Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome back to part five of my epic interview with Jim Bennett, son of former U.S. senator Bob Bennett and author of a faithful reply response to the CES letter. We have spent four, three to four sit downs, probably 12 hours at this point, talking about all sorts of issues. Polygamy, racism, Joseph Smith, all the issues, Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham. And I've gotten so much positive feedback. I hope, Jim, you've gotten really good.

Jim Bennett [00:00:37] I've gotten some wonderful feedback, yes. I've also gotten some other feedback, but I'm sure you have too.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Yeah, yeah. But overall, people are really grateful for this exchange and for your time, and so thank you for that. And one of the criticisms I've received is that I haven't held your feet to the fire, meaning that I've, according to many people, let you gotten, let you get away with making a bunch of assertions that we could argue with or that I could make a response to or even nail you down on. And you know, in a way that's what today's about. In a way it's not. And I'm just going to say that now that we've covered the main topics, what we're going to do today is I'm going to raise a bunch of questions that you listeners have raised for Jim. And a lot of these are responses to his answers. And so in that sense we will be, quote, holding Jim's feet to the fire, but not because I don't believe that's constructive. I don't believe that, like trying to pin someone down or score points. I just, that's never been the way I've done Mormon stories, podcasts. I don't think it makes people want to come back and I don't think people make decisions that way. I think that we've talked about the backfire effect a lot. If you shove information in someone's face when they have a closely held belief, they tend to believe even stronger in whatever their belief is. So I just, I don't believe in debates. I don't like them. I don't like direct contention and that's not how I like to do. But I, I am going to ask a bunch of follow up questions that, that are going to, that is going to give Jim a chance to,

Jim Bennett [00:02:24] you

John Dehlin [00:02:24] know, respond to the expression of concerns that maybe you weren't always giving the best answers. I don't know. I don't know anyway, but I don't, I don't want.

Jim Bennett [00:02:35] Well, and I can say up front that I didn't always give the Best answers. I mean, that's the other thing is that, is that I don't really believe in that kind of debate thing either, because I'm not trying here to score points for the church. What I'm trying to do is demonstrate this is why I believe this is who I am, this is where I am. And you can come back and say, well, your response on that is inadequate and it's not a strong enough defense of the church, or it's wrong or whatever it is. And I'll be the first to concede that that's probably the case in a number of these instances. I'm not giving anybody anything other than where you are, where I am and who I am and why I believe. And if that's useful to anybody, great. And if it's not, great. And, and that's it, you know. But I do feel as if I feel very strongly, and we talked about this in our last, last session, that members of the church, faithful members of the church and the church as a whole really has no choice but to answer these kinds of questions and to, and to try to confront them directly and head on. And so I sort of feel a responsibility to do that. But I am under no illusion that my answers are representative or official or any of that.

John Dehlin [00:03:59] Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that, but. And I'll just say, I think for me, today is going to be the most interesting couple hours of the whole series because we are going to talk about what I think is the meat of many of these issues. I'll be incorporating your questions. We will get to some of the more, you know, the hearts of the matter. And what I want to do is end by, by summarizing my concern with apologists and apologetics, give you a chance to kind of respond to that. And I've invited you to maybe compile a list of ways that critics can be more constructive in their engagement with these types of questions. But, but, but to me, that's going to be the most important part, is the end where we say, how can we both do better? My request for apologists to up their game, and then hopefully your request for critics to up their game in a way that's more constructive.

Jim Bennett [00:05:00] But even that, I mean, I don't consider myself, and I know people are going to tear their hair out when I say this, but I don't consider myself an apologist in that I am not really interested in refusing to acknowledge problems where there are problems. I am an apologist for my personal point of view. I think that very often that lines up with sort of being an apologist for the church, but not always. You know, we've talked about LGBTQ issues in a way that I don't think you would listen to me and say that sounds like an apologist for the church, because I'm very frustrated with the church in some ways on that issue. So, anyway, I just wanted to sort

John Dehlin [00:05:47] of frame it that way, but buckle up, because I think today is going to be a great conversation. I think it's going to be my favorite part of this whole series. So. You've been a really good sport, Jim. And so. All right, so the first thing I want to, of course, lay out, and I've already mentioned this, is so many people with really positive comments. So. Jason writes, kudos to Jim for coming on your podcast. I really enjoyed his discussion with Bill Real, and I'm looking forward to this one. Danielle writes, I love this. I loved his interview with Bill Real. I don't buy most of what he said, but he's a genuinely nice guy. I respect him for going toe, toe to toe with you and with Bill. Kyle writes, I think it's great that Jim is coming on the podcast and willing to have a dialogue. Most of this is. More of this is needed, especially in light of the recent videos about the CBS letter that came out. Charlize writes, just wanted to give him props for being willing to have an open dialogue. I have several critiques of apologists, but one is that they just, they don't show up. They, they hide behind their, their annual conferences, their own blogs, their own podcasts, but they won't face the direct and the tough questions. And that includes Richard Bushman and Fiona and Terrell Givens and Daniel Peterson and many others that just won't come on the show and face the tough questions.

Jim Bennett [00:07:12] Most of those guys have been on your show.

John Dehlin [00:07:13] Yeah, but that was, that was before I got excommunicated.

Jim Bennett [00:07:16] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] And while I was actively trying to promote faith, as soon as my, you know, I got kicked out and I started to get really frustrated, it's like they, they refused to come on and stop being willing to engage. And that was really disappointing to me. One, I, I'll just tell this one story that when Fiona and Terrell came out with this book called the Believing Christ or whatever it is, do you know the book I'm talking about?

Jim Bennett [00:07:41] I don't.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] After. After the Crucible, Doubt I've read the Crucible of Death. Yeah. They came out the book about Christ, and I'm like, hey, why don't you guys Come on the podcast again. And they're like, oh, we don't want to give the impression that we're gurus for people in faith crisis. And I'm like, how are you anything other than gurus for people in faith crisis? It felt like a very disingenuous reply. And I told Fiona that. It was Fiona that said that, but I just think that it wasn't good for their book contract or it wasn't good for their aspirations to work at the Maxwell center, or. Or they're just uncomfortable facing the tough questions. Whatever it was, I lost a lot of respect for. For both Bushman and Givens. For the Givens is for being unwilling to show up. And so kudos to you again, for the 20th time for being willing to show up.

Jim Bennett [00:08:31] Well, thank you. But again, I don't. I'm not of a piece with Bushman or Givens. I mean, I certainly don't have the academic credentials that either of you that the Givens is. Or certainly not what Richard Bushman has. I mean, I don't.

John Dehlin [00:08:45] This is.

Jim Bennett [00:08:46] We're not all on this team, and they haven't, you know, sent me in because they're not willing to come in. I mean, I'm doing this entirely. I'm a freelancer here. Sure, sure, sure. So I don't have any contracts with the Maxwell Institute. So.

