meldrum [01:16:47] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:47] Wearing. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:16:51] At the Wailing Wall of an Orthodox Jew, basically. He has two things on his. Going on there. Number one is he has his, his, his. Has his, his little phylactery, which is a little like wooden box, and they put. They like write scriptures on it. So they put it in the box. So the scriptures are literally on their mind. Okay. So.

Carah Burrell [01:17:09] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:17:09] And then. And then they have. They take this, this hair lock and almost no other people do this. They take this hair lock right here where I don't have any hair and actually braid it. And then they let that grow long and they pull it in front of their ear. I mean, what other people do that?

John Dehlin [01:17:27] So you're saying that if, if Native Americans, if you can find some photos with some hairstyles similar to. To Israelites that you see that maybe

Rodney Meldrum [01:17:37] that's Israelite influence there is their Israelite heritage. See, I look at Native Americans as being some of the covenant people of God.

John Dehlin [01:17:45] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:17:45] Who are living the law of Moses is what I just want to clarify. So you believe that that was them. That was them living the law of Moses is the reason they started bap.

John Dehlin [01:17:52] People.

Rodney Meldrum [01:17:52] You know, they lost the laws of Moses thing. But some of the ancient traditions would have continued on. As an example, in the Bible, the, The. The Lord commanded the Israelites to have a, A, A fringe on their garment. It's right there. And I think it's in numbers or whatever. In the Bible, they have a fringe upon their garment through all time. Well, one of the things that makes Native American clothing and garb basically is what. I mean, the fringes on their garment. Why do they Native Americans have fringes on their garment? I mean, it could be just something that was just kind of cool. Some people say, well, maybe it helped to camouflage them when they're hunting. There's lots of different possible reasons, but it is interesting that the Jews were commanded by the Lord to have fringes on their garment. And here we have Native Americans with fringes on.

Carah Burrell [01:18:42] Coincidence at all? It's not a coincidence in your life.

John Dehlin [01:18:45] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:18:46] It's a cultural thing.

Carah Burrell [01:18:47] You think it's just passed On.

Rodney Meldrum [01:18:49] I could give you a dozen different cultural things that are. That are unique to Israelites and also to Native Americans, which.

Carah Burrell [01:18:56] Yeah, they're in that book. Like, that's what I was saying. That's why I pulled that one out as an example.

Rodney Meldrum [01:18:59] I think if you have one or two, maybe that's okay. That could be a coincidence. But when you have a whole bunch of cultural things that match up, I think then you have to. You have to look at it as being maybe something more than a coincidence.

John Dehlin [01:19:09] And I'll just say there's another. There's another critique of what you're doing. It's called parallelism. It's. It's. Discard any evidence that goes counter to your theory that's in. Oh, all the. The entire disciplines.

Rodney Meldrum [01:19:22] Sometimes you have to put.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Please let me respond. So the entire discipline of geology, the entire discipline of genetics, the consensus around multiple disciplines will discard all that. But if we can find a hairstyle of. Of a. Of a photo of some Israelis that match a hairstyle of some Native Americans a couple hundred years ago, somehow that's compelling evidence. And that's called parallelism.

Rodney Meldrum [01:19:44] Right.

John Dehlin [01:19:45] And it's something that the Maxwell Institute people and the Farms people have all done very. And I think it's also interpreted as just a blatant example of confirmation bias, of arranging the evidence.

Rodney Meldrum [01:19:59] And I would have to say, based on a lot of things. I mean, actually, John Sorensen's most recent book is actually full of those kind of parallelisms and things like that. You know, it's kind of like saying, you know, you know what, in the Book of Mormon, they talked about having banners and flags and waving banners and flags. And here we have in Central America, we have, you know, some kind of a depiction of or, you know, you know, saying these people had banners and flags. Well, because this people had banners and flags. Said they had banners, like, they must be the Book of Mormon people.

John Dehlin [01:20:28] Yeah. So Sorensen does.

Rodney Meldrum [01:20:30] We all know that's ridiculous.

John Dehlin [01:20:30] Sorensen does it, too. Karen, did you have a final thought?

Carah Burrell [01:20:33] I have a question, but it is

John Dehlin [01:20:34] an important aspect because I'm trying to follow a timeline, but.

Carah Burrell [01:20:36] Yeah, yeah. So I just wanted to add to John's question and stuff, and I'm. Thank you again. I just want to take a pause to say thank you for being so patient with us as we work out these.

Rodney Meldrum [01:20:45] This is great.

Carah Burrell [01:20:45] These issues and stuff. So I'm having a good time. Hope everyone else is having a good time, too. So just to John's point about parallelism and Things like that. There are people in the church. BH Roberts comes to mind. People who had a serious conviction in the church. And they looked at things like the way that the language would have had to evolve from Hebrew into the Native American languages and so many other things that were like, there are small little coincidences and parallelisms. And you could show us a hundred. But I feel like the weight of language and how it evolves, that outweighs. That outweighs the scales. And it did for B.H. roberts, I think, in my opinion, and what the evidence is. I don't know if you agree with that, John, but, like, it just seems like, what do you do with that? That there are people out there who. They could know those. There are people. You could give me a hundred parallels between the way that Native Americans dress, Rod. And parallel that exactly with like. Like Hebrew culture. Sorry, I'm not saying that. Right.

Rodney Meldrum [01:21:38] Hebrew culture.

Carah Burrell [01:21:39] Hebrew culture. You could give me a hundred of those. But if you can't show the line of. In which people were speaking Hebrew when they got off of Nephi's boat and now they're speaking all of these languages, these Native American language that have nothing to do with Hebrew, that.

Rodney Meldrum [01:21:58] Well, just give you one quick example. The Algonquin. The Algonquin language. There's over 110 tribes that use the Hun.

Carah Burrell [01:22:04] The.

Rodney Meldrum [01:22:04] The Algonquin language. And many of them can't even really communicate with themselves. But we know that they all came genetically from each other and they all started with the same language. Language changes a lot. That's the reason why I don't use language a lot in my research. As. As hard evidence for really anything as far as the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:22:19] It's inconvenient. Using language is very inconvenient.

Rodney Meldrum [01:22:22] Well, it changes.

John Dehlin [01:22:23] We're going to get to this. We're going to get to this because it's one of the major critiques of both the Book of Mormon and the Heartland theory. So, Carrie, you're bringing up a really good point, but language is hard.

Rodney Meldrum [01:22:34] Language is hard.

John Dehlin [01:22:35] But see, Carah, my. I'll answer for you, Rod, if you tell me if this is right. Rod's already told us that if major bodies of science conflict with the fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture, he's going to go with the fundamentals in script interpretation of

Rodney Meldrum [01:22:49] Scripture and have faith every time.

Carah Burrell [01:22:50] I'm just pulling up examples of how that is. So, yeah, there's so many examples that come to mind.

John Dehlin [01:22:55] Totally, totally, totally. Yeah, that's valid. It. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:23:00] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:23:01] Okay. So we've talked about, we've talked about. Okay, so we, we talked about the mountain builder myth that predates Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith's Treasure Digging and Historical Credibility

Rodney Meldrum [01:23:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:23:09] Really quickly there. You know, we've covered our Mormon stories quite considerably. Joseph Smith's multiple years treasure digging where he, he believed in the fables or myths that there were buried silver mines or buried pirate treasure or buried treasure in the ground. He would use a stone and a hat to guide people. He would get paid to use a stone and a hat to guide people to alleged burial grounds. Then he would point them there, say, start digging. Sometimes they would sacrifice an animal, a chicken or a sheep or a goat or whatever, start digging. And then always sort of like miraculously, as soon as they're about to get to the alleged treasure, he would say, oh, the spirit took it away, no treasure. He was convicted of this. He was found guilty in a court of law of breaking the law and of engaging in illegal activities, scrying, glass licking, etc. That's a well established history that the modern Mormon Church even acknowledges. How do you make sense of that illegal and disreputable behavior by Joseph Smith prior to his creation the Book of Mormon?

Rodney Meldrum [01:24:19] All right, then that, that basically comes down to, in a court of law, you have basically a hierarchy of witnesses, right? I mean, some witnesses are more credible than other witnesses. I mean, you bring in expert testimony for certain areas. So the question is, when it comes down to history, and this is, this is one, one area that I would love to, in fact I have, I even talked to Jonathan Neville, who was kind of our resident historian person, and he'd be happy to come and speak. But wait sometime.

John Dehlin [01:24:43] Okay, so let me restate it, but let me. You agree that Joseph Smith engaged in treasure, treasure digging with the stone in a hat, yes or no?

Rodney Meldrum [01:24:51] No.

John Dehlin [01:24:52] Okay, so you say he never did

Rodney Meldrum [01:24:54] any of the, the, the historical sources that I'm aware of, and I've read a lot of them, okay. Is that he was hired to go and do work, physical labor for people who were looking for these things. They, they, they then claimed, well, you have a stone, you know, can you use this? Or whatever. Joseph Smith actually tried to talk people out of the treasure digging. Okay, that's several instances and so forth. But I didn't hear you mention that particular part of it. But that, but was he engaged in that himself? Did he go out and start trying to find treasure himself? Why was it he was always working for someone else when he was doing this?

John Dehlin [01:25:30] Because they had money to pay him.

Rodney Meldrum [01:25:31] Right? Because he didn't have money to do this.

John Dehlin [01:25:33] But he was doing it to make money.

Rodney Meldrum [01:25:36] But if he thought he was going to get rich doing it, John, then why wouldn't he just go out and do it himself and not have to, say, split the money with anybody else?

John Dehlin [01:25:41] Because there was no treasure, and so there was no way to get rich.

Carah Burrell [01:25:43] Yeah, but.

Rodney Meldrum [01:25:44] But if he, if he was really thinking that he had this ability to go out and find treasure, why was he poor almost his entire life?

John Dehlin [01:25:51] Or. Or he was fooling people and engaging in a disreputable behavior, which is what,

Rodney Meldrum [01:25:56] again, it comes down to who's writing the history.

John Dehlin [01:25:59] No, no, no, I. And that's fine. We can argue. I just want to know what you believe. So you believe you disagree with the modern Mormon Church. The modern Mormon Church came out with a Gospel topics essay where it acknowledges that Joseph Smith used a stone and a hat to seek for buried treasure and no treasure was ever found. The modern Mormon Church, its Gospel topics essay, all of its scholars, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, Patrick Mason, Spencer Fluman, they all agree that the modern Mormon Church, that Joseph Smith engaged in treasure digging with a stone in a hat, that was illegal. And you, Rod Meldrum, say they're all. Wait, you, Rod Meldrum, are saying the modern Mormon Church and all of its top historians and scholars are wrong on that point. Yes or no?

Rodney Meldrum [01:26:41] That is not a yes or no answer. Okay. And when. And when I come down to that, basically. Let me, let me go into a little bit. How it, how did we get there? Because, because you know for as well as I did, tell me what you,

John Dehlin [01:26:53] what do you believe? You just believe that the bottom line

Rodney Meldrum [01:26:57] is, is that, that, that if you are a historian, like, let's say, Richard Bushman, okay, for example, if you're a historian and, and you go to academic schooling and training, you are taught in no equivocal terms that basically you do not ever do a history from one viewpoint from one vantage point. You have to, you have to bring in all the different vantage points, or else it's not an accurate history because then it becomes more propaganda. Right? So this, so this is, this is a thing that is taught to historians. This is something that they're supposed to do. You never tell a history from one viewpoint. So in doing so, Richard Bushman and others, Terrell Gibbons and others, have brought in other eyewitness accounts, people like Mormonism Unveiled and other people who had an agenda against Joseph Smith. He says, well, they have a history, too, and we can't just leave that out. So they give the Mormonism unveiled, for example, the, the same level of credibility as Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith and their thing.

Carah Burrell [01:28:00] I totally see what you're saying.

Rodney Meldrum [01:28:01] So this is in Rough Stone Rolling, for example, which I know is one, you know, a primary book that, that, that you have people go and read because it does that the church, wait,

John Dehlin [01:28:12] it brings both sides out that the church sells a desire book and commissioned Richard Bushman to write like the church said Richard Bushman, we need a response to Fawn Brody. Write a history of Joseph Smith and then we'll sell the bejesus out of it. Richard Bushman did what the church asked and then the church sold a bajillion editions, tens of thousands. They sold tens of thousands of copies of Rough Stone Rolling at Deseret Book, where your books are sold, by the way. So like, so like, and just to cut this short, if you sat Richard Bushman down here and I have, or Patrick Mason or Spencer Fluman or any of these historians have said, do you believe Richard Bushman that Joseph Smith used a stone in a hat to treasure dig it was illegal and that it was not found. He would say yes, and that's what the Gospel topics essays say, and that's what the church would say.

Rodney Meldrum [01:29:04] But that is because of source documentation from people who said that they would drink the blood of Joseph Smith and would kill him if they had a chance. They're using that as their hard evidence that Joseph Smith was know that the Smith family were drunks and that Smith was all, you know, into treasury and so forth. So they're using people who had an agenda against Joseph Smith as primary source documentation and then they have introduced that into the history. So again, like, I disagree with that.

John Dehlin [01:29:33] So like geneticists, like geologists, you basically say all the historians are wrong.

Rodney Meldrum [01:29:38] Rod Meldrum people have an agenda that they're going to kill Joseph Smith and drink his blood. Then yes, I think why would Bushman,

John Dehlin [01:29:45] why would Richard Bushman and all the church historians and the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Let me ask the question. Why would they give credence to tainted sources? If they're credible historians, why would they do that?

Rodney Meldrum [01:29:57] Especially to ask them?

John Dehlin [01:30:00] Especially when it would be in the church's disadvantage to make those interpretations.

Rodney Meldrum [01:30:06] It is in the church's disadvantage because when you bring into source documentation that comes from people who hated Joseph Smith with a passion and you use that as primary source documentation of his character,

John Dehlin [01:30:17] why are they doing it?

Rodney Meldrum [01:30:18] It's kind of like this, John. If somebody, if somebody writes a book about, about you and your Character and they hit your guts. Yeah, right. Would you want that to be the primary source document of, of who you are?

John Dehlin [01:30:29] Why is church headquarters doing this is my question.

Rodney Meldrum [01:30:32] Because they are taking that, they're taking the lead from Richard Bushman, these other people who are using these source documents because they're historians. They don't want to get hammered by their historian, historian colleagues by say by, by presenting a history that's only one sided.

John Dehlin [01:30:47] So Carah, I want to, I want to let you come in next, but I just want to restate what you just said. Richard Bushman, historian, is beguiling and deceiving prophet seers and revelators in the corporate church in a way that's causing, they're relying on, in a way that's causing tens or hundreds of thousands of people every year to leave the church. And the prophet sees, or revelators aren't inspired enough or smart enough to see that Richard Bushman is fooling and hurting everybody and they're allowing it to perpetuate.

Rodney Meldrum [01:31:17] According to. I think the prophet seers and revelators have asked us as members of the church to have the spirit with us so we can discern why did they

John Dehlin [01:31:24] sell his book, a deseret book, to the.

Rodney Meldrum [01:31:26] Why did they sell a vampire book, the Deseret book.

Carah Burrell [01:31:29] All right, let me ask it this way.

Rodney Meldrum [01:31:31] I mean that is a good, that is. John, the thing is that you have a legitimate question here.

Carah Burrell [01:31:36] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [01:31:36] Okay. The problem, the thing about it is is that the prophet seers and revelators of the church, they have a job to do. They have to administer the ongoing and worldwide aspects of the church but care about people's faith. They don't have time to go into all the details about history. Nobody can be expert in everything. So they have to rely on the Terrell Gibbons and the Richard Bushman's to give us the right history.

John Dehlin [01:32:00] But it's.

Rodney Meldrum [01:32:00] If they get it wrong, it's, it's on them. Not the Brethren.

John Dehlin [01:32:05] Well, the Brethren.

Rodney Meldrum [01:32:06] The Brethren.

John Dehlin [01:32:08] The Brethren are funding the historians to lead people in the church.

Rodney Meldrum [01:32:12] Well, the historians are doing that and actually we've heard of the, I mean I probably, you probably heard of the swearing elders group that were secretly meeting to undermine the, some of the early prophets of the church.

Carah Burrell [01:32:24] All right.

Rodney Meldrum [01:32:25] History can be used as a, as a bludgeon as well. And I think that they're using this bludgeon because they really believe that Joseph Smith really was a gold digger. He really was into this cultic, occultic art stuff.

John Dehlin [01:32:37] But my point is the Brethren are letting the historians do this to the church.

Rodney Meldrum [01:32:42] They are allowing free will and they allow people to read Richard Bushman's material

John Dehlin [01:32:49] and then the book and sell it. Yeah, okay, Carah.

Carah Burrell [01:32:53] All right, so this is just where my mind goes. Stick with me here. So the whole, like, proposition of the church is that it's restored and it's led by prophets, seers and revelators. Right? And so.

Rodney Meldrum [01:33:06] And are they perfect?

Carah Burrell [01:33:08] No, that's not my point. That's like, not even my point. No, so, so it's, that's the proposition that it's led by prophet seers and revelators. Their perfection is not even, like, part of the question. More, more. The point is like,

Rodney Meldrum [01:33:20] why would they allow this?

Carah Burrell [01:33:21] No, they have the keys. Like, I went through so many Sunday school lessons throughout the whole church that like, the bishop holds these keys and the stake president holds these keys, and then the area authority holds these keys, and then the prophet holds all of the keys.

Rodney Meldrum [01:33:34] Right?

Carah Burrell [01:33:35] And like, the prophet is the person that you look to, to tell you right and wrong. We're, we sing, follow the prophet, and everything centers around the authority of the church in those keys and things.

Rodney Meldrum [01:33:47] Right?

Carah Burrell [01:33:47] And then you have the Gospel Topics essays that say things like, as a young man, Harder just added this. I believe this is in the Gospel topics essays commissioned on, on the church's website. Like, Christ has one true church. That means he has a website from the authority of his people who are to speak on earth. And they commissioned this, they signed off on this to tell people as a young man during the 1820s, Joseph, like others in his day, use a seer zone to look for lost objects and bury treasure. What do you make of that, the

John Dehlin [01:34:17] Gospel topics essay that the church.

Carah Burrell [01:34:19] Well, I mean, they have the authority and that's what they're telling people.

Rodney Meldrum [01:34:23] They're telling people lies. For many years, it seemed that. As though the church was promoting a Central American theory. And, and, and we obviously disagree with that. We haven't been censored. We haven't been. Had any, Any issues with that. So the fact that the church at one point in time had these particular positions. And, and, and when it comes down to that, you know, the brethren have to rely on people who have expertise in their particular fields. If those people get it wrong, then what is their, what is their position to say, well, Richard Bushman, you're wrong. You don't know that. You don't know the history. No, they, they're going to go with Richard Bushman and his history. So it's on Richard Bushman to tell the, the, the, the history in a factual way.

Carah Burrell [01:35:12] So they're relying on people who are lying, are they not?

Rodney Meldrum [01:35:15] Richard Bushman's not lying. These are, these are actual historical documents.

Carah Burrell [01:35:19] I thought you said that he like Mormonism unveiled.

Rodney Meldrum [01:35:21] His sources to me are suspect. Many of the sources that Richard Bushman relies on are suspect because they themselves said that they hated Joseph Smith.

Carah Burrell [01:35:30] Okay, so like for instance, rocking the hat. Joseph Smith, 18 different treasure digs. He's looking around, never finds anything. That never happened.

Rodney Meldrum [01:35:39] Joseph Smith is a treasure digger. He stunk at it because he was always poor.

Carah Burrell [01:35:43] That's the point. No, Rod, listen. That's like the point. Like there's no such thing as treasure digging. Like there's no such thing as very treasure. Like, no, Rod, seriously. There's no such thing as. That's why he was poor.

John Dehlin [01:35:53] What that speaks to is that he was potentially deceiving people who believed there was treasure. You have to understand that, right?

Rodney Meldrum [01:35:59] No, that.

John Dehlin [01:36:01] That's the, that's the idea. You understand that? That's the idea.

Rodney Meldrum [01:36:04] It's the fact that Joseph is taking people on treasure days.

Carah Burrell [01:36:10] People who believed in him.

Rodney Meldrum [01:36:12] Yeah, that.

Carah Burrell [01:36:13] That he would lead them to treasure.

Rodney Meldrum [01:36:15] But Joseph Smith shut down. I mean, you know, if you look at. Who is that the guy that he was doing that the, the digging Josiah stole. Josiah Stoll. I mean, he tried to. To get Josiah stole. To stop doing.

John Dehlin [01:36:26] After he collected the money. Rod, after he collected the money, he

Rodney Meldrum [01:36:29] was a laborer getting paid for.

John Dehlin [01:36:31] That's your interpretation. Josiah, Emma's own dad, wrote an affidavit where he said, I watch Joseph with a stone and a hat, take people to the place, tell them to start digging. That's Emma's own father who is an eyewitness. He did not say Joseph was just a shovel bearer digging. He said Joseph Smith was leading the silver mine treasure expedition. Just read Isaac Hale's affidavit that he signed and swore that was Emma's own dad who was an eyewitness, not that Joseph was just a shovel digger. You're. You're ignoring the evidence that doesn't conform with your views.

Rodney Meldrum [01:37:12] I'm not ignoring it. You are not aware of that.

John Dehlin [01:37:15] Okay, go read Isaac Hale's affidavit and you'll see that he testified that Joseph was leading the treasure dig with his stone and a hat.

Rodney Meldrum [01:37:25] And actually that's one of those questions that we could ask in depth with Jonathan Neville, for example, because he's done a lot more of that kind of church Historical research. Anyway.

John Dehlin [01:37:36] Okay, that might be helpful to close this out. We're all taught that the, that God would never let the prophets lead us astray.

Rodney Meldrum [01:37:46] So that was, that was actually something that was, as I understand it was actually something. I think it was. Spencer W. Kimballer so you don't believe,

John Dehlin [01:37:53] do you believe that God will ever let the prophets to lead its members astray?

Rodney Meldrum [01:37:58] No, I think that God would actually take him.

John Dehlin [01:38:01] So you don't believe that?

Rodney Meldrum [01:38:02] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:38:02] Okay, there's Ballard recently saying, like, stay in the boat and well, this is, this is the path.

Rodney Meldrum [01:38:08] But does that mean that they can't make mistakes? See that there's a fine line here?

Carah Burrell [01:38:12] No, the difference is, Rod, the difference is if the prophets are listening to somebody whose evidence is of an event that didn't happen. Does God have a prophet right now in President Nelson who is allowing people to John's point, to believe something about Joseph Smith that causes them into faith crisis, to leave the church, to abandon their covenants, to be forced into outer darkness? Is, is God allowing a prophet to uphold events about Joseph Smith that caused faith crises of something that didn't happen and is just an invented narrative by people who are. Had it out for Joseph Smith?

Rodney Meldrum [01:38:56] Okay, so maybe to just ask that. That. First off, I don't know the will and mind of God, but I do know this about God and that is that he allows us. He. He's given each one of us freedom and agency. I don't believe that his prophets are, are allowed to basically take that freedom and agency away from anybody, including members of the church. So when there is additional information that comes out and so forth, people have to make up their own minds. In my particular case, I choose to have faith. I choose to believe. And, and then I, and I got to try to find evidences and things that back up that belief. Okay, but when it comes down to prophet seers and revelators, are they prophet seers and revelators? Yes. Do they. They teach us that, that we are to be commanded in all things, that they're, they're going to give us direction in all things. And the answer to that, of course, no. That would go against the directive. God himself, who basically says that we are, we are free to make choices and do and do things. So do they deliberately lead people into paths that would cause faith crisis? And I think the answer to that is no. Do they allow people to have to make choices and things so that they have to choose? Do I believe in the accounts of people who wanted to drink the blood of Joseph Smith. Do I believe their accounts over Oliver Cowdery's accounts? That's a subjective thing. You have to decide who you're going to believe. All right, but without that ability to make a choice between the two, you see the problem. Then it's just the Lord's prophets just guiding, directing. People say, okay, John, you got to do this, you got to do that, got to do this, got to do that.

John Dehlin [01:40:34] That's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [01:40:35] It's way more nuanced than that. There's. There's a lot more freedom within the church than people think. To think different things.

Carah Burrell [01:40:41] I mean, seriously, less is what I hear.

Rodney Meldrum [01:40:44] What's that?

Carah Burrell [01:40:45] Follow the prophet less. There's free agency.

Rodney Meldrum [01:40:47] That's not what you're. That's not what I'm saying.

Carah Burrell [01:40:49] You said that the prophet.

Rodney Meldrum [01:40:51] The prophets allow agency, different ideas to come forward, that the prophets have taken no position. A Book of Mormon geography. But you know that I'm very much in favor of the heartland theory.

Carah Burrell [01:41:00] I've heard some things.

Rodney Meldrum [01:41:02] And John Sorensen and Jack Welch and so forth are all on the other camp. It's okay. We're all in the same tent here, but we can have different down to, like.

Carah Burrell [01:41:12] Down to, like, Russell M. Nelson.

Rodney Meldrum [01:41:14] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:41:14] Putting his face in a white hat thing. This is how Joseph Smith did it. Like, that seems like to me, like.

Rodney Meldrum [01:41:21] Well, he said, as I understand it, that's how it was done. Right. I would love to go into the translation process thing and the whole stone in the hat thing.

Carah Burrell [01:41:29] I'm sorry. We should be getting into Heartland.

John Dehlin [01:41:31] This is like, I think we made the point. I think we're circling down the drain.

Carah Burrell [01:41:35] I would circle a lot more. All I wanted to say is, like, my last, final parting words on this is, I read this book, and this has.

John Dehlin [01:41:42] What's the book?

Carah Burrell [01:41:43] This is Joseph Smith, the Prophet, the Making of a Prophet by Dan Vogel. And he has, like, the court documents from Joseph getting arrested. So I don't think it's as simple

Rodney Meldrum [01:41:51] as saying many times.

Carah Burrell [01:41:53] But, like, the court documents of, like, what the different witnesses said. Like, you can read what was going on in the courtroom. And that just seems like pretty strong evidence to me, as opposed to just like, oh, it's all Mormonism unveiled. It's all people who want to drink his blood. I'm like, are these witnesses, like, lying? And did this courtroom scene not actually happen?

Rodney Meldrum [01:42:10] Do people ever lie in court?

Carah Burrell [01:42:13] No. The point is, I wonder if people

Rodney Meldrum [01:42:15] could possibly lie in court.

Carah Burrell [01:42:16] No, what I mean is, like, what I mean, not. Not that I'm saying. No, that's not what I'm saying. Sorry, let me make my point. And then, sorry, John, we'll move on. And I'll, like, I'll literally shut up.

John Dehlin [01:42:24] You're telling me not to circle the drain, and then you circle the drain. No, this.

Carah Burrell [01:42:27] The people are loving it. Read the comments.

Rodney Meldrum [01:42:29] This drain is going to get clogged if we keep going.

Carah Burrell [01:42:31] No, no. Sorry. I just wanted to clarify. I'm not saying that people don't lie in court. No, obviously people lie in court, but I'm talking about people saying, like, Joseph Smith is a totally legit treasure digger. And everyone's like, show us your evidence in the courtroom and you can read these things. And then he. The. The people who still believed in Joseph Smith, like, Josiah Stolen. He's like, yeah, he went. Took us on this treasure dig, and guess what he found? He found, like, a feather buried underground, and he found a piece of something that looked like gold. And all the people in the courtroom were like, was it gold? And he's like, no. And so my point is, like, did that not happen? Like, if there was ever a time to show the evidence that Joseph Smith took people on treasure digs and he didn't find anything, it's in that book. It's like, like it's in the court documents, right? That that happened.

Rodney Meldrum [01:43:12] And, and there's all kinds of people would testify that Rod Meldrum is a scumbag, sleazeball, blah, blah, blah, in a court of law and so forth. It doesn't. It doesn't make. Just because somebody claimed it in a court of law does not make it the truth.

John Dehlin [01:43:26] And, Carol, what I. What I. What Rod is showing is he's consistent, whether it's science or history. If there's ever history that conflicts with a favorable narrative of Joseph Smith, he's going to favor the historical documents that are favorable to Joseph Smith and dismiss or marginalize any documents that. That make Joseph Smith.

Carah Burrell [01:43:48] How do you feel about that? How do you feel about what John just said?

Rodney Meldrum [01:43:52] If somebody writes a history of Rod Meldrum sometime in the future and the historian decides to use people who, you know, who hated me or whatever as the primary source documentation, I think that the history would be skewed. In fact, I know it'd be skewed. And you know that that would be the case. If people hate Joseph Smith and they're used as a primary source documentation for his character in his life. I'm telling you, Joseph Smith had an amazing character. I mean, you look at so many Others, you can. You can choose to look at those who hated him. You can lose those who loved him or those who were in between and didn't really care one way or the other. But those who loved him. Talk about his character. I'm telling you, from what I've read of those accounts, Joseph Smith's character was utmost. And I would put him up against anybody as far as having the character to be. I mean, put it this way, are you willing to die for your beliefs?

Carah Burrell [01:44:51] I'm not willing to die for dogma. That's the difference. That's the. More. That's a different thing.

Rodney Meldrum [01:44:56] I mean, it shows a level. Level of commitment, though, that he. That he would go to even, you know, to be arrested numerous times. And it would have been so much easier for him to just say, you know what? This. This is. This is horrible. My family's suffering, everybody's suffering. I have just. If I just renounce my. My fakeness and so forth, you know, if I'm faking all this stuff, if I just renounce all that, everything would be over. I'd be just a normal guy doing my normal thing.

Carah Burrell [01:45:22] You don't know what we would do if we were Joseph, because I'm also not banging 40 women. Like, there's a lot of things Joseph was doing that. Like, maybe he had a reason.

Rodney Meldrum [01:45:29] Let me tell you, though, he wasn't banging 40 women.

Carah Burrell [01:45:34] I'm sorry for saying that. I'm just saying.

John Dehlin [01:45:35] Let me move on.

Carah Burrell [01:45:36] There's other.

Rodney Meldrum [01:45:36] There's no evidence for that at all, genetically or in any other way.

John Dehlin [01:45:41] I'm just here to defend the dream.

Carah Burrell [01:45:43] I'm just saying we don't know the reasons why people don't give up when the odds are against them. It doesn't have to necessarily mean that it's true, but I'll stop talking.

Rodney Meldrum [01:45:51] Okay, but you have to be committed. But you have to be. You realize you have to be pretty committed to be able to. To put your life on the line or something.

Carah Burrell [01:45:57] Okay, I'm going to open this. Take a walk around the room.

John Dehlin [01:45:59] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:45:59] There we go.

John Dehlin [01:46:00] So, Rod, the point. My point to summarize that. That you. You've addressed very directly for many, and I imagine in many of your followers, they. It would make sense for them to be disturbed that the quorum of the 12, the. The first presidency would, number one, commission Bushman to write Rough Stone Rolling, where he gives what you would say is an unfavorable. Let me. Where he would allow that book. Where they would commission the book and sell it A Deseret Book and that they would commission the Gospel Topics Essays project to be completed and that they would publish the essays on the church's own website. That the first presidency of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles would lead and pay for all of that. That would then lead to tens of thousands of Mormons every year to lose their faith. It would make sense if you or others were somewhat troubled or confused as to why prophets sees or revelators would let all that happen. And you've already answered it, which is that the Lord allows prophets to make mistakes.

Rodney Meldrum [01:47:10] Okay, that's not exactly what I think I said I think that the Lord allows his prophets to rely on the expertise of others. And they, they're hoping that, that when Richard Bushman does the research and so forth that he's got it right. They don't have time to go in and double check everything. Yeah, I don't know.

Rough Stone Rolling and Gospel Topics Essays

John Dehlin [01:47:33] Do you think it was a mistake for the church to sell Rough Stone Rolling at Deseret Book?

Rodney Meldrum [01:47:38] If it was up to me, I wish that they would discontinue it.

John Dehlin [01:47:41] Do you think the Gospel Topics Essays project has led many, many people out of the church?

Carah Burrell [01:47:46] Church?

Rodney Meldrum [01:47:47] I think that as an example in the, in the Book of Mormon and the, the DNA thing, basically it was, it was mostly written by, you know, by Hugo Prego, and that was a yes or no.

John Dehlin [01:48:01] Do you think the Gospel topics essays questions have led a lot of people out of the church?

Rodney Meldrum [01:48:04] I think that there's been some things in the gospel doctrine essays that have been incorrect from a genetic standpoint.

John Dehlin [01:48:10] And also the Gospel topics essays have led people out of the. The church. I have, I've talked to thousands.

Rodney Meldrum [01:48:16] I would guess there's probably some people who have done that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:19] So do you think that was. Do you think the Gospel topics essays overall were a mistake for the church to create and publish on their website?

Rodney Meldrum [01:48:28] I have, I don't really have.

John Dehlin [01:48:30] Are you a little bit concerned about saying that the brethren would make a

Rodney Meldrum [01:48:33] mistake not through the gospel doctrine essays. Because the gospel doctrine essay specifically says that this is, you know, this information has been compiled by experts in the church and so forth. And it's not. Does not necessarily always reflect the positions of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. So they. There's a disclaimer in there about the Gospel topic X days. Personally, I think that some of them had. Have had problems. I think it does help some people, but for, for some people it's been problematic.