Listener Questions on Mormon Apologetics

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Okay, so bunch of questions. The first set of questions around apologetics, and this is going to be hard because you've already sort of said you don't identify with. With that label of being an apologist. But, but my good friend Douglas from the UK says, you know, what is the purpose of apologetics in a church which claims direct revelation from God? Where and why is apologetics necessary? Shouldn't prophets, you know, shouldn't the prophet seers and revelators, the quorum of the 12, the first presidency, should. Shouldn't they be speaking for themselves? Isn't that why we have prophets to begin with? And another way to say to this, why should we even care what Jim Bennett has to think? Why can't the church be responding to these things directly when there's so much at stake?

Jim Bennett [00:09:46] Well, he asked that question on Facebook, and we actually had a long dialogue on it. I maybe should pull it up and read what we were talking about, because I was trying to zero in on what his objection was. Because Neal Maxwell likes to quote C.S. lewis, or I don't have the quote right here, but the idea that the kinds of arguments or defenses that apologists make don't build Faith, necessarily, but the absence of them, the unwillingness to acknowledge them, can destroy faith. That's. Are you familiar with that quote?

John Dehlin [00:10:26] Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's actually really, I mean, it's kind of a disturbing quote to me. And I was going to, I was going to bring up later, but since you, since you brought it up, got it there. Oh, yeah, for sure. And Oaks actually quotes this in a, in a talk that he gives during an apologetic conference. And I'll read it. Austin Farrar said of C.S. lewis, though, though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced, but what no one, but when no one shows the ability to defend, but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish. And I, I have concerns about that being disingenuous because it's, it's the way, the way that I first contemplated the, the nature of this response is, you know, Egyptology is really difficult. None of us are really smart and none of us are Egyptologists, and we'll talk about this later, but none of us are going to really take the time to learn hieroglyphics, glyphics, nobody's going to learn siratic or hieratic or whatever the, you know, except for rfm, right, Or Brian Hauglet or a couple people. But most of us are never going to be able to really take the time to learn Egyptology. And so all we can do is rely on scholars. And so you get the entire world of non Mormon Egyptologists telling us the Book of Abraham is a false and a fraudulent translation, and we would all go, oh, okay, case closed. But then the church pays someone like Hugh Nibley who's got a PhD from UCLA and who can speak like he's really intelligent and informed or John Gee or Kerry Muhlstein, and they can speak a bunch of words that get translated to the believer as, oh, smart person says a lot of fancy words. Therefore I don't have to worry about this issue because a lot of other smart people have already thought about it. And so this idea of they just have to throw up any defense so that we can still maintain the environment of belief. That feels kind of disingenuous to me. If what apologists are doing, it's just like throwing stuff, throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks. Instead of giving answers that are truly intellectually honest, that are supported by the scientific community, that are academically rigorous, rigorous, what you have is fair Mormon and Maxwell Institute farms before them giving shoddy, non credible pseudoscientific answers that sound fancy but that allow, that allow believers to turn off their brain and just sort of follow. And to me, there's a disingenuous nature to that approach because it basically says you don't have to think about it, really, don't worry about what the prevailing scholarly consensus is. Just trust that Hugh Nibli super smart, and if he says it, then you can go with it.

Jim Bennett [00:13:47] Well, Hugh Nibley is super smart.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Yeah, but not. He's not credible to Egyptologists that aren't Mormon.

Jim Bennett [00:13:54] He's not. He's not an Egyptologist.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Yeah, but, but John, but, but you know what? Robert Rittner is.

Jim Bennett [00:13:59] Robert Rittner is.

John Dehlin [00:14:00] And, and he could pull together the top 100 Egyptologists and they would all agree that John Gee and Kerry Muhlstein are, are abusing and doing a disservice to the field of Egyptology with their answers. So for the church to hide behind Guy and Muhlstein, for almost anyone I talk to who's trying to be objective is a disingenuous act. And to pay these guys to give answers that aren't credible, which is what pretty much anyone now, now that they've heard Robert Rittner will agree that Guy and Mostein's answers have no credibility. But like this quote you just offered relating to CS Lewis, there are answers that allow believers to go, oh, Guy and Mostein, Yale and ucla, smart dudes, they still believe in the Book of Abraham. So I can too. Can you see that there's a problem with that?

Jim Bennett [00:14:52] Sure, sure, I can see what the problem is. The question that, I mean, certainly C.S. lewis wasn't confronting the Book of Abraham when that was said of him. The question, I think, isn't necessarily Book of Abraham specific. And if we want to get Book of Abraham specific, I can get lost in the weeds because I'm not qualified to be able to answer it, to respond to any of that. And I fully acknowledge that the broader question of why do we need apologetics at all in the first place, when that question is posed to C.S. lewis, it's a question being posed about the Christian tradition that has nothing to do with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Well, nothing to do. But is orthodox Christianity as opposed to the Restored Gospel. And as to why we need apologetics, the reason why I think it becomes problematic for so many people is that when an apologist comes in and starts talking about these things, They can give the illusion that what they're doing is justifying their faith. And I don't think that's what they're doing. Certainly it's not what I am doing. For instance, I'm not a believer because of a kind of scientific, logical case that has been laid out. Religion is not sort of an academic exercise. That is not to say that it is a mindless exercise and it's contradictory to reason and to logic. It's to say that when you're engaging in apologetics, you are trying to demonstrate the reason and the logic that are inherent in your religious convictions, but that reason and the logic are not the reason you believe. People believe. People have faith because they have a personal encounter with the divine, and apologetics cannot mimic or replace that. And for many those who do not have that encounter or do not believe in that encounter, they aren't sufficient to produce that.

John Dehlin [00:17:14] So,

Jim Bennett [00:17:17] you know, I think the reason why we need this is because there are those who have these questions and we need to be willing to be able to engage with them where they are. But anybody that is under the illusion that anything I can say or that there's any kind of academic, If I could cobble together. Some kind of academic justification for the Book of Abraham and attempts clearly had been made to do that. And I've met Kerry Mohlstein and think very highly of him. I love Hugh Nibley. I don't know a whole lot about John Gee, but I've read almost everything Hugh Nibley has had to say about most anything, and I adore him. And, and I think just saying, okay, well, the, all these guys do is they just come in and they lie and they just come in and build, build this facade. I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's true.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] But is it fair that that there's scholarship related to Egyptology is not credible by the standard of the Egyptology community? Right. That, that they're, that all their peer, that their stuff isn't peer reviewed. They're, they're operating under the guise of academic credibility.

Jim Bennett [00:18:41] Well, that's an.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] And yet, yet in their community, they're viewed as a laughingstock. They, their, their apologetics are viewed as shoddy.

Jim Bennett [00:18:51] Well, because Kerry is not a laughingstock in the Egyptological community.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] No, there are arguments justify the Book of Abraham.

Jim Bennett [00:18:59] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Are viewed as shoddy.