John Dehlin [01:49:00] Yeah. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:49:02] Yeah. So, yeah, I, you know, I know that they have been problematic for some people. And especially when it comes down to the. The Book of Mormon DNA part. I mean, I know enough about that to know that there was some things in there that were wrong, and they actually changed it.

John Dehlin [01:49:15] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:49:15] We actually wrote to them and said, okay, this is wrong. And they went, oh, yeah, okay, so is that considered canonized Scripture? And obviously the answer is no, it's not.

John Dehlin [01:49:24] Okay. Can you think of examples where the brethren have made mistakes, where a prophet or apostles have made mistakes? Is there anything in your whole understanding of Mormon Church history where you would

Rodney Meldrum [01:49:36] say, I mean, President Kimball basically, a lot. He loved Native American people. And he is pretty much on record as saying, you know, if you're a Native American person, whether you're in North, Central or South America, you're a. You're a Lamanite, you're a descendant of Lehi and Nephi and so forth. And then, of course, that was. That was corrected by the First Presidency when they changed the. The title page in the Book of Mormon to say that the. That the Lamanites are not the principal ancestors of American Indians, but are among the layman among the ancestors. That was clearly a result, I think, of. Of information and research.

John Dehlin [01:50:12] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:50:12] That on the genetic side of things, that shows that there are a lot of people who are here in America that are native peoples that aren't from descendants of, you know, the Book of Mormon people.

John Dehlin [01:50:24] Okay, cool. Thanks for giving an example.

Rodney Meldrum [01:50:25] So that, that, that's. That's that. And there's. And there's other examples, too. But bottom line is, is that that was never canonized Scripture. That was never. You know, at no time did Spencer W. Kimball ever say, and thus saith the Lord God Almighty, I have received a revelation that all the people in North, Central and South America are. That that never happened. That was his opinion. And prophets are allowed to have opinions.

John Dehlin [01:50:45] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:50:46] And sometimes they can be wrong.

John Dehlin [01:50:47] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:50:47] Most of the time, they're right.

John Dehlin [01:50:49] Got it.

Carah Burrell [01:50:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:50:50] All right, Perfect. Okay. Really quickly, the Church would acknowledge that Joseph Smith used a stone and a hat to translate. Translate the Book of Mormon. And that once he was getting to the actual production of the text that we have now, that the plates weren't even in the house, that the plates were, according to Joseph Smith, stored somewhere off property, and that the way.

Rodney Meldrum [01:51:17] According to Joseph Smith. But according to others, according to the witnesses. Other people.

John Dehlin [01:51:21] Yes, according to the witnesses of the. Of the quote translation process, that the plates weren't in the house, that Joseph Smith had his head in a hat. With the stone in the hat. The same stone in the hat that he used to treasure dig and that he would dictate the words of the Book of Mormon in that manner. What is your view about that narrative that the Mormon Church and all its historians agree with the secular historians was the way Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon. What's your view of the stone in the hat?

Rodney Meldrum [01:51:53] Okay, obviously the. That. That is something that I have had a chance to do quite a lot of research on. The. The primary source documentation that Joseph Smith used a stone in the hat.

John Dehlin [01:52:04] No, I just want to know what you believe, not why you believe it. So what do you believe about the stone in the hat translation method that the.

Rodney Meldrum [01:52:12] That the source documentation is being used for? The idea that Joseph Smith used a stone in the hat for the translation of the Book of Mormon is historically incorrect and false.

John Dehlin [01:52:22] Okay. And so. So the. Like Emma or Isaac Hale or Martin Harris or whoever testified that Joseph didn't have the plates and used a stone in the hat, why would they give false testimony in your view?

Rodney Meldrum [01:52:37] Many of their testimonies were long after the fact when they were, you know, years and years after the fact that they, they. In the case of Emma, one of the things that she was at the point in that point in time doing is saying that Brigham Young wasn't a prophet and that her son, Joseph Smith iii, was the. Was the rightful heir to the thing that, you know. So some of the.

John Dehlin [01:52:57] She wanted to spoil the Book of Mormon narrative because she was salty about her son not being the successor.

Rodney Meldrum [01:53:04] Well, no, there was also. It's a very nuanced thing, and probably Jonathan Neville would be able to give you an even more concise understanding. But let me just kind of give you this. Basically, we know that there was the, you know, the Spalding manuscript and so forth there, and we have the, you know, the view of the Hebrews. Joseph Smith is being accused of copycatting some of these other earlier books that were published just before him, even though there's no evidence that he ever had those books or knew anything about them. But nevertheless. So Joseph Smith and his. And what his. When it comes down to it, there's not one single instance where in any revelation that's claimed as a revelation in the Doctrine Covenants was anything mentioned about any stone in a hat or anything other than the Urim and Thummim being used for the purpose of that. I find it very difficult to believe that if the, If. If the, if the. The Lord took the time to create a Urim And Thummim and then made sure that it was passed down from the Jaredites to the Nephites. And the Nephites made sure it got all the way into the actual stone box with the gold plates for the very purpose. I mean, its primary purpose was the interpretation of the plates. Right. And then Joseph Smith just somehow decides not to use the instrument that God had prepared centuries in advance. I think that's just bogus, right? I don't think that that's actually what happened at all. And the source documentation of that is from, again, unreliable sources. Sources I would consider to be unreliable. Martin Harris was already had already left the church. He had, he had an agenda against Brigham Young and the Church at that point in time when he had his interviews or he talked about. Oh yeah, in fact, right before he talks about the stone in the hat, in his interview that was, that was published in the newspaper, he says that, yeah, well, Joseph Smith was a prophet while he was translating, but after that he was a fallen prophet. This is a guy who was not a friend of Joseph Smith in any way, shape or form. Martin Harris, at the time when he did the interview, which he talks about the stone in the hat, Emma had an agenda as well. Other people who talk about the stone in the hat were actually from newspaper articles and so forth that were, that were deliberately antagonistic towards Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [01:55:20] But you do see the problems.

Rodney Meldrum [01:55:21] Historical documents that talk about Joseph Smith in a stone in a hat go completely against what Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and others who actually were there and witnessed.

John Dehlin [01:55:29] Well, Martin Harris was a scribe, right?

Rodney Meldrum [01:55:32] But Oliver Cowdery never said anything about a stone in a hat. And he did the vast majority.

John Dehlin [01:55:37] But he didn't say there wasn't a stone in a hat.

Rodney Meldrum [01:55:39] No, he specifically said that he sat with Joseph Smith as Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim to look at the plates that were in front of him and translate the Book of Mormon into English. So the one source that we know was actually there and participated in the entire process never once mentioned a stone in a hat. Why is that?

The Seer Stone and Translation Method

John Dehlin [01:56:02] Okay, I don't know. Probably because it's goofy and it would take away from the credibility.

Rodney Meldrum [01:56:06] I don't know. But I mean, again, that's, that's, that goes into motives and so forth. But, but he, but he, but Oliver Cowdery never said anything about it.

John Dehlin [01:56:13] But, but my understanding of the history is that his, that that many of the people involved use the term seer stone or urim and thumb.

Rodney Meldrum [01:56:24] That's true.

John Dehlin [01:56:25] They Used it interchangeably. So when they said Urim and Thummim, sometimes they meant the stone.

Rodney Meldrum [01:56:31] Yeah, I've heard that. As that's what the church's position is.

John Dehlin [01:56:34] Yeah, that's what the Church's position is.

Rodney Meldrum [01:56:36] Right. And I. And I would have to say that. I mean, is it possible. I mean, basically the description of the Urim and Thummim is that it was two stones set in a silver rim. Right. So there were stones involved, but were they sear stones or was it a special instrument that got it prepared? And my personal belief is it was a special instrument that got it prepared. And Joseph Smith used that and only that in the translation of the Book of Mormon. He never used a sear stone that he got out of the well. He never used any other stones that he got from. From, you know, whatever treasure digging he was involved with.

John Dehlin [01:57:11] In your view?

Rodney Meldrum [01:57:12] In my well. Well, historically, there's no evidence for that except for anti Mormon sources.

John Dehlin [01:57:16] No, I mean, I. So I don't want to circle the drain here. So I'm just going to summarize. I. I would hope you could see the problem of saying I'm going to agree with Martin Harris's witness of the Book of Mormon as one of the three witnesses when it confirms my point of view that the Book of Mormon is true. But then when Martin Harris testifies 30 years later. Let me finish.

Rodney Meldrum [01:57:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:37] Then when Martin Harris testifies of the stone in the hat being used in the translation when he was an actual scribe, you're going to say, well, that's anti Mormon testimony.

Rodney Meldrum [01:57:47] I hope you can see he had lost his.

John Dehlin [01:57:49] I hope you can see the inconsistency there. A little bit of inconsistency, but I

Rodney Meldrum [01:57:53] don't think it's inconsistent because people's. People's attitudes change over time. And that was 30 years later.

John Dehlin [01:57:58] That's fine. He did die. Martin Harris did die faithful.

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:01] Yeah, he did. He came back. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:58:03] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:04] Carrie, do you have anything you want to add about the stone in the hat conversation? Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:07] Oh, I wanted to go into more detail on the stone and have them because that. It's an area that I feel really strongly. Obviously you can tell I feel strongly about it because it goes against every revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants and so forth. There's not one time when a stone and a hat is ever used in any of those revelations, in your view?

John Dehlin [01:58:26] In your view?

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:26] Well, no, it's just not there, John. I mean, it's. There's no stone in a hat thing mentioned. In the Doctrine and Covenants. Period. End of story. All right, well, it's all. But you're. My thumb is mentioned 11 different times.

John Dehlin [01:58:37] Okay, that's fine. All right, so. So. But I do think we let you state your position.

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:43] Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:44] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [01:58:45] And thank you, by the way. I know this is. This is a hot topic, but trying to make the transition from. Well, I disagree with the historians into the. You know, the prophets, seers, and revelators are leading people down and out of the church. It's not them that's doing it.

John Dehlin [01:59:01] It's the bad historians. It's the wicked historians.

Rodney Meldrum [01:59:05] Bad history? Yes. It's the reason why Nephi was told to kill Laban. He says it's better that one mansion perish than an entire nation should suffer and, you know, and. And lose their faith.

John Dehlin [01:59:19] So why didn't God take out. Why didn't God take out Richard Bushman instead?

Rodney Meldrum [01:59:24] Or.

John Dehlin [01:59:24] Or Dan. Why didn't God take out Richard Bushman, Dan Vogel, Fawn Brody? Like, he took out Laban so that. So that Mormons wouldn't dwindle in unbelief.

Rodney Meldrum [01:59:36] Well, then. Then what? Are you going to start killing everybody? I mean, come on. I mean, every evil person. That's not going to work if God is about agency.

Carah Burrell [01:59:44] Wait a second. Did Rod Meldrum, who believes in Noah's Flood, just say, is God going to kill everybody? Did I hear that correctly? God is very in tune with killing everybody. That's kind of what he's known for.

John Dehlin [01:59:57] That's his brand.

Carah Burrell [01:59:58] I was literally like, kara, shut up. Shut up. And I was like, no, Rodney, Karen,

John Dehlin [02:00:03] nobody wants you to shut up.

Rodney Meldrum [02:00:06] Okay?

John Dehlin [02:00:07] Yeah, killing lots of people is on brand for God.

Rodney Meldrum [02:00:09] Okay? But again, remember that from. In God's perspective, the fact that they are changed from this earth to the next life, it's just a transition. It's not. It's not like it's how we feel about it when we die.

John Dehlin [02:00:21] We talked about this last time. We talked about this last time.

Rodney Meldrum [02:00:23] Okay.

Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [02:00:23] Okay, so really quickly, what do you make of anachronisms in the Book of Mormon? So, horses. I think I know your answer. You're just gonna say the science has got it all wrong. But horses, steel wheels, chariots, helmets, rice, you know? Oh, no. Wheat, barley. All the things that are in the Book of Mormon that shouldn't be. Cattle, sheep. All the things that are in the Book of Mormon that shouldn't be. And then all the things that aren't in the Book of Mormon that should be. Chocolate, corn. It should be.

Rodney Meldrum [02:00:57] Wait a minute. It should, it should be. It's just not part of everybody's like, there's no.

John Dehlin [02:01:02] There's no jaguars. There's no. So a lot of the animals and food that should be in the Book of Mormon aren't.

Rodney Meldrum [02:01:08] Okay?

John Dehlin [02:01:09] And a ton of animals and food and materials that shouldn't be in the Book of Mormon is. And it just so happens that all the animals and food that are in the Book of Mormon reflect a 19th century worldview. That would have been what Joseph would have thought the Native Americans would have had, because it's what he saw Native Americans having in the 19th century.

Rodney Meldrum [02:01:34] Okay, I love the topic of anachronisms, okay?

John Dehlin [02:01:38] Because you can just say the science is all wrong. And then. Because literally, I think that's. I think you're just going to say the science is all wrong.

Carah Burrell [02:01:45] Should we get one of those, like, buttons that's just like.

Rodney Meldrum [02:01:48] Unfortunately, you don't know me very well yet, brother, because. Because that's. That, that's the way. Okay, so when it comes down to anachronisms, first off, anachronisms have been a major source of issues with the Book of Mormon because of the Central American theory. The Central American theory is because of that we have all kinds of anachronisms which you kind of mentioned. You know, the horses, the cows, the sheep, the goats, the grapes, the wheat, the barley, and all these other kinds of things. They're all anachronistic in the Book of Mormon. If the Book of Mormon is understood as a Central American history, because the Mayan civilization never had horses, there were never elephants that we know of down in Central America, there was never any sheep. You look at all the frescoes and all of the, the quiches and all that kind of stuff that goes on in Central America. The Mayans, they never had sheep, they never had goats.

John Dehlin [02:02:45] We agree with you there.

Rodney Meldrum [02:02:46] The Book of Mormon talks about having grapes and wheat and barley had. King Noah was a. Was a wine bearer, for heaven's sake. I mean, he had vineyards, right?

John Dehlin [02:02:53] We're with you.

Rodney Meldrum [02:02:54] Vineyards don't grow in Central America. Grapes don't grow in Central America. They're used to make any kind of wine. Wheat and barley are mentioned specifically in the Book of Mormon, and neither one of those will grow in Central America.

John Dehlin [02:03:06] We're with you.

Carah Burrell [02:03:07] So we have a giant map of the world and we have a big cross and we go, not Central America.

Rodney Meldrum [02:03:12] Right? That's what you're saying, right?

John Dehlin [02:03:13] We're with you. We're with you there.

Rodney Meldrum [02:03:15] Now let's turn the anachronisms over to a North American setting. Okay, In a North American setting, are there. Were there horses anciently in North America? The answer is absolutely yes.

John Dehlin [02:03:25] Not during the time of the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [02:03:26] Okay, There was. There was horses in the Brae Tar pits and so forth, but not during

John Dehlin [02:03:30] the time of the book.

Rodney Meldrum [02:03:30] It all comes down to dating again.

John Dehlin [02:03:32] So science is wrong.

Carah Burrell [02:03:34] No, I'm just kidding.

Rodney Meldrum [02:03:34] No, no. So actually I, I have, I have journal articles. Horse found, but they would have to be like everywhere carbon dated into Book of Mormon time frames. A horse remains in Wyoming was found and it carbon dates in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:03:50] I'm going to stop you. We agreed that we're not going to talk about the science on the show. I do not want you, I do not want you conveying your interpretation of scientific data because I think there is scientific consensus that if there were elephants or if there were horses in North America, it would have been long before six or seven thousand years ago.

Rodney Meldrum [02:04:13] All based on life dating, science, dating, dating.

John Dehlin [02:04:17] So again, you can just say you think all the science.

Rodney Meldrum [02:04:20] You got to go into the dating stuff.

John Dehlin [02:04:22] That's fine. So you. So we, I think we can know. We cannot circle down the drain here.

Rodney Meldrum [02:04:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:26] You think all the scientists are wrong when it comes to North American.

Rodney Meldrum [02:04:30] Okay. There's a lot more archaeology, too, when it comes down to, as an example, horses. Did horses actually go extinct? We know that there were horses here in America before the Book of Mormon. Time frames, Right? The brake tarp is there's elephants and horses in the same pits together like,

John Dehlin [02:04:44] like 17 or 18,000.

Rodney Meldrum [02:04:46] The question is, is what caused the horses to go extinct and why did they become reintroduced? And was it the Spaniards? Horses that were reintroduced as the horses to the Americas. Turns out that the Native American horses that they use, the small painted ponies, they're not directly related to the horses that came over with the Spaniards. They're two different.

John Dehlin [02:05:05] I don't.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:06] Two different subspecies of the same.

John Dehlin [02:05:07] I'm going to say that you're not making a scientific.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:11] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] Proposition there, and we can debate that in a future episode.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:14] Okay? All right.

John Dehlin [02:05:15] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:15] So I'd love to talk about horses, but bottom line, horses are not anachronistic in North America.

John Dehlin [02:05:19] In your view.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:20] Neither are you. In your view, Neither. Elephants, right?

John Dehlin [02:05:22] In your view.

Carah Burrell [02:05:23] No, wait, he just said elephants.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:26] All you have to do is go to any, any natural, natural science museum in the heartland of America, Ohio, Illinois, whatever. Guess what? They, they have elephants. I mean, elephant like creatures. Whether they're mastodons or mammoths or whatever. They're elephant like creatures all over North America. Okay. They were.

John Dehlin [02:05:45] They were hundreds of thousands of years, over 10,000 years before the time.

Rodney Meldrum [02:05:49] Again, come down to the dating. Right? So we got to address the dating or else we're not going to be able to address all this other stuff. Okay, as far as that, sheep and goats and so forth. Anachronisms in Central America. Yes. Not in North America. North America has about five different varieties of sheep and goats that were indigenous to North America.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:06:06] Again, barley are indigenous to North America. There's three different kinds of grapes that are indigenous to North America.

John Dehlin [02:06:11] Okay, we'll see.

Rodney Meldrum [02:06:12] We'll.

John Dehlin [02:06:12] We'll have scientists back on to talk about these types of things. This is your interpretation of the evidence.

Rodney Meldrum [02:06:18] Now, this is science.

John Dehlin [02:06:19] Science. Except. So science is okay if it backs up your view, but then if science has dating, you don't like if the dating.

Rodney Meldrum [02:06:26] If the dating is wrong, the dating is wrong. But it doesn't change the fact that the grapes were here in North America.

John Dehlin [02:06:32] Okay, all right, so I think we

Rodney Meldrum [02:06:33] get your point and are indigenous. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:06:35] Okay, so here's my problem, Rod. So it's like when dating about horses falls in line with what the Book of Mormon says about horses in the time frame dating. Thumbs up. The dating was right because it aligned with the Book of Mormon, which is the truest book in the world. But if the dating is a couple thousand years off and that dating about horses would not align, then that dating is wrong. So it's almost like starting with the starting point of. Let me look. Let me just scan. Where is the dating about the Book of Mormon? I'll take that. Oh, the dating about the Book of Mormon there is wrong. I'm going to shove that away. So it's like, what's the point of even caring about dating if it's only about. That's just what I'm viewing. It's like, what's the point of all of dating if you're only looking for the one that fits within the Book of Mormon? Because anytime we've said that, like, what about the science that they followed that doesn't fit within that they get it wrong? So it's like, how do you believe in dating? My question is just leading up to, like, what do you believe is good dating? Is it whatever aligns with the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin [02:07:44] Well, he's already told us, Carah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:07:45] Yeah, I think I've already kind of mentioned that. But when it comes down to the horses and the dating, you Know we, again, we know that they were the horses and elephants were, were at least extent with each other because they're both buried in the same liberated car pits

John Dehlin [02:08:00] like 18000 years ago.

Rodney Meldrum [02:08:01] Yeah. Well, again, assuming that they've got it right, I mean, is that, how do they know that was 18000 years ago? You know, that, that this all happened? Right. Well, that goes back to geologic dating, which we haven't gotten into, but when we did, we'll get into that. Okay, so do we cherry pick. Okay. An answer to that question? Basically, yeah, there's, there's dating all over the, all over the board. But there's more than just dating aloud with that. For example, we go into horse genetics. Okay. The horse genetics is another interesting aspect of it because the Indian painted ponies.

John Dehlin [02:08:35] Wait, we're getting into the science again? I don't want to get into the science.

Rodney Meldrum [02:08:38] Well, but this is the explanation as far as. Do we cherry pick that? No, we look for additional sources, we look for additional research. But in the meantime, this is what this is. I think one of the important things for me and my colleagues, we have faith that the answers will be there eventually. We may not have all the answers now. We may have to put some things on the shelf, but one of the problems I have with the apologetics that has gone on within the church is, for example, one of the primary directives of the Maxwell Institute, or not Maxwell Institute, but the farms was, well, lack of evidence doesn't mean. What is their famous saying? Just because there's no evidence doesn't mean that the evidence is not going to be found kind of thing.

John Dehlin [02:09:20] The absence of evidence is.

Rodney Meldrum [02:09:22] That's the one.

John Dehlin [02:09:22] The evidence of absence.

Rodney Meldrum [02:09:24] Okay, that's it. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Well, you can use that for, you know, a while, but after a while, sometimes it just might be. The absence of evidence is showing an absence of evidence. You can, you can't use that for everything. So you can't use that for every anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. But if you can show a propensity toward not having to use that phrase over and over and over again. And you can actually show some real, some real evidence that they really did have sheep, they really did have wheat and goat and all those kind of things that are anachronistic in Central America. The bottom line, John, is this is the exciting point. They're not anachronistic in North America.

John Dehlin [02:10:05] Depending on how you date things.

Rodney Meldrum [02:10:07] Yeah. Okay, well, even, even the Hopewell culture I mean, we know that they had corn. We know that they used, you know, barley. We know that they had, you know, because these things have been found in their actual archaeology. So it's not. It's not a faith thing. It's a fact.

John Dehlin [02:10:21] Okay, and let me just respond to. Glenn Fulmer made the comment. John, you don't want to get into the science. Glenn, you may have missed the beginning. Our main purpose with Rod today is not to debate the science, because in my view, neither Rod nor Carah or I are qualified to debate the science. We are simply in this episode trying to nail down what Rod's positions are.

Rodney Meldrum [02:10:45] Right.

John Dehlin [02:10:45] And that's the main focus. So just. Just to answer those of you who

Carah Burrell [02:10:50] joined us late, which is hard to do because, you know, you have an opinion, you're like, I want to give the evidence. And then we get into sticky territory. But we're just. We're keeping the ball moving. I like what Sarah said. Sarah, you're a woman after my own heart. She said, speaking of horses, it feels like he's beating a dead one, but

John Dehlin [02:11:03] that's a good joke. Yeah. Okay, I'm ready to move on.

Rodney Meldrum [02:11:06] Okay, so anachronism. So that's next.

John Dehlin [02:11:09] Okay, so one thing. Okay, so let me just tell you. Let's. Let's see if we can agree on some things just very quickly.

Rodney Meldrum [02:11:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:11:18] I would position that Joseph Smith believed that the Hill Cumorah that was near his house was the Hill Cumorah where Moroni would have buried the plates. Do you agree with that?

Rodney Meldrum [02:11:32] Yes. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:11:33] Okay, next. Do you. I believe that Joseph Smith would have believed that the Book of Mormon took place over the entire. That the major parts of the Book of Mormon took place North, Central and South America, not just Central America, for example. Agree?

Rodney Meldrum [02:11:55] No, not at all. There's no evidence that he'd had a hemispheric view. Everything that we know about Joseph Smith, that he. That we know from historical sources talked about a North American setting.

John Dehlin [02:12:06] Okay, so your view is that Joseph Smith viewed the primary events of the Book of Mormon absolutely happening in North America.

Rodney Meldrum [02:12:13] Yeah. I don't know anybody who can show me any historical documentation that Joseph Smith thought it was all about North, Central and South America. I can show you numerous things like the Zelf Mound account and other accounts, the Wentworth Letter and the American Revivalist accounts and so forth, all indicated that Joseph Smith believed the Book of Mormon happened in North America. And also not just by his words, but also John, his actions. I mean, when he was commanded by the Lord to send Missionaries to the Lamanites. Where did he send them? He never sent any missionaries to Central America ever. Send them to North. Send them to tribes in North America.

John Dehlin [02:12:50] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:12:51] So it wasn't just his words, it was also his actions.

John Dehlin [02:12:53] But doesn't the Book of Mormon itself say basically no. North, Central and South America?

Rodney Meldrum [02:12:58] No, not at all.

John Dehlin [02:12:59] In your view? No. The Book of Mormon restricts its geography. In your view, the Book of Mormon restricts its geography to North America?

Rodney Meldrum [02:13:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:13:07] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:13:07] Yeah. The thing that gets people confused is the narrow neck of land thing. You look at north and South America, there's this narrow neck called Panama, Emma in between. And so that's that, you know, so there, there were people in Joseph Smith's day who did believe in the hemispheric setting of the Book of Mormon, but there's no indication that Joseph Smith himself actually did.

John Dehlin [02:13:25] Yeah. Okay. All right. So from there, let's see. So would you agree that the prophet seers and revelators, at least into the 1900s, believed that there was one hill cumorah?

Rodney Meldrum [02:13:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:13:46] And that it was the one in New York that Joseph Smith talked about?

Rodney Meldrum [02:13:51] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. In fact, the. The idea of a two hill cumorah theory actually came from. I wasn't even our church. It was actually the. The RLDS Church actually when. When the. The fighting preacher, you know. You know I'm talking about the. Oh, good grief. His name just this escaped me, but it's fine.

John Dehlin [02:14:15] RLDs church.

Rodney Meldrum [02:14:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:16] Came up with the heartland model.

Rodney Meldrum [02:14:17] Well, well, yeah, when they basically. Well, the heartland model actually. Well, I should say the Mesoamerica theory actually came originally by some people who were in. Joseph Smith still. Still day. In fact, we call him the smoking gun of book Mormon geography is Benjamin Winchester is the earliest historical account of somebody who was trying to. Attached the Book of Mormon to Central America. Then he became, you know, apostate to the church and so forth. And then you have. There was other people at John Page and others who promoted the Central American idea. Joseph Smith never did do that. Where was it going with that though?

Origins of the Mesoamerican Geography Theory

John Dehlin [02:14:55] Well, let me ask you, what's your understanding of the history of why the Central American model emerged? What's your understanding of.

Rodney Meldrum [02:15:05] That's at a high level? Yeah, that's. That's a very good question. Jonathan Neville has written fairly extensively about this, and so I'm kind of reiterating some of his stuff. But basically the Central American theory came about primarily because of the. And the whole hill cumorah thing was when the church actually Bought the Hill Cumorah. The RLDS Church basically said, well, you know, that the Salt Lake Church, they, they really screwed up here. You know, they, they bought the wrong hill because the real hill is somewhere down in Central America. And, and they, and it was actually the RLDS Church that was originally promoting the Central America theory. And then some of our scholars in the church basically absconded with that, with that theory and ran with it. There are indications in the Book of Mormon that the geography could not have possibly been hemispheric because there's, there's journeys where somebody leaves, they go someplace else, they come back and it's only a few days journey or maybe a few weeks. But it wasn't years, which would be the requirement if somebody's coming from South America into North America and back. Plus, it's just the fact that the plates were found here in the Hill cumorah, which is 4,000 miles approximately from Guatemala and Central America. It's just, it makes no sense that they would have had to haul the plates all the way.

John Dehlin [02:16:21] Why do you think, what's your understanding of why the Mesoamerican model emerged?

Rodney Meldrum [02:16:27] It actually didn't come about really until John Sorensen was able to get an article published in the End Sign. And he actually tells the whole story about how that happened. He had submitted it several times. It had been turned down several times. I guess there was an article that was going to be done and then they pulled the article. They needed something else right now. He said, well, here's an article that's been submitted before. And then they put the article in the, the enzyme. In regard to John Sorenson's understanding is his, his belief in a Central American theory. There's, there's, there's a ton of stuff in there. There's a couple of great books about this that has been written by Jonathan Neville that has all the historical documentation. It'd be fun to actually have him on and kind of explore that in more detail. But that would be a longer conversation.

John Dehlin [02:17:16] Okay. Let me tell you my understanding and I'm going to credit RFM with kind of helping brush me up.

Rodney Meldrum [02:17:22] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:17:23] Because I'm. We're doing way too many interviews these days. And so I'm relying on my understanding of what RFM said.

Rodney Meldrum [02:17:29] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:17:29] That basically there are a couple problems with, with North America or the, the New York Hill Cumorah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:17:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:39] And. And this is, you know, again, this is rfm. So first of all, the Book of Mormon talks about these massive battles with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Rodney Meldrum [02:17:48] Yeah, potentially.

John Dehlin [02:17:49] And which would probably mean millions of a population of millions all living around the Hill Cumorah in New York. To be able to, I'm just telling. Let me, let me get. To be able to sustain the hundreds of thousands of soldiers that are fighting on either side using helmets, swords, shields, whatever is used in the Book of Mormon. And that first and foremost, there's no, there's no archaeological evidence that either there were populations large enough to sustain such large amounts of people. And then there's no artifacts of battles. If there were battles that large with that many people, where's all the artifacts that there would be. There would be artifacts that, that showed that those battles took place. And this would have been 600, you know, let's just say 4, 5, 600 years or CE, whatever the term is for that. And so that's, that's my understanding of the first problem with a New York.

Rodney Meldrum [02:19:00] You bet. And I think you stated it pretty accurately. The, the, the idea that there was, you know, ten, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, not just once, but twice. In the Book of Mormon, you had the Jaredite civilization that supposedly, that's where they met their end. And then they have the Nephites civilization that supposedly met there in there as well. So actually that brings me to. I love this particular.

John Dehlin [02:19:26] Couple more. There's a couple more I want to lay out.

Rodney Meldrum [02:19:28] Yeah, let me just address them real quick here. So the Hill Cumorah, one of the big reasons why Central America thing is because, well, where's all the, where's all the bones? Where's all the helmets, where's the shields? Where are the swords? Where's all that stuff? If it happened there and there was tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people that died there, where's all the evidence for it? And actually, I was asked to come and do a presentation actually at the Hill Cumorah Pageant for all of the cast members. There's about 650 members of the cast as to what archaeological evidence is there at the Hill Cumorah. And the first thing we have to really address on that, John, is that what would we expect to find based on just what we know from how things decompose and, and so forth. And what would we. What has been found and is there a. Is there a difference? And again, just at the 30,000foot level here, I actually have a two hour presentation on the archaeological. And. And what would we expect to find around the Hill Cumorah? First off, we have to get the narrative, right. The, the people didn't live around the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. According to the Book of Mormon record, they were driven there from their main lands and they, and they retreated back up into the land of the, the land of the hill Cumorah. So they live, they weren't living there.

John Dehlin [02:20:40] They live somewhere else.

Rodney Meldrum [02:20:41] That, that was where they basically, I wouldn't say migrated to because they weren't, they weren't going there to live. They were going there to defend their, their, their families and their freedom basically. Right. So. So you wouldn't expect to find a lot of occupation around the New York area in your review. That's not where, that's not where the. Neat.

John Dehlin [02:21:00] That's again we're going into the science now. What archaeology.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:03] This is just the Hopewell Mound builder people. Primary areas of civilization were in Ohio.

John Dehlin [02:21:10] I agree with that.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:11] Missouri.

John Dehlin [02:21:11] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:12] It wasn't in New York.

John Dehlin [02:21:13] Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, so.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:15] But the Book of Mormon doesn't say that they were living in New York.

John Dehlin [02:21:17] That's fine, that's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:18] So the point is, is that they, their civilization was somewhere else. They had moved up there for their final battles.

John Dehlin [02:21:24] Okay, okay, so they marched from the heartland.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:26] Yeah. Up to hill, which is probably about a, you know, I mean the Zion's camp covered a thousand miles in, in a month.

Carah Burrell [02:21:33] So.

John Dehlin [02:21:33] But, but, but you're basically saying that they're all living in Iowa and Nebraska and Missouri and they're like driving Aberdeen lands. So let me finish. So like, so like we're all living in the Midwest, Ohio. We want to have a really, really, really, really big battle. So let's do a multi month march up to New York to have our battle.

Rodney Meldrum [02:21:57] Okay. In the Book of Mormon account you have Lamanites who are, are coming with a massive army and they're driving the people ahead of them basically and saying we're going to wipe you out. They. So in battle it's pretty, it's pretty obvious. I mean just look at what's going on right now in Ukraine. How many people are, have, have been displaced? How many people are migrating out of Ukraine but we don't have to use. When you have a battle going on with the Lamanites are determined to wipe you out, you're going to move out in front of them and that not just stay there and get slaughtered, you're going to keep moving out. So they, they were. Yes, they were being displaced up into New York.

John Dehlin [02:22:33] O and I think scientists would say then there would be evidence of Literally hundreds of thousands of soldiers migrating from

Rodney Meldrum [02:22:41] the Midwest from their, from their footprints in the dirt. I mean, what would you expect if that.

John Dehlin [02:22:46] Okay, it doesn't matter, but now we know your position. And then, then, then the reason why there aren't relics of, Of a massive battle taking place on Hill C. Yes.

Rodney Meldrum [02:22:55] Let's address that for a second. So first off, where's all the bodies? Think. If you have hundreds of thousands of people and they all die there, there. Shouldn't there be. Shouldn't there should be bones all over the place? Right.

John Dehlin [02:23:04] Erosion.

Rodney Meldrum [02:23:05] You're gonna say, okay, and the answer to that is no. And because science would, Would tell you that if you, if you. If a cow dies out in somebody's field there in New York, how long is it going to take before that cow is completely not identifiable anymore? Probably about five or six years because it's left on the surface. The only time you're going to actually find bones is when they're buried in the dirt. They have to be below the fossilized and below the oxygen level, so the bones don't oxygenate, which is what causes the bones to disintegrate. Right. So the bottom line is, is that in the Book of Mormon, it says in the Jared account that they. They wiped each other out down to one guy. So who's going to bury hundreds of thousands of people? Nobody. So it's just gonna. They're gonna lay there on the surface until they do what? Decompose. Now, the Nephite situation, you had the Lamanites, they were victorious. But the Lamanites didn't care about burying a Nephite. They were just. In fact, the Book of Mormon specifically says they were left to molder and to return to Mother Earth.

John Dehlin [02:24:00] Earth.

Rodney Meldrum [02:24:00] They were sitting on the surface. Nobody, scientific or not, would expect any. A bunch of bodies laying on the surface of the earth to still be there after a thousand years or even after a, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 years.

John Dehlin [02:24:14] Okay, so basically erosion. And so, so that, so that decomposition.

Rodney Meldrum [02:24:18] Yeah, so that's, that's an unrealistic expectation

John Dehlin [02:24:21] even for the weapons and the swords and the shields.

Rodney Meldrum [02:24:23] Weapons are a different thing, though, okay? Because weapons like made out of copper, for example, they're not going to decompose. I mean, they'll, they'll get oxidized, but they won't. They're not going to just disappear. Right. But, but if the Book of Mormon account is correct, you have a Lamanite army that far outnumbers the Nephite army. The Nephites had head plates, breastplates, swords and scimitars and so forth. Right? That was that. That's what their explanation is. Basically, the Lamanites, they came. They. They may not have had all of the metal weaponry. So when. Let me just ask you a question. If you were a Lamanite guy and you just wiped out all these Nephites, and they have all this wonderful armor and they have all this wonderful, you know, swords and scimiters and head plates and so forth, you go, you know, that guy right there, he's dead. He's not going to need that armor. I think maybe I'll just take it now.

John Dehlin [02:25:11] The Lamanite army removed all the evidence of battle.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:15] Not all of it, but the vast majority of it.

John Dehlin [02:25:18] Well, enough that there's no.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:19] There was four times as many Lamanite warriors as there was Nephites. So there's.

John Dehlin [02:25:24] So they all took it to wherever.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:25] Not even enough to go around. Okay. Of the spoils of war. It's called spoils of war.

John Dehlin [02:25:29] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:30] This is natural.

John Dehlin [02:25:31] So there's no evidence of any of those battles.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:32] Because the one thing you would expect to find, though, would be arrowheads. Arrowheads by the gazillions. Okay, okay. Early accounts in western New York talked about you can hardly walk on the ground around western New York without stepping on arrowheads. There were literally more arrowheads per square mile than almost anywhere else on Earth.

John Dehlin [02:25:52] Okay. So for you, the arrowheads are the evidence.

Rodney Meldrum [02:25:54] The arrowheads are definitely of an evidence. But the head plates and breastplates, I think that would have been taken as spoils of war, generally speaking. Now, there have been. There's been iron install. In fact, there was a blacksmith that was there in western New York who actually made the claim that. That he never had to buy iron because the, The. The farmers just plowing their fields would plow up pieces of iron.

John Dehlin [02:26:17] I'm going to challenge that and say I would. I would want an archeologist to confirm that quote you just said.

Carah Burrell [02:26:22] Said.

Rodney Meldrum [02:26:22] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:23] So. So can you see how it's a tiny bit convenient that. Okay. Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon would have listed all these different weapons.

Rodney Meldrum [02:26:31] Right.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] Of course, we all know that that actual. That there is a gazillion. There's evidence of arrowheads being used throughout Native American civilization. Can I please finish? Can I please finish? So native. Native Americans would have used arrowheads North, Central and South America.

Rodney Meldrum [02:26:48] America probably.

John Dehlin [02:26:48] Right. That's. That's something that we would expect to be there. Joseph Smith got that right. There's a saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Right. So he got the arrowhead part right. But then all the weapons that, that, that there's no evidence that they did exist or should have existed. All that's missing. You can understand why someone would say that's, that's a little bit convenient that the, that the weapons that shouldn't have been there also happen to be the ones that are missing.

Rodney Meldrum [02:27:20] Okay, well, I think that what you're, what you're trying to, you know, get, get out here is basically. Yeah. Is there. Does it seem weird that there would be hundreds of thousands of people die there? And there's, and there's no, you know, there's not hundreds of thousands of head plates and breastplates. But it also is equally plausible. In fact, I think it's actually not just plausible. I think it's actually probable that a Lamanite warrior seen his, his dead comrade over on the ground and said, you know what? This, this armor is about my size. I think I'll just take that with me. Why would you not do that? It's human nature in especially with spoils of war to do that. Yeah, that's, that's, that's not a hard stretch in any imagination.

John Dehlin [02:28:03] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:28:04] So taking all those artifacts away and hauling them off to other places. Have there been artifacts that are head plates, our breastplates and, and so forth in the Book of Mormon time frames? And the answer to that is no. If the, if the geography of the Book of Mormons in Central America, because guess what, the Mayans weren't doing anything with metals until long after the Book of Mormon time frames, about 900 to 1100 AD is when the Mayans began to do metalworking or metallurgy. But here in North America, on the other hand, we have evidence is not only from the artifacts themselves. They, we, we know that they actually did have head plates. We know that they actually did have breastplates. They're in the museums in the Midwestern part of the United States.

John Dehlin [02:28:46] I'm going to rely on archaeologists to verify what you just said.

Rodney Meldrum [02:28:48] Let's go to the museums real simple.

John Dehlin [02:28:50] That's fine. Okay. That explains your view on. So that was the first reason I understand Mesoamerican theory emerged was because of the lack of the archaeology. Archaeological evidence for wars and battles of civilizations around the New York Hill Cumorah. Okay. There are a couple others one. Another one is that language. So, so Book of Mormon would, would kind of assume that all of the people, all the Book of Mormon people had Written language. Yeah, because they were. The Book of Mormon was written in a written language.

Rodney Meldrum [02:29:38] They also wrote it down and then had passed it out to people.

John Dehlin [02:29:41] Let me finish. So the, the Book of Mormon assumes that the kings and the scribes and the generations of like a thousand. Generation of a thousand sort of years, they had written language. The only civilization we're aware of in, in North, Central and South America that, that we know had written language is, as I understand it, the Mayan civilization in Central America. And in fact, language. There's no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that shows that written language migrated to the northern, to the tribes that would be in North America. And so when Mormon apologists started realizing, oh, we've got a problem here, one of the main reasons they developed the two Cumorah Mesoamerican theory was to try and account for written language, which a North American model doesn't seem to account for.

Rodney Meldrum [02:30:39] Yeah, that, that's very well stated, actually, John. And in fact, that's one of the big issues that we have with, with this, with this whole language thing is because in, in Mesoamerica, you're right that the, the only one that has a known written language is the Mayans. The only problem is, though, John, is that the Mayan language has nothing to do with Hebrew, which is the primary language that is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. In fact, I think it was Moroni or Mormon that lamented. He said, you know, if we could just write in Hebrew, there would be no imperfections in our record. Which means that from the time that they got there until the very end of the record, the primary language and linguistics that they would have been using would be Hebrew. But the Mayan glyph system has nothing to do with Hebrew. It's as far away distant from Hebrew as Latin is to Chinese. You know, basically there, there's no, there's no connection between the Mayan glyph system and Hebrew writing systems. And that's been a big problem. So we have to go back to the original text of the Book of Mormon. How much evidence of, of writing would we have of people who didn't write on gold plates, for example? Okay, so what were they writing on instead of gold plates? Obviously, most people didn't have gold plates. They were hard to come by. As far as we understand in the Book of Mormon, they were writing on for, for example, birch bark or other kinds of wood materials or, or other textiles which they had. How long would those textiles last? Number one? Number two is, who was it between The Nephites and the Lamanites that had the written language. As far as we know, it was primarily the Nephites that had a written language because there's no indication in the Book of Mormon that the Lamanites were using written things. And then we. But what we do know from the Book of Mormon is that the Lamanites were absolutely determined to destroy the history of the Nephites, which is the reason why they had to hide the plates in the first place. They said if the Lamanites found our records, if they found our history, they would destroy it because they hated the Nephites so bad. Right. So how much evidence for writing would we expect to find from a Book of Mormon people whose enemies survived and were determined to destroy their history? If you look back in Egypt, for example, you know, every, every pharaoh that came in after the next pharaoh, they would, they would go to all the, all the obelisks, all the monuments and have the, the previous pharaoh's name removed from the history.

John Dehlin [02:33:12] Right?

Rodney Meldrum [02:33:12] They would have him taken off, they would put their name instead on the monuments and so forth. That's kind of human nature when you have whoever's the victor of the war gets to, to determine the history and they get to also if they can destroy the, the history of the previous people. So I think what we're seeing is, is that the, the effect of the, the Lamanites trying to destroy the history of the Nephites. But that doesn't mean that there's no evidence because in fact, John, we have eight different locations in North America with ancient Hebrew writings. Some of these are controversial, there's no doubt about it, because there is a, there's a deliberate idea that there is no Hebrews coming to America. But nevertheless, we have things like the Bat Creek Stone, the, the Newark Holy Stones, we have, you know, the Tarleton Cross and so forth. There's, there's been the, the Hanukkiah earthworks, which was made by these mound builder people in the shape of a menorah with the, with four other ancient Hebrew symbols, okay, that are, that are culturally unique to Hebrews, which are found in an earthwork that's over, over 50 square.

John Dehlin [02:34:20] And again, we're digging into the archaeology and I'm not qualified to discuss whether the sources you're bringing up are even valid if they're frauds. So that, that would be an archaeologist that would need to describe that. But I just am asking you to acknowledge that the North American is, the evidence that we have for North American tribes overwhelmingly shows that they did not have written language like the Mayan civilizations. Do you acknowledge that?

Rodney Meldrum [02:34:45] Yeah. Yeah. As far as what's in the ground, there's only. There's only a handful of. Of. Of artifacts that have been found. But there is a. But that. But there are. There's also an admittance, though, John, that the. That the amount of work that was done and the coordinated efforts to be able to build multiple sites that. That have similar geometric configurations in them, for example, in Ohio, that that could not really have been accomplished without some form of a written language that they could transfer information from person to person, even from generation to generation. So there is that aspect as well.

John Dehlin [02:35:21] Okay. Okay. So those. So those I, as I understand it, are the two main reasons the two Kamora theory developed. My. My main. You know, to me, here's where you and I completely agree, Rod Meldrum. We agree that Joseph Smith was seeing Native Americans and calling them Lamanites. We agree with that. That when he sent missionaries to, you know, Ohio and Missouri, they were saying, go to the Lamanites. Yeah. So we agree with that.

Rodney Meldrum [02:35:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:35:54] And we agree that when he said Hill Cumorah, he meant Hill Cumorah. There's no evidence that Joseph Smith believed in a second Hill Cumorah.

The Hill Cumorah and Heartland Geography

Rodney Meldrum [02:36:02] Nope.

John Dehlin [02:36:03] In Mesoamerica.

Rodney Meldrum [02:36:04] No. In fact. In fact, even the Book of Mormon talks about the Hill Rama of the Jaredites was the Hill Cumorah. There's no indication in the Book of Mormon itself that there was more than one Hill Cumorah. There's one Hill and that's it.

John Dehlin [02:36:16] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [02:36:16] In fact, I, I have on my Firm foundation shirt, I says one. One Kimura guy.

John Dehlin [02:36:21] Right.

Rodney Meldrum [02:36:22] You know, so the Heartland Research, we're all about one Camorra. There was only one Camorra. It's in New York. It was. It's been sustained over and over again by, you know, the, the, the. The leadership of the church that. That is the Hill. This is the reason why there's a visitor center there. They have the Hill Kamora pageant there. There's. There's. There's nothing other than just speculation that there's. That. That that's not the real Hill Kamora.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then there's umpteen gazillion quotes from prophet seers and revelators between Joseph Smith and even probably today where prophet seers and revelators said Hill Cumorah is in Palmyra, including as Mormonism live RFM Bill Real make known the F. Michael Watson letter.

Rodney Meldrum [02:37:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:37:14] Where the Secretary to the First Presidency

Rodney Meldrum [02:37:17] claims, you know, comes out and says that that's. That that's been the position of the church since its inception. And we maintain that same idea.

John Dehlin [02:37:25] And the fact that the church sponsored the Hill Cumorah pageant forever in.

Rodney Meldrum [02:37:29] Well, until now. Yeah, been canceled, but dang it.

John Dehlin [02:37:34] Yeah. The fact that they did that forever is a good indication that that's what the church is pretty generally held, right?

Rodney Meldrum [02:37:42] Yeah. But the way that the MES America folks have kind of tried to come to an understanding of that not being the real Hill Cumor of the Book of Mormon is they said, well, the. There was. That there was a repository of records that was in the actual Hill Cumorah, but the, that the plates were found on the Hill Cumorah in the stone box in New York. And that's. And that they're two different hills. Okay. So that, that's where they're kind of coming from, where our feeling is. Basically the Hill Cumorah of. In the. In New York is the place of the repository of records. And we have some really good historical documentation that can actually demonstrate that that was the case in Joseph Smith's day. And then there was. The stone box was on the hill. So that the, the room of records was in the hill. The. The stone box was on the hill. People say, well, wait a minute, but that's a glacial drumlin. There's no caves in there. It wasn't a cave. It was a man made room that was. Had been dug out and actually deliberately put into that hill. So what? Glacial drumlins are not susceptible to cave formation. That requires a karst environment and limestone and dissolution of limestone and so forth to make that happen. That's not something that would happen in a glacial moraine, which is what the Hill Cumorah is.

John Dehlin [02:39:06] Okay. All right. So that's where you and I, I think, agree that Joseph Smith and almost all the prophets and revelators between then and now believe that North America was probably the primary setting for the Book of Mormon or at least the Joseph Smith.

Rodney Meldrum [02:39:27] Well, it wasn't the primary setting for it, but it was the final battle setting. It was the setting of the final battles, but it wasn't the setting of the, of the archeological history of the book.

John Dehlin [02:39:36] North America wasn't.

Rodney Meldrum [02:39:37] No, no, no. I thought you said Hill Cumorah, North America. Right, but that. I'm just, I'm just making the distinction that, that the civilization was not around New York. That's not where the Mound Builders were. They were primarily in the heartland area.

John Dehlin [02:39:49] Okay. All right.

Rodney Meldrum [02:39:50] Which is why we call it the heartland model.

John Dehlin [02:39:53] The best summary I've seen of this, I think it comes from Thomas Murphy where he basically says he agrees that, that Joseph Smith's, you know, he, he agrees that Joseph Smith's description of Laymanites and Nephites reflects a North American model for the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [02:40:15] Yeah, it does.

John Dehlin [02:40:16] He just says it reflects A farm boy's 19th century view of Native Americans in North America versus what the archaeological evidence would show 2,000 years prior in North America. You know, and what science would, would suggest is actually substantiated by the evidence. Do you see what I'm saying?

Rodney Meldrum [02:40:43] Not clear.

John Dehlin [02:40:45] It was probably a murky interpretation, but basically the. Joseph Smith writes into the Book of Mormon his, under his 19th century understanding of, of what it was like to be a North American.

Rodney Meldrum [02:40:59] Native American in that time frame.

John Dehlin [02:41:01] Yeah, yeah. And that's why all the 19th century anachronisms, including language, including horses and, and wheat and barley, according to Thomas Murphy, that's why all those anachronisms are showing up in Lamanite and Nephite culture. Because Joseph is looking around at the Native Americans that he's seeing in the 1800s, seeing that they're riding around on horses, seeing that they're eating, maybe they have sheep or wheat and barley, whatever. Seeing that they, you know, whatever. And then he's using arrows and he's writing that into the Book of Mormon from a 19th century perspective.

Rodney Meldrum [02:41:42] Okay, I can understand why Thomas Murphy would feel that way and, and you know, that kind of thing. That's one possible interpretation of the, of the evidence. But the, I think the propensity of evidence actually suggests that, that, that actually the Native Americans and the way that they were living in and around New York at the time when Joseph Smith was there, it would be kind of a stretch, I think. I mean, basically they had, they, they did have some farming that they did. Yeah. Book Roman talks about farming and so forth. The people, the Native Americans there in, in Joseph's day, you know, did they have. How many horses did they have? Did they have a lot of horses? Do they just have a few horses or do they do like most people back in those days, they pretty much just went on foot. You know, the, I don't think that there was a lot of Native Americans riding around on horses, attacking villages in New York. So, so having Native Americans on horseback would actually be kind of a weird thing for Joseph Smith to put if he was just basing it on his, on his experiences with the Native Americans. Look at the French Indian War, how many how many of the Native Americans were on horseback? How many of them had a cavalry? I don't know of any. Do you know of any? I don't know of any. So if that was the case, then why would Joseph Smith put in the Book of Mormon, well, the Indians had horses and so forth. Right. And also in the Book of Mormon, even. Even the horses thing is a little bit suspect because of the fact that. That when I say suspect, meaning who had horses in the Book of Mormon, there's no evidence that they had enough horses to form a cavalry. They never said we did. Right into battle on our. On our horses. And it's kind of a funny thing. I. I gotta tell you, this is one little funny little anecdotal thing. I saw a funny meme and it had. It had. Had a Native American guy standing on a toboggan with a taper, a tapir.

Carah Burrell [02:43:32] Taper.

Rodney Meldrum [02:43:33] The taper. Yeah, the taper, which is kind of a pig. And. And since there's no horses in Central America, they. They say, well, what? They must have been riding some kind of a pig. Some kind of a taper. Right. Which is really funny because Hebrews wouldn't even touch a pig because it's an unclean animal to Hebrews, especially ones that are living the laws of Moses, which the Book of Mormon said they were living for about 600 years.

Carah Burrell [02:43:55] That was kind of put forward by what, Paul just. Dan Peterson.

Rodney Meldrum [02:43:57] Yes. Okay, so. So it's like the tapers were the horses. That's not only a stretch, it's just. It's just ludicrous. Okay, so that's basically. So I've got on a little bit, that little tangent. I think it's kind of funny, though, that they. That, you know, they have tapers right into battle, but the Book of Mormon never says anything about them actually riding into battle. So horses, according to the Book of Mormon account, seem like they were not ubiquitous among all the people. They were kind of reserved for the. More royalty. So, for example, King Lamoni, the Lamanite king in the Book of Mormon, he had horses. He had chariots, apparently, and Ammon was taking care of his horses. Right. But there's no indication that everybody in the area had horses. It was kind of a. Kind of a. Only the rich and famous, maybe we had the. Had the horses kind of thing. So I'm not thinking that there's like hundreds of thousands of horses there. There were some horses, but not, you know, I mean, like I said, there's no indication they were riding into battle. On horses. They were pretty much hand to hand combat battles as far as we understand.

John Dehlin [02:45:04] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:45:05] Okay. So, yeah, I think I kind of got off on a little bit.

John Dehlin [02:45:10] That's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [02:45:10] The question was a little bit more about Joseph Smith and was he writing based on his understanding of Native Americans of his day? And the answer is I think he knew something about them. But there's a lot of things in the Book of Mormon that he would not have been really exposed to that he attributes to Book of Mormon stuff.

John Dehlin [02:45:26] Okay, cool. That's fine. Thank you. Yeah, I was just trying to, trying to convey an idea.

Rodney Meldrum [02:45:35] Right, right.

John Dehlin [02:45:36] All right, so really quickly, what I, I think we don't really have to go into this because I think you're going to give the same answer that you gave regarding Richard Bushman and Terrell Givens and the gospel topics essays like the church funds FARMS or the Church funded FARMS or Jack Welch did. But, but clearly the church and FARMS had a, had a partnership on significant levels, in my opinion. You don't have to agree with this. Yeah, this is my opinion.

Rodney Meldrum [02:46:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:05] Then FARMS evolves into the Maxwell Institute, which literally was on BYU campus. The Church funded Daniel Peterson, they funded Lewis Midgley, they funded and continue to fund the Maxwell Institute.

Rodney Meldrum [02:46:17] Right.

John Dehlin [02:46:18] Which has been critical of the Heartland Theory. And the Church has a very close partnership with Fairmormon, which has also been very critical of the Heartland Theory. So why do you think the church. And even though the Church has let you sell your books, a Deseret book, it seems like they're not as cozy at all to the Heartlanders as they are to Fairmormon and the Maxwell Institute. I think that's just factual. Why. Why would the Church be paying this other group of apologists to be criticized in attacking the Heartland model? Yeah, because if you go to Maxwell Institute, Gregory Smith, if you go to Fairmormon, there are, and we can include these in the show notes. There are extensive links to rebuttals and criticisms of the Heartland model from people on the Church's payroll. Why is the church funding criticism of your work, in your view?

Rodney Meldrum [02:47:30] Okay, yeah, that is an excellent question. And maybe to get a little bit of background as to why I think that that's going on. First off, the Church needs to have defenders. Apologetics is, I think, an important aspect of anything. If you can't defend your positions on, then, then you're. That's pretty weak. Right. And so, so I think you've got to be able to, to at least make the attempt to defend sometimes you have to have faith in things that we don't know yet and so forth. But there's, but you should have a, a large body of information that actually supports your basic premise. Right? Anyway, so come. When it comes down to apologetics, you know, the, the FARMS was originally, if you look at their original statement of their purpose for FARMS was to show forth evidences of the Book of Mormon as a Mesoamerican codex. I mean, that's right in their opening. This is what we're about. So their whole purpose was not to show evidence of the Book of Mormon in general, but evidence of the Book of Mormon as a Mesoamerican codex.

John Dehlin [02:48:40] And I believe that we kind of covered why. I think the reason they did that is because. Let me finish.

Rodney Meldrum [02:48:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They had.

John Dehlin [02:48:47] Because they were seeing the emerging science, the linguistic problems and the archaeological problems and the genetic, the DNA problems with the North American model. And they said if we want to be taken seriously in the, in the free world as people that don't, that aren't flat earthers, that aren't the equivalent of flat earthers, basically, then we need to develop up theories about the Book of Mormon that allow it to remain as a plausibly historical document. And so we've got to move the location of the Book of Mormon out of the, out of North America where there's no credible scientific evidence to support it. We need to move it to this really tiny area in Central America where there happens to be really, really advanced civilizations, the types of buildings that would be like Solomon's Temple, where there is a written language. Right. And where the area is so tiny that then you could argue, oh, there's just not enough, you know, we don't know it. It sort of removes it to this fictitious place where then the Church can never be nailed down. So that's why my view would be that FARMS would have had that charter because the Church was worried about being about looking like the equivalent of flat earthers, basically.

Rodney Meldrum [02:50:05] And I, I think, I think that that actually has some validity to your statement. But, but there's, it's a lot more in depth in that, I think. And, and basically maybe take. Just explain it. I'm trying to figure out the best way to explain it. So, you know, if there's, if there's, if you have a book that claims to be a history book and there's no evidence for its history, you got a problem. Right. And the, and the archaeology and things here in North America, we're indicating a, you know, the civilization of just, you know, we're primarily just, you know, hunter gatherer people and that kind of thing. That was kind of what the archaeology was saying at the time. And so what happened was, is that they, that they would be. It was problematic that this civilization would actually have existed here in North America. But then in Central America there's all this, that like you say, all this evidence for this highly advanced civilization. It had a written language and things like that. It's only been really in about the last 30 or 40 years when the archaeology of the Hopwa mound builder people has become more and more understanding or understood and the complexity and the, the greatness of this ancient civilization really has only come to light in about the last 30 or 40 years. Meaning that they had, you know, that they actually may have had a written language that they actually had. Had built these massive structures and things that would require humongous amounts of human labor, all working for a singular purpose. They now believe that these things are purpose had to be religious or spiritual in nature to get so many people involved in making earthworks that would that rival in some estimates the Great Wall of China in the amount of labor required to build over 2 million mounds. And these complexes in central Ohio and other places here we, we, we've learned a lot about their textiles. They had fabrics, they, they weren't just wearing raggedy leathers. They actually had textiles. They had a textile industry. We know that from archaeology. Again, there's, there's a lot of things that, that weren't known at the time. So I think the, the FARMS and, and those people were trying to, to, to deflect the, the, the research down to Central America where there was a highly advanced, an ancient civilization. But FARMS was not the first ones, John. Really the first ones was actually Benjamin Winchester.

Church Funding of Book of Mormon Research

John Dehlin [02:52:38] I know, but I'm just asking why the Mormon Church would fund farms, Maxwell Institute and Fair Mormon to argue against your, your heartland model.

Rodney Meldrum [02:52:48] And I think the answer to that is the funding actually I don't think comes from the church itself.

John Dehlin [02:52:52] Church pays, paid for. Daniel Peterson paid for Lewis Mitchley paid for Will family.

Rodney Meldrum [02:52:58] They paid their salaries.

John Dehlin [02:52:59] The maximum is literally on BYU campus. Like it's not really, it seems sophistry to argue the fact that the church funded the Maxwell Institute.

Rodney Meldrum [02:53:08] Yeah, that then turned Maxwell Institute. FARMS was not though FARMS was different.

John Dehlin [02:53:13] Okay. If we could debate about whether, I mean Hu Nibaly and FARMS and all the books that got published was clearly in association with byu. We don't have to even adjudicate that. Clearly the Maxwell Institute was hosted on BYU campus, funded by the Mormon Church. And the church was paying the Maxwell Institute to criticize and undermine the Heartland model. And they continue to do that today with Fair Mormon. And I'm asking you why you think whoever approved that budget, so Jeffrey Holland or the BYU board of directors, whoever it is that sponsors the Maxwell Institute in their apologetics, why are they paying and funding all that that to criticize the Heartland model?

Rodney Meldrum [02:53:55] Okay, that is a good question. And I'm gonna have to get into a little bit.

John Dehlin [02:53:58] You may not know because you, you.

Rodney Meldrum [02:54:00] I have a pretty good idea.

John Dehlin [02:54:01] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:54:02] I think.

John Dehlin [02:54:02] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [02:54:03] Although Dan Peterson may actually disagree with me on this. But, but when you originally had farms, now FARMS was, as I understand it, not necessarily funded by the church. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there was all private donations. Now there may have been church leadership that, that contacted wealthy members of the church to say, hey, would you fund this kind of thing? But as far as I know, it didn't come from the church itself. It was privately funded. Now that was the, that was farms. Then FARMS morphed into the Maxwell Institute. And that morphine was a really interesting thing. Those who are not, are not aware of that history. I mean it should take just a real brief history of that. But basically the, as I understand it from some very good sources that they, the FARMS was going in directions that some of the brethren were not that comfortable with. So they said we need to get some amount of control over what FARMS is doing so we can kind of give them some direction possibly anyway. And, and so they, so the church established the Maxwell Institute, funded it and then, and then invited FARMS to be a part of the Maxwell Institute, which then they took a vote and the, the board of directors of FARMS actually turned the church down originally said no, we don't want to be a part of that because we don't want to have to be under your control. And then I think there was some amount of pressure asserted, say if you're going to be working at BYU and getting, getting a paycheck from byu, then you will accept our, our proposal kind of thing. I don't know if that was the case. That might have been. I might get this a little bit wrong. But the bottom line is, is that they tech. They took a second vote. FARMS did and they decided to go ahead and become part of Max one Statistic. Then Maxwell Institute took over and they moved the most of the farmers people moved into Maxwell Institute, which again was funded by the church. Okay. As part of byu. I Don't know who actually. Who. Well, I know that there was a director there at the Maxwell Institute, but I think it was Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and others who said, you know, we have to address this, this Heartland Research guy because he's got more and more people are not believing in our Mesoamerica theory and more into the Heartland research. And that's undermining what we're doing in apologetics because we're saying that the Book of Women happened Central America and this guy's out there, you know, claiming that it happened in North America and, and, and we want to basically debunk his research. So know who funded it. I don't know exactly what the situation was or who made the decision, but I think it was the director Bradford at the time made some kind of a decision to do that. Now Fair Mormon, on the other hand, they, as far as I understand they're not funded at all by the Church. I think they're all donation.

John Dehlin [02:56:51] They work very closely, they work closely

Rodney Meldrum [02:56:53] with it, but that doesn't mean they're funded by them.

John Dehlin [02:56:55] They're indirectly funded by rich donors that the church says, hey, rich donors fund fair Mormon.

Carah Burrell [02:57:00] Right.

Rodney Meldrum [02:57:01] It's, I'm going to be honest, it does make it.

John Dehlin [02:57:03] Second, it feels a little bit like, like it is very clear that the Mormon Church is funding an entire strain of apologetics.

Rodney Meldrum [02:57:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:57:12] That is against what you're doing.

Rodney Meldrum [02:57:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:57:14] And they're publishing that not only with the Maxwell Institute, but nevertheless, but also with Sarah Mormon. And I'm asking you if you have any idea why and you're having a hard time just saying why. Why do you think church funded apologists keep attacking the Heartland model?

Rodney Meldrum [02:57:32] And the answer to that is because they, they, I think they did it at first and then they all got canned and they haven't done it since.

John Dehlin [02:57:40] Do you think Daniel Peterson was canned for attacking the Heartland model?

Rodney Meldrum [02:57:44] I don't know that for sure but that, but I have several indications that would, that would give the idea that because of taking almost six months of time and, and, and the, the money and the people and so forth to basically write hundreds and hundreds of pages of, of attack articles against me research that that was why Daniel Peterson was one of the reasons why it could be also a personal thing between him and, and Bradford and so forth. But, but I think that, that the timing of it is indicative that he, that they spent all this time and effort to debunk my research and then right after they publish it, they're all let go from Maxwell Institute. The timing of that just smacks of, there's something going on there. Bradford said he wanted to go in a different direction, but I can tell you that the Maxwell Institute has not published really anything negative about my research since that time, since Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley were expelled from Maxwell Institute. That makes sense.

John Dehlin [02:58:43] But that's, that's also because, and even

Rodney Meldrum [02:58:46] fair Mormon hasn't really addressed me other than the time that they did early on, which was years and years ago. And they haven't really gone any more into that direction. So is the church continuing to fund it? It first off, the church was never funding it. It was individual donors. And you can say, well, yeah, but the church kind of arranged for it. Okay, yeah, I mean, I, I, I see where you're coming. I think one of the reasons why the church hasn't helped me as far as financially or donate or you know, through these kinds of grants or so forth is because I'm not a 501c3 nonprofit. The church can't work with a for profit company. So that's what we're doing. That's why we don't have any, any direct access to that. But it is, it has been somewhat disconcerting to me that, you know, that, that these guys would get so much funding and everything. I kind of feel a little bit like David going up against Goliath in some aspects because you got, you got people who have PhDs and who have clout and who have BYU backing and who have money and, and everything. And I feel like I kind of been going against them to some extent, but I look at it a little bit different than they do. They look at me as the enemy. I look at them as we're on the same team and we're just deciding whether we're going to call it a play that goes up the middle or we're going to go for the, the pass or around the end. But while we're arguing about which direction we're going to go, the other team is taking it down the field and they're taking it to the Church. And the Church is getting kicked in the teeth over and over again by the research that has been done by these organizations that have been trying to show forth evidence of the Book of Mormon. Central America, a place that doesn't have evidence. Sorry, but it just doesn't, the time frames don't match up. The animals, the plants, you know, the, the civilization itself doesn't match up that language, even though they have a written language. It's the wrong One, it's not Hebrew. So. So in the, in doing their apologetics, they have actually I think done to some extent a major disservice to the church by not being as true to the church as it should be.

John Dehlin [03:00:52] Are you feeling emotional about this right now?

Rodney Meldrum [03:00:55] A little bit. Because, you know, and again, I don't, I'm not expecting the church to fund me or any of our research. I've funded it myself pretty much based on, you know, our, our sales of our DVDs and things like that, our educational materials. I think that's an honest living. I, I will have to say though that for, for all of their efforts to try to continue to promote the Central American theory, they're losing. I think that there are more that be with us than those that be with them anymore within at least the English speaking membership of the church. But there you go.

John Dehlin [03:01:35] One thing that I think.

Rodney Meldrum [03:01:36] Carah, you've been quiet for a while.

Carah Burrell [03:01:39] Yeah, I'm reading the comments. I'm just keeping track of the comments. Everyone has a lot of things to say.