Jim Bennett [00:19:00] Well, because when you start doing that, you start painting with an extraordinarily broad brush and it becomes really binary in terms of who these men are and what their scholarship is and what they've been able to do. And I don't think that's fair. I don't think that's fair to John Gee or to Kerry Mohlstein or to Hugh Nibley, because these are people who have engaged with and wrestled with these things and have come up with some things that are very. That, to me, allow for, you know, the possibility that there's a whole lot we don't really know or understand about this. I, I, I, I, I, I can't, I can't push back on Egyptology at all. I don't know anything. And from what I can tell, I, I've listened to, I've listened to your conversation with Robert Rittner. Robert Rittner certainly has an awful lot of credibility. And I talk about Robert Rittner in my CES letter, the second CES letter reply, because Jeremy didn't mention him in the first one. He does in the second one and just mentions him in passing. And my response to him was, you should take out all this other stuff and replace it with Robert Rittner's stuff, because Robert Rittner is the best advocate you have for the argument that you're making. The argument that Robert Rittner makes is that the Joseph Smith papyri that we have now bear no resemblance whatsoever to the translation that Joseph Smith produced.

Book of Abraham Scholarship and Critics

John Dehlin [00:20:29] But he also argues that Guillerm Olstein are being deceptive and, or employing really shoddy scholarship in their defense of the Book of Abraham. I've got 12 hours of him saying that. It's very explicit.

Jim Bennett [00:20:45] Okay. And I can't, I mean, In my conversation about Robert Rittner, in my reply, I go through the, you know, Robert Rittner says he did a rebuttal to the Church's essay, the Historicity of the Book of Abraham. And there's a whole lot in that essay that Robert Rittner does not address. And I list that in my reply. You know, they talk about parallels with the plains of Ulusim, and they found a place that's called Ulusum. Well, Robert Rittner doesn't talk about that.

John Dehlin [00:21:25] He does in my interview.

Jim Bennett [00:21:26] Okay. Well, he didn't in his written reply. So you can go through all those kinds of things. Robert Rittner focuses on something that is indisputable, which is that the papyri that we have bear no resemblance to the Book of Abraham as it was produced. And I'm not arguing against that, but

John Dehlin [00:21:45] also that guy and Molstein are not doing.

Jim Bennett [00:21:47] I don't want to indict Guillain, Muhlstein, even secondhand. I don't want to. I just.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Their scholarship, not them, their scholarship. Well,

Jim Bennett [00:21:58] I'm not equipped to judge their scholarship the way Rittner is. I can certainly say that Rittner has great credentials, and Rittner, I mean.

John Dehlin [00:22:05] But okay, what about just the bigger question then of why aren't you the first presidency, the quorum of the 12, providing official responses? Why are they leaving that work to apologists? And why should we even listen to apologists when they're not the prophet seers and revelators?

Jim Bennett [00:22:25] Well, you don't need to listen to me, certainly. I mean, why should we even listen to them is a question of why should we listen to anybody. If you want to frame the entire experience within the church, as nobody is allowed to discuss these things unless they have some kind of clear hierarchical ecclesiastical authority to do it, I think that would be an intellectually barren church. That's probably a bit of a straw man. But I would like to see them address these things.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] The quorum of the 12 president, sure.

Jim Bennett [00:23:00] I remember the John Sweeney interview for the BBC where he was grilling Jeffrey Holland about the Book of Abraham. And Jeffrey Holland essentially did exactly what I'm doing right now, which is say, I don't know. I don't know anything about Egyptology. And he doesn't, and he's never claimed that he does. So I can certainly empathize with a request like, I'd like to see the prophets, seers and revelators give authoritative answers to apologetic questions. I don't think they see that as their role. And I don't think lived religious experience functions that way for most people. For most of the people in my ward, for instance, I would bet that if you were to poll them, they don't know the first thing, not only about Egyptology, but even about the controversy about the Book of Abraham. And they don't care. And you can call them complacent, or you can call them this, that, and the other, but most of them don't really approach their religious experience that way, and they feel very satisfied and fed by the kind of religious instruction and moral instruction that they receive in general conference and aren't looking for somebody to stand up and explain the Egyptology or lack thereof behind the Book of Abraham translation. So, you know, I don't have a definitive answer to the question, Only to say that I personally would like to see a lot of that, and I don't know that we will see it unless I represent a larger majority of The Church, I think the vast majority of the Church. A lot of these questions just aren't interesting to them or aren't compelling to.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] For sure that's true because I don't think belief is fundamentally an intellectual proposition. I think it's a emotional and a social proposition and it's, it's really not based on.

Jim Bennett [00:25:05] But, well then, then that makes the case for why apologetics is necessary because I don't think it can be solely emotional and social and not intellectual. I don't think religion should be divorced from the intellect. I, I, so the reason why I'm willing to engage in these questions is to demonstrate that it is possible to have intellectual integrity and still have all of these kinds of things. And, and so that's what I think the purpose of apologetics is, is to demonstrate that the intellect is not at odds with religion. But there's certainly tension there and difficulty there and rather than sort of run away from it, I think we need to confront it and sometimes we need to live in the tension. And I fully recognize that the Book of Abraham intellectually is probably the strongest argument against the Church. I'm not willing to leave the Church over it for the reasons I've outlined in our hours and hours of discussions. But there's no question that there are real challenges there and real problems there that I don't think the Church has or I don't think we've come to terms with yet.

John Dehlin [00:26:15] A cousin question to the one I just asked you is, or, or kind of assertion question is, they basically say Jim Bennett's version of Mormonism is like his own Mormonism. It's like there's, there's the orthodox correlated version that we all are pretty clear on. I mean we could make a straw man of this, but it's, we know Heavenly Fathers, we know what Jesus is, we know that LGBT is bad. We know that, you know, polygamy is, is in the Doctrine and Covenants. We know that it's revelation. We know that the racist stuff was revelation. We know that Lamanites, who the laymanites are like you could go through all the things we've talked about and I think 98% of Orthodox attending tithe paying Mormons would be able to agree on what the orthodox view is. And then you have Givens or Mason or Flumen or you or others that sort of, in these small little venues to select people give a very personalized, customized, very alternative version of Mormonism that the brethren themselves today wouldn't condone, that Nelson wouldn't condone Oakes wouldn't condone. You know, none of them would condone your. Your version of Mormonism. And, and, and so it begs the question. It just. A lot of people ask. We have orthodox Mormonism. We know what that is. The Brethren make it very, very clear. They're not confused about it. Who are you to get out in front of the Brethren and offer this parallel version of Jim Bennett Mormonism? It's not even kind of your place to do that.

Jim Bennett [00:28:02] Well, first of all, of course, I'm living Jim Bennett Mormonism. And the extent to which that overlaps with the correlated Mormonism you're talking about isn't a question that interests me anymore. I think it was at one point in time or I think it was, okay, how orthodox am I? How this, that, and the other at this point in my life? I don't care.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] Why not?