Rodney Meldrum [03:01:45] Yeah, I can imagine.

John Dehlin [03:01:49] As I think about my upbringing in the church and this is before farms, this is before the Maxwell Institute. I remember watching Ancient America Speaks, these little movies or film strips where the church in this in the 1970s is basically the church, not apologists, the church itself. Church publications are saying, hey, we found baptismal fonts in Mesoamerica. We found the, the legend of the great white God Quetzalcoatl in Guatemala. Well, that's Jesus. And these little, these little things we can find in a Mayan temple. Well, that's a baptismal font. And this little toy that we found, you know, you know, that has wheels on it. It, it shows that there were wheels. And it wasn't apologists. It was the church that was advancing the model of a, the Mesoamerican model for the Book of Mormon, not its apologists.

Rodney Meldrum [03:02:43] Yeah, I think a lot of it actually comes down to Arnold Freeberg. You know, his, his artwork has probably done more to promote the Central America theory than almost anything else because he, he, when he did his famous, I think it was 12 or 13 paintings that he was commissioned by the, the primary president of the church to say, we don't have any artwork to show the Book of Mormon. Can you do something that would show that? They said, well, why should I, why should I put, well make it Central America because that's what, you know, a lot of people believe. So he, so he showed, you know, depicting with jungles and jaguars and so Forth. You know, there's King Noah sitting up on his throne, there's these jaguars next to him and so forth, which are never mentioned in the Book of Mormon. They sell these, these huge Mayan temples and there's not even, not one referenced anywhere in the Book of Mormon to any stone buildings at all. The only thing that talks about made out of stone is stone walls. In fact, in Helm, it talks about that the temples were made out of timber, made out of wood. Well, wood doesn't last over long periods of time. There's no. In fact, the pyramid temples in Central America look amazingly like the ones in Laos and Cambodia because they're the same people. They're Asians, they're Asiatic people. They built the same kinds of structures. They have nothing to do with the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:04:00] So I imagine you're going to give us the same answer you gave about Richard Bushman in history, that the prophets make mistakes. But I'm asking you why was the Church's. Let me finish the question. Why was the Church's official marketing materials and educational curriculum advancing a Mesoamerican model for the Book of Mormon?

Rodney Meldrum [03:04:20] In my upbringing, because somebody was promoting that way back in Joseph Smith's day,

John Dehlin [03:04:26] it was not known they were promoting a Mesoamerican model.

Rodney Meldrum [03:04:30] Yeah, yeah. Benjamin Winchester, John Page, they were promoting Mesoamerica models when the very first book that came ever came out was called the Incidents of Travel in Central America.

John Dehlin [03:04:39] And that's why the first presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve in the 1960s and 70s were promoting a Mesoamerican model. Because they believe this Winchester guy over Joseph Smith himself.

Rodney Meldrum [03:04:51] No, they, they were basically they, the, the apologetics and specifically I think it. What had a lot to do with. Well, first off is the, the RLDS Church. And then it was kind of taken on by our, our LDS apologetics basically that, that Central America was the place. This is the place we're supposed to be looking for the evidences. And so they allowed these things to be promoted. In fact, the one person I know that did get money, quite a bit of it actually was Thomas Stewart Ferguson. And, and I think that that was actually. I'm not sure 100 if that was a direct from the church to him or if it was through a, a wealthy donor or whatever that, you know, whatever. But Thomas Stewart Ferguson spent years, I think it was about a half a million dollars going down to Central America looking for evidence Book of Mormon and, and then he came back, basically wrote a letter to the first Presidency says there's no, there's no in the dirt archaeology that supports the Book of Mormon in any way, shape or form here in Central America. He basically left the church. But let me, let me tell you the, the, the sequel to that story because his son.

John Dehlin [03:06:05] Well, what you're not, what we're getting off track from is the original question, which just, I think it's the same question as the Gospel topics essays. I, I, what I think you're going to say is that the, the prophet seers and revelators of our church aren't perfect.

Rodney Meldrum [03:06:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:06:20] That they can make mistakes.

Rodney Meldrum [03:06:22] And this is one.

John Dehlin [03:06:23] And this is, you say it.

Rodney Meldrum [03:06:26] This is what is one of them? The, the promotion of Central America as a setting for the Book of Mormon. The church official was, is what, you know what the church's official position is, right, John? You know what that is?

John Dehlin [03:06:37] I know what it is now. Neutral. I know what it is now.

Rodney Meldrum [03:06:39] Right.

John Dehlin [03:06:40] But it wasn't, that wasn't true back

Rodney Meldrum [03:06:41] in the 70s, actually, back in Joseph Smith's day, it was probably not as true either because, because Joseph Smith was pretty clear about the North American idea, North American setting. So somewhere along the line, people in administrative positions within the church have accepted what apologetics people have, have, have researched and said, well, you know, this makes the most sense to us. Let's explore this. Let's take a look at it. The Church explored it. It, they allowed information to go out there about Central America and the Mayan civilization and so forth and then, but, but since that time, you know, when you were on your mission. I was on my mission. And you look, you open the COVID of the Book of Mormon, what was the pictures on the inside? Central America. Right. And you had, you had the missionaries going out and doing, you know, you know, Ancient America speaks and, and all this kind of stuff all about Central America. How much of that is going on now? There's zero promotion of Central America in the church. In fact, the church has officially come

John Dehlin [03:07:41] out and said, I'm sorry, Rod, you're changing my question. My question was why did they allow it then?

Rodney Meldrum [03:07:47] Because that was kind of the dominant idea. That was the best information they had at the time.

John Dehlin [03:07:51] But you, but you also said administrators. And what I'm going to say is Spencer W. Kimball, David O. McKay, Harold B. Lee, they would have all seen those film strips, they would have all seen those movies, but that would have

Rodney Meldrum [03:08:03] been the missionary department.

John Dehlin [03:08:04] They would have all known and approved of the Church advancing a Mesoamerican model. And your view is that that was a.

Rodney Meldrum [03:08:15] What mistake?

John Dehlin [03:08:17] That the pro. That the Quorum of the twelve and the first Apostles made a mistake in advancing the Mesoamerican model.

Rodney Meldrum [03:08:23] I wouldn't say it's a mistake. I mean, basically, I mean, when we learn the best, when we make mistakes, a lot of times. Right. I mean, sometimes in my life. In your life, when you do a dumb thing and then you get hammered for it, you suffer the consequences of your decision. It has a tendency to help you to learn more. I think that the Lord allows the church and its leaders and all of us to be able to make mistakes and correct them. And I think the church has corrected it. The church is not funding any more. You know, Thomas Ferguson's out there. His son, in fact, told me after he was introduced to Heartland Research. He says if my dad, Thomas Stewart Ferguson, says if. If my dad would have had the, the research and information the Heartland model actually provides, he says he'd have never left the church. And my hope is, is that. That there's somebody out there that's listening to the podcast and they say this and say, well, well, maybe we should take a new look at this. Because I think in a lot of ways, John, you've been right in that you've been pointing out the inconsistencies of some of these things with these apologetics. Right. And, and some of the apologetics that have been done in, in support of the church haven't actually been completely supportive of the church. Some of them have had a foot in. In other camps and trying to, to reconcile the two.

John Dehlin [03:09:58] Yeah, yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:10:00] And you've been basically just pointing that out, and for that you've been, you know, hammered, you know, because. Pointing out that kind of thing. So, so my hope is, is that there's. That people can see that there is a path to remain faithful in the church, to remain faithful to these things, because there is a path forward to be able to say, you know, what these anachronisms that were thought to be anachronisms are not necessarily, you know, Joseph Smith and the translation. There's things about that that are different, you know, and, and, and hopefully it gives people a reason to believe. Yeah, still believe.

John Dehlin [03:10:40] Yeah. And I think that's what the Heartland model seems to be. It's basically saying, yeah, the Mesoamerican model is a loser. So maybe the Heartland model needs another look.

Rodney Meldrum [03:10:54] I think that that would be an accurate statement. And I think those who have looked into it and in, in sincerity and depth. I mean, it's one thing to come to one of our events and then, you know, with the intent of trying to show, you know, what's wrong with it or coming to one of the events. Basically, when new information is, is, is offered to anybody, you really have kind of three ways of looking at. You can look at positively, negatively or subjectively. And if you do positive or negative, you're going to end up with confirming your own bias. If you look at it subjectively, then hopefully you can come to a, a new conclusion if it requires it or you can maintain your old conclusion based on if it doesn't have validity or not. Okay, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [03:11:41] Yeah, I think, I think I understand what you're saying.

Rodney Meldrum [03:11:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:11:45] Okay. Well that, that is my main line of questioning personally that I had about. Yeah, thank you. And you, and I really appreciate you answering it.

Rodney Meldrum [03:11:56] And they're hard questions. But one of the things about, in the universal model, we had kind of an interesting saying. It says that hard questions are easy if you have an answer.

John Dehlin [03:12:06] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:12:07] And hopefully I've shown that we do have some answers that may go against the grain of what mainstream is saying. But, but let me just for those who are aware of the, of the, of the Book of Mormon teachings, it actually talks about several times that in the last days people wouldn't even know where to go to find the truth truth because it wouldn't be readily available and that there would be so much misunderstanding and untruth out there that people can't find it. They don't even know where to look for it. My hope is that by looking into the heartland research, it may give people some answers that have previously been problematic, but that are not or at least less problematic take than the Mesa America stuff.

John Dehlin [03:12:54] Okay. So I've got a huge list of questions now that aren't my questions, they're questions of others. Carah's also monitoring the chats and we want to invite our viewers and listeners to share any questions for Rod. And we can just kind of go back and forth here now. Sure, Carah, if you want to. But let me start with some questions that Thomas Murphy asked me to ask you.

Thomas Murphy on DNA and Heartland Evidence

Rodney Meldrum [03:13:14] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:13:15] Because I really respect Thomas Murphy. He was for me the first scholar to recognize the DNA problems with the Book of Mormon. And Simon Southerton came later. But also Thomas Murphy is a well respected scholar with, with reference to Native Americans and Native American culture in North America. So we've interviewed Thomas Murphy on Mormon stories. Let's in the show notes include past Mormon stories, interviews to Thomas Murphy. Because I really respect him and I'm just Going to ask, ask you his questions and give you a chance to answer.

Rodney Meldrum [03:13:49] By the way, I've never met him. If he's watching, I would love to meet him someday. Yeah, that'd be awesome. I met his mom, actually. She's come to our conferences and things and, and it's been, you know, it seems like a really nice guy, so.

John Dehlin [03:14:00] Super nice guy.

Rodney Meldrum [03:14:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:01] Really incredible scholar. Okay, so one of the concerns. And I'm going to read about five or six of these and then, Carrie, you can queue up questions if you want. So one of the concerns or criticisms Thomas Murphy has, and actually Fairmorman and the Maxwell Institute both share this concern with Thomas Murphy is that sometimes you use evidence that has later then been determined to be fraudulent by the scientific community. You'll still use fraudulent evidence to bolster your claims for the Heartland theory. If the evidence, if, if you happen to like the evidence and you can just say that was a mistake or we, we shouldn't have done that, or I've never done that. I just want to know, you know.

Rodney Meldrum [03:14:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:14:49] What would your response to Thomas Murphy be about that? Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [03:14:52] Probably one of the areas that, that would be the most cogent as far as that's concerned is, is the, is when it comes down to artifacts. Yeah. I mean, I have, I have in my little box here, I have a couple of artifacts that. And, and there's been claims that they are fake, they're forgeries, that it's a hoax and forth. I could pull those out and actually show you a couple of them. But the bottom line is that there are arguments both pro and con on both sides. Just because one side claims victory doesn't make them the victor, doesn't make them the truth. Right. So there's been like, for example, the Newark Holy Stones. There's been arguments on both sides. There's non Mormon people like Professor Houston and so forth that have, have argued in favor of the authenticity of the holy stones. But yet you have the, the head curator of archaeology for the state of Ohio who says that they are absolutely a fraud. Both of them have made their arguments. Both of them have some validity. So which one's right? But just because one side claims it's a fraud doesn't make it a fraud unless it can be shown definitively to be so. So, and some of these have not been shown definitively, but yet Thomas Murphy and others will say, well, just because they claimed it was a fraud, because means it's a fraud, period.

John Dehlin [03:16:08] Okay. And we'll have to bring Thomas Murphy on to Debate that with you. Let me just ask you this question a different way. Are you aware of ever using evidence that later turned out to be fraud that you now say, man, I did use some evidence that turned out to be a fraud, and I shouldn't have used it? Are you aware of ever doing that? Is there any.

Rodney Meldrum [03:16:26] I can't really think, because the ones that are primarily been claimed as fraud is like the, the Bat Creek stone, the Newark Holy stones are ones that have been claimed as, as fraudulent. I know that there are frauds that go on out there. Some of the. In one of the videos that we did, it was called the Last Civilizations of North America documentary. There was just a flash on the screen for just a second of. I think it was the, the Kinderhook, one of the Kinderhook plates and so forth. Well, that's been declared as a fraud as well. There's, there's, again, there's, there's, there's, there's. The more you delve into the details of that and the claim of fraud, you know, there's aspects of that. There's been, like the, the Michigan tablets and, and things like that. The Michigan relics, they've been declared as frauds, but it's pretty hard to understand how that could be a fraud. For example, Dwayne May has done research where some of these. This, this symbol called the mystic symbol that was talked about by Henriette Mertz, who's not a member of the church or anything. On certain artifacts. They said, well, well, this guy, the Sofa Savage collection, he was faking all these things. It's interesting to note that there were newspaper articles that had some of these artifacts in it that were published before Sofa and Savage were even born. It's pretty hard to fake things and forge things that, that are. That were in the newspapers before you're born.

John Dehlin [03:17:54] So you're saying the Michigan relics were not frauds?

Rodney Meldrum [03:17:57] I'm saying that some of them may be frauds, but not all of them.

John Dehlin [03:18:00] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [03:18:00] I mean, how would somebody take tens of thousands of artifacts and hide them in over six states?

John Dehlin [03:18:05] No, no, I don't want to. I don't want to argue the details. I just want to know your position on it.

Rodney Meldrum [03:18:09] So, yeah, so. So some of them may be frauds, but some of them may not be frauds.

John Dehlin [03:18:14] But as far as you know, your work has relied on credible sources, and you don't rely on or have never really significantly relied on evidence that later turned out to be a fraud. Fraud. As far as you know, you would rather Say the people who called, the archaeologists who called that evidence are more likely wrong than the evidence is actually fraudulent. Is that what you're saying?

Rodney Meldrum [03:18:37] Yeah, I would say that a lot of things that have been declared as frauds may not be frauds.

John Dehlin [03:18:40] Okay. All right, so that's Thomas Murphy. That's my first attempt at an answer there. So the, the second thing Thomas talks about is he feels like. And, and by the way, we're not going to be able to talk about the genetics here in detail. I just want to get you on record as your, of your position.

Rodney Meldrum [03:18:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:57] So. So you talk about the X DNA lineage.

Rodney Meldrum [03:19:01] Right.

John Dehlin [03:19:02] And according to Thomas Murphy, you generally refer to the X lineage as a European lineage, when in Thomas Murphy's understanding the X lineage is found in Africa, Asia and the Americas. And so he has an issue with you racializing the X lineage and referring to it as European. Does he, Is that what you do? Does he have it wrong? Do you want to make a correction?

Rodney Meldrum [03:19:26] Well, he can, he can, he can take that up with the people who wrote the, the actual journal articles who talk about it being a European lineage.

John Dehlin [03:19:34] Okay. Yeah, but, but, but his, that is,

Rodney Meldrum [03:19:37] that's not my, that's not my opinion. That's basically from mainstream genetics. They say that the haplogroups A, B, C and D are Asiatic lineages. And haplogroup X is the only DNA type type that is a founding haplogroup that is not Asian, it's Caucasian, basically. And that's what they say. So it's a, it's a Europe, primarily European, Middle Eastern.

John Dehlin [03:19:59] And when, and when Thomas Murphy says the ex lineage is found in African, Asian and the Americas, you would say

Rodney Meldrum [03:20:06] what if it was Hebrews? And they were, they had, after the, the diaspora of Israel they went to Africa, they went to America. As far as if the Book of Mormon is correct, they went to America. So they dispersed around the different areas. So their lineages are going to be found throughout the world. Like that.

John Dehlin [03:20:25] Got it. Okay. He wants to ask the, the LDS Church leadership has called to reject racism in any form. He wants to know if you support the LDS Church leaders call to reject racism in any form. Form.

Rodney Meldrum [03:20:41] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:20:42] Okay. Then his follow up question, and this is a little bit of a lawyerly setup.

Rodney Meldrum [03:20:47] Uhhuh.

John Dehlin [03:20:48] He says, why do you advocate that Lamanites were cursed with dark skin? So for. I think we've probably, we, we beat that Ver.

Rodney Meldrum [03:20:58] Smither last and in the second one.

John Dehlin [03:21:00] Okay, okay, that's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [03:21:01] So watch that one, Thomas.

John Dehlin [03:21:02] Okay.

Carah Burrell [03:21:04] Clear your schedule. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:08] All right.

Rodney Meldrum [03:21:09] It's worth it, though. These, these, some of these conversations may have. I don't know, maybe I'll just say it. Eternal consequences for people. You know, I mean, people make a lot of life decisions based on the things that you bring up.

John Dehlin [03:21:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:21:26] And, and, and my hope is, is that I give people a reason for the faith that is in them.

John Dehlin [03:21:32] Sure. Here I understand. Okay. Next, Thomas has a real concern with, with sometimes the usage of Native American artifacts.

Rodney Meldrum [03:21:45] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:21:46] That just because some of us may stumble on some Native American artifacts that they. They ultimately should be owned or belong to the tribes that exist today that would be the descendants of the original owners of the artifacts. So Thomas asks, would you consider repatriating Native American artifacts to their rightful owners, whatever ones you have in your possession or any of your supporters or followers have? Do you think that that's an ethical thing to do?

Rodney Meldrum [03:22:20] I, I, yeah, I would. I would say in general, yes. However, I mean, what about museums and so forth? There's, I guess one of the, in fact, this is one of the issues that came out with the, with the whole genetics thing, is that the Native American remains remain of Kennewick Man. And there was about five or six different tribes that, I understand it, that were. That were claiming his remains, the Kennewick man's remains. So which one of the tribes are you going to give it to? And that's the reason. Part of the reason why they started doing the DNA analysis of Kennewick man's bones so they could actually repatriate his bones with the correct tribe that actually has his same genetic background. Right. So that's, that, that's the American Graves Protection Repatriation Act. There are a lot of Native American artifacts that, you know, this is a huge civilization. They had a lot of, of, of stuff. Who. And that goes into, well, who are their descendants today? You know, so if you find something that was 2,000 years ago, for example, I have, right here in my, in my stuff, I have a little scroll. It's a copper scroll. It was found up in the Keweenon Peninsula up in Michigan. It is made out of copper, and it was beat into basically, a copper plate and then rolled into a scroll. I have it right here with me. And so. But who owns that? I got it from a collection, a guy who had a big collection of these things, and I'm not sure where he got them all from. I was there up in Michigan. I think it's a murky area, Thomas. I don't know that everybody knows. Exactly. I mean who do you repatriate those things to? And if that's the case, are we going to also then require that all museums repatriate everything that they have on display that shows the, the greatness of this ancient civilizations, all these ancient civilizations. Do we give those back to their people if they don't have museums so that no one can ever know about them them? I think it's kind of ridiculous really. But, but on the other hand, if the Native Americans. I'll give you one quick example. The Bat Creek stone was dug up in, in a, in in Tennessee by the Smithsonian and official archaeological dig. The, the, the Central Band of Cherokee. I believe. They, they kind of claim it's their, their stuff, but you don't see the Smithsonian given it back. In fact they, they allowed the Cherokees at the Cherokee Museum there in Cherokee, North Carolina, they allowed them to have the stone and put it on display for about a year and a half. And I, and I would take groups there to see this, this, this stone which is again, it's controversial, but there's good arguments on both sides. And, and, and, and bottom line is, is that the Smithsonian took this stone back. Last time we went to Cherokee, North Carolina to go look at it, it was gone, it was off display. So I should the Smithsonian give that back?

John Dehlin [03:25:19] I think, I think I get, I think I get your answer. It's just complex and it is complex.

Rodney Meldrum [03:25:23] It's not that easy. But I, I think that Native Americans, if they want their stuff, they should claim it and then, and then see, you know, how, how it was procured, who got it, where was it found? Yeah, it's murky.

John Dehlin [03:25:37] Okay. Okay, tell us about the. My understanding is you or some of your followers are sponsoring archaeological digs now in the, in the past few years, like in Iowa, for example. Can you talk about what digs you or your supporters or followers are, are engaging in and what, what, where, what they're trying to find and where they're trying to find find it and how they're trying to find it?

Rodney Meldrum [03:26:05] Yeah. Okay. So, so basically probably the ones most, most involved with that would be Wayne May. He's kind of our archaeological guy. He's the, he's had an ancient American magazine for a long time. As far as an archaeological dig, though I'm not aware of any archaeological digs per se. That as that has been part of this. Most of what we've done is what they call non invasive types of research. Archaeological research involving whether it be ground penetrating Radar or. Or magnetometry studies.

John Dehlin [03:26:38] Just tell me really quickly, what are they trying to find?

Rodney Meldrum [03:26:41] Just evidences of the ancient civilizations of America here in the heartland.

John Dehlin [03:26:47] Any big hopes? What would be the holy grail discovery for these digs in Iowa?

Rodney Meldrum [03:26:54] Well, probably the digs in Iowa would be. If our understanding of where the Zarahemla of the Book of Mormon is located would be somewhere across the river from Navajo. So we've done lidar studies, we've done magnetometry studies, we've had ground penetrating radar studies. We actually purchased a piece of. A piece of ground to take a look at some things that Wayne May was. Was. Was finding based on those. Those things.

John Dehlin [03:27:19] So far, you're trying to find Zarahemla. Would be nice if you could find Zarahem.

Rodney Meldrum [03:27:23] I mean, would that be cool? I mean.

John Dehlin [03:27:24] Okay, okay.

Rodney Meldrum [03:27:25] But nobody's really expecting we're going to find a rock at some point that says, you know, made in Zarahemla.

John Dehlin [03:27:28] Right, right, right.

Rodney Meldrum [03:27:29] You know, but that's.

John Dehlin [03:27:30] You're trying to do things like that,

Rodney Meldrum [03:27:31] but just show that there's. That there was at least a, you know, civilization there. And they were.

John Dehlin [03:27:36] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:27:36] You know, okay. Had buildings and houses and dwellings and stuff.

John Dehlin [03:27:40] And then. And then I'm gonna. Carah has to leave soon, so I'm going to turn the time over to Carah, and then I'll come back to some of these questions from Tom. But. But to close out this question specifically, Tom wanted to know if you've consulted with any local Native American tribes as consults in any of your archaeological digs in the Midwest.

Rodney Meldrum [03:28:01] Yeah, in fact, we had. There was a. Several Native American tribes that came and actually did a special blessing thing and so forth there at the site before we did any kind of digging stuff. I mean, yes, absolutely, we have tried. We want to be 100 respectful because we believe that these people are the covenant people of God.

John Dehlin [03:28:19] Yeah, you. Yeah, you love and respect. Respect them. Okay. Yeah. All right, I've got some more questions.

Rodney Meldrum [03:28:24] We definitely do not want to disrespect the Native Americans. In fact, we have nothing but utmost honor and respect for them. And we have a lot of them. I mean, the last big event that we had, we had a Native American celebration where we had them come and talk about their stories and do dances and all kinds of stuff. It was awesome.

John Dehlin [03:28:40] Yeah. Okay. Carah, we're sad that you have to leave early today, but we want to give you a chance to ask any questions you want to ask of Rod.

Examining Book of Mormon Characters and Artifacts

Carah Burrell [03:28:48] So my last one, so I was reading Your book. And you have this, if anyone wants to look it up later, the caricatures, I don't know what you call it. Characters. Yeah. The characters that were supposedly, it says, given to Martin Harris, described to Joseph Smith Jr. Where he requested that he obtain proof of the antiquity of the record being translated. And Martin Harris went and talked to Anton. The Anthem transcript, Anson transcript. Can you tell me your understanding of how that went down and that this. And then in your. And your estimation, historical. And then just to clarify that these characters you believe are the actual characters of the Book of Mormon?

Rodney Meldrum [03:29:27] Yes.

Carah Burrell [03:29:28] The, the, the, the. What do you call it, as we

Rodney Meldrum [03:29:30] understand it, the Anthem transcript. Although that, that, that's the hard part about history, is knowing what's the truth and what's not the truth. Right. It's, it's very hard to go back and reconstruct.

Carah Burrell [03:29:42] If you included it in your book, you believe that this, these are the

Rodney Meldrum [03:29:45] characters as, as I understand it, it now, unless I'm shown, you know, if somebody shows sometime that the anthem transcript fragment was somehow fraudulent or something. But as we're, as I understand it, Joseph Smith wrote down specific characters from the gold plates.

Carah Burrell [03:30:03] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:30:03] And he put them onto that anthem transcript. And then, and then that was taken to some people and they said, well, yeah, it does look like some Hebrew. The thing that I find is interesting there is that if you look at the ancient Micmac language.

Carah Burrell [03:30:16] Hold on, wait, don't go to that yet. Just say what, what happened with, with. Was it Charles Anton?

Rodney Meldrum [03:30:21] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:30:22] Was the authenticity.

Rodney Meldrum [03:30:24] Well, he's the one that supposedly, again, this, again, you have to take a little bit with a grain of salt because it was. Who was it that took it to the Anthem transcript too?

John Dehlin [03:30:33] I think it was Martin Harris.

Rodney Meldrum [03:30:34] Yeah, I think it was Martin Harris and he took it to him. And then according to what Martin Harris said, is that, is that, you know, he looked at it, he said, yes, it's a, it's a, it's a real deal. It's, you know, this is actual character. And he said, where'd you get it from? He says, well, you know, Joseph Smith has this gold Bible and blah, blah, blah. And, and so that's when he said, well, he says, I want that. I want my, my affidavit. This is authentic back. And he, and he tore it up. He says, you know, he says, unless you give me the book, he says, I'm not going to do it. And then, and as I understand it, then, then he said, well, I can't. Some of the book is Sealed. He says, well, I can't read a sealed book.

Carah Burrell [03:31:14] Right. So you tell. You kind of describe that in your book, that. That kind of exchange that says that Anton wrote Harris a letter of authenticity declaring the fragment to contain true Egyptian characters.

Rodney Meldrum [03:31:27] Right.

Carah Burrell [03:31:27] And then later, when he said, oh, did you know that it was from an angel of God, revealed the characters, Joseph Smith, Anton reportedly tore up the authentic authentication, stating that there's no such thing as angels and as herring to bring the plates for him to translation.

Rodney Meldrum [03:31:39] If that did happen, is it possible that Professor Anthon would have been biased against the Book of Mormon? I mean, is that possible?

Carah Burrell [03:31:47] So what was your intention? So when you're collecting your book, the annotated version of the Book of Mormon, what was your intention with including that story and these characters in your book?

Rodney Meldrum [03:31:57] Because the Mic Mac language has characters that are. That at least some of the Micmac language has many, many characters. Okay, so this is just a few of the characters that actually look somewhat like the characters that Joseph Smith, if the Anthem transcript is correct, that Joseph Smith got from the place, which would show a possible connection between the. The Book of Mormon linguistics and the actual linguistics of the people who live in the area up there.

Carah Burrell [03:32:26] Okay, so you are comparing the Micmac language to the characters that. That Hanton apparently said.

Rodney Meldrum [03:32:33] It is a parallelism given.

Carah Burrell [03:32:35] Okay, but my question that I think you know that. I would assume you know this. I don't know that. Scholars have said. There's a scholar named Stanley Kimball that said that even a reincarnated, reincarnated Egyptian could not have translated the characters. And that also the study of Egyptian texts was in its infancy at 1828. And not even the most. Most advanced scholar at that time could have validated a translation of any Egyptian hieroglyphics, let alone the translation of an otherwise unknown altered form of Egyptian. End quote. So Anton would not have been able to even tell if the translation was correct because there was no such thing as the scholarship of Egyptian at the time. So why are you comparing the Micmac language to something that we can't even tell was authentic at the time? And that. And if you look at it, it just kind of looks like.

Rodney Meldrum [03:33:25] Why don't you take it to Professor Anthem, I guess, is one of the questions. Wasn't he a renowned Egyptologist?

Carah Burrell [03:33:30] But there was no such thing as, like Egypt, there was no such thing as authentic. What's the word I'm looking for? There's no such thing as confirming authenticity of something against nothing that something that there wasn't really scholarship in. So I'm just confused. Like, why would you. Like, what's the. What's the import, the importance of including this in the book? If. Because it just seems like you were trying to say maybe, I don't know, like, well, that he was just, like,

Rodney Meldrum [03:33:54] against a couple of assumptions. If, if the assumption is correct that these actually were characters from the Book of Mormon, then it would also make sense that the Book of Mormon happened in North America, that maybe some of the ancient. The tribes would still carry some of those characters forward into their current language or their language that was known back in the 1700s. And if that's the case, then. Then that's what this is about, because that basically that. That Micmac language was one of the very first written languages that was actually understood and accepted as a language. That was Columbus. So when. When people say there was no language, the Native Americans didn't have any language. That's. That's bunk. The. The Micmac had a language, and there was people who actually went and stayed among the Micmac and they. And he learned the language and then he wrote down their syllable, what they call this syllable or something like that anyway, that their. Their characters. And then he published it. And some. The characters that he published look just like these ones that were in the Book of Mormon that Joseph Smith said was the Book of Mormon. And Joseph Smith couldn't have possibly known about this because it was written after his time frame. Okay, excuse me for your answer. I got that wrong. The. The. The mcmac language information was written before Joseph Smith wrote, you know, had translated the Book of Mormon. Okay. And Joseph Smith had no access to that information. So there's no way he could have copied what was written about the Micmac language as.

Carah Burrell [03:35:24] And you're saying that the characters.

Rodney Meldrum [03:35:25] That the characters.

Carah Burrell [03:35:26] Characters right here match the Micmac language and he wouldn't have been able to look at them.

Rodney Meldrum [03:35:30] Some of them, the Micmac language has like 200, and I can't remember, there's maybe even three or 400 characters. These are just some of the characters. But they do look amazingly like the characters on the plate, if Joseph Smith was getting those right, Because.

Carah Burrell [03:35:45] Okay, there's just. There's some funny ones that kind of look like regular American. Not American, sorry, regular English, like an H with like an H with a little curl or a D with like an extra line and a dot around it. And that if you arrange each one of the letters on here, you could literally write the standard, most written languages,

Rodney Meldrum [03:36:07] unless it's a glyph system. Most written languages, whether it's cuneiform or other kinds of languages, have a lot of similarities. So, I mean, you could. You could. You could make the case that there's similarities in almost every written language just by looking at the ones that look like an A, an H or an I or a J or.

Carah Burrell [03:36:24] So you made my point for me. Kind of. You just made my point for me.

Rodney Meldrum [03:36:28] Well, again, the point is, is that you can make parallelisms to that, but the fact that there. That the. That the characters that Joseph Smith claimed came off of the plates, if the anthem transcript is correct, fact is actually characters that existed in Native American culture before his time.

Carah Burrell [03:36:46] All right, back to you, John.

John Dehlin [03:36:48] Well, what. Care. Summarize for our audience what point you're kind of making.

Carah Burrell [03:36:53] Yeah, I know. I think. I think we got it. I think Rod explained his point just that. That the characters in this Anton transcript, he thinks that they came from the Micmac language and that they're an evolution out of ancient, like, Native American writing.

Rodney Meldrum [03:37:11] They come from a common background.

Carah Burrell [03:37:12] They come from a common background. The only point that I was just trying to make is that it just. I was trying to understand why he included Anton saying that he was going to prove the authenticity of something that Anton didn't have the ability to prove at the time.

Rodney Meldrum [03:37:29] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:37:29] So it's almost like.

Rodney Meldrum [03:37:31] Well, we don't know what Anthony actually wrote. I mean, maybe he said, you know, because he. That there's no letter. Extent. I mean, we don't have any more information about that. So really, all we have is Martin Harris's, you know, his. His history basically, of what he said happened. Because as far as we know, I don't think Anton ever wrote about it or.

Carah Burrell [03:37:55] Sure.

Rodney Meldrum [03:37:56] Anything.

Carah Burrell [03:37:56] And I guess the other thing that is just like. Like, it seems. I don't know what. What do you. I should probably. I should probably go. I have to. I'm doing Mormonism live tonight, guys, which I have to go prepare for. But it just is a little bit suspicious to me. Sorry for speaking out loud to include that Anton story in here instead of just like, making the parallel. Like, if you wanted to make the point that, like, look at this Alphabet. Look at how it aligns with the Micmac language. Language. It just seems that weird that you included a story of a. Of somebody who's not a scholar on something in a field of study that hasn't been established. And then when he says he was informed that angels had revealed to it, and he's like, give me back my affidavit. Tear it up. Trying to, like, pose this narrative that, like, this is the truth, that like, the world doesn't want to get out there, but we don't, like you just said, like, we don't even know what happened between Martin Harris and Charles Anton anyway.

John Dehlin [03:38:54] Well, what we know is that Martin Harris's account of what Charles Anton said was very different from what Charles Anton said. Charles Anton said, and that Charles Anton would say that Martin Harrison. Joseph Smith grossly mischaracterized his memory of the interaction.

Carah Burrell [03:39:11] Right.

Rodney Meldrum [03:39:13] Okay. Did he? I, I, I'm not aware of, of, I think I have actually heard that he, he made some kind of a comment about that later on because I guess word got out that he had, had written this affidavit and so forth. Was he denying that the, that he wrote the affidavit or do you know,

John Dehlin [03:39:29] he's denying that he in any way validated Joseph Smith's scholarship.

Carah Burrell [03:39:36] Oh, see, I didn't know that. So that's, see, that adds, that adds like to the problem to like, include in your book that, like, that Anton did say it was authentic and then he ripped it up. And it's the story of, like, us versus them. Like, like he, like there was a scholar that knew that it was true and that this was a true, like, authentic, these characters were actually authentic. There was a scholar out there that knew these characters were authentic. And then in the most faithful interpretation of it, it's like the evil scholar said, give me back my thing and I'm going to tear it up.

Rodney Meldrum [03:40:04] Can I give you an example from my own personal experience? So there, there was a show called America Unearthed by Scott Wolf Altar. And, and I, I invited him to come and speak at one of my conferences about some of the, the things that he had been finding and had some pretty awesome information and so forth about. And he originally, he agreed that he would come and speak at our conference because, you know, we, you know, you don't have to be a member of the church or whatever to speak at my conference. We have a, a wide range of, of ideas and individuals and we let people make up their own minds. But, but anyway, so he agreed to come and speak at the conference. And then he, he had to call me back. He says, right. He says, I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to be able to come and speak. I said, well, what happened? He says, well, the Discovery Channel found out I was going to be speaking at this essentially Mormon conference. And they said, nothing doing. We will not allow you to come Speak to any Mormon conference. Okay. Same kind of thing happened with the. When we do in the documentary the Last Civilizations of North America, we had 14 scholars in this film. Film there was. And I, I actually didn't produce it. I was in it, but I wasn't actually into the producer. I didn't do any of that part. I was kind of a consultant, I guess, if you want to put it that way. We had 14 scholars in this film, including like, Alice Kehoe is a former dean of anthropology at Harvard University. We had Dr. Roger Kennedy as one of the directors of the Smithsonian. I mean, these are not small time. These are heavy hitters, right? And we had the head archaeologists of the state of Ohio and all these other people. Out of the 13 scholars, there were only two of us that were. And I went out, I'm not even a scholar, so. So I don't count. But that, but there was 11 of these guys and women were not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And when we got the film done, it was called the Last Civilizations of North America. Why is it that the ancient civilizations of North America are so poorly known? Why is it that we consider that they're still a bunch of ignorant savages is when all the archaeological evidence nowadays shows that they were highly advanced, were amazing civilization, they accomplished things that, that other civilizations hadn't even accomplished. And, and so we did this, this, this documentary to show forth the evidence of a great and grand civilization here in North America. Every one of those scholars, after we got the film done, every one of those scholars signed off on the film. We sent them the original, the, the, the, the copies, the, the kind of.

John Dehlin [03:42:37] The point you're trying to summarize, okay,

Rodney Meldrum [03:42:38] basically that, that when we, when we sent it out to all the scholars, they all signed off. This is great. This is a, this is a good documentary, and so forth. And then I started to use that in some of my presentations about how great the civilization was in north. In North America. And all of a sudden, when they found out that it actually may actually support the claims of the Book of Mormon, a couple of them actually took issue with that and said, and they went, they contacted all the other scholars, said, oh man, we got to shut this down. This is promoting Mormonism and so forth. And then out of the, out of the 13 scholars, I think it was three of them said, yeah, well, well, we feel like we were kind of taken out of context. What was interesting is that they were, they were threatened with their jobs, okay, because of this film. But all the other ones said, we said what we said and we, and we stand by it and we had a chance to, to argue so that the head archaeologist of the state of Ohio know, bottom line is, is there's a bias. Anything that would show forth the evidences of the Book of Mormon in the archaeological community in North America, there's a bias against that. They don't want to have that information going out.

Carah Burrell [03:43:48] It was.

Rodney Meldrum [03:43:48] Okay. Why do you think that it was promoting Mormonism?

John Dehlin [03:43:50] Why do you think that is, Rod? Why do you think scholars would not want evidence, what would not want their scholarship to be used as evidence to support the Book of Mormon? Why do you think scholars would not want that?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:05] Probably for the same reason that we have some scientists who don't want to have evidence of young earth creationism being, being taught, told.

John Dehlin [03:44:13] What's the answer?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:14] Shared or anything else.

John Dehlin [03:44:15] What's the answer?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:17] That's the answer.

John Dehlin [03:44:18] No, you said there are others. You didn't say bias. So they hate religion or they just hate the Mormon Church?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:26] I don't know that they hate it, but, but they don't like their information research being used in the promotion of stuff that would actually validate and support the claims of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:44:36] Because. Why?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:39] That's. That's a good question. I don't know why.

John Dehlin [03:44:42] So I'll.

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:42] Let me just try that as an emotional thing. I mean, I have no idea of their motive.

John Dehlin [03:44:46] I'll try, I'll try one possible explanation. So flat earthers. Do. Do you believe the earth is flat? Flat, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:52] I think it's so funny. I think it's laughable.

John Dehlin [03:44:55] Yes or no?

Rodney Meldrum [03:44:56] No, absolutely not. The earth is round.

Carah Burrell [03:45:00] Okay, good.

Rodney Meldrum [03:45:01] Is a sphere okay?

John Dehlin [03:45:02] Perfect. So you said you think flat earthers are laughable, right?

Rodney Meldrum [03:45:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:45:06] Okay, so let's say that some flat earthers contact some scientists gathered, had some type of interaction where they gathered some things that the scientists said, said, and then turn around and published in their flat earther videos or materials information gathered from the scientists that gave the impression that the, that the scientist validated flat Eartherism. Can you see why scientists would say, take our quotes out of there. You're making it appear as though our evidence supports flat Eartherism. Can you see why they wouldn't want that?

Rodney Meldrum [03:45:41] Absolutely. I, I totally see their point. Point.

John Dehlin [03:45:43] Okay, so you can see why they could see Book of Mormon, North American heartland model, Book of Mormonism or the Book of Mormon period or Mormonism as not credible like flat eartherism and not want their scholarship to be used to support your theories.

Rodney Meldrum [03:46:03] It's kind of like our conversations that we've had in, in text messages and so forth, said, you know, that you're. One of your concerns is that we're going to be spouting off a bunch of pseudoscience mumbo jumbo and you don't want your, your audience to be subjected to this pseudoscience stuff. And I, I totally get that.

John Dehlin [03:46:21] Okay. Okay, cool.

Rodney Meldrum [03:46:23] However, there are, as, as usual, two sides of every coin. And, and there are things that, for example, when we talk about, when we get into the discussion in the future about, you know, fossilization and the scientific things, there are hard, hard actual experiments that have been done that, that, that are going to be pretty dang hard to, to explain away as far as the dating, really, when it comes down to it. The biggest, and this is kind of maybe at the 60, 000 foot level, you know, we had Simon Southerton coming on and basically saying that, you know, the, the. Based on his understanding, his research, that my, my DNA is fatally flawed because of primarily the dating. So we need to really focus on the dating aspect of it because it's the dating part of it that either validates or invalidates.

John Dehlin [03:47:15] Got it. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:47:16] What we're saying. And that's what I'm trying to kind of get up to that point.

John Dehlin [03:47:19] Got it, Got it. Okay, Carah, I want to make sure before you go, you have.

Carah Burrell [03:47:24] Are you going for a while longer? Are we wrapping up?

John Dehlin [03:47:25] I'm, I'm gonna. I've got a few more questions.

Carah Burrell [03:47:28] All right. We're all. Almost four hours. Fun times.

Rodney Meldrum [03:47:32] Dang. Time flies when you're having fun. Are you having fun?

Carah Burrell [03:47:38] I'm having fun, John.

Rodney Meldrum [03:47:39] Are you having fun?

John Dehlin [03:47:41] I love this stuff. Yeah, that's, you know, and I'm grateful you're here.

Rodney Meldrum [03:47:45] I, I like talking about it and I appreciate your. I mean, these are hard questions for, for most. I, I can see why people in the Mesa America camp don't want to come and face these questions, John, because. Yeah, I know. I'd hate to be the one trying to, trying to feel these questions if I was a Mesa America guy.

John Dehlin [03:48:02] Yeah, yeah, well, we agree on that front. We agree that there's no evidence for the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica. That's where you and I completely agree.

Rodney Meldrum [03:48:10] And I know, I know we disagree with other things, but we can, but we. The nice thing about this is though, is we can disagree without being disagreeable. And so I have to say,

Carah Burrell [03:48:22] well,

Rodney Meldrum [03:48:22] except for Carah, but, but I'm not part of that. But I, I, but I really, I think that hopefully we can set a precedent that at least, if nothing else, we can have a legitimate conversation and not call each other names and not say, well, you're evil and you're this or you're that or you're whatever, but we can talk about it. And that's kind of my hope, is that let's talk about it. Let's, let's give people a reason for my best reasoning and your best reasoning and let people kind of let the chips fall where they May Day.

John Dehlin [03:48:55] Yeah, totally. Carah, what do you got? Before you have to go?

Identifying the Narrow Neck of Land

Carah Burrell [03:48:59] Two quick questions that I'm dying to know. So somebody else also asked Corey Mangum in the chat, asked Rod, where is the narrow neck of land in the Heartland?

Rodney Meldrum [03:49:08] The narrow neck of land, there's not just one. There's actually they talk about a narrow neck of land, a narrow neck. They talk about a narrow passage. I think they're all different and they're talking about different places. But the narrow neck of land, actually that would be really, the narrow neck would be between the Great Black Swamp area, which is the extension of Lake Erie, back in the days when it was about 50ft higher than it is today. It actually extended further out to the west and to the south, and then the Grand Kankakee Marsh, which is Lake Michigan's extension, when it was 50ft higher as well. Those two lakes actually came down to within a 15 mile, fell apart from each other, two huge swamp areas. They were still being drained back in the 1800s. And that, that would be the narrow neck of land.

Carah Burrell [03:50:00] Got it.

Rodney Meldrum [03:50:01] That's the simplest. There's a lot more than that. But that's, that's kind of the simplest thing.

Carah Burrell [03:50:06] That was very simply, it was between

Rodney Meldrum [03:50:08] the land northward, the last southward. In the Book of Mormon, if the Book of Mormon happened, the heartland, this would be a place that would be easily crossed on foot by a Nephite. It says the narrow neck of land could be crossed, crossed by a Nephite on foot. That's one of the, another big factor with the Mesoamerica thing. You know, where, where is there a place that is between two bodies of water that you can cross on foot in a day? According to the Book of Mormon, a Nephite could cross it on. On foot in a day. Well, nobody's crossing Panama Canal area in a day on foot. I mean, even, even ultra runners, I've done a lot of research on ultra running and so forth and how far you can go and Even if you had the best ultra runner, they're not going to make it across the swamps of Panama in a day. So where was it? Where's the narrow neck of land if it's in Central America? And where's the place in the Book of Mormon that talks about the place where the seas divide the land? Down there, the land divides the seas, but the Great Lakes are seas that are so huge that it divides the land up. And I. To go into more of the geography stuff. But that's.

Carah Burrell [03:51:14] Next question, next question.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:16] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:51:17] Okay. And then my final last question before I have to run is I think of the world filled with, let's say like 8 billion people right now. And these are all what I believed, what you probably believe all came from spirit children from like the pre. Pre Earth life. And there are people.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:32] Wait a minute. Did you think, did you say you believe that?

Carah Burrell [03:51:34] I believed.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:35] Believed.

Carah Burrell [03:51:35] Okay, past tense, past tense.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:37] Okay, okay.

Carah Burrell [03:51:37] I'm starting to believe it now after talking to you, Ross, that you want to hear.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:40] That's what I would love to hear. Yes, Carah, I would absolutely love that

Carah Burrell [03:51:44] Actually leads into my question perfectly.

Rodney Meldrum [03:51:46] Go ahead.

Carah Burrell [03:51:47] Okay. I think of 8 billion people with brains given to them and bodies. And there are people, billion, you know, Hindus in India and people of all different religious persuasions all around the world. Do you believe that if confront, confronted with, with like, let's say, LDS missionaries giving everybody a Book of Mormon? What do you, what do you think is the best way to convince 8 billion people of the truthfulness of the gospel that you believe in? Do you think it's, hey, missionaries, just hand him a Book of Mormon and they should pray on it, Moroni's promise, that'll convince them, or do you legitimately think, like the Book of Mormon, it needs this stuff to convince those 8 billion people, those spirit children, they're going to have a problem if these covenants are not made in this life. They need to accept the gospel. What do you think is the best way to convert the 8 billion people of the Earth? Is it?

Rodney Meldrum [03:52:38] I love your question, Carah, because there. I really believe that there's. I mean, there's lots of ways to divide people into different things, but I think for a lot of people it kind of comes down to two camps. Those who just kind of believe things on faith and those who want to see the evidence. Yeah, for sure. For some people. In fact, I look at this from the standpoint of. Okay, let me go just, just for a second. So in if, okay, based on your previous understanding of the pre Existence, right? We're all living with God. We're spirit. Spirits don't die. So we're going to basically live forever with God. Why can't we just say hallelujah, game over, this is perfect. We're just live forever with God. Why do we have to come down to earth? We had to come down to get a body. Right? That's what, that's what the teaching is. We had to come down and get this body. What's so great about having a body? Body, you know, I mean, it just gets old and your hair falls out and it starts growing out of weird places and you get sick and diseased and eventually you die. So what's so great about that? I don't know really what's so great about all that, but I do know this and that is that I don't think that we can become like our Heavenly Father is without one. There's something about having a physical body that a spirit's just not enough. In fact, in the scriptures it talks about when you have the physical and the spiritual combined together is when you have a fullness of joy. If you apply that same kind of general understanding to the Book of Mormon, for a long time it was just, read the Book of Mormon, read Moroni's promise, pray about it and get your answer. That works for a lot of people, but there's a lot of other people out there that says, you know what? Show me some evidence. Show me something real. Show me that there's even this, this history even exists.

Carah Burrell [03:54:20] Is that fair?

Rodney Meldrum [03:54:21] Do you think that's fair? Show me. Yeah, I'm just saying. Yeah, who wants to read the book that, that claims to be a history book and there's no evidence that it actually happened?

Carah Burrell [03:54:31] And just pause for a second, Rod, and just to pause for a second when people say that, when they, what you just said that seems like you can empathize with that understanding of like, who wants to read this book? Do you empathize with that?

Rodney Meldrum [03:54:41] Right.

Carah Burrell [03:54:41] That's a, that's a hard thing to swallow. Like just read this book and I'll understand the church is true. Do you understand why people are.

Rodney Meldrum [03:54:46] But like I said, for a large amount of people that's okay because they're more emotion driven people. But there's a lot of people who are logic driven.

Carah Burrell [03:54:53] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [03:54:53] And I'm more kind of that, that side of things. I think I'm more logic driven. I think, I think John is very logic driven. Right.

Carah Burrell [03:55:00] He hired me.

Rodney Meldrum [03:55:00] It's not, it's not, it's not just a warm fuzzy. Okay. I mean, did I have a warm fuzzy? Well, I had it. I did have a very spiritual experience. But because of that experience, I want to look for the physical evidences that actually support. Support the claim and not, not just, not just ignore everything else, but, but I am definitely in tune with things that do support the claim. Right. I mean, it's just like when you buy a car and you've never seen really that many people driving a car. You buy a car and all of a sudden everybody in the road has your same car. Right? Same kind of thing. So what? But anyway, so back to the thing so that we have left and right brain. People, basically, people need different things.

Salvation, God's Plan, and Eight Billion People

Carah Burrell [03:55:42] That's kind of what I'm hearing.

Rodney Meldrum [03:55:43] And intellectual people, people, if you, if you have the Book of Mormon and, and, and it doesn't really go that, you know, that they, they read it, they study it and they pray about it and they just like, well, I didn't really get an answer. Okay, that happens. Right? We all, we all know that. Right? They didn't really get an answer. Sometimes those kind of people might be more on the intellectual side. Say, show me some evidence. If you can't show me some evidence, then I'm not going to waste my time reading a book that has no evidence. But if you can show me some evidence, then maybe there's something to this. So the physical can actually testify to the spiritual and doctrinal aspects of the Book of Mormon, which I think are awesome. And the doctrinal and spiritual aspects of the Book of Mormon testify that it was a real history. So when you put the two of them together, I think it's powerful. I've had, I've had, even general authorities have gone with me on my tours and they said, you know what, you know, if you, I, I already have a testimony, the Book Mormon. You're not going to change my testimony at all by going and seeing all this stuff. I just there because I want to see, I'm interested in it. But by the end of the tour, they're going, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that, that, that my testimony would grow so strongly about this. By seeing the actual head plates, by looking at the actual breastplates in the museums. These are not LDS museums, museums. These are mainstream archaeological museums in the Midwest. And there's head plates, breastplates. You know, all of this kind of stuff is, it's there when you go and see the mounds. I mean, it's not fake.

Carah Burrell [03:57:12] Nobody faked them to, to Borrow a line from you, Rod, though. Let's see the dating on those breastplates and head plates, though. Okay, but let me, let me follow up.

Rodney Meldrum [03:57:20] My question is already accepted to be in within that time frame. Okay.

Carah Burrell [03:57:25] All right. But my, my question still is on the table because I don't feel like it was quite sufficiently answered. I totally see what you're saying, that people need to have those two things, but I'm thinking about God, you know, setting up this plan, and 99.9 of all of his spirit children are not going to have access to either the Book of Mormon to read it or the evidence of Rod Meldrum and your evidence. So what do you do with that? Why would God create a system that has so many people. 99.9 of every spirit child is never going to read that stuff.

Rodney Meldrum [03:57:56] Well, I have to say, I have to say, if I was in his shoes, I would be very disappointed.

Carah Burrell [03:58:01] If you were in God's shoes, you'd be very disappointed.

Rodney Meldrum [03:58:03] Well, if I, if I had, you know, several billion kids and, and less than 1% of them actually believed in the stuff that I was teaching, I had an opportunity. I would be pretty disappointed.

Carah Burrell [03:58:18] No, not even believed it, even had an opportunity to read it, to even know it existed.

Rodney Meldrum [03:58:22] Exactly. I mean, yeah, he'd be disappointed in

Carah Burrell [03:58:24] himself for setting it up that way. Darn it. I should have known. God, where was I?

Rodney Meldrum [03:58:28] I would, I, I, I would have to say that I, I would love to see the day when this goes back to your original question. What is it that I, I think the Book of Mormon is the key. I think the Book of Mormon is the key to our religion being more mainstreamed or main or, or more worldwide. I don't know exactly. I, I feel personally disappointed that we don't have billions of members of the church. I wish we did. Maybe that day will come. I don't know if that day will come. But, but for me personally, if I can help bring more people to Christ. I think I told you this in the very first episode. That was one of my, one of my mantras in my life is I want to bring as many people to Christ as I can before I die. That's my, my, that's my goal. That's my directive. That's what I live for. And I get up every morning to do so. That's. So in doing that, am I disappointed in how and how well our research has, has gone out? Well, I think that we have, to a large extent, more, more believers in the heartland research now than mesoamerica. But that's still just a tiny. Yeah, it's a tiny of a nothing. When it comes down to the entire world. Would I love to see the entire world except the Book of Mormon? Yes, I would do. I expect that that's going to happen. And that probably answer is no, I don't. I think we'll know a lot more when we get on the other side of the veil and we, and we see what the real deal is. What do you think, John?

John Dehlin [04:00:05] Yeah, well, def. Well, if we're alive, if there's life after death, if there's a God and if there's a, a judgment, then yes, we'll all see. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [04:00:15] And then I think that answers will be more clear. Right. So until then, we have to kind of walk blindly to some extent. And so really we kind of have to make a decision what we believe. Do we believe that everything came from nothing or do we believe there is a God? And for me, I make the choice. I believe there's a God. And if there is a God, then basically you have these, these other things. Otherwise, if you believe in science, then you have to really, you have to go to the, the what we, the very first, first part of our discussion here, and that is the, you know, the epitome of science, that the one who has achieved the most greatness in science was Stephen Hawking. And he says everything came from nothing.

Carah Burrell [04:00:58] We will pick up with that another day, Rod. And the reason why that, that, that, the reason why I asked that question is just kind of like on my heart you could say is because Mormonism is a very small percentage of the current population of the past. It's, I'm neutral on that fact. But anyway,

Rodney Meldrum [04:01:20] the thing is, the smaller the better, really.

Carah Burrell [04:01:22] No, I mean, that's neither here nor there. Who's to say? But that's not the point of the question. It's just that it seems like it's such a small percentage of the global population and always has been and that there, if, if there was a Heavenly Father who put this plan into motion and he's desperate to get those spirit children back. He's desperate that it just seems like the information is not accessible to very many people by his design, because he's very interventionist. All through the Old Testament and sending Christ and you have the Book of Mormon. He's a very interventionist.

Rodney Meldrum [04:01:58] Even look at Christ though. I mean, I mean, how many, how many followers did Christ really get?

Carah Burrell [04:02:03] I'm just saying, like, he's a very interventionist God wouldn't you agree?

Rodney Meldrum [04:02:07] Like, that's where I think we. I would probably disagree because I think that God gives a wide latitude of freedom.

Carah Burrell [04:02:15] Well, in the scriptures, to make your own.

Rodney Meldrum [04:02:17] To make your own choice, like your, you know, so forth. Now, now once you make a choice, then that's a different thing. I mean, it's kind of like you're standing on top of a cliff. You have a choice to jump off the cliff or not. But once you jump off the cliff, you don't have a choice anymore. You made your choice. You can hit the bottom.

Carah Burrell [04:02:34] There's examples after examples of Old Testament. I'm thinking of the Book of Mormon. I'm thinking of Nephi killing Laban. There wasn't some choices in those things. And so if God wants his will to be known, sometimes in Mormon scripture, he makes it known and you're like, oh, this is a God.

Rodney Meldrum [04:02:50] But Nephi didn't have to do it. Nephi could have shrunk and said, well, you know, not going to do it. Do it.

Carah Burrell [04:02:56] I wonder what God would have done to a prophet who didn't follow him. Maybe like have him be swallowed in

Rodney Meldrum [04:03:00] the belly of a whale anymore. I don't know.

Carah Burrell [04:03:02] I think we know what would happen to him. I'm just trying to say that, like, it just. There's such a wide population of people of spirit children that will never once be able to come in contact with this, this information to make a choice about what to do one way or another. And so this, the entire, the entire God that you are supporting, you know, with the, the Book of Mormon and the heartland model of supporting that this God, this is his plan, these are his people, this is his book. I just don't personally, because I have to leave and I'm like speaking my piece. I'm like, personally, I don't really feel like there's much value in worshiping a God who he. He knows what's going to happen. He knows that less than 1% of the people are ever going to have any contact with the Book of Mormon or with your information, which is why there's a Heavenly Father up there that you're worshiping that my mom, that all of these people in the LDS Church are worshiping, that are worshiping a God that just.

Rodney Meldrum [04:04:05] Which I think is one of the reasons why his plan is so merciful, that we, that basically, whether or not we hear it in this life, we'll have the opportunity one way or the other, other, either this life or the next life. And that's actually kind of Unique in the, in the l. In the, in the religious world is basically to have second opportunities. That, that's in our first podcast we did together. That was one of the main themes of the reason why I wanted to talk about these things that, you know, basically God allows do overs. He doesn't interfere in our lives. I mean, he gives us pretty much ultimate freedom to, to make choices and do what we, we, what we're going to do in our lives. But when we screw up, when we make bad mistakes, when we, when we do wrong things, he always has a backup plan. That was one of the things that hopefully came out in our first podcast. He has a backup plan for every one of us, including the Hindus and including the, the Confucius and including the, you know, the other Christians and, and including Muslims and, and every other different belief system.

Carah Burrell [04:05:07] I know. But doesn't that argue against your point though? Because that means that there's no use in actually living this gospel. It doesn't apparently bless people's lives. If God's okay with. No, no, no, 99. Hold on, wait, let me finish my point. He's apparently okay with 99.9 of every human not living covenants, not making those covenants because we're told that this, this living, these, this plan, living this gospel will make you more happy. But apparently there's a God who's fine with, with almost nobody of his spirit children ever living those covenants or having those blessings because he says, just do it in the next life.

Rodney Meldrum [04:05:38] Well, I think in the scriptures it says straight is the gate, narrow the way and few there be that find it like that God, I think he sort of already put it in there,

Carah Burrell [04:05:47] that God who said that, it's like,

Rodney Meldrum [04:05:49] that's kind of rude, but that God still loves everybody. You know, just, I mean, when we, when we talked about the whole race thing, I mean, does, does God hate the black race for some reason? Well, heck no. You know, he loves everybody. He loves all of his children and he wants to give them all the opportunity. So my feeling is basically this, yeah, there's going to be just a few that actually find him in this life, but everybody's going to have the opportunity one way or the other. I think that's such a merciful plan. I just, I love that whole concept. I, I've talked to other Christian groups and so forth and they go, but this God is, you know, he's like a God of judgment and you know, and he's just a kind of a mean God really. And I'm Kind of going not the God that I understand. This plan of salvation that we have in the LDS Church is unique in all the world. And I think it's probably the most. It gives everyone the opportunity that nobody's forced into anything, which is kind of really, as I understand it, Satan's plan in the pre. Existence is to force everybody. So God, I think is very allegiant to the idea that you. That he. He's going to give. He's going to give everybody their ability to make their own choices and make mistakes because that's how we learn the most.

Carah Burrell [04:07:13] And just to reiterate, you said God is like, he loves everyone. This is, this plan for everyone, though. Like, that's kind of the root of my question. Like, so you believe that this plan it is.

Rodney Meldrum [04:07:25] I think it is. I think there's not very many people who are going to find his particular plan this, you know, meaning the, the restored gospel, which is part of the reason why I feel really blessed to have found that. Really. I didn't, I didn't find it really. My parents and their, and their parents and their parents found it. But I'm still kind of in the, in the, in the camp that. Not candidate. I'm definitely in the camp that there's something about this. There's something special about this,

Carah Burrell [04:07:53] all right?

Rodney Meldrum [04:07:54] And it's different than anybody else. And nobody else has that, that, that love. I mean, I shouldn't say nobody else, but you know, I mean, basically, if you're Catholic, I mean, it's heaven and hell, right? I mean, hell doesn't sound like a very happy place. But the telestal kingdom is that. Is that hell? Not really. For those who are there, they're going to be, as I understand it, they're going to be happy. So the vast majority of people who've been on this earth will be in a perfectly happy place after this life. There is no burning in hell.

Carah Burrell [04:08:27] When God was like, how awesome is that? Can. But in your mind, did God set up the earth knowing what we would choose? Knowing.

Rodney Meldrum [04:08:40] I think he knew us as spirit children. I think he kind of knew who we were and maybe what some of our propensities were. You know, I mean, you know, but, but is there. It's kind of like the whole discussion about, you know, preordination versus foreordination versus predestination and so forth. You know, I don't think that God. I think that there were some like Abraham. He says, you know, he says that Abraham was, you know, was very, you know, he was he was a noble spirit basically, if you will, in the pre existence kind of thing. And so he had a special role to play here on the earth. And they'll probably have a special role to play in the, in the, in the, the future, I don't know. But anyway, I, I think that's very. I can feel from your heart, I think that you really, you let, you do love people.

Carah Burrell [04:09:32] Oh of course.

Rodney Meldrum [04:09:33] And you don't want to have anybody. I think it hurts God. I mean I, I can't imagine, I know with my own children, you know, if my children completely reject the things that I have tried to instill in them, it hurts, I think it hurts God when we, when his children choose other things.

Carah Burrell [04:09:52] I, I totally understand that and I, I used to think that as well until I realized that there are people on like North Sentinel island who I've been around found in again what science has said like 50000 years who they have never had contact with anything that would have anything to do with the Book of Mormon or anything. And it just seems to me that there's a Father in heaven that sends people to various places. Never have as high of a degree of glory as you though who was born in. Yes, wherever you were.

Rodney Meldrum [04:10:23] They do if they accepted in the post existence.

Carah Burrell [04:10:26] I mean no one will ever. How are we going to know, know their name? Like how are we going to do baptisms for them? But I'm just saying like you get to live if there are true blessings is what I'm trying to also say. If there are true blessings of living the gospel, paying your full tithe, you know, being able to communicate with the one true creator of the universe. And you get that. My parents get that. You know, Brother Joe in Draper, Utah gets that is what I'm trying to say. There's a God who designed a system for a few people to be able to bless, be blessed with the covenant, covenants, living and making covenants here that there are people on North Sentinel island they will never get. Regardless of the post Earth Life, there are 8 billion people on planet Earth who will never get to have those covenant blessings that you enjoy. And that bothers me. And that just seems like a very flawed.

Rodney Meldrum [04:11:14] It's kind of like it could be like, like anything like we had in our discussion earlier. Everything can be used for both good and bad. The covenant can be both a good thing and it could be a cursing, you know, being, being, you know, somebody, somebody who has the covenant in their life and then rejects it is probably worse than if they never knew about it. Right? I mean that's, that's, that's another little doctrinal thing, you know, that, that where much is given, much is required. So if somebody never knows about it and in this life and then they, then they hear about it and they accept it in the next life, so

Carah Burrell [04:11:48] then why are we preaching to people it then what you just said then if much is given, much is received, then isn't it in people's worst intentions? Isn't it in, not in their intention to go ask people to make these covenants, to go do missionary work? Because now, now it would have been better if they never heard of the gospel because they could, they could advance

Rodney Meldrum [04:12:09] to that higher degree of glory if they reject it. But if they, but if they live it then, then they're going to be blessed like anybody else is going to be blessed if they accept it in the. Either in this life or in the next life.

John Dehlin [04:12:17] 1.

Carah Burrell [04:12:18] I don't think the math works out. John, do you have any comments? Because Personally, personally, if 8 billion people were converted to Mormonism tomorrow, as a lot of people do, like a lot of people are converted, we talked about, who did we talk to that had a mission in the Philippines? Oh, that episode hasn't come out yet. But there will just be hordes and hordes of people from developing countries. They get baptized making this covenant and they have, they don't know exactly what they're covenanting to, but now God's holding them accountable for this baptismal covenant of a religion. And so they would have been better if they would have just told us they would have been, it would have been better if they just lived their normal life and then in the afterlife they could advance through the degrees of glory from spirit prison to spirit paradise and then have somebody do their ordinance work, let's say during the millennium and then they can reach godhood as opposed to, if they convert to the church and fall away. Now they're in outer darkness. Okay, right.

Rodney Meldrum [04:13:09] As I understand it, maybe John can, you know, but as I understand, outer darkness is only if you have a, A, a sure witness, meaning that you've had us, what we would call the second comforter. So only those people can be out of darkness. Everybody else is okay. And then it's very few people who have that. So as I understand it now, I haven't had it. So I don't know. So you know, so that. There we go.

John Dehlin [04:13:33] Obviously I feel similar to you frustration with if God's all powerful and all loving, how few of his Children in the past 200 years have really had a credible chance to consider Mormonism. Like if you're born in hind, if you're born in India or Pakistan or Europe or Africa, your chance of hearing about Mormonism, having a credible hearing of Mormonism, let alone accepting it, is super, super tiny.

Rodney Meldrum [04:14:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:14:06] And if you combine that with the Mormon doctrine that and the Christian doctrine that narrows the gate and few there be that pass through it. It just means that a lot of people of color, you know, and a

Rodney Meldrum [04:14:18] lot of people who have the color thing come from. This isn't a race thing, this is just everybody.

John Dehlin [04:14:24] I'm not saying you're racist and I'm not saying the church is racist, but the implications are. It just so happens a lot of white people from Idaho and Utah, exaltation,

Carah Burrell [04:14:35] it was restored in America, it wasn't restored in Zimbabwe, it wasn't restored on North Sentinel Island. The church was restored where white people live.

Rodney Meldrum [04:14:41] It is growing like crazy in Africa and other places and so forth.

John Dehlin [04:14:44] I mean not with endowed members. And I guess I'm just saying that you've got a much bigger chance of becoming endowed in this moral probation.