Jim Bennett [00:28:32] Because. Well, first of all, every lived religious experience is different. Every single one, no matter how correlated you are. You go into my ward, you go into your ward, you go into anybody's ward, and you poll every individual about everything. And you're going to find differences, and you're going to find big differences. And yet all these people still find enough common cause to come and worship together. I think you sit down with the quorum of the 12 and you ask them questions about the historicity of the Book of Abraham, and you're gonna get 12 different responses. So this idea that there is sort of this one kind of way to be a Mormon and live a Mormon, I don't think that has ever, ever, ever been the case. I don't think that's the case in any religious tradition anywhere. Everybody's religious experience is unique to them to some degree. Now, is my. The way I practice my faith so radically at odds with correlated Mormonism that I can no longer be in the faith. So far, that hasn't been the case. I don't expect that to be the case. I think I have enough common cause with people within this tradition that I. I don't lose an ounce of sleep worried that, oh, gee, am I going to get booted out? Because I think there is a great deal of room in the church for different ideas and different opinions. I've seen that in my own family at the highest levels of the church. You know, David O. McKay and Joseph Fielding Smith didn't agree on just about anything. When Joseph Fielding Smith published Man His Origin and Destiny and came to David O. McKay and said, I want you to have this published by the church because this is where we Stand on evolution. David O. McKay, who was a firm believer in Darwinian evolution and in geological time, thought man his origin and destiny was nonsense. James E. Talmadge would debate with other apostles. I mean, back in the day it was more appropriate for people to sort of talk about things where they had profound differences of opinion at the highest levels of the church. We've lost some of that as time's gone by and I think we've gotten a bit more cautious. But this idea that somehow.

Private Beliefs Versus Public Church Discourse

John Dehlin [00:30:58] And a lot of that happens privately, it doesn't happen publicly.

Jim Bennett [00:31:00] Well, it used to happen publicly. James Talmadge had debates about pre Adamites and about geological time with other members of the quorum of the 12 in public. I mean he was very outspoken. He was a geologist and he thought the idea of a 7,000 year old earth was nonsense. James E. Talmage has written two of the books that are published by the church today. Jesus the Christ and the Articles of Faith. This is not somebody who's considered a heretic. Is James E. Talmadge Mormonism so at odds with correlated Mormonism that it's not acceptable? I think my Mormonism is less radical than Talmage Mormonism and the man was an apostle. So, you know, I listen to that and I just throw up my hands and say, show me the person that's living correlated Mormonism in its sort of perfection, that there's no variety or no variation. That person doesn't exist. We have a framework and I firmly believe that it allows for a much larger and wider disparity of opinions than I think critics give it credit for.

John Dehlin [00:32:13] You would agree though that that over the past 10, 20, 30 years, the brethren have operated under the belief that the Quorum needs to act in, in a united way and that they don't share, speak publicly about their disagreements and they, they hide any, any sign of disagreements from the public so that it always appears that there's unanimity.

Jim Bennett [00:32:41] Right. Yes, that, that's one of the reasons why you, why change is slow, because change doesn't come unless there's unanimity. So. But yes, yes, I think, I think you saw less of that prior to my lifetime. James Talmadge predates me, obviously.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] Yeah. And you could argue that James E. Thomas lost that Joseph feeling. Smith outlived him. And the pro science sort of slants of Talmagen, Woodstow and Eyring and Those apostles and B.H. roberts in the mid-1900s got correlated out of Mormonism by the 1960s and 70s and 80s and 90s. I'm showing up at BYU, having been indoctrinated for 20 years that evolution's evil, that the earth is 6,000 years old. And that was the standard curriculum in CES, in, in seminary, in institute. And yes, there were BYU professors that taught evolution at BYU by the time I arrive. But, but, but there was a prevailing feeling at BYU that they were, that they were doing something wrong. There were complaints about them and, and the church was really hesitant to really settle that matter.

Jim Bennett [00:33:56] You were very likely at BYU the same time my wife was, and she was a biology major and, and was never taught anything but evolution at bio.

John Dehlin [00:34:05] It was allowed in the biology department.

Jim Bennett [00:34:07] It wasn't just that it was allowed. It was the only thing taught. I mean, there weren't any biology classes where they were trying to make the case for a 6,000 year old Earth.

John Dehlin [00:34:15] Right. But outside that, you'd go to your religion classes. It was one of the seven deadly heresies.

Jim Bennett [00:34:20] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] And you were taught that all in seminary, growing up, and in church. You would never hear someone say evolution's awesome. You would always hear, you know, an anti science, anti evolution sort of stance. Well, or, you know, at least I think that was the prevailing experience.

Jim Bennett [00:34:36] It certainly was the prevailing.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] So I guess I'm just saying that when you hearken back to the debates between Talmage's son, I think it was, and Joseph Fielding Smith, because I don't think from my understanding, Talmage never publicly openly debated Joseph Smith directly. His son, who is a geologist, engaged.

Jim Bennett [00:34:56] That may be true.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Joseph Fielding Smith. So it was an apostle that gets apostle, but other than that, that's exception.

Jim Bennett [00:35:03] It was apostle against apostle, certainly in private.

John Dehlin [00:35:06] Yeah, but, yeah, but I'm just saying, like, I'm trying to argue that, that there really is an orthodox correlated Mormonism that has been carefully crafted and cultivated from Harold B. Leonard. That is a real thing that influences us all. And your response is, oh, yeah, but there's this one issue that a couple apostles disagreed with back in the early 1900s. And I'm just saying that's a bit of a. That's. I, I want to just resist straw men where you can always come up with an exception that then, that then acts as though it's dismissing the larger point, which is we all know what correlated orthodox Mormonism is in a general sense, and that's a real thing that impacts us today. And I don't want that truth to be watered down by your ability to find a couple notable exceptions that were 120 years ago, 120 years ago.

Jim Bennett [00:36:03] I don't want to water down that truth. I want to put that truth in the larger context, which is to say that within that kind of correlated Mormonism which you and I both agree exists and has been predominant certainly in our lifetimes, even within that box, there is a vast variety of opinions and a vast variety of lived experience among individual Mormons. And no two Mormons individual experience is alike. Certainly many are similar, but none are identical. And the idea that I'm living some kind of radically different Mormonism from the correlated Mormonism from which I was raised, the reality is I'm not, I'm really not. I push against the box in some spots, but to a large degree, if you go down the list of things that I believe, you're not going to see anything that, I mean, I've gone down this list of things that I believe with people who have held high ecclesiastical office and none of them have batted an eye. I mean it's, you know, so I, so, I mean I see that as such a sort of, I think the tension between sort of McConkieism, Joseph Fielding Smithism and the tension between those who push back and want to see more of a scientific approach to these things. I don't think it originated with, with the McConkeys or with Joseph Fielding Smith and I don't think it will ever fully be resolved even as the church. You know, if you go to BYU now and you go into any kind of a science class and you try to sell the idea of a 6,000 year old Earth, no one's going to take you seriously at a church owned school. You know, there is no longer any kind of, I don't know of any apostles now who are eager to sort of push that kind of narrative the way that Joseph Fielding Smith was, the way that Bruce R. McConkey was, how adamant they were that this was such an essential part of the gospel. You know, Gordon B. Hinckley gets asked about this by Larry King and he says, oh, I read all about it, I don't care.

John Dehlin [00:38:22] But you even what you're not acknowledging is that like Russell M. Nelson just in the past year or two, you know, gives this statement in general conference that a dog is always a dog. You know, that he basically gave an anti evolution talk in general conference within the past couple years, okay? And if, if anyone were to stand up in a normal average Sandy or Draper Mormon ward and say evolution's totally true, which means the earth is billions of years old, which means that the prophets and apostles were wrong, who taught that for over 100 years, they're probably going to get in trouble. And again, yes, you could. I don't like the tendency for you to say, oh, but biology professors, the B way you teach it, or members of the church. There are some members of the church that believe differently in here. There again, I think that it's not here there.

Jim Bennett [00:39:18] It's not small little pockets of the church. I really, I don't want to get too exercised on this, but I really push back against the idea that

John Dehlin [00:39:32] people have private beliefs that are different, but they don't speak publicly about it in the church. In church discourse, they don't say, I don't believe in DNC132. I believe that the earth is billions of years old. You say that stuff in a Mormon chapel these days.

Jim Bennett [00:39:47] But who stands up at a Mormon chapel and says, I believe that the earth is 6,000 years old? You don't have that dialogue in a Mormon chapel. That's not something that is common in a testimony meeting. When people are standing up in a testimony meeting or they're doing all these things, they're talking about their lived experience day to day, of which the age of the earth is not a part. I mean, the idea that these debates are being sort of settled in a Mormon chapel experience is kind of silly. The idea that evolution comes up pro or conversation in, in these settings. It, it.

John Dehlin [00:40:21] What about CES Seminary Institute?

Jim Bennett [00:40:26] I. I'd have to talk to my kids because it's been a while since I've been in seminary and institute. When I was in seminary and institute, I didn't go. I was. I was a terrible seminary student. But I taught seminary and institute for three years. I taught seminary for three years. Early morning seminary in Westwood, California. And I don't really remember this. Discussing this.

John Dehlin [00:40:49] Okay, well, I don't want to beat a dead horse. I just. There is. I do think a correlated orthodox version of Mormonism exists.

Jim Bennett [00:40:59] There is no question that a correlated orthodox Mormonism exists and that there's a

John Dehlin [00:41:05] real social cost to publicly going against that. And that's kind of what apologists do nowadays in these private forums. But it's fair, I think it's fair for people to ask, why should we care about what you or Richard Bushman or Terrell Givens say about evolution or polygamy or polyandry or Book of Abraham, when we know that a correlated orthodox narrative continues to be taught on a massive scale and believed on a massive scale until that changes these sort of in little small pocket justifications to keep a few liberals and progressives happy. It doesn't, doesn't really, it doesn't really move the needle and it doesn't even warrant serious consideration until the brethren are standing up and saying in general conference, we got it wrong. The earth is billions of years old. We got it wrong. Evolution is valid. We got it wrong. We have been racist. You know, Joseph mishandled polygamy. Book of Abraham is not a translation until they're, until they're in, in entering that into the public discourse in general conference and in the CES in very public ways, people are just saying a lot of these conversations are, are not super meaningful or relevant. They're just band aids for a small group of people. But they don't move the needle on a large scale.

Jim Bennett [00:42:32] I certainly am not capable of moving a needle on a large scale myself by what I'm doing and by these conversations. And I am under no illusions that I can or will and am.

John Dehlin [00:42:42] So it's more starfish. It's like, I can help this person, I can help that person. No, not in a bad way. It's just saying, no, no, you can. If you can help a few people, it's worth doing.

Jim Bennett [00:42:50] Well, it's, it's that. And it's also, we have to start somewhere, right? We have to start somewhere, right? Because I think it's not gonna just be starfish going forward. Eventually we're going to have to get to that point. We're going to have to get to the point where we confront all these things head on, straightforward. And I absolutely want to get there, and I absolutely agree that we need to get there. What I push back against is this idea that what I believe is just so out of sorts with Mormonism as a whole, that that's somehow strange or different or wrong or unique. Because really every Mormon believes differently. They place different emphasis on different doctrines. It's not so much that they, you know, they believe black is white. It's that, well, this, this part of the gospel is really appealing to me and I embrace this part of the gospel. Well, you're living your religion differently than I am.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] Yeah, but some people pay tithing on their net. Some people pay on their gross. Sure, sure, yeah. Some people don't believe in lots of things, but they enjoy the association. Like there's, there's, there's as much variability as there are people.

Jim Bennett [00:44:04] Yeah, but I, but, but, but I, but I think there's also as much, there is as much rich and intellectual diversity. It's not just a cultural and social thing. I think that I've had so many wonderful, fascinating conversations with Desnat proves that, right? Well, yeah, well, Desnat, I mean, when you start talking about this kind of rigid orthodox Mormonism, that's where my brain goes, is the Desnat. You're describing Desnat to me, in my mind, and thankfully, in my experience, that is not the vast majority of the people that I've come to associate with in the church.

John Dehlin [00:44:46] Amen. So, okay, onto the subject of prophets, Justin writes, if prophets, and we've talked about this, whether it's with racism or polygamy or its treatment of history or LGBT stuff, you've acknowledged that a, the prophets can make lots of mistakes, that we over worship and over idolize the prophets, and that oftentimes the only way revelation really happens is if there's agitation from below. That, that's often what is the impetus given the flawed nature of prophets? To what extent should we, why should we even give them much attention at all if they're so flawed? And then to what extent should we hold them accountable when they, when they do speak authoritatively?

Accountability of Prophets and Church Leaders

Jim Bennett [00:45:39] When. Hold them accountable when they do speak authoritatively?

John Dehlin [00:45:44] Yeah. I mean, why, why should we take them seriously? And then what's the accountability if they speak authoritatively and they're wrong.

Jim Bennett [00:45:52] Yeah, they're wrong. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:54] Those two things.

Jim Bennett [00:45:54] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:55] Why take them seriously is the first question, when they get so much wrong and, and really rely on the bottoms up agitation to make the important changes that make the church less racist, less homophobic, less suicide.

Jim Bennett [00:46:07] But again, that's why.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Why should we take him seriously?

Jim Bennett [00:46:11] But when you frame that and say when they only respond to agitation.

John Dehlin [00:46:14] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:46:16] I don't think they only respond to agitation.

John Dehlin [00:46:18] Largely important things.

Jim Bennett [00:46:23] I think we're dealing with a binary here that I wouldn't.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:46:26] That I wouldn't fill it in, wouldn't agree with, because I believe prophets get far more right than they get wrong. You know, I come back to the broader mortal experience.