Rodney Meldrum [04:14:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:14:55] And living a faithful, tithe paying Mormon life if your parents happen to be one white Mormons born in Utah and Idaho. And you've got a lot less of a chance if you ever meet the missionaries, if you're born in Africa or Pakistan or India or Asia, your chance of becoming endowed and getting married in the temple and living a faithful Mormon life paying your tithing, chances are you're going to drop out. And the retention rates outside the United States prove that. We now have retention rates in Latin America, in the Philippines, in Europe, less than 10%. So I'm not saying that it's overtly, explicitly racist, but the implications of it mean that a lot of non Utahns and Idahoans are kind of left out of exaltation. Am I wrong?

Rodney Meldrum [04:15:44] And that I get where you're coming from, but are you wrong? I think the answer to that is. I hate to say it, but yeah, I think you're wrong. And the reason for that, I mean basically that's what missionary work is about, about. If the Abrahamic covenant actually did happen, then Abraham was given a charge to take the gospel to all the other of God's children, which, which essentially would have been, you know, all the Asiatic people, all the Africans, all of everybody else. That was his job, was to take the gospel to all them. Whether they accept it or not is up to them. But God doesn't make them accept it. That's kind of the whole point of

John Dehlin [04:16:18] the so dropping, so dropping the racism thing because people are saying we're going down the racism journey.

Rodney Meldrum [04:16:23] Yeah, we don't want to go there.

John Dehlin [04:16:23] But to Carah's point, point, a majority of God's children are kind of not going to be exalted. And that's, that's. It's hard to believe in a God being loving and all power. Okay, forget racism. It's hard to believe in a God who's all powerful and all loving if the overwhelming majority of his children are kind of out of luck from living with him again. Is that what you're saying, Carah?

Carah Burrell [04:16:46] That they'll never have the Book of Mormon, let alone all of Rod's research to convince them of the fact that they are a spirit child. Fact was.

Rodney Meldrum [04:16:56] Well, don't equate my. But my research with the Book of Morocco is not.

Carah Burrell [04:16:59] But I'm just saying supporting.

Rodney Meldrum [04:17:01] I do get what you're coming from and I would have to say again, if I was in God's shoes, I would basically feel pretty disappointed that more of my children didn't accept that in this life. But we don't know how long the afterlife is going to be. I mean, maybe, who knows how much time we have have and who knows who's going to be the, the ones teaching it over there. Maybe there'll be a lot better teachers than I was, was a missionary, you know, so, so I, I don't, I don't think that it shows an unloving God. In fact, I think that that's one of the unique things about the plan of salvation according to the church is that it shows a very loving God who's, who's, who's able to overcome our, our lack of, of, of being able to get information and so forth in this life. I hope so. I think, you know, if I, if I had kids and they, and they didn't follow my, my particular example or kind of whatever might share my common ideologies and so forth, it's okay. Because you know what? They're still my kids. I still love them. And I think it shows a loving God rather than a, you know, a guy that's ready to beat down anybody who, you know, whatever and, and that's one thing I, I love about being in this church. Happy loving God.

John Dehlin [04:18:28] I was watching a Q A that Elder Holland did seven or seven or eight minute clip that's on Reddit and a bunch of people are asking questions about ceiling and about like, well, if my husband dies and I was sealed to him, but then no other man wants to be sealed to me because I'm already sealed to my first husband. Or if my parents and one is in and one is out and they Ceilings canceled. All these people concerned about ceilings.

Rodney Meldrum [04:18:51] How's it work?

John Dehlin [04:18:52] Yeah, heavenly. Jeffrey Holland's answer was, at the end of the day, God's loving, God's compassionate, he's going to be fair. Everything's going to be right and true at the end. And I. That's kind of what I think you're saying thing. And the problem with that is it kind of begs the question, why do we need Rod Meldrum apologetics or any Mormon themed apologetics? Because if every, if God's just and everything can be made right in the afterlife, then it doesn't matter if people don't believe in the Book of Mormon. It doesn't matter if people don't even get their ordinances here or join the church. You should never cry crocodile tears, Rodney Meldren. The people are leaving the church because everything's fair there. God loves everyone. And when everybody dies, they go to the spirit prison, learn the right things, and they all get their chance to be exalted.

Rodney Meldrum [04:19:37] Their chance. But they don't have to accept it there either.

John Dehlin [04:19:40] I'm just saying the stakes, all of a sudden, Rod extending your arguments, the stakes on this life have gotten super low because you can always, you can always figure it out in the next life. So why should you spend your retirement defending the heartland model when all those people that you're trying to save can just go to the spirit prison when they die and become converted, then, dang it.

Carah Burrell [04:20:02] That's what I was trying to explain, but you did it better than me.

Rodney Meldrum [04:20:04] Okay, well, maybe this is an anecdotal thing that we've probably all heard, but there are these two guys walking down the beach and there's all these starfish on the beach, and they were flying, they were dying. And the guy, one guy was picking them up and chucking them back out in the ocean. And, and, and the other guy turned to him and says, listen, he says, you know, there's, there's, there's tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of starfish on this beach. They're all going to die. He says, you can't possibly make a difference. And this other, he says, do you really think you're going to make a difference to these starfish? And the other guy just kind of stood there and leaned down, picked up another starfish, struggling on the beach there and flung him back in the water. And he says it makes a difference to this one. So there you go. Okay, so, so, yes. Are we going to be able to save everyone? Am I, am I, the heartland research going to have everybody singing the praises of the Book of Mormon? Probably not. But for those who we are able to touch, hopefully it'll make that, it'll make a difference in their life. Maybe they'll get like that starfish and get flung back in the water and be able to live on.

Carah Burrell [04:21:12] What if to, to your analogy, though. What if the starfish going into the water is, is kind of what you're analogous to like giving them evidence to believe in the true church. Right.

Rodney Meldrum [04:21:25] To stay in.

Carah Burrell [04:21:26] Yeah, that's your analogy. Yeah, but what if the starfish are being flung into something that is not salt water and it's fresh water and it's actually poison acid and it's actually, But Rod, I'm serious about this one. What about if you're actually not helping people live their best lives and their most fully actualized, most Christlike, most honest, authentic lives? You're giving people evidence to be more dogmatic in their belief beliefs and more divisive and less loving to their friends and family who don't believe. Have you considered that point that what

Rodney Meldrum [04:21:59] you, that's that

Carah Burrell [04:22:03] that the very thing that you're upholding is causing people not saying you're racist. I'm not. Is causing people to believe racist things because they believe the evidence of the Book of Mormon supports it, or they are becoming more dogmatic. They, they're more hateful towards gay people now because they think that that's what the God wants them to, that your evidence is making families be torn apart because everything revolves around you didn't bless your baby, you're not baptizing your kids, you're wearing a tank top, you're drinking coffee. That your evidence is causing harm. It's a freshwater.

Rodney Meldrum [04:22:35] Okay.

Carah Burrell [04:22:35] Starfish.

Rodney Meldrum [04:22:36] I, I, I think that I addressed that in the very first part of our first, first presentation when I was, when I was, when I was waiting, when I was in, I had had all these opportunities to go and, and, and manage that mink farm and so forth. And I, and I told the Lord, basically, I need to know that this is true because I'm not going to go out and preach something that would actually damage people's lives and, and, and, and something that's not true. If it isn't true, then I don't want to be out there promoting it. Right. And that's when I had the experience that I, that I already told you about, which is that, you know, that I had the experience that I knew that it was true. And so does that bother me at this point? Well, you know, if, if you, if you, if you've had an experience where you feel like that the Lord has, has, has that's giving you information and you want to share that with other people, and it's not bad information. I mean, really, when it comes down to it. Look at the fruit. You know, what is the fruit of living the gospel? Well, we live longer lives in general, a little more healthy because of the health code. Do we love our fellow man? Do we, do we serve our neighbors? Yeah, I think that happens a lot that, you know, look at the fruit though, Carah. This is what I, I mean, really, you have to look at, where does this lead? You know, somebody who is really active in the church and so forth. Did they go to the temple? Are they looking at their, at their ancestors in a different way than most people do? Do they have a bond with their, with their progenitors? Do they serve people? Do they honor Christ? Do they live good lives? Are they hard working? Are they honest in their dealings? All these different things. You look at the, you look at the fruit of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I have to say, it's pretty dang good fruit. I like it. It's pretty tasty. And not that, not that other people can't have good fruit too, but there's a lot of bad fruit out there. People who try to tear down other people's faith and their beliefs and so forth. And that's, that's not a place I want to go. Okay, you are just about to have something. I'm not sure

Fruits of the Church and LGBTQ Concerns

Carah Burrell [04:24:59] this is going to be a question in the summation of last, the last episode, so please, for the love of Pete, I hope that we do not go in a rabbit hole. But this is so important for you to hear, Rod. This is so important for you to hear.

Rodney Meldrum [04:25:13] Okay?

Carah Burrell [04:25:14] You just said that the fruits of the church are good. And I believe that with all my heart. I believe that he believes it. And I used to believe that with all of my heart. I believed that the fruits of the gospel were true. And they did all of the same things that you said. And I had to recognize that. I'm saying that as a person who's white, who's never had to deal with racist people in the church. And. Yeah, so I started listening to what black members of the church had to say and other people of the church. And I said, okay, the fruits of the church for you have been rotten. Okay, Started listening to trans people, started listening to gay people. The fruits of the church was not happiness, it was devastation, and it was divisiveness and it was suicide ideation. So I had to listen to people who were fundamentally born gay and say the fruits for them. The God's plan was not good. I listened to a lot of women, listen to a lot of people who felt like Mormonism stopped them from progressing because they were not of the right gender. And I started listening again. I wasn't a feminist. I was never a progressive Mormon, not once. I went from being as a very conservative Mormon, anti feminist. So I started listening that a lot of people were hurt by the church. And all of the fruits that I saw was just. I like to see the happy families. I'm going to ignore the crying ones. I like to see the people serving. I'm going to ignore the ones who are going to serve dead people in the temple and not the ones of other faiths and other religions who also are doing great things serving in soup kitchens. So all I'm trying to say is, like, it's really easy to say, like, yeah, we're upholding something that is true because of the fruits, but it's only easy to say that because from my perspective, I hadn't talked to enough people I hadn't talked to enough people to see that. The fruits are super easy to see. When you. When you look through a worldview like this and you're ignoring all of the crying, all of the suicides, you're ignoring everything else. So I just want to caution you. Sorry to make it so serious. Caution you from saying that, like, empirically, emphatically. You can say that it works for you. You can say that the heartland model bolsters your testimony and it bolsters other people's testimony. But to say that the fruits are empirically good is something that I can't allow.

Rodney Meldrum [04:27:33] I think you have to separate a little bit the fruits of the church from people's different choices and how it makes people feel. I mean, basically, whenever you go against truth, it's not comfortable. Or whenever you go against the precepts of God, it's not comfortable.

Carah Burrell [04:27:56] No, no, no, no. What I'm saying is. What I'm saying is only for men and not for women. That's not people's choices. That's the structure of the church. That's a. That Is. I'm saying that fruit hurts women and men.

Rodney Meldrum [04:28:09] Well, why is there two different sexes?

Carah Burrell [04:28:12] I mean, a sperm and egg have to come together. One has to carry.

Rodney Meldrum [04:28:16] Okay, but assuming that God created man and woman in his image, right. Why was there two? Why didn't. Why not make it just easy and just do one and just have it so that they can do asexual, you know, reproduction, like some animals do?

Carah Burrell [04:28:34] I think evolution tells us the answers to that. But I'm saying you tried to make the point, though, that, like, people's choices are the bad fruit. And I'm saying, no, Rod, it's not just people's choice. Some people make bad choices within the church.

Rodney Meldrum [04:28:47] Church.

Carah Burrell [04:28:48] But some people, from the very structure that they live in day to day, feeling suffocated because of their gender identity or sexual orientation or the color of their skin or them being a woman or a man, that there are certain expectations that the church's structure puts on them, that they live every day.

Rodney Meldrum [04:29:06] There's some cultural aspects that I think you're right. Okay? But there's also some assumptions that I think are incorrect, and we probably don't want to go down that rabbit hole particularly. But I'll just say that when you say. When you talk about the fruit, does it cause more pain for some people based on the decisions that they make and the things that they feel about different things will put them at odds with the commandments.

Carah Burrell [04:29:39] What, like a decision?

Rodney Meldrum [04:29:41] Let's say, for example, the commandment says, thou shalt not kill. Kill, right? Or take. Take innocent blood. Well, somebody who goes out and kills someone may feel pretty darn uncomfortable about. About that commandment, don't you think? So they're gonna go, gosh, you know. Well, the fruit of that, you know, very similar.

Carah Burrell [04:30:02] Not to kill and name something else.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:04] No, this.

Carah Burrell [04:30:05] This. This. Something that is everybody that will deal with. I'm talking about things.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:09] It's an extreme example. I would. I wouldn't.

Carah Burrell [04:30:11] Examples aren't helpful, though, because we're talking about the reasons why people live, why people find the religion toxic. Rod. Rod, people don't find people. People do not find the church suffocating and the fruits rotten because we're not allowed to murder. That's not what I'm talking about.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:24] Let's take another one. Let's take pedophilia.

Carah Burrell [04:30:25] People don't find the church toxic because we're not allowed to be pedophiles. I am.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:33] I was born a pedophile, and I just. Sex with little kids.

Carah Burrell [04:30:38] Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:38] This is not a Good example. It makes me uncomfortable when the church talks about. About pedophilia as being wrong, and therefore I'm going to go out and commit, you know, suicide because I feel.

Carah Burrell [04:30:48] Example. Hold on, Rod, that's not a good example. Use the one that I.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:51] What's wrong with the example?

Carah Burrell [04:30:52] Because nobody leaves the church. Nobody on Mass.

Rodney Meldrum [04:30:56] Well, you said about sexual orientation. One of the sexual orientations is pedophilia. Right.

Carah Burrell [04:31:01] It's not enough.

Rodney Meldrum [04:31:04] Or beastiality. How about beastality? If I want to have sex with a guy goat. Okay, let's stick on the one. If that makes me suicidal because I want to have sex with the goat and the church says that's wrong.

Carah Burrell [04:31:14] Let's just stick on. Let's.

John Dehlin [04:31:16] One thing, Carah, I love. A lot of people are loving your line of questioning. I love that you're questioning. And Carah, want to turn around.

Carah Burrell [04:31:23] I just don't even know what to say to that.

John Dehlin [04:31:24] But I'm just gonna say that it's deeply offensive to the LGBTQ community for you to be putting them in the same conversation as pedophiles and as people who engage in bcl.

Rodney Meldrum [04:31:35] Well, it's all. It's all. If you look at the mainstream.

John Dehlin [04:31:38] Wait, can you stop? Can you stop and just absorb what I just said, that I have lgbt. I have LGBT people right now that are listening and watching.

Rodney Meldrum [04:31:46] Right.

John Dehlin [04:31:47] And they're saying it's deeply offensive to invoke the LGBTQ community in the same line of reasoning as pedophiles and people who engage in bestiality. Can you sit with that for a second and think about how that's coming off to other people and how that's making them feel and whether that's. Whether that's a good example.

Rodney Meldrum [04:32:12] I understand how it may make people feel, I think. And probably it's not a comfortable feeling, you know, and so there we go.

Carah Burrell [04:32:25] So, like, the love you have for your wife and she has for you, you should mention you're deeply, madly in love. Right?

John Dehlin [04:32:30] Right.

Carah Burrell [04:32:30] We're talking about something that's analogous. The love two men have for each other and want to commit their lives to each other. Is that. Is that people. We're trying to.

Rodney Meldrum [04:32:40] I'm trying to actually do analogies that are actually information. Do you want to go into that or.

Carah Burrell [04:32:46] No, I don't want to. I'm just saying, like, let's step back from, like, 20 minutes ago, and I'm trying to make the point that, like, you're saying that you're throwing starfish back in.

Rodney Meldrum [04:32:55] Right.

Carah Burrell [04:32:56] And that the heartland model helps give evidence to people. Being able to have a bolstered testimony in this one restored church. But I just asked again, like, what if that's fresh water and it's not salt water? What if it's throwing that starfish into a bowl and it's not. Have you ever sat and actually thought about, like, there are some people who. The evidence. Let's say that there's a family and the parents believe the evidence of the heartland model and it bolsters their testimony. But what it does is it creates a freshwater lake that their children of starfish are living in that they can't breathe in now because one of them is gay and one of them doesn't like the idea of living as a polygamist in their next life or in the other one, they have legitimate problems with the structure that causes them to suffocate. So that's my, that's the root of my question is, is like, what if upholding this heartland model makes people not as happy as you think that they are? Are you willing to listen to people who say that?

Rodney Meldrum [04:34:07] Okay, very good. Deep question. Okay.

Carah Burrell [04:34:11] Happy with it.

Rodney Meldrum [04:34:12] Okay.

Carah Burrell [04:34:12] And then I really.

Rodney Meldrum [04:34:13] It's kind of a long one.

Carah Burrell [04:34:15] So.

Rodney Meldrum [04:34:16] But I really think that, that whenever you go against principles of truth. Okay. That it is going to be difficult. Okay. And it's going to be uncomfortable. Now the. Again, if you take things to the logical extremes, for example, the. Would our civilization survive if everyone had same sex attraction and, and if everybody was gay? Would we survive as a people or as people in general? Would there. Would there still be.

John Dehlin [04:34:52] I'm just gonna say this conversation's as offensive as the racism conversation or worse.

Rodney Meldrum [04:34:57] Yeah. And probably. I would think this would probably be a good idea to maybe stop it. But. But I'm. I'm willing to kind of go there. But.

John Dehlin [04:35:03] But I don't think, I think we should stop this line. But Carah, I love what you were saying that led up to this, so I want to give you a chance to finish.

Rodney Meldrum [04:35:12] Do you.

John Dehlin [04:35:13] Unless you want to continue care.

Carah Burrell [04:35:14] I mean, it's a. I get your point, though. You actually don't have to explain it. I get your point. I read you.

Rodney Meldrum [04:35:18] Okay. But what is my point, though? I want to make sure that you really understand my point that the gospel

Carah Burrell [04:35:23] is good for people. The gospel is true. The gospel is good for people. And it is indeed salt water. And there's some people going to be like, but I don't like salt water. I actually want to go against the salt water. And it's like you don't even know that the salt water is good for you because you're trying to go against it. That there's some, that people.

Rodney Meldrum [04:35:39] That's actually a pretty good, I think, you know, decent, you know, explanation. I think as far as that's concerned, I think whenever you go against certain principles, there's going to be some pain involved and that, and that's, that's the choice. That's a choice that you make. So.

Carah Burrell [04:35:58] Okay, okay.

Rodney Meldrum [04:36:00] Yeah, maybe we should just let that one stop it, I think.

Carah Burrell [04:36:05] And furthermore, the last thing I'll say on that is I hope that people who like the heartland model that, that feel like that is a good evidence that it encourages their testimony. That's the hard thing for me is that I only want people's conviction in Jesus Christ to bring out the best in them. Them. The best in them to look for people who are downtrodden, who are on the margins of society, that it bring, it bolsters their testimony in only the best of ways. And there's so much pettiness that can happen in Mormonism and I'll chalk that up to culture. Sure. It is between families. We mentioned ceilings earlier, the fact that like, you know, like I was mentioning like a Mormon parents who, who really believe in the heartland model and they really believe in the Book of Mormon, that there needs to be at least doing away with like this snide remarks that people who don't believe in the heartland model, they don't believe in the Book of Mormon and have chosen to make other. To have chosen.

Rodney Meldrum [04:37:14] Not everybody knows how to deal with it. You know, I mean, when, when the children make choices other than theirs. I mean, sometimes parents, parents are learning too. I mean, we're all here to learn and grow and we, and we, we, we screw up and we make mistakes and we, we say things that, that are hurtful and that, that may not be exactly what we feel but, but many times it's, it's, it's, it's because we do love someone and we want them to find the happiness that we have and so forth and so on.

Carah Burrell [04:37:40] And that can't really be done through snide remarks. And my, like, I'm, I'm a funny gal. I understand, you know, humor and things, but I, I come from this ex Mormon world where there's just so many broken families over these issues, where there's parents against children, spouses against one another all over.

Rodney Meldrum [04:37:55] Something that happens in almost every.

Carah Burrell [04:37:58] Let's not have it happen here.

Rodney Meldrum [04:38:00] Child situation.

Carah Burrell [04:38:01] Let's call it out and say, let's not have it happen.

Rodney Meldrum [04:38:02] In other words, I'm just saying it's not a, it's not exclusive to the Mormon Church that this happens. Right. I mean, you realize that. So parents, parents everywhere, in every generation, in every dispensation has had the same issue. You, the kids choosing a different path than them.

Carah Burrell [04:38:19] Yeah. Not every dispensation has like a Rod Meldrum who has like book after book saying that this thing is absolutely true. That happens. And it gives people more of a motive to be more dogmatic, to be more doubled down in their beliefs, which I would hope would make them more Christlike. If their beliefs are doubled down in, please let it be the one that is loving and supportive of different people instead of the double down belief. Belief that says we are right and anyone who chooses something else is led by Satan or they're of the devil and they're going to make snide remarks and they're going to tear apart their families. Like, I would hope that that's what people who believe in the Book of Mormon with all their heart. It helps them to choose better things. But I'm just a little bit disheartened by your, by your remark though, that like, the things people choose is almost them, like, rebelling against the truth. And I don't know if you want to answer that.

Rodney Meldrum [04:39:11] You don't think that people rebel against the truth? I mean, does that not happen? Do people not rebel against the truth? I think there's both,

Carah Burrell [04:39:19] like, things like something as simple as, like, drinking coffee. And there are families out there. There are Mormon families out there. There's a husband and a wife out there right now fighting over something. Like one's disobeying the word of wisdom, drinking coffee because their belief that drinking coffee removes the spirit from their household. How dare you. No, you can't do that. They're arguing over something like coffee because one person believes in the heartland model in the Book of Mormon with all of their heart and it's causing a divisiveness that doesn't need to happen. That's what I mean by like. But, but I want to talk about pedophilia. I want to talk about actual real world issues.

Rodney Meldrum [04:39:51] You know, where's the divisiveness coming from? I mean, it's kind of like somebody said, you know, you know, you mean, if I drink this cup of coffee, I'm going to hell. And, and I think the answer was is drinking the cup of coffee won't. But if you Continue with, with, with, with disobeying the commandments of God. Yeah. That will lead you to hell. And if, and if, and if drinking a cup of coffee is indicative of your attitude towards the commandments, then that might be something that might lead you there. That makes sense.

Carah Burrell [04:40:17] Yeah. Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [04:40:18] In other words, drinking a cup of coffee isn't going to make you go to hell, but it's your attitude about being defiant against God's laws that will take you to hell in a, in a, in a, in a loving way. You know, in the, in the, in the plan of salvation. There's no hell in, in LDS theology.

Carah Burrell [04:40:38] But wouldn't it be cooler if there was just like a non believing Mormon, like non believing husband. A believing Mormon spouse. The husband drinks coffee every morning and the wife instead of.

Rodney Meldrum [04:40:49] I know, I know several families that do that.

Carah Burrell [04:40:50] Yeah. And so instead of the wife saying,

Rodney Meldrum [04:40:52] like, hang in there, they're doing fine, they're.

Carah Burrell [04:40:53] But I'm saying like the idea that there's, that there's people out there, there's a wife out there going like, I believe in the Book of Mormon with all of my heart and it's you. And Joseph Smith is a prophet and he had really revealed the book, the book of the Book of Mormon and all of this. And the husband, you drinking that coffee right now is going to lead, you and me and our whole family are probably going to watch you drink that coffee to hell. What do you think that does to the average Mormon family when they're, when they're people saying what you just said, though? Like, this is like, I'm saying this is like a real family issue.

Rodney Meldrum [04:41:19] Like it is a real family issue.

Carah Burrell [04:41:20] Like there's a wife out there saying what you just said right now.

Rodney Meldrum [04:41:24] Sin or, or things that go against God's commandments are never things that are going to feel comfortable because we all have our spirit and we basically. So, so, so, so doing things that go against the, the, the commandments of God, for example, are things that are, they're not going to produce happiness.

Carah Burrell [04:41:43] You think drinking coffee doesn't produce happiness?

John Dehlin [04:41:46] Yeah, I'm going to take issue with that.

Rodney Meldrum [04:41:48] I don't know. I haven't personally imbibed, so I couldn't tell you from a personal level. Just kidding. Anyway. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [04:41:55] All right, well, Rod, it's been a pleasure. I do have to take off. Thanks everyone, for. Jon has more questions for you.

Rodney Meldrum [04:42:01] Yeah, we're going to continue on.

John Dehlin [04:42:04] Well, so I'm done with my questions. I am going to say that there are a lot of either LGBT people or LGBT allies, like with the racism discussion, that were deeply offended by those comparisons. And we don't have time to go into the LGBT thing with you, and I honestly don't think that's your specialty.

Rodney Meldrum [04:42:23] It is.

John Dehlin [04:42:24] I don't think you probably know a lot about that. That so. But I do have to represent. There's several. There's several viewers and listeners that were deeply hurt and offended by that. And I just want to acknowledge that.

Rodney Meldrum [04:42:36] And I apologize if I've hurt somebody's feelings about my. My thoughts there.

John Dehlin [04:42:41] Well, I. I would say more than apologizing at hurting people's feelings, I would say, Rod, my recommendation is talk to more LGBT people and read more LGBT research to understand that it doesn't belong to be compared to BCLD or.

Rodney Meldrum [04:43:00] Yeah, I have actually done quite a

John Dehlin [04:43:02] bit of pedophilia involving.

Rodney Meldrum [04:43:03] But that stuff.

John Dehlin [04:43:04] But, yeah, well, I. I know what you mean by doing research shows.

Carah Burrell [04:43:08] She said sarcastically.

John Dehlin [04:43:11] I mean, I know.

Carah Burrell [04:43:11] Come on.

John Dehlin [04:43:12] I'm saying if you were to value mainstream scientific evidence and to review it, I. I think you would learn a lot that would make you change the way you talk about LGBT people. But we can leave it at that. I just didn't want to leave those comments. Right.

Rodney Meldrum [04:43:27] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:43:28] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [04:43:28] So I think it probably best. Best at this point left unsaid.

John Dehlin [04:43:32] But, yeah, we can move on. Carah, I always love having you on the podcast. And like. Like every other podcast we've had, you made super valuable contributions, and I just. I'm sad you have to go. But I also love Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real and Mormonism Live. Rod and Carah just did a fist bump, but, Carah, thanks for joining us,

Carah Burrell [04:43:51] and we love having you tune in tonight. Mormonism Live.

John Dehlin [04:43:55] All right. Okay. Thanks, Carah. Rod, I have. I. I just have a bunch of questions. Not for me, but that. A bunch of other people.

Carah Burrell [04:44:03] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:44:03] And by the way, viewers and listeners, two quick things. Several of you are saying you don't like it, that we brought right on, that you. That you disagree with the things Rod said, that you find his views on race or on LGBT people offensive, that you view his views on science as offensive or as harming. And I just want to say. But how do we ever progress? Rod has tens of thousands of followers, people who believe like him. Many of the people in the comments are making a really important point. Point which is that Rod's views simply reflect mainstream Mormonism. And if that's true, if we can't have people on Mormon Stories podcast that can represent mainstream Mormonism and represent the churches, the implications of the church's doctrines and teachings, then we're literally an echo chamber preaching to the choir. So I know that many of you found what Rodney teaches to be harmful or, or offensive. But, but Mormon Stories has always stood for making its best attempt to bring on people in all sides. We brought Daniel Peterson on before. We've brought Richard Bushman on the Givens's. You know, we've brought lots of people on all sides of the belief spectrum on. And I, I don't want to do Mormon Stories if I can't keep doing that. So while I'm not happy that. That harmful things got said, I'm super happy that we got on the record, audio and video of people reflecting mainstream Mormonism so that, so that it can be number one made record of and number two discussed and challenged. And maybe it can lead to positive things. And so I just, I had to say that. Rod, you were going to say something.

Rodney Meldrum [04:45:57] Well put, John. I think, I think that that's, I think that actually shows the, Your, your. That you're trying to be a genuine and honorable person. I mean, you know, to be able to have to bring up all these different sides and that, I mean, to have me on your podcast, I know, was probably a big gamble. I hope it was a good one, you know, because, I mean, the same thing for me, basically, coming on your podcast is kind of like, you know, people go, rod Melder, Mormon Stories. Oh, my gosh, you know what? Rod Meldrum has gone on, you know, to the dark side of the forest or something like, I mean, that's, that, that's kind of what they, you know, and I, I said, you know,

Carah Burrell [04:46:35] you

Rodney Meldrum [04:46:35] know, if, if, if we're going to live a Christlike life, basically, one of the things that Christ said is you, you, you know, you, you leave the flock and you. And, and you go to the, to the one. You know, if, if one's out there and, and lost or whatever. If you. To kind of stay with the flock, I mean, hey, you know what? That's not a bad thing. That's what I'm hoping.

John Dehlin [04:46:57] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [04:46:58] See, Carah.

John Dehlin [04:46:59] Okay. Thank you, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [04:47:02] But I, I agree. I think we as a society are very easily offended by things that we don't agree with.

John Dehlin [04:47:11] But also, sometimes we believe and say super offensive things.

Rodney Meldrum [04:47:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:47:15] And so I would ask you to consider, yeah. Talking to a lot more LGBT people and people of color to understand why they find the things you're saying deeply offensive. Instead of staying impervious in your worldview that A lot of your followers are going to probably adopt because they believe in you and respect you. Your views are not only your own. You're going to be influencing tens of thousands of people with the voices you get platform to and with the positions you put forward. And I would just say, please, Rod, please spend more time with LGBT people and people of color to understand why you should never make some of these comparisons ever again. That's my, you don't have to listen to that. That's my respectful request to you, okay? And I'm not trying to, like, dress you down or like, embarrass you or call you out. I'm just responding to, number one, my reactions to what you've said today and part two last time and to the overwhelming comments and reactions of LGBT people and people of color that have been really hurt by some of the things you've said. But I, I say this honestly with, with love.

Rodney Meldrum [04:48:32] I, I, I, and I don't do that in any way spiteful or mean or whatever about, you know, anybody as far as their sexual orientation or their race or that kind of thing. I think there are some differences in that, but we're not going to go into all that.

John Dehlin [04:48:45] Okay. The only second thing I was going to say is there's a lot of people that want us to just end the interview. And, and I understand that. And I just want to say that Mormon Stories believes in long form. And yes, we could have done this interview in 30 minutes or in an hour, but we, while we have Rod here, here, while we have the lights on, while we've dedicated time, I don't want to have Rodney go away with a bunch of questions that I wish I had asked him. And I've got a bunch of smart people like Brian Hauglet, like Radio Free Mormon, like my friend Randy Bell, a lot of smart questions that I still want to ask you really quick and a few other things that I actually do want to ask. And I, I want to. So if you need to drop off, drop off, but please don't argue you that you want Mormon stories to be shorter. That's not what Mormon stories ever has been or will be. We do long form because we think these topics are so important and they're so serious that they deserve comprehensive treatment. And you can always fast forward, put it on double speed, or choose not to listen. But I guarantee you some of the. If Radio Free Mormon cares about the questions I'm about to ask, if, if Randy Bell, if Brian Haglett, if others care enough to ask these Questions and if I care enough about them and if Carah and others, they're important. So please just understand. We do long form on here on Mormon stories anyway.

Rodney Meldrum [04:50:07] Well said.

John Dehlin [04:50:08] Okay. All right, so I'm gonna ask you some questions that some of our listeners have asked. And the first couple questions come from Randy Bell. We can answer them quickly. We don't need to go into a lot of detail. Okay. Randy wants to know where are the ruins of the temple constructed after the manner of, of Solomon? And I don't know is a perfect answer.

Rodney Meldrum [04:50:26] Okay, probably.

John Dehlin [04:50:28] I think he's referring to a stone.

Rodney Meldrum [04:50:30] Yeah, probably in Tennessee.

John Dehlin [04:50:32] You think they're in Tennessee? They just haven't been found yet?

Rodney Meldrum [04:50:34] No, no, it was, it was found. It was discovered actually. When? In, in the, in the TWA or not TB twa. It's the, it's the, the water resource people there in Tennessee. The Tennessee Water Authority, something like that. Yeah, Tennessee Valley Valley Authority. Tba.

John Dehlin [04:50:52] Anyway, okay, so your interpretation of the relics.

Rodney Meldrum [04:50:54] There actually was an archeological dig that was done. They found a, what they even considered to be a temple. And it had two big pillars, two big stone pillars, and those pillars ended up in museums over in Europe and blah, blah, blah.

John Dehlin [04:51:06] Okay, so. So Rabi, his answer is. Okay, where are the ancient gold mines that would have been required to smelt the gold to make the golden plates and any of the other types of gold.

Rodney Meldrum [04:51:20] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:51:21] Mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [04:51:22] Okay, so gold, number one, gold is not generally smelted. The gold that was probably used in the Book of Mormon was probably just, just on the, on the, on the ground.

John Dehlin [04:51:31] In your view, like found in rivers?

Rodney Meldrum [04:51:34] Well, actually around Tennessee, which if our geography is correct, it puts the land of Nephi, which is the first time they really talk about having gold in, in the Chattanooga area of Tennessee. Chattanooga is what is interesting because it was the first ever gold mining district. District. It was actually the first gold rush of, of the United States. Wasn't in California, it was in Tennessee.