The Role of Prophets, Seers, and Revelators

John Dehlin [00:46:38] So let me, let me ask you about that. So they're called prophets, seers and revelators, meaning they're prophesying. We know what seer means. It means looking into a seer stone and like seeing things that other people can't see and they're revealing things in the future. How are prophets today over the past 50 years, prophesying, seeing in the traditional sense that Joseph meant it, and revealing. Where do you see that? I mean, other than like, oh, let's build. Let's build a different sized temple, let's build a lot more temples, let's Build a mall. Where is the prophecy, the seership and the revelation that's meaningful to you?

Jim Bennett [00:47:18] That's meaningful to me.

John Dehlin [00:47:20] Yeah. And to the membership?

Jim Bennett [00:47:21] Well, because that's a.

John Dehlin [00:47:22] Because let's invest 120 billion in these stocks and funds. Like where is the prophecy Revealing and you know, sear ship. Where is it? Where the. Where's the Expanded Canon, Section 150 of the Doctrine Covenant, Section 151, Section 152, the New Scripture. How is it not just lawyers and business people and bureaucrats investing in a massive stock and bond and real estate portfolio? Lawyers protecting their own assets, trying to protect the church from lawsuits? Do you ever feel like it's hard to see how they're really engaging in prophecy, seership and revelation? Do you even understand or empathize with that question?

Jim Bennett [00:48:09] I can empathize with the question. I can certainly empathize with the question. To me, it comes back to expectation. It comes back to, okay, if he's a prophet, I would expect multiple new sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. I would expect sort of predictions about the future. I would expect. This is what I've come to expect from reading scriptures and my understanding of what a prophet is and what a prophet should be. Heber J.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] Grant don't we get those expectations from the Scriptures and from church history?

Jim Bennett [00:48:55] Yes. Yes. I'm not saying it's frustrating because as I'm talking to you, I am reading the comments in my brain from the critics who are going to be hacked. He's just dodging. He's just doing all this. And of course we were taught to expect that. And yes, of course we were taught to expect that. I can acknowledge that 150%. As I have come to sort of struggle with that question and sort of struggle with my own relationship to the institutional church. I have tempered my expectations or my expectations have changed. My understanding of what that means, of how that works, has changed drastically. Which is not to say that I do not sustain these men as all of these things. It is to say that the way the church functions and the way that we are supposed to engage with the church is far more reliant on things that are more mundane and tangible and practical than some kind of spectacular new revelation. You know, when I first went through the temple, I remember reading the description of the second Abraham facsimile and talking to my brother, I think it was, and says, this is not to be known here, but this is to be known in the holy temple of God. And I thought, I'm going to go to the temple and I'm going to learn these really cool, wild new secrets. And maybe they'll tell us where the lost tribes are, and maybe they'll tell us how to find Kolob on the. You know, and then I go through the temple and I went, really? That's it. I didn't learn any kind of new, exciting, wonderful, marvelous things. And it's only as I've gone through the temple, you know, over time, that I've seen the beauty of the liturgy there, and I've seen and understood how it applies to me individually on a daily basis in a way that the location of Kolob would not. So my empathy for that question is also tempered by my revised expectations of what I expect from prophets, seers and revelators. I firmly believe that if the Lord has need for an additional if we're going to get the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, that it's going to come from the prophets, seers and revelators who are authorized to receive it. But the Lord has not seen fit to give us the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon. And so you see a lot of people who leave the church in some of the more fringe groups who aren't satisfied with that, who aren't satisfied with this is just too boring, too vanilla. There's just nothing here. I want real prophecy, seership and revelation. And so they go out and find it themselves or create it themselves.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] Denver Snuffer.

Jim Bennett [00:52:07] Denver Snuffer, I think, would be a great example of that.

John Dehlin [00:52:10] Kristen Melka.

Jim Bennett [00:52:12] Kristen Malka. I have to tell you, the Kristin Malka story. Chris Namalka wrote a Ida Smith. Do you know who Ida Smith is? Ida Smith was. Anyway, she was a close friend of my father's. Well, that whole family is Hiram Smith. And my father both founded what is now Franklin Covey. And so dad worked very closely with Hiram. I worked very closely with Hyrum when I was down at Tuacan. And Ida left the church following Chris Damelka. Chris Demelka is a guy. And Ida's related to Hiram Howe, Ida's Hyrum sister.

John Dehlin [00:52:44] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:52:45] And they're descendants of the Hyrum Smith and of Joseph Fielding Smith. Not Joseph Fielding, but Joseph F. Both. Both. Maybe. Both, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] Joseph Fielding is the son of Joseph

Jim Bennett [00:52:55] F. Yeah, you're right. But Joseph Fielding. Anyway.

John Dehlin [00:52:58] Oh, it could have been through other.

Jim Bennett [00:52:59] I think it might have been.

John Dehlin [00:53:01] Well, they would be related.

Jim Bennett [00:53:02] They're related, but I don't think they might not be through that direct. Regardless.

John Dehlin [00:53:06] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:53:08] Christopher no. Malka produced the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon. And Ida Smith not only became a believer, but she came his biggest supporter. She, in fact, sold her burial plot to him or gave her burial plot to him. If you go to the Salt Lake Cemetery, Christopher Nomelka claims to be the reincarnation of Joseph Smith's brother, Hyrum Smith. And there's a grave there with Christopher Nomelka's name on it and a website to go to Christopher Nomelka's website. I mean, it's just wild. Anyway, Ida wrote to my father and said, you need to read this, and I very much appreciate your response to it. And my father read it and gave her a very lengthy response to it and went through what he considered to be problematic about it. And Christopher Namalka sued him. How dare you? How dare you come against me and do all of this? And it was dismissed out of hand, but it cost dad some attorney's fees to deal with a lawsuit that was completely frivolous. But Ida Smith, when she talks about going to Christopher Namalka, talks about, I was sick and tired of being so bored by the blandness of the lack of prophets, seers and revelators that here finally was this magnificent thing, and this is what I'm going to pursue, and this is where I'm going to go. And she died a believer in Christopher Nomelka's additional scripture. And I wish her well, and I wish Christopher Nomelka well. Please don't sue me. Christopher Namelka. I can certainly understand the desire for that, the desire for sort of a more spectacular prophecy, you know, new name. Noah. Mike Norton. I had kind of a run in with him at one point. We were on a website, and I made a comment, and he said, if you want the truth more than you want the church to be true, call me. And so I called him and had a conversation with him, and he got mad because later I characterized that as he dared me to call him. He's like, I never said dare. Like, you're right, you never said dare. But I took it as a dare and doesn't matter. But one of the things that drove him crazy is that Gordon B. Hinckley was on Larry King and was asked, are you a prophet? Larry King asked him, are you a prophet? And Gordon B. Hinckley's response was, well, I am sustained as such. And Mike Norton thought, a prophet doesn't say that. I mean, what kind of namby pammy answer is that? Gordon B. You are sustained as such. Where's the, you're a prophet, you know, be a prophet.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] I think Joseph F. Smith gave a very similar answer during the Smoot hearings.

Jim Bennett [00:55:53] During the Smoot hearings, right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] Very kind of. Not. I don't know about equivocating.

Jim Bennett [00:55:57] That's not equivocating. So I believe that these are the men who are in the position that should something spectacular and dramatic be revealed, it will come through them. But day to day life and mortality, big spectacular sorts of drama like that are few and far between. The scriptures give you the impression that this happens every five minutes, but you have long. The Book of Mormon, you know, you have the whole. The Book of Omni is how many years? It's 150 years and it's just passed down from one guy to another or one leader to another. And there's no great revelation that's happening here. And you know, so we get all the, we're spoiled by all the dramatic bits that we get in scripture, but the mortal experience is one where, you know, we are sent here to walk by faith in ways that require day

John Dehlin [00:56:52] to day

Jim Bennett [00:56:56] observance of things that aren't spectacular, that the sum total of which are spectacular. The sum total of a quiet, faithful life is a miracle in my eyes. But these are not the kinds of things that get written up on the front cover of the ensign. Nothing's going to get written up on the front cover of the ensign anymore because it's not going to exist anymore. But so, no, I, so, so I

John Dehlin [00:57:22] hear you saying, and I did this too when I was still in church and still trying to make it work to kind of lower the bar. And the Bible allows us to have a very low moral bar for our prophets. Right?

Jim Bennett [00:57:33] Well, those are two different things. Like can prophets be immoral versus why aren't prophets prophesying a lot?

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Yeah, I'm just saying generally speaking, you're kind of lowering your expectations. That's all I'm saying.

Jim Bennett [00:57:44] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:57:45] And the only response I would have to that is, you know, I've been watching the Crown, right? And Mormon, Mormon prophet seers and revelators are analogous to royalty within Mormon culture. We, we stand when they come in. We, we, we treat them like, we talk about, we can't criticize them. We talk about them like they're, they're enlightened beings off as a culture and we're not allowed to criticize them at all. And, and you know, I think it's interesting that once Joseph died from Brigham Young all the way to George Albert Smith, none of those none of those presidents of the Church allowed themselves to be called prophets. It wasn't until David O. McKay that we started calling them prophets again. Brigham Young was uncomfortable with the title because I think he saw. I think he saw himself as different, and I think the subsequent ones saw themselves as different. Joseph is receiving revelation. Joseph is prophesying. Joseph is seeing with the seer stone.

Jim Bennett [00:58:50] He's.

John Dehlin [00:58:51] He's literally like using a seer stone and having visions. He's producing revelation. None of the dudes after that did that. Even the declarations aren't new sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. They're just like responses to social pressure, where statements get. Gets drafted up, probably by lawyers, like the proclamation on the family, and then it's somehow, like, endorsed, but it's not even fully canonized. So on the one hand, I don't even think they saw themselves as prophetseers and revelators. On the other hand, that somehow shifted with David O. McKay. They now we sustain them, every General Conference, as prophetseers and revelators. And we're taught to expect what prophecy is, what seership is, what revelation. They could disabuse us of that and say, we're no longer gonna ask you to sustain us as that. We're just good men. Presidents, bureaucrats, administrators. But they kind of want it both ways. They want the. The worship, the idolatry, the stand in the room. Bednar tells everyone to stand up if they're not standing. Like, they want the reverence. They want the almost worshiping. They want to be viewed as prophets, seers, and revelators. But then they're really not doing any of that. And some of that is their own. They're inviting that level of criticism and that bar that we're then holding them to. No.

Jim Bennett [01:00:20] Yes. Yes, they do. And culturally, we go along with it, and we fed into that. The reason it takes me a while to say yes is because I feel like whenever we approach this kind of a thing, that there are only two options. And I really, really feel like there's so much more to that, you know? For instance, I know that Heber J. Grant was very uncomfortable being called a prophet. He did not.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] He's a family of yours, right?

Jim Bennett [01:00:50] Yeah, he's my great grandfather. So is David O. McKay. He's my great grandfather. He didn't mind being called a prophet so much. But Heber J. Grant didn't like the song We Thank Thee, O God for a prophet because he saw Joseph Smith as the prophet, as the prophet of the Restoration. And I know Joseph Fielding McConkie, my mission president, had all of the missionaries in his mission do a. Prepare a talk. He would call on them in zone conference, and they had to prepare a talk based on Doctrine and covenants, section 5, 10, which says, this generation shall receive my word through you. And he was sort of laying a trap for them because people would take that and say, well, missionaries, they're receiving their word through the missionaries. And he says, no, that's not what this means. It means this generation receives its doctrine and its word through Joseph Smith, that Joseph Smith is the great prophet of the restoration, and that all of the doctrine that we have came through Joseph Smith. And he was very much differentiating Joseph as a prophet from the prophets that we have now. And so this kind of a distinction is something that. The blurring of that distinction is a relatively modern invention. It's been going on, I think, for both of our lifetimes. This idea that the prophets are somehow magical, somehow this, that and the other. So that is very real. That has to be placed in the context of understanding how to wrestle with the whole idea of the restoration, with the whole concept of what it means to restore and what it means to be a prophet and that you had all this kind of drama with Joseph Smith and you didn't have it with Brigham Young necessarily, although Brigham tried to introduce kind of his own doctrinal ideas and to some degree got shot down. You know, we haven't gotten into Adam God at all. But I think it's fascinating that Brigham Young tried to sort of push this Adam God idea, and the church as a whole largely rejected it, and it just sort of expunged itself over time from our theology. And so the way. I see too much, I see too much value in the overall structure of the church to throw up my hands and say, well, these guys just aren't prophetic enough. Because the massive challenge of dealing with. With a 21st century church with millions of members across the world is, oh, it's horrendous.

John Dehlin [01:03:54] It's massive.

Jim Bennett [01:03:56] It's massive. And we expect these men to be superhuman and they sort of encourage us to think of them as superhuman. But one of the things that, that. That was such a real faith builder for me was discovering that David O. McKay wasn't superhuman, human, because it's. You know, when I discovered, when I was on my mission and I read his missionary journal and discovered he was just like me, he was just a frustrated kid. To me, that's such a better story, right, that this church has done all of these things. With ordinary human beings at the helm, which suggests to me that it isn't ordinary human beings at the helm that God's hand is in this church, but somehow all of these ordinary human beings who never have their agency extracted from them at some point so that they can become superhuman and no longer make mistakes. That's a much more compelling story and inspiring story than the idea that Joseph Smith came off of Mount Olympus and all these men who have followed him since have all been born under the perfect star and whatever else, the other. So I very much want to see the church embrace that story. And it is a different story from the one we're currently telling.