John Dehlin [04:51:55] So you're saying they got it in Tennessee.

Rodney Meldrum [04:51:57] And actually one of the biggest nuggets ever found, gold nuggets actually found historically in, in, in within, in America, basically was there in Tennessee. It was a. Gosh, it was like 100 and something kilogram solid gold nugget was just found in a river.

John Dehlin [04:52:14] This is stuff I can't dispute because I don't know the evidence.

Carah Burrell [04:52:17] Right.

John Dehlin [04:52:17] So I just. You can just say you think it's Tennessee. I, I'm not trying to cut you off, other than I don't want you

Rodney Meldrum [04:52:22] to actually historical document stuff. So we, if we had, if I like ours, we could talk about all that stuff. But basically you're saying Tennessee, you're saying it's in the historical record of Tennessee,

John Dehlin [04:52:32] but it wasn't, it wasn't mines. You're saying the ancient Nephites to you wouldn't have been mining gold.

Rodney Meldrum [04:52:37] Right. They would have been mining instead zinc and also iron.

John Dehlin [04:52:44] Iron. But the gold they would have found in riverbeds. Yeah, okay.

Rodney Meldrum [04:52:47] Absolutely. Plenty of gold just in the riverbed. They didn't have to mine it. They didn't have to smelt it either. They just taken and, and hammer it into plates.

John Dehlin [04:52:55] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [04:52:56] And there also is gold artifacts that have been found in, in Harvard and Peabody Museum and so forth. Gold artifacts from the mound builders that were mashed in little plates. So there you go.

Audience Questions on Heartland Evidence and Experts

John Dehlin [04:53:05] Okay. Okay, next question from Randy and RFM. I'll, I'll read two questions that are row. Randy asks what qualified PhD archaeological experts have endorsed the Heartland model? So PhD level archaeological experts, are you aware of, of a PhD in archaeology who's ever endorsed the Heartland model? And it's okay if you just say

Rodney Meldrum [04:53:27] no non LDs or LDs or both.

John Dehlin [04:53:30] Either one. A credible, like let's just say a PhD level archaeologist at a Division 1 university has, has a, has a, an established credible PhD level archaeologist at a Division One university, LDS or not, had ever endorsed the Heartland model.

Rodney Meldrum [04:53:49] Yes. Who, yes, the question yes or no. Right. But.

John Dehlin [04:53:53] Oh, you don't remember.

Rodney Meldrum [04:53:55] No, no. Well actually, for example, K. Godfrey, he is a, he's a, he's a. I'm pretty sure he's PhD. He's, he's in, is an archeologist.

John Dehlin [04:54:07] But is he like tenured at a university kind of thing?

Rodney Meldrum [04:54:10] I don't know all of his background, but he is a, he is an actual archaeologist. He's a huge Heartland fan. What's his name? K. Godfrey.

John Dehlin [04:54:19] Okay, so we'll, we'll have Jen write that down and we'll just include that in the show notes.

Rodney Meldrum [04:54:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:54:24] As someone to look at their credentials. It's not.

Rodney Meldrum [04:54:26] There's others. I mean, but in answer to your question, I think the answer you really wanted to hear was no, there's not really mainstream same, you know, non LDS archaeologists who, who say yes, the Book of Mormon is absolutely true. I believe in it completely because the archaeology shows that it's true.

John Dehlin [04:54:41] Right. And I'm gonna just.

Rodney Meldrum [04:54:42] If you're expecting that, then you're expecting something that will never happen.

John Dehlin [04:54:45] And I'm going to tell you I understand logical fallacies and appeals to authority and bandwagon appeals can be fallacious arguments. So I'm not saying that that question I just asked you proves anything.

Rodney Meldrum [04:54:56] Exactly.

John Dehlin [04:54:56] It just, it just answers the question, is there any, are there any Credible mainstream archaeologists, PhD level at university that support the Heartland model? And it sounds like you're not aware of any. But that's fine. I, I'm acknowledging that that doesn't necessarily prove it.

Rodney Meldrum [04:55:11] That's one. But he's, that he's, he's, you know, he is, he's not active archaeologist as far as that's concerned at this point. So.

John Dehlin [04:55:17] Okay, that's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [04:55:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:55:18] Any, this is RFM's question. Any publications substantiating the Heartland model in peer reviewed academic journals that you're aware

Carah Burrell [04:55:28] of

Rodney Meldrum [04:55:30] the Heartland model itself? Probably not that.

John Dehlin [04:55:32] Okay, that's fine. And again, I'm not saying that proves or disproves anything RFM asks. It was widely believed and we're going back to the Bat Creek Stone thing, but I just want to get your answer to that. RFM writes, it was widely believed in the 19th century that American Indians were descended from Jews. Because of this, there were a number of forgeries produced to support this belief, like the back Bat Creek Stone from Tennessee. Today, Meldrumites frequently use these 19th century forgeries as evidence of their position. So my question is, do what? Do you believe the Bat Creek Stone evidence is fraudulent or do you believe that it is credible evidence? Well, we don't have to, I mean, I just for the sake of time, if you can just say whether you it is. Okay, what is it? Go ahead. It, Pull the mic close. Pull the mic close.

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:27] There we go. Microphone's a little bit closer. I don't know if you can see that.

John Dehlin [04:56:29] Yeah, there we go.

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:30] Hold that up through there. There we go.

John Dehlin [04:56:32] And just what do you think?

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:33] Replica of the Bat Creek stone.

John Dehlin [04:56:34] And do you think it's fraud or do you think it's legitimate?

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:37] It was, it was dug up in an official archaeological dig by the Smithsonian by a guy by the name of Emmert. He, he pulled the stone out. They published it in one of the publications of the Smithsonian.

John Dehlin [04:56:47] Fraud or legitimate? In your.

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:49] I think it's, I think it's legitimate.

John Dehlin [04:56:50] Okay, that's fine. I just wanted to understand that. Okay, okay.

Rodney Meldrum [04:56:53] I know, I know. There's others, though. I, I, I acknowledge that there's others who think that it's a fraud.

John Dehlin [04:56:56] And how does it, how do Heartlanders think it substantiates the book of Mormon. What is it about it?

Rodney Meldrum [04:57:02] Because, because it has characters on it. When the, when, when the Smithsonian originally published it, it was published upside down. And they said it's some kind of Paleo Cherokee writing. We don't know what it was, but it comes out of a mound that carbon dates in the Book of Mormon time frames.

John Dehlin [04:57:14] Okay, by your, by your.

Rodney Meldrum [04:57:16] Well, but no, by them. Okay, by this. Miss.

John Dehlin [04:57:18] But you don't like carbon dioxide dating.

Rodney Meldrum [04:57:20] No, I, I, no, I, I think we, well, we didn't really get into science, but this carbon dating can be pretty accurate up until about the Flood. Okay, Anything after that gets, gets messed up because of the carbon changes, ratios and so forth that the, the flood cause.

John Dehlin [04:57:33] But that's a tiny bit fishy.

Rodney Meldrum [04:57:34] So what happened was, is that basically that there was another lady who's not LDS and she saw the stone upside down. It was published in a particular orientation in the Smithsonian publication when it was the other direction she goes, wait a minute, that's perfectly legible. Hebrew.

John Dehlin [04:57:49] Hebrew.

Rodney Meldrum [04:57:49] And when they talked about, and they said, well, what do you mean it's Hebrew? I said, well, the characters are Hebrew characters. They had epigraphers actually verified that. And the bottom line is it says for the Judeans.

John Dehlin [04:57:59] Okay, so, so it's got now that

Rodney Meldrum [04:58:01] carbon dates in the Book of Mormon time frames in Tennessee.

John Dehlin [04:58:03] Okay, there you go. Okay. And okay, got it. And I think modern archaeologists have established that to be a fraud.

Rodney Meldrum [04:58:10] It was, it was on display at the Cherokee Museum.

John Dehlin [04:58:13] And they could have been wrong.

Rodney Meldrum [04:58:14] I'm just saying it could be a fraud, it could be otherwise. But, but the fact is it could be authentic too. And, and actually there's a lot of non. Has people who believe it is authentic.

John Dehlin [04:58:22] Okay, perfect. Okay. Brian Howlet, he asks number one. And Brian Hagled was a member of the Maxwell Institute for many, many years. He's retired now. He used to be a Book of Abraham apologist. Now he's since renounced his Book of Abraham. Apologetics, dear friend. Love the guy. Brian Howlet asks on a scale of 1 to 10. What?

Rodney Meldrum [04:58:44] Hey, Brian.

John Dehlin [04:58:46] Brian, scale of 1 to 10. And how certain are you that the Heartland model is correct?

Rodney Meldrum [04:58:54] Probably eight.

John Dehlin [04:58:55] Okay, good. Next question. Any general authority emeritus support the theory these days that you're aware of that you can share?

Rodney Meldrum [04:59:05] Yes. Who can't share?

John Dehlin [04:59:09] How many are you aware of?

Rodney Meldrum [04:59:11] Many more than three. Oh yeah, yeah. So out of the 15. Yeah. There's, there's anyway the current quorum of the 12. Right.

John Dehlin [04:59:22] Wait, okay. So he asked emeritus, are you saying of the current first presidency, the quorum of the 12, you're aware of some that are.

Rodney Meldrum [04:59:32] No, nobody has come out in an, in an open endorsement, but I know that there are some who espouse basically the, the general idea of, of it.

John Dehlin [04:59:41] So it's your belief that there are current members of the First Presidency, slash quorum of the 12 that believe in the Heartland model?

Rodney Meldrum [04:59:47] I don't know that for absolute certainty and we can't verify anything, so I think it's probably better to say don't know.

John Dehlin [04:59:54] But you believe that you, you, you

Rodney Meldrum [04:59:57] believe that's true based on conversations and so forth and so on? Yes.

John Dehlin [05:00:01] Okay. Okay. Brian wants to know how, how much funding, ballpark figure, is typically expended in a given year for conferences, speaking engagements and research related activities. So basically total annual revenue for your organization. Are you comfortable about all of it?

Rodney Meldrum [05:00:21] That's as much as you want to fight? Probably will say okay, it's a lot. I mean, basically we, we bring in quite a bit and we spend a

John Dehlin [05:00:26] lot more than a million a year. No more than 500,000

Rodney Meldrum [05:00:35] probably somewhere in that range.

John Dehlin [05:00:36] Okay, that's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [05:00:37] Yeah.

Heartlanders, Fringe Groups, and Political Affiliations

John Dehlin [05:00:38] Okay. People have associated Heartlanders with, so Julie Rowe, you know, preppers Chad and Lori, Chad Dabell and Lori Valow, the Preparing A People group and Denver Snuffer. First of all, have you found a lot of your followers are also supporters of Chad Dabo? Lori Valo Preparing A People Julie Rowe Denver Snuffer Is that what you found, that there's a correlation there?

Rodney Meldrum [05:01:12] Well, interestingly enough, at my conferences, we typically have, you know, between 60 and 80 people that speak. So there's a high probability that we're going to end up with somebody speaking. That's kind of gone off the rails. But, but Julie Rowe has never spoken at my conferences. Chad Daybell never spoke at my conferences. Denver Snuffer. He was actually an early adopter of our Heartland research and so forth. And he's now out of the, obviously out of the church. But he's never spoke at one of my conferences. So we've been able to kind of, if you want to say, thread the needle as far as that. You know, we've been pretty careful about the kind of people that we have come and speak at our conferences. Is there a propensity for people to be attracted to the Heartland research? And then, you know, I, I don't, I don't necessarily think so. I think that some people have issues with the apologetics that have gone on with the church because frankly, some of the apologetics have been miserable and, and, and have, have not been really true to the, the, the teachings of the church. I think what you'll find if, if nothing else, we're consistent. You know, I mean, yes, we may be mainstream, you know, Mormonism and that's, and, and I'm, I'm guilty as charged there. Okay, but, but, but I think people like at least, if nothing else, the consistency, at least we're not trying to have one foot in both camp and say, oh yeah, we believe in science and we also believe in the church and we believe that both of them are right because there's issues that they both can't be right.

John Dehlin [05:02:47] Okay. Do you, so Julie Rowe, sort of like end times prepper kind of stuff. Visions, predicting the second coming with earthquakes and you know, you know, stocking. What, what are your views on Julie Rowe, her spiritualism and kind of the prepper movement overall? Do you have, are you for it? Are you against it? Do you like it? Do you not like it?

Rodney Meldrum [05:03:15] I'm, I'm all about prepping as far as that's concerned. I mean, I've been involved with that most of my life. I, I feel like that if you read the Bible, you read Revelations and John the Revelator talked about some pretty bad stuff happening. I think it's, it's foolhardy to think that things are just going to go along happy, happy, happy forever and that it doesn't make some sense to have some food stored or have some amount of self reliance. We, we haven't, in fact, in our conferences we have a whole section on just self reliance clients. As far as people like Julie Rowe and other people who've had, you know, claim visions and so forth and so on, we haven't had them on our conferences and so forth because that if, if they did have a vision, that's great, but it's probably their personal deal. I don't know that they, you know, that we should be sharing that stuff. There's lots of different people that I have come in contact with that have had, you know, what they would consider to be, you know, visions and dreams and so forth and involving that kind of thing. Thing. We don't really delve into that. That's not our deal. The preparing of people, folks that they were doing that, they asked me to come and speak at one of their conferences and I agreed to do so after I saw some of the other speakers. And so I said, well, you know, if I'm going to come and speak at any of the other conferences, there are some People that I'm not going to be speaking at the same conference with them. Just don't, don't need it. And so Chad Daybell was one of those people who spoke at one of their conferences. And I said, if he's going to speak again, I'm not going to be part of it. And, and I what. And so they, they actually canceled Chad Daybell and he went and he didn't speak at any of the, the, the last conferences that they did. So you know, I mean, did you know, what does that mean? I mean just because somebody speaks at a conference with somebody else who's, who's gone off the rails doesn't make them, you know, a bad person. And on the other hand, you know, you want, you got to be careful, you know, especially in what we're doing here, that we don't introduce things that would be harmful to people. And so we try our best to, you know, so the prepping that we talk about, you know, that that's, that's not a secret. The church has said for years that we should have you know, supply of food on hand.

John Dehlin [05:05:27] And so, so just to be clear.

Rodney Meldrum [05:05:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:05:31] Nobody's concerned with people having of food storage and a 24 hour, 48 hour pack. It's sort of this Julie Rose saying, oh, there was an earthquake. Oh, Moroni fell off the Salt Lake temple. Here's a date for the second coming. I received that in a vision or in a near death experience. Wait, let me in.

Rodney Meldrum [05:05:50] Our group is there.

John Dehlin [05:05:51] And then a bunch of people selling their 401ks, selling their retirement, buying a bunch of weapons and tents and trailers, going up to the mountains to live in temps tent cities in preparation for an imminent second coming of Jesus that causes a bunch of people to waste a ton of time and money when then the prophecies don't come true. Those are the concerns about prepperism and

Rodney Meldrum [05:06:17] Julie Rowe, we share the same concerns.

John Dehlin [05:06:19] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:06:19] Which is the reason why we haven't had those kind of people come and speak at my conferences.

John Dehlin [05:06:23] Okay. Okay. Huge thanks to Ben Zula for the super chat. These donations are very valuable. Thank you so much for supporting us. Okay, what about. Thank you for expressing concern about that because I, that's, that's another area where we agree. We're concerned about extreme preparism.

Rodney Meldrum [05:06:41] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [05:06:42] Both of us.

Rodney Meldrum [05:06:42] Although I will have to, to preface that with. There's only two times in the scriptures that talk about food storage actually saving people. One of them was Joseph in Egypt that required a seven year supply of food.

John Dehlin [05:06:54] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:06:54] And then the other one was in the Book of Mormon, but Laconius and his people and they gathered together the people in the center of their lands with the seven year supply of food. So, so do we, do we advocate, you know, storing food? Yeah, absolutely we do.

John Dehlin [05:07:07] Sure.

Rodney Meldrum [05:07:08] Not ap. Not apologetic about that.

John Dehlin [05:07:09] That's fine. Okay, next question. There's a line of the church is actually, believe it or not, the church is more interested in fundamentalist Mormons right now than they are liberal or progressive Mormons. And an example, kind of the leader, one of the main leaders of that movement is Denver Snuffer.

Carah Burrell [05:07:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:07:28] Because Denver Snuffer's position would be, if I understand it correctly, that the modern Mormon Church is an apostasy. That the current first president of the quorum of the 12 have taken the church in the wrong direction. That he, Denver Snuffer is now God's prophet on the earth. Denver Snuffer is receiving revelation and printing the revelation, his revelation as revelation and leading entire groups of people in what he perceives to be the true order of the Lamb of God or whatever it is, because the current corporate modern Mormon church has fallen into apostasy. What is your views on Denver Snuffer and people who follow Denver Snuffer who believe the modern Mormon Church is an apostasy?

Rodney Meldrum [05:08:13] Yeah, actually like I said, Denver Snuffer was an early adopter of the Heartman research and actually wrote some that. Excuse me just one second. Dry.

John Dehlin [05:08:24] Yeah, because he likes what Joseph Smith thinks. Thought and thinks. And Joseph Smith was probably a heartlander, right?

Rodney Meldrum [05:08:31] Probably so. Okay. But Denver Snuffer, interesting individual. I actually have only met him one time at his office and we had a cordial conversation so forth. I don't know that much about him, but I do know we had a young fellow who, who became a, you know, he was inactive in the church. He heard about the heartland research and, and became active again. And then he, he wanted to, to do a bunch of things. He wanted to really help the youth of the church. Excuse me, too dry here. Anyways, and, and, and anyway, but he was kind of an extremist himself. Anyway, long story short is that he ended up joining us now group up in Boise, Idaho. And, and, and, and again, John, I have to go back to the fruit thing. You know, what are the fruits? I mean, you know, he, he had his, his wife and his young, I think it was a daughter or so. And now they're divorced and he's got a beard down to his, you know, navel. And, and just, just completely Kind of gone off the rails when it comes down to the church. And, and uh, he thinks he's, you know, having regular visitations to, you know, by Jesus Christ and, and so forth. So, so there's weirdness that goes on really in probably every, you know, every religion. People can become, you know, fanatic, but I think it becomes a problem when they, when they try to shoot. You know what I think the scriptures talk about going beyond the mark. That makes sense.

John Dehlin [05:10:07] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:10:07] And you, and I think that Denver Snuffer is one of these that basically has said, you know, I, I, I feel like that, that we're not getting the guidance from the church and, and, and, and its leadership and, and, and you know, the church has gotten me to a certain point, but now I have to leave. I know there's a lot of people who feel that way that have left the church and saying, you know what they, you know, the church got me up to this point. But in order to go progress further, I have to, you know, do something, you know, spectacular or, or you know, whatever I have to, you know, be willing to offer my son up or whatever kind of thing you want to do, do. And I think that level of fanaticism is, is, is dangerous.

John Dehlin [05:10:49] Okay, so you're, so you feel like the, the Denver Snuffers movement has bad fruits. That's first one summary that I have. And then the second is you, you do not believe that the modern LDS Church is an apostasy. Those are two things I took from your answer.

Rodney Meldrum [05:11:09] Correct. There is, however, in the, in the Book of Mormon itself. It has, it has a very distinctive warning and it was actually the, the last prophet of the Book of Mormon, Moroni. And in, in the Book of Mormon, in the Book of Mormon, which is, you know, Mormon's book, but actually in the preface of the chapter, it says that Moroni is now making commentary here. And he actually says, you know, he said, he, he basically says, you know, Jesus Christ has shown you unto me and I know you're dead doing. And then he proceeds to tell in his narrative what it was that Christ showed him was going to be happening in the last days. And he says, oh, he hypocrites the pollution. See teachers who sell yourselves for that which will Canker. Why have you polluted the Holy Church of God? And I have to go, well, wait a minute. Who was the Holy Church of God? I mean, I don't think he's talking about the Baptists here, there. I think he's talking about us. And if Christ showed him this pollution that was going on, and he's actually talking about that in the Book of Mormon. What is the pollution? Who are the teachers that sell themselves for things which will canker? And as I pondered that, first off, they have to be people who are being paid because they're selling themselves. Right. And things that canker are things that don't last. Things that, you know, if you have a steel and you put it in the ground, it's going to rust, right? It's gonna, it's gonna canker away, it's gonna fall apart. In other words, it's not going to last long term. So who are people that are teaching things that are not going to last? Which things of things have been don't last? Things of God do, in my opinion. And so, so, so the Book of Mormon actually, actually prophesies that there would be pollutions that would rise up up in the church basically and pollute it. He didn't say, he didn't say, why are you trying to pollute the Church? He says, why have you polluted it? So there's, there's that aspect now in my personal, in my personal understanding, that's not the brethren, that's other people. And maybe, I probably shouldn't say it, but I, but maybe, maybe faulty apologetics could be part of the responsibility, why the church has been polluted because there's, there's people who are trying to strat, trying to, to straddle the great divide between what we know from the true gospel and what is true science and what is not true science and what is not true religion. Those, those things are not compatible oftentimes. And when you try to make them compatible, you're going to end up many times being wrong on both counts. And we already discussed this in the previous thing.

John Dehlin [05:14:02] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:14:02] Does that make sense? So I don't know who those people are. I just know that at least from what Moroni said, he was shown by Jesus Christ that there was going to be pollutions that were going to enter in.

John Dehlin [05:14:16] Well, yeah, and so you were, you were come. I was gonna, you kind of beat me to it because I was gonna ask you if you had to share your opinion on who the main polluters were, I was going to ask you who they were.

Rodney Meldrum [05:14:30] I let that. Let other people make up their own minds who they think that might be.

John Dehlin [05:14:33] Okay, okay, but you did say possibly bad Mormon apologetics.

Rodney Meldrum [05:14:38] Well, I think any apologetics that actually leads people out of the church is bad apologetics.

John Dehlin [05:14:44] Yeah, sure, yeah. And here's another area where you and I agree. Fair Mormon and the Maxwell Institute and FARMS have led probably hundreds of thousands of people out of the Mormon Church. Would you agree?

Rodney Meldrum [05:14:59] Absolutely. In fact, Jeremy Reynolds, in his letter to a CS director, he said, you know, that was one, one of the catalysts that actually caused him to lose his faith in the church was these apologetics that don't make sense. So, so that's the reason why in the first, in our, in our first interview, I said, you know, I'm all in, in. I, you know, I, I will take my elix basically for being, you know, somebody who's, you know, a science denier or whatever you want to call it, you know, kind of thing. We're not science deniers. We're actually, we, instead of just denying it, we've actually gone out and tried to find the answers. The, the, the, the, the that are true, but also faithful answers.

John Dehlin [05:15:39] I understand.

Rodney Meldrum [05:15:40] And so that's where we're kind of coming from. I think that's one of the reasons why our apologetics is different, why a lot of people are in fact drawn to it. Yeah, because we're not making excuses for things and trying to have one foot in both camps. We don't believe that we came from apes and slime and then at the same time say that we believe in Adam and Eve. That's, that's not compatible.

John Dehlin [05:16:02] Yes. In our view, you're saying modern Mormon apologists of the Fair Mormon actual institute type have irreconcilable positions that are, that are, that lack integrity. When I say integrity, not that they're being dishonest, but that they don't fit together.

Rodney Meldrum [05:16:21] And what's interesting is that a lot of the apologetics that we have from the Neal A. Maxwell, well, not so much the Maxwell Institute, it's mostly been Fair Mormon and farms, okay, that were kind of the original ones that, that really were promoting. But it's interesting to note that that the, the, the organizers and the, the, the heads of those organizations have several common threads that run throughout their apologetics. So for example, you know, although, although Fair Mormon will say that, you know, that they believe in Adam and Eve and so forth, they will also basically say that, you know, that they're, they, they promote the idea of evolution, promote the idea that the earth is, you know, the, the, the, the organization of this earth happened, you know, know, you know, 4.5, 6 billion years ago, that Noah's flood wasn't really a real event, you know, and, and, and other things like this. I, I, I had actually a guy who was, he was asking me, said, so. So based on what I understand from your Mormon apologetics organizations, you guys don't believe in Adam and Eve. You guys really don't believe in the Flood. You really don't believe in creation as it's, as it, as it's laid out and so forth. He says basically you're not Christian. This, this is a Christian guy. Right. He says if you don't believe those things, then you don't believe in the Bible. If you don't believe in the Bible, then how can you call yourselves Christians? And, and, and that. I think that was a pretty astute observation on his part. You know, if we don't believe in creation, if we don't believe in Adam and Eve, if we don't believe in the flesh, God, then we don't believe in the Bible.

John Dehlin [05:18:04] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:18:05] If we don't believe in the Bible, then how can we call ourselves Christians? And so my, my point is basically this. If you're going to be a Christian, then be a good one and believe.

John Dehlin [05:18:15] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:18:15] And not just believe blindly, but believe and then go out and, and find the evidence that supports your position.

John Dehlin [05:18:23] Yeah. And I would, you know, I'm thinking of like Patrick Mason or, or Terrell and Fiona Givens or Spencer Fluman. I think they would take offense at the suggestion that they're not true or real Christians. I just think there's a form of,

Rodney Meldrum [05:18:38] there's a. I'm not calling them not Christian. I'm just saying that other Christians, other Christians are saying, if you guys don't believe the Bible, then you're not Christian.

John Dehlin [05:18:47] There's a group of apologists, both, both traditional Mormon apologists and neo apologists that just say, no, no, religion is more metaphorical. Scriptures are metaphorical. They're mythical. There's some history there. But there's also a lot of myth and they're flawed and they represent the mistakes of mankind. And it's just a more progressive form of Christianity. Yeah, it's a less literal, it's a less fundamentalist type of Christianity.

Rodney Meldrum [05:19:13] Right.

John Dehlin [05:19:14] But they would say they're still legitimate Christians.

Rodney Meldrum [05:19:16] Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm not, I'm not the one saying that. I'm just saying that I have had other people who are Christians who are questioning. They said, well, you guys aren't Christians. Said, well, yes, it's right in the name of the church. And you go, well, well, if you were Christian, you would, you would believe this, this and this based on the Bible. Yeah, I'm not calling anybody non Christian. I'M just saying that, that, that was an observation made by a Christian guy that I had a conversation with.

John Dehlin [05:19:38] Yeah, I understand. Okay, cool. Let's few more questions. We're almost done. If you, if you had to characterize the probability of your average advocate for the heartland theory, if you had to, you characterize them as more often being sort of supporters of Republican Party or Trump versus Democratic Party or Biden or Obama, where would you say, on average, the, the majority kind of fall?

Rodney Meldrum [05:20:10] Oh, absolutely. On the more conservative side.

John Dehlin [05:20:13] Like overwhelming. Like, what percentage of the heartlanders would you guess are like, conservative Republicans?

Rodney Meldrum [05:20:22] Yeah, well, we have a kind of an older demographic, generally speaking, although it's been much to our consternation. We would like to have a lot more of the youth and so forth that would be more involved with that. But, but we do. I mean, I just, just saying the facts, but we have an older demographic. Older demographic tends to, to lean. At least those of our, are in our group tend to lean more conservative. We do have Democrats and we've even had, you know, Democrats come and speak at our conferences before. I'm just talking about on average, but on an average. Yeah, I would definitely say it's more conservative. I mean, I mean, put it this way. We are the advocates of a, of traditionalist views.

John Dehlin [05:21:02] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:21:03] I mean, obviously that's going to be more, more Republican, you know, more, more exciting for people who are traditionalist than people.

John Dehlin [05:21:11] When you talk about progress, when you talk about fruits.

Rodney Meldrum [05:21:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:21:15] Do, does, does Trump and his fruits ever concern you or bother you? And I don't, I'm not. Mormon stories is not pro Republican or pro Democrat. It's not pro Biden or pro Trump. We don't like to have an official point of view there.

Rodney Meldrum [05:21:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:21:34] But I do, but, but since you, you did say that there's a lot of conservative Republicans in your group. Yeah, there are, I think there are legitimate concerns about Trump's behavior and some of his fruits. And I'm curious whether you might share some of those concerns.

Rodney Meldrum [05:21:51] Probably we get, I mean, we, you know, we'd be going into the political.

John Dehlin [05:21:55] Okay, you want to stay with rat hole. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:21:57] And, and there's, there's, there's no good winners in that whole thing. I, I would just have to say probably, I mean, just, just say this and that in, in general, I would think that the, the, the policies and things that, that, that Trump aspired to. I mean, let's face it now, an abrasive personality is something that a lot of people had issues with with Trump's and I, and I, and I get that. I think that in order for Trump to get in a position that he got, you know, to become the president, United States, you have to be, you have to be pretty gutsy. Right. And pretty, and pretty straightforward and so forth to do that. I think his policies resulted in things that are undeniable, which is, you know, economy that was great. We didn't get into any wars. We, you know, we, we brought people home, those kind of things. Those kind of policies, I think, are much better than the policies that have been going on with the progressive liberal policies, if you will.

John Dehlin [05:22:49] Sure.

Rodney Meldrum [05:22:50] Which have brought us, you know, gasoline prices three times what they were.

John Dehlin [05:22:53] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:22:53] I don't know, massive inflation and an economy that's, that's on the verge of collapse. I think that's where we're going. One, but that's my personal opinion.

John Dehlin [05:23:02] Okay. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:23:04] Well, I won't dig into politics. I could, I could, I could respond to that, but I don't want to go into a rabbit hole.

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:09] Right, right.

John Dehlin [05:23:09] His treatment of women, Trump's treatment of women, is that concerning to you at all?

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:14] God uses his, you know, whatever. I mean, you know, David had, you know, wives and concubines and so forth.

John Dehlin [05:23:21] I mean, so are you saying God. Trump's in God's hands?

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:26] No, no, no. I, I, People who basically, if, if you want to talk about, you know, using women and so forth, I think the Clintons are, are equally right up there with, with.

John Dehlin [05:23:40] I'm not asking the Clintons. I'm asking about if Trump's behavior with women bothered you.

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:44] Yeah, I mean, in any, any time when women are idealized and, you know, and sexualized and that kind of stuff, I think that's not a good thing.

John Dehlin [05:23:52] So in that area, you feel like he is not. Doesn't represent Christianity?

Rodney Meldrum [05:23:55] Well, probably in that area, I mean, okay. He's got, he's got his Achilles heel, and it happens to be women. And when, I guess when you're rich and whatever, women throw themselves at you, basically.

John Dehlin [05:24:08] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:24:08] I don't know that because that's never happened to me.

John Dehlin [05:24:10] Okay. So you and I. Yeah. Another area of agreement. We share disgust for Trump's treatment of women.

Rodney Meldrum [05:24:16] I would, I think he treats his daughters and his wife. His wives have been pretty well treated, I think, think some women, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I, I think he cheated on him. I mean, I think that's fairly openly, you know, discussed and so forth. But, but when he say, his treatment of women, I mean, I don't know if you're talking about, you know, did he pay them less because they're women? I mean, he had executives and so forth who were women. He had, he had women on every one of his cabinets and so forth.

John Dehlin [05:24:46] I mean, no, I mean like multiple reports of sexual, sexual impropriety.

Rodney Meldrum [05:24:51] Yeah, well, and some of those were actually manufactured by, you know, other people.

John Dehlin [05:24:56] May be valid. None of them were legitimate.

Rodney Meldrum [05:24:59] I don't know.

John Dehlin [05:25:00] Okay, that's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [05:25:03] I just know this and that. That is the media. I believe the media cannot be trusted hardly for anything anymore.

John Dehlin [05:25:09] Okay, next question is around vaccinations. Generally speaking, would you say Heartlanders tend to be supportive of getting a Covid vaccination or doing both? No, but, but just generally speaking, would you say there's, the average Heartlander would lean towards being for the COVID vaccine or against the COVID vaccine? Equal.

Rodney Meldrum [05:25:37] Equal, Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:25:38] I say for masks or against masks?

Rodney Meldrum [05:25:41] I'd say probably in general, probably against masks. I mean, again, if you're looking at a conservative demographic, I think that's pretty obvious that you know, masking up and that kind of stuff, you know, and, and I mean even you have Saturday Night Live actually questioning the validity of Mass. Did it really help anything? We had Fauci basically getting on, said Mass don't work. And then after that was like, oh, yeah, no, it's okay, you don't need to. Well 7 mass is even better.

John Dehlin [05:26:06] Yeah, you don't need to go into that. Well, I just wanted to know kind of if, if there was a leaning there.

Rodney Meldrum [05:26:11] I, I think there's a, there's a tendency of Heartland people, if I was going to categorize them to, to be freedom loving, very suspicious government, patriotic, suspicious of government. Yeah. I think if you read the Book of Mormon, you better be at least a little bit questioning about government because there's talk about secret combinations taking over the government in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [05:26:34] Yeah. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:26:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:26:35] Okay, really quickly, the problems with Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Abraham and Egyptologists saying that Joseph Smith did not do an accurate translation just in a couple sentences. Where do you fall on that problem?