John Dehlin [01:05:19] Yeah. Okay. Thank you so far. Let's move on to people who have concerns about how you responded to Jeremy's CES letter. One person asked, this is Trent. He says, what is. What does Jim perceive as being Jeremy. Jeremy Runnels, his motives for writing the CBS letter? And I'm just going to refer to something. I already said that, that John lynch and Scott Gordon of Fairmormon are on record saying Jeremy Runnels is a liar. He's trying to make money. He did this to make money. He did this to deceive people. You know, and. And same with Kwaku and Cardinalis, you know, John Lynch, Scott Gordon, Kwaku car, all the Fairmont Fair Mormon people. One of their only tactics is to smear and condemn the character and the motives of the people who ask sincere questions. And I hate it, and I condemn it, and you have condemned it. And so I. I applaud you and appreciate that. If you had to state your perception of Jeremy Runnels's motives for writing the CES letter, what would you say those are?

Examining Motives Behind the CES Letter

Jim Bennett [01:06:34] I don't see any reason to impugn or to Jeremy Runnels any motives other than the ones that he stated himself.

John Dehlin [01:06:41] Which in your mind are.

Jim Bennett [01:06:42] Well, it's not. It's not in my mind. Jeremy Runnels is announced. I had questions about the church. I compiled them in a document, and I submitted them to a CES director. There's. There's no reason to doubt that chain of events.

John Dehlin [01:06:56] Do you believe he was troubled? His questions were sincere?

Jim Bennett [01:06:59] Of course. Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't anybody? I mean, I'm trying to figure out the idea of somebody thinking of Jeremy Runnels, you know, a lay member of the church in his 30s, all of a sudden, hey, you know what would be fun is to completely upend my life and rip myself out of my faith, tradition and you know, put family relationships at risk and do all of this because maybe there's some cash in it. Doesn't make any sense. I mean, that's just kind of silly, you know? And again, I, again, will be the witness. I sat here, I read Jeremy Runnels. He was kind enough to share that with me, and I read the entire email thread with the CES director. I know the CES director's name. I. I know all of this.

John Dehlin [01:07:47] So

Jim Bennett [01:07:51] it is. So maybe I can use this rather than just to reiterate the fact that I think Jeremy Reynolds is on the up and up, which I do. And I think Jeremy Reynolds is a good guy. And I'll say that again, I get exhausted by commenters and people who talk about my motives, who talk about, well, Jim Bennett's just doing this because he's being paid by the church. I'm not, you know, Jim Bennett's just doing this because his. His whole social standing is dependent on him being an active member of the church. That's not true. I mean, I. I can. We can get into that if you want to. I will ask you about that, but, you know, I just say stop with

John Dehlin [01:08:36] the it's just condemning modes.

Jim Bennett [01:08:38] It doesn't. It doesn't. Doesn't do anything.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] Doesn't get us anywhere.

Jim Bennett [01:08:44] Doesn't get us anywhere. And it demonstrates a weakness. Demonstrates weakness. Demonstrates. Okay, I can't. If I can't refute what Jeremy Runnels has said, then I'll just say he's a jerk or he's a liar or, you know, he's. Whatever you want to say about him. So don't even bother reading the CES letter because Jeremy Runnels is such a. And that's just so lazy and such a waste of time, you know, and you don't have to like me and you don't have to agree with me, and you can think that everything that I've said is nonsense. And I wouldn't put it past, you know, wouldn't blame you if you did. But don't start telling me, you know, what a jerk I am or, you know, don't try to read my mind. You know, a lot of these people, it's like, well, Jim Bennett. I mean, the mental gymnastics that Jim Bennett is engaged in and that he must, you know, it's like, you know what? I'm 52 years old. I've been wrestling with this my entire life. I'm really at peace with what I believe. You know, whether or not that's even consistent with what anybody else believes or what any church believes, not just ours at this point, I don't care. I know what I believe. I know why I believe it. Give me the benefit of least that doubt. That's all I ask.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] And I'm gonna. I'm gonna do that in. In just a little bit. But I love it and I agree with you, and we'll talk more about your beliefs. But. Okay, next question is, what were your motives for writing the response to Jeremy's CES letter?

Jim Bennett's Reasons for Writing His Reply

Jim Bennett [01:10:24] Right. I actually answered this guy on Facebook and talked about this, and I write that in the preface to my CES letter reply. But it's the whole. When I read the CES letter and got Godmakers flashbacks, I remembered how helpful it was to have somebody who had actually gone through the Godmakers line by line, the whole Gilbert W. Scharf's truth about the Godmakers thing. And my motive was I kind of wanted to pay that forward. I kind of want, you know, all of everything that I am doing in this space engaging with you, engaging with Bill Real writing the CES letter reply, all of these things that I am doing, I am not doing. I'm not doing even necessarily to defend the church. I'm not doing it to convince anybody to join the church. I'm not doing it to convince anybody who has left the church to come back to church. I am doing it for the people like me when I was 18 years old. I'm doing it for the people who encounter this information and want to stay and don't feel like they can. And my answer is no, you can. You really can. And that may be a very sort of small sliver of people, but those are the people that I feel like I'm talking to. And so when I read the commenters that are just people who are really hostile to the church and hostile to me, the reality is, this is not a message that I'm really even aiming at you. I'm aiming it at the people who are in the church who are still sort of struggling and doubting and in faith crisis and wondering, is there any possible way that I can stay? And my answer is, this is how I've done it. It's not, this is how you have to do it. You don't have to model yourself after me. But this is how I've done it, and I'm at peace. I am happy with where my faith is, and if that's helpful to somebody, then wonderful. And I wanted to do that. So that's kind of where I was. That was My. My primary motive and continues to be

John Dehlin [01:12:45] my primary, to keep people in the church that want to stay, want to have a way to stay a model for staying.

Jim Bennett [01:12:50] Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:51] A lot of people asked about your use of the term a faithful response to the CBS letter and that I kind of wondered why they're asking this question at first, but I think there's some insinuation that a faithful response isn't fully honest, that there's a truthful response and then a faithful response. So why did you use the term faithful? And what's the difference between a truthful response and a faithful response? And I'm not trying to be tricky here.

Jim Bennett [01:13:20] I never thought of that. You're the first person that's. That's raised that with me. I don't. I certainly didn't choose the word faithful as a substitute for truthful. I could have just said a response. I think I chose the word faithful to sort of give the end from the beginning that, that, that, that I'm responding to this and that I still have faith that I've looked at. I've read the CBS letter, and it has not destroyed my faith. I am still faithful even after having read the CES letter. It certainly was not my intent to say, you know, this is just going to be nothing but the faithful stuff. And I'm going to. I'm going to, you know, round the edges of the truth to make it fit that, you know, you can make that accusation against anything I wrote, but that was not my intention in choosing that word in the title.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] So people like Guy and Muhlstein have been on record as saying they begin with the conclusion that the church is true. And we're going to get more into this when we talk about epistemology a little bit more. But they begin with the assumption that the church is true. And then they literally select and interpret evidence that bolsters that. That conclusion.

Jim Bennett