Rodney Meldrum [05:26:54] Best thing to do would be to talk to my friend Bruce Porter.

John Dehlin [05:26:58] But do you have an opinion on that? I'm not asking you to provide evidence.

Rodney Meldrum [05:27:02] I haven't dealt in it enough that I really feel comfortable and even really addressing, seen it. I mean, I, I, I know the, the things around it, but I don't know enough to. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to declare the Fifth on that one.

John Dehlin [05:27:16] Okay, that's fine. Thank you. That saves us time. So the existence of Deutero Isaiah in the Book of Mormon. So the idea that parts of Isaiah that were written after Lehi would have left Jerusalem, that that would not have been contained on the brass plates that they would have carried with them, the fact that that somehow appears in the Book of Mormon and that it also seems to match the version of the Bible that Joseph Smith had when he translated, would have had when he translated the King James. Do you have an opinion on Deutero Isaiah or do you just not have an opinion?

Rodney Meldrum [05:27:54] Somewhat. Basically the assumption there would be that everything that they knew about Isaiah would have come, you know, should say, for Moses and so forth, would have come from the brass plates. Isaiah was actually, you know, in the same kind of time realm, if you will, the, the general time frame of Lehi and his family and so forth. But then if, if the Book of Mormon is correct, that Christ actually did come to them in the land bountiful, the temple there, and instructed them, then that would have been, you know, 600 years, you know, after Lehi left Jerusalem and, and long after, you know, the death of, of Isaiah. And so those, those, those Isaiah teachings could have been from Christ to the Nephites and at the time when he was there and then, and then perpetuated basically after his visit in the Book of Mormons. So that, that I don't think is a big issue for me. That makes sense. I mean, because. Because the brass plates would have been written long before Isaiah and then, and then you have the, and then you have basically, you know, Christ coming to the Nephites around, you know, 0 A.D. and then if he actually did instruct the Nephites there, it's a very good possibility that he may have been instructing them also about the teachings of Isaiah, especially since he, in the Book of Mormon in Third Nephi, he specifically said that great are the words of Isaiah.

John Dehlin [05:29:37] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:29:37] So I think he probably was teaching him Isaiah and that got perpetuated down through the ages and ended up in the gold plate sites.

John Dehlin [05:29:45] Gerardo is saying that Nephi is quoting Deutero Isaiah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:29:53] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [05:29:57] It's fine.

Rodney Meldrum [05:29:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:29:58] You don't think the Deutero Isa thing is a problem?

Rodney Meldrum [05:30:02] Not that I'm aware of.

John Dehlin [05:30:03] Okay, that's totally fine. All right, so this is, this is not a gotcha question. It's not intended as a gotcha question. It's literally a question that someone posted. Somebody expressed a concern about promoting the Heartland model Tours well, promoting the Heartland model and then promoting Heartland model tours. And they seem to feel like that's a conflict of interest because you're promoting a theory for the Book of Mormon that's just kind of spiritual endeavor and then you're profiting from the, that some would, some would say they're concerned with the. Profiting, yeah, from the advancement of that spiritual model by making money off of the tours or the, or the events. And this isn't me.

Rodney Meldrum [05:30:46] I can see that. I can see people would, that would, would possibly go, well, wait a minute. But so, so you, so it's kind of like the old thing about, you know, the somebody gets a rock through their window and they pick up the rock and it goes, you know, if your rock broke, your r broken, you know, call, you know, Jones painting glass, you know, so create the problem and then sell them the solution to the problem. Right. So I understand that that could be looked at in that fashion. But basically this situation is, is that, you know, we didn't start off with tours. That was never, you know, the intention, the intention was just to show forth the evidence of the Book of Mormon. But when people talk about evidences, they go, well, okay, so show me. Well, how are you going to show them unless you actually take them there and show them the head plates, the breastplates, the mounds and the, and the other things that go along with them that you can send them off on a, on a goose chase, you know, and say, well, here go here, go here go here and look at this, this and this. But a lot of times the information that they're going to get while on the tour is, is way more than they would get from a interpretive sign out on some mound someplace. So the, the answer to that is basically, do we, do we take tours? Yes, absolutely. We do in fact invite anybody to come on the tour. We've had probably, you know, three or four thousand people have come on my tour tours. It has been a life changing experience for most, I would say. In fact, we've had people who are not even of our faith have been on the tours and out of those few people, several of them actually have decided that they, that they, they saw enough information and enough evidences that they actually chose to go ahead and, and, and take missionary lessons and actually join the church. Because, you know, again, some people want to see the logical stuff. You know, it's one thing to believe blindly, it's another thing to believe with, with an education or at least, you know, to have some amount of reasoning behind, behind the whole thing. So, so yeah, we also offer our educational materials. I mean, it's the same kind of thing. But we, we do have bills to pay. We have to have, we maintain, you know, several websites. We have these big conferences.

John Dehlin [05:32:58] I get it. And we covered your finances in the last episode. So, so in the first episode, in part one, at the end of part one, if you guys want to hear him talk about finances, we talked about

Rodney Meldrum [05:33:08] as much as when you've, when you spent your life studying these things and you know, where the places are and you know, kind of how to take people there, it actually condenses. A lot of people could waste a whole lot of time going to, looking for all these different things themselves.

John Dehlin [05:33:19] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:33:20] And we just save them a lot of time by just taking them on the tour. And, and they love it.

John Dehlin [05:33:25] I get it.

Rodney Meldrum [05:33:25] I love it. It's great.

Closing Reflections and Thanks to Donors

John Dehlin [05:33:26] So rfm, we, we love anytime RFM joins in. Radio Free Mormon just posted. Just getting back. Is this still going? Have we at least gotten to the Heartland theory yet? And rfm, I'm just going to tell you that not only did we get to the Heartland Theory, I literally read Rod your questions and allowed him to answer the questions you gave me. And rfm, I attributed your explanations of, to me of the two Cumorah Central American theories for the Book of Mormon, I attributed that to you, rfm, because you are the, you in my view, are the fountain of all truth, light and knowledge. I'm saying that tongue in cheek a little bit.

Rodney Meldrum [05:34:08] And Rod never met you, though, rfm, whoever you are.

John Dehlin [05:34:11] Well, rfm, let me just ask you now, Rodney Meldrum, will you come on Radio Free Mormon or Mormonism Love Live and be interviewed by RFM and Bill Real,

Rodney Meldrum [05:34:23] if time permits. I mean, I mean, we could, we. It's kind of like the old Aesop stable fable about the, the, the, the Briar Rabbit and the, and the Tar Man. The more, the more he kicked into it, the more it just kind of completely consumed him. I just, I, I don't want to get completely consumed in this whole realm. But, but I thought that and I, I felt that you would be honest about what you said. And so far you have not disappointed that the fact that you said that, you know, you weren't going to do a lot of gotchas or that kind of stuff. It's going to be an open discussion. I get to kind of express my thoughts and views and you get to ask the questions. And so hopefully it's been a good exchange.

John Dehlin [05:35:07] Oh yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:35:08] I don't know how much time I have to devote to all of this, but I, but I felt that it was something that I should probably do. I appreciate it for you specifically.

John Dehlin [05:35:20] All right, thank you. Thank you for that. I've tried to honor our understandings beforehand. RFM also writes, does Care know she is supposed to be on Mormonism Live tonight? Rfm. Carah left early so she could be there probably four hours early with our blessing because we're really glad Carah can come on Mormonism Life to tonight. She gave you guys.

Rodney Meldrum [05:35:40] She's not on. She's not on the board.

John Dehlin [05:35:42] This is Carah. There's Carah. There's Carah. And we're.

Rodney Meldrum [05:35:47] She's gone.

John Dehlin [05:35:49] Okay, a couple more. So really quickly. I'm almost done. I'm reading now from Gregory Smith's summary of the problems with the Heartland model. This was really rich because, because Greg Prince attacks you for attacking other Men members. And Greg Smith, like you said, that you think that maybe Daniel Peterson was let go from the Maxwell Institute for attacking you. It was my understanding that he was let go from the Maxwell Institute for attacking me when I was a member and writing Greg Smith was writing these long hit pieces against me. But regardless, it's one of the most rich and ironic and hypocritical things I've probably ever read in the 18 years, years of being in this business to have Gregory Smith criticizing Rod Meldrum for criticizing other members. Rod Meldrum, do you have a response? Is that a softball? Are we on the same page there?

Rodney Meldrum [05:36:48] Okay, so, well, one thing that I think you'll find and that is that early on in our research is when I, it's when we had that I got blindsided by the Fair Morgan Fair Mormon Organization and, and, and Scott Gordon and, and they, they, they, they called me and said, you know, we understand that you've got a new DVD that's coming out. It's about DNA and so forth. And, and we'd just like to talk to you about that. And I said, okay. And I was, I was actually in California at the time doing some presentations over there around the, the San Diego area. And, and anyway, the, the, so we set up a, a call, a conference call, and I got on the line and there was like, gosh, there must have been like seven or eight people. And they just started peppering me with questions and so forth. And, and I was like, well, hold on, wait a minute. And they said, anyway, long story short is that they, they said, well, well, well, you need to address these, these, these concerns of ours and so forth and if you don't do it, then we're going to publish a bunch of stuff about you and so forth. I said, okay, well what are your concerns? What are your questions? And anyway, and like literally a week later they published and they, they had been, they spent almost six months of their time. I, I feel sorry for them because they spent so much time and effort and, and publishing. They took my first DVD and just try to dissect it into every little, every little nuance and every little detail. And you know, and, and oh, Rod Meldrum is wrong because there was only 30 million buffaloes on the plains and not 60 million buffaloes and Rod Meldrum was wrong about that. And, and I actually have the sources that, that, that claimed it was 60 million. So it was just trying to take issue with any little thing that they could, any nitpicky little thing and avoiding the elephant in the room, which is that, you know, that there's major problems that are going on with the, with the Mesoamerica theory. So, so the, the, so Gregory Smith, he published his, his piece and I, and I decided long ago that, you know what, life is too short to just deal with negative people all the time. And, and so I did a quick probably about three or four page, I can't remember maybe four or five page response to his, his probably 30 or 40 page, you know, article that he wrote. And, but what you'll find is, is that we in the Heartland Research camp, we have not gone out and, and published a bunch of, you know, all the reasons why the Book of Mormon could not have happened in Central America. We just want to tell our story. So you won't find on our websites, you know, dozens of articles or hundreds of articles, you know, you know, trying to poke holes in the Central American theory. We just tell our side of the story and let people decide where they want to go. And the vast majority of people when, when presented with both sides of the information and looking, looking at it objectively go with the Heartland research every time. I'd say it's probably high 90%. And, but, but if you go to, you know, a lot of these sites that promote the Mesa America theory, I, I swear three quarters of their articles are all the reasons why the Heartland research is wrong and not much about why their theory is right.

John Dehlin [05:40:16] My point is they also attack you personally while I'm accusing you of attacking other people, do they not?

Rodney Meldrum [05:40:22] Yeah, but I, I honestly don't, I don't try, I don't try to make this personal. I mean, if I, if I took it personally, you know, I mean, we wouldn't be having our conversation here today together. Right. You know, because, because, you know, so if you're going to be in this arena, you better have a little bit of a thick skin.

John Dehlin [05:40:39] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:40:40] And maybe that's thick skin or just hard headedness, I don't know. But anyway, but, but either way they, we, we have not tried to tear them down in order to build ourselves up. We just want to tell our story and let people decide.

John Dehlin [05:40:55] Well, I respect that more, more than Gregory Smith. Okay. Another crit. Thank you for sharing that. And so there's this accusation he makes that you, that he's saying that Heartlanders rely too often on conspiracy theories to explain why your model has not been accepted. And he's saying it includes tax on, by attacks on byu, on LDS scholarship, on LDS who offer a different model. The National Science foundation, the national association of Science, the American association for the Advancement of Science, DNA researchers, even James Talmage. Like, so just we've covered a lot of this, but I just want you to address just this idea that, that you, you sometimes have to lean towards conspiracy theories to try and explain why so many scientific organizations and so many LDS church funded organizations don't support the Heartland model.

Rodney Meldrum [05:41:59] Yeah, okay. That, that actually it's, it's a pretty good question I think overall. Obviously from our previous conversation earlier on in this long, long interview. I think it's pretty obvious that somebody looking from the outside and not having any additional information and would go oh man, you know, these guys are just into pseudo theories and, and all this. You know, I, I mentioned about the, the, the, the three big scientific organizations, the NSF, the, the AAAS and the NAS and how that in their own internal surveys they're 97 or 98 atheistic. That's not an attack on any individual, but it is an observation from their own surveys. And I think it, and it's relevant because, because of their position at being able to be the dispensaries of funding for scientific research in the United States. So I think that is, that's at least somewhat interesting or should be important to know the background of who is, who it is that's funding the research and the science. As far as attacking byu, I love byu. I, I think it's awesome. Although I went to Utah State and so I'm kind of an Aggie, really, really more than a cougar, but I live close to byu and when, when, when BYU is playing games against other people besides Utah State, I usually would Would, you know, have a tendency to, to, you know, root for them. But I love byu. But there's also things that are being taught at BYU that I disagree with. BYU spent. Not byu, but the Bean Museum at BYU spent over, over one and a half million dollars making a display on human evolution from lower life forms, which obviously I disagree with. So is that an attack against byu? Well, kind of, I guess, if you want to look at it that way. But actually I'm hoping that we can move the narrative in the direction of what the scriptures say and what the prophets have said rather than what mainstream, you know, biological thought is as far as evolution solution. And I think the church would be better served by teaching the, the teachings of the prophets and the scriptures than teaching modernistic theories of how humans evolved. So that's my personal opinion about that. So is that an attack against the, against BYU and the Church? No, I'm hoping to maybe move people in a particular direction that actually is faithful to what I, as I understand the scriptures and the, and the creation accounts that we have have something that's more along the lines of what the scriptures say.

John Dehlin [05:44:37] Okay, thank you for answering that.

Rodney Meldrum [05:44:39] Is that, I don't know if that's, that, that's kind of concise or whatever. I'm trying to keep it.

John Dehlin [05:44:44] No, thanks for.

Rodney Meldrum [05:44:45] But, but I mean, like Daniel Peterson, I mean, you won't find anything on my website saying, you know, what a, what a low life he might, or whatever.

John Dehlin [05:44:52] No, I get that.

Rodney Meldrum [05:44:53] I keep it non personal because it's not a personal thing. I, I would, I would hope that Dan Peterson would be a friend of mine. Mine.

John Dehlin [05:44:58] Yeah, totally.

Rodney Meldrum [05:44:59] We've actually had lunch together and he's a very nice guy.

John Dehlin [05:45:01] Yeah.

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:02] And so is Simon in person. I don't, I don't have personal vendettas against really anybody.

John Dehlin [05:45:07] Totally.

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:08] Except for one guy, I don't know, Lewis Midgley, maybe. But anyway, that's another, another thing we share.

John Dehlin [05:45:14] Okay, really quickly, a couple very quick things there. There's a very patient commenter who's actually super chat donated three times. Times. Because he wants you to answer the question. Do you believe that giants existed in North America? And I have no idea why he's

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:32] asking the nephilim he's talking about probably giants. In what degree? It would be the thing, I, I think.

John Dehlin [05:45:40] What word did you just use? Nephilim.

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:42] Nephilim?

John Dehlin [05:45:43] What is that?

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:43] You don't know Nephilim?

John Dehlin [05:45:44] I'm sorry, there's so much I don't know.

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:46] Well, then you must not know Jack either? No, just kidding.

John Dehlin [05:45:49] There's so much I don't know.

Rodney Meldrum [05:45:50] Yeah, you know what? That's like we said in the very first thing, you know, everybody's expert in certain little areas and everything else. We're all ignorant. You know, it's just the way it is. But as far as giants is concerned, giants as far as like, you know, 12 and 13 footers, I think that's obviously way out of no way. Okay. And I don't know of any credible source that talks about those kind of giants. However, on the other hand, the Adena people which we're talking about would be the time frames of the Jaredites. In other words, in our, in our viewpoint, the Adena culture and civilization are the Jaredite culture of the Book of Mormon. And some of those people were pretty dang big. Many of the men were seven footers or more.

John Dehlin [05:46:35] Where's many of the women coming from? Why is, why is this person even asking about giants?

Rodney Meldrum [05:46:40] Because, because there's been, you know, there was, there was. Well, really back in the 1800s, there were skeletons being, being dredged up and so.

John Dehlin [05:46:51] But is there a scriptural reference to

Rodney Meldrum [05:46:53] giants that this is, or scriptural reference to giants?

John Dehlin [05:46:56] That is the origin of this question.

Rodney Meldrum [05:46:58] Not in the Book of Mormon, as far as I know. I don't know that giants. In the Bible, it talks about giants in the land that was pre flood, if I, if I remember correctly.

John Dehlin [05:47:07] Do you believe in giants pre flood?

Rodney Meldrum [05:47:11] I don't know. I mean, the Bible talks about it, but what is gigantism? I mean, is that just somebody that's like 7ft tall and everybody else is 5ft and they're, they're giants in comparison to a 5 footer. Is there somebody that's 25ft tall? And the answer to that is I've never seen it. I've never seen anybody that's more than about, I think the tallest person I've ever seen actually been next to, I think is Mark Eaton. And, and he, and, and, and he made me feel pretty small. I mean, I would consider him to be a giant, you know, in that sense, but I mean, he's. What is he, 7ft or something? Yeah, I'm 6 foot 4.

John Dehlin [05:47:49] So the last, it's the last goony that's asking this and he's saying, I'm talking about North American Adena giants, not the Bible ones. So yeah, I would love the last goony to explain why you're asking Rod Meldrum about giants.

Rodney Meldrum [05:48:03] I think maybe because they were being dug out Actually, and they were making claims as like, you know, there's a ten footer and so forth. Obviously when people are, are dead and they're, and their bones disarticulate and you know, or, you know, they get stretched out from erosion or whatever that causes that, it could, it could appear larger. I am not aware of any like 13 footers, but there's pretty regular that people would be 7 and 8 foot tall. In fact, the, the Zel Mound account talks about Zel and they, and they actually, the brethren procured his thigh bone and they made measurements of the thigh bone. And, and, and if, and if that, that Zelf guy, if they, when they measured his thigh bone and compare it to my thigh bone, I'm 6 foot 4. His thigh bone itself was about 2 inches longer than mine. Which would indicate if you, if you, you know, do the ratios and so forth on an average male person, you know, know it would be somewhere around seven feet tall.

John Dehlin [05:49:06] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:49:07] And that would be that. Yeah, they're big. They're big people.

John Dehlin [05:49:09] So the last goony writes Rod knows the Smithsonian conspiracy theory about giants is a classic one. So apparently there's some Smithsonian theory about giants.

Rodney Meldrum [05:49:22] Well, there was people making claims of, you know, 13 and 15 foot tall people and you know, they supposedly found their bones and, and they, it's kind of a circus thing back in the day, you know, you know, who had the, who had the biggest giant, you know, remains or whatever.

John Dehlin [05:49:35] And I'm just wondering how this ties to the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [05:49:40] Well, I think that ties with the Book of Mormon just because the Jaredite people were actually very big. I mean they were way above average

John Dehlin [05:49:47] as described in the Book of Mormon.

Rodney Meldrum [05:49:49] Yeah, well, it talked about in the, the Jaredites being large in stature, but then again you have Nephi and, and other people saying they're large in stature as well.

John Dehlin [05:49:57] Okay, all right. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:49:58] Which I, which just, just as a side note I think is another kind of a funny little correspondency or whatever or correlation between, or difference between the, the heartland research and the Mesa American research is throughout the Book of Mormon they say, you know, Nephi says I'm large in stature. You know, you have, you know, Captain Moroni is large in stature. Mormon Moroni. They describe themselves as being larger than stature. Nature. Why are they, why are they putting that in the Book of Mormon? They got some kind of a egotistical thing going on. I think it's just, they're just making the claim that they're above average in size. And you look at the Mayan Civilization down in Central America. Would anybody call them as a people large in stature in comparison with other human beings around the world? No, they're. They're quite. They're smaller bone. They're smaller people.

John Dehlin [05:50:50] Okay, that's fine. That helps really quickly. Joseph Smith's polygamy. There are a lot of people these days that don't believe that Joseph practiced polygamy at all or that it was all spiritual stuff. But there was no. Joseph never had sex with other women other than his wife. Where do you stand on Joseph Smith's polygamy and him having sex with his plural wives?

Rodney Meldrum [05:51:12] First off, I think polygamy is something that is pretty well established that God allows at certain times and disallows at other times.

John Dehlin [05:51:18] So with Joseph.

Rodney Meldrum [05:51:19] And so with Joseph, I think that it was probably allowed at that point in time. I know that that starts a molecular research foundation, took the top 25 individuals.

John Dehlin [05:51:30] I just want to know what you believe.

Rodney Meldrum [05:51:32] Okay. I believe that he. That he was told to and commanded to practice polygamy, that he had ceilings with other women.

John Dehlin [05:51:43] That.

Rodney Meldrum [05:51:44] That those. Those ceilings had. There's no evidence that those resulted in actual children being born or whatever. So if they were. If they were consummated, which there's, you know, at least that any consummation that may have happened didn't result in any children. So I think that the propensity of evidence is that. That there was not sexual things involved with Joseph Smith and these other women. It was more of a ceiling thing and probably more about the next life.

John Dehlin [05:52:10] So in your view, Joseph Smith didn't. Likely didn't have sex with his plural wives?

Rodney Meldrum [05:52:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:52:16] Okay. And the fact that several women signed. Several of his wives later signed affidavits testifying that they were married to him in the very deed, meaning they had sex, Your response to that would be bad sources, disgruntled people?

Rodney Meldrum [05:52:31] Probably. Actually probably one of the more, you know, highly researched areas as far as our Heartland group people, if you will. Hannah Stoddard actually has done a lot of research involving that, and it's just. Just published a book and involving that. But there's. There's. I don't think there's any denying that polygamy was something that was. That was bantered about and talked about and, and practice, as far as the early church is concerned, learned. You know, I mean, there's. There's no. There's no point in saying that that didn't happen. Yeah. The question is, is do we understand properly how that was handled and what was really going on there. And I. I wouldn't. I would have to defer, I think, to. To Hannah Stoddard and others who have addressed that issue.

John Dehlin [05:53:24] But that's what. That's what you.

Carah Burrell [05:53:28] Do.

John Dehlin [05:53:28] You. Do you believe in multiple mortal probations, that, that we can basically reincarnation within the Mormon system where if I die, my spirit can come back to another mortal or whatever? What, into another. No, no.

Rodney Meldrum [05:53:46] Into another human.

John Dehlin [05:53:48] Human incarnation?

Rodney Meldrum [05:53:50] No.

John Dehlin [05:53:50] Okay. You don't believe that. Okay. That's something Chad Dabel and Lori Valow were really big into. So just cruise one quick thing. Somebody's saying that the term Asiatic is actually kind of racist. Kind of racist and not good to be used anymore. I was just passing that on. Have you heard that before?

Rodney Meldrum [05:54:08] Well, well, some people want to deny that the races even exist. And, Or. And. And that there's. There's no. There's really no such thing as racist and races and so forth. And. And I guess you could really. A more proper term would be descendants of Ham, Shem and Japheth.

John Dehlin [05:54:24] I'm just saying, do you know that the people find the term Asiatic offensive?

Rodney Meldrum [05:54:28] And, you know, I haven't found many Asians that are offended by being called Asians. You know, I mean, I'm sure there probably is somebody who wants to be offended because they want to be offended, but that's just the way it goes.

John Dehlin [05:54:40] Or because it potentially might be sincerely offensive to them.

Rodney Meldrum [05:54:45] Why would be.

John Dehlin [05:54:46] I mean, I don't know. We'd have to ask.

Rodney Meldrum [05:54:47] If somebody calls me a white person, you know, or a Caucasian, I'm not offended by that.

John Dehlin [05:54:51] No, but I'm saying if an Asian person came to you and said that that is an offensive term. Here's why. Would you listen and consider not using.

Rodney Meldrum [05:54:57] I would listen to it, but I would think it probably. I'd probably have a preconceived that if somebody. If somebody's Asian and they're offended by being called Asian, that they're being nitpicky.

John Dehlin [05:55:10] But would you at least listen to them and give them a chance?

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:12] And if they listen to why they. Why they would think that, would you

John Dehlin [05:55:15] consider to no longer use the term? If once they gave you the evidence for why they felt it was offensive, would you consider changing?

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:21] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, good. I think society in general, I mean, you know, I mean, they're, you know, first, nobody knew what to call, you know, people from, you know, of. Of black skin. I mean, did we call them Africans? Do we call them African Americans? Do we call them blacks. Do we? You know, what do we want? I. I think there's a lot of confusion, even in the black community as to what they want to be called.

John Dehlin [05:55:45] Let's not go. Let's not go.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:46] Or what we want to be.

John Dehlin [05:55:47] Let's not go down. The race.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:48] Want to be called the white guy or. Or.

Carah Burrell [05:55:50] Or.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:50] Or, you know, Anglo Saxon or. Or, you know, Caucasian.

John Dehlin [05:55:56] Okay. Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:57] It doesn't offend me either way.

John Dehlin [05:55:58] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:55:59] All right.

Rodney Meldrum [05:55:59] And hopefully. And hopefully I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to offend anyone by not using the proper terminology that they. That they. That, you know, because there's. There's. There's so many people, and everybody has their different hot buttons and what. What sets them off? I try not to set them off. I'm not deliberately trying to do that. But on the other hand, I. You know, we have an English language, and words mean things, and so we try to use the words that are the closest proximity to what we're trying to express.

John Dehlin [05:56:26] Totally. Okay. And if there are any people of Asian descent who want to pass on to Rod reasons why you might find that term offensive, I'll be happy to pass those on.

Rodney Meldrum [05:56:40] Right.

John Dehlin [05:56:41] We don't have to keep going.

Rodney Meldrum [05:56:42] Most of the time, I do use the word Asiatic because that's what's used in genetics journals and so forth. You know, Asiatic, they typically say Caucasian, African, and Asiatic is the three primary lineages.

John Dehlin [05:56:56] I think those are out of use. I think those terms are out of use now. Now. Long gone, but it doesn't matter.

Rodney Meldrum [05:57:01] Yeah, I probably show you some articles, but anyway.

John Dehlin [05:57:04] Okay, so really quickly, I'll just say one last thing. Joshua writes, I get the impression that John literally hates Rod. So that's what Joshua is saying. Really, Man, I hope you don't feel that way, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [05:57:18] Oh. Because you know what? I feel like, you know, we're all. If the gospel is true, then we're all brothers and sisters at some point. And I would. And I would venture to say, in fact, I think it would be kind of fun, John, if. If you. If you have ancestry, whatever on your phone to see if we have common ancestry, because I would bet we do.

John Dehlin [05:57:40] Cash Valley, baby.

Rodney Meldrum [05:57:41] Yeah, man. Cash Valley. I have no reason to. To hate you. And I don't.

John Dehlin [05:57:49] Well, I don't hate you either, Rod. All right, thank you.

Rodney Meldrum [05:57:52] And I know that we disagree on many different aspects, but bottom line is we've been able to have a pretty decent conversation, I think. And so, you know, what the heck?

John Dehlin [05:58:02] I feel that way. All right, well, believe it or not, we're, we're six hours in and I think I'm done with my questions.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:13] My turn to do questions now is that.

John Dehlin [05:58:15] That'll be the next episode.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:16] Oh, yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [05:58:18] Bring me on Heartland podcast. And I would love. I would love to be interviewed by you for your podcast.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:25] Cool. All right.

John Dehlin [05:58:26] Okay.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:26] So are we. So questions. So are we going to do any more?

John Dehlin [05:58:29] Yeah, I'll talk to Simon and Tom Murphy and any other, any other scientist, and if they are interested, then we'll get back in touch with you. But I'm, I'm if, if scientists are willing to engage you on science.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [05:58:46] I would be willing to allow a scientific discussion to take place.

Rodney Meldrum [05:58:51] Okay. Fair enough.

John Dehlin [05:58:53] Okay. Yeah. And I will say just really quickly, this conversation can continue both in the chats on YouTube and on Facebook on the blog MormonStories.org and we have a new Discord channel that maybe Jen will paste into the comments right now. Now you can get it from the top left corner of the MormonStories.org website. There's a Discord link. And we invite you, any of you who want to continue this conversation. You can do that also in our new Discord community, which we think is really valuable. Yeah. So, yeah, Rod, I just want to say thank you for coming on. Thank you for taking the hard questions, and I really respect that. And there's a lot of others who, who won't do that. And so for that, you have my respect.

Rodney Meldrum [05:59:42] I, I had quite a few people after our, our last podcast that, that said, you know, have you read the comments? Oh, my gosh. You know, you just get, you're just getting hammered. They're just ripping you up and one side and down the other and so forth. And I, and I, I have to say I don't mean this by. With any disrespect, but I don't really read the comments. I don't have time. I know that the, the, the know many of the. Of the folks that are would be watching would be probably not happy with some of the things that I have to say, and I understand that. I just hope that we can all be civil and nice to each other and, and listen with an open heart and open mind and realize that we don't have to have a lot of hate out there and, and in the world. We can, we can, you know, be. Be agree to disagree and not be. And still be civil about it. Which is one of the things I really appreciate, John, that you've been able to do for me. So thank you for that.

John Dehlin [06:00:42] Well, it would make me feel really good if you felt like we treated you like we promised, that we treated you respectfully, courteously and fairly.

Rodney Meldrum [06:00:53] The fact that you're willing to do it live and not have it edited so that, so that people can see the whole thing and not, you know, have the little snippets of things. Because just like when, you know, the very first question I, I asked you guys, you know, you know, about water, you know, water boiling at room temperature, you know, it's easy to construe that one way if you don't have the last part of it, which is the, you know, in a vacuum, you know, and so that, that can be, that. That's an easy. Gotcha question, you know, does. Does water boil at room temperature?

John Dehlin [06:01:28] And I had the, I had the right answer.

Rodney Meldrum [06:01:30] You had the right answer. But now I have to say Carah, because she kind of fell for it. You know, she said, no, water doesn't boil at room temperature because I, I left out a crucial piece of information in a vacuum. And then all of a sudden she would have had it just right. But her answer, if I just left it at that, you say, oh, there she, she's wrong, you know, because I left out that important, critical piece of information. That's why I appreciate you're giving me an opportunity to kind of, to not just answer the question yes or no, but give a little bit of explanation as to why. So thank you.

John Dehlin [06:02:01] Yeah, thank you. And thanks to Carah, who's not here. We love Carah. We're grateful for her. So Carah, wish you well. Carah is about to show up on Mormonism live tonight at 6:15, 6:20 on YouTube. So big shout out to Bill Real Radio Free Mormon and Carah. Check out Mormonism Live tonight. We support the them. Huge shout out to Jen who's back here.

Rodney Meldrum [06:02:24] Good job, Jen.

John Dehlin [06:02:25] Doing the, doing the time code and the show notes. Jen, we love having you on the open in the open storage foundation. You've done really important work. So. Yeah, and, and also.

Rodney Meldrum [06:02:37] Until another time. Yeah.

John Dehlin [06:02:38] Yeah, thanks, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [06:02:39] We still need to address the dating aspect and the DNA stuff and, and, and Simon and, and, and Thomas and it'd be awesome if we could do that in person. That'd be great. But I know that'd be, be a, that'd be a big commitment on Simon's part coming from Australia up here, but, but maybe he's going to be coming up here for another time and we can have, have a little sit down together. Who knows break bread.

John Dehlin [06:03:01] I would love to have.

Rodney Meldrum [06:03:02] We broke red last time. It was, you know, I mean, I

John Dehlin [06:03:05] made a commitment to you that we would discuss science with scientists. So even for those who are telling me that they don't like the idea, I. I want to fulfill that commitment with you. If they're a legitimate scientist, scientists that are willing to talk science with you.

Rodney Meldrum [06:03:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [06:03:18] Then I, I want to try and make that happen. So, anyway, thank you, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [06:03:21] Well, if you. If you feel like that's something that you know that you shouldn't do or go there, whatever, I. I respect that, too.

John Dehlin [06:03:28] Okay, we'll see. We'll see if that happens. But, Rod, thank you for coming on. And I'll just say, finally, thanks to everyone who joined us in the chats. Your chats on Facebook and on YouTube added a lot to this conversation. So thank you. You. Thanks to everyone who gave donations through the super chat feature of YouTube. Your donations go to pay for Carah and for Jen and for Gerardo and for Brooklyn and for Jennifer and for everyone who makes the Open Stories foundation possible. So thank you. Me. Me, too. So. And thanks to all the donors just generally that support Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. And if you value. Some of you may not value this type of program programming, but if you value this type of programming where in this instance, we try and bring on people that we disagree with or on different sides of the spectrum, we invite you to show that support by becoming a monthly donor@mormonstories.org and you can email us@mormonstories gmail.com with feedback, or you can comment on all the different places where you can comment. Thanks, Rod.

Rodney Meldrum [06:04:30] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [06:04:31] All right, thanks, everybody. Talk to you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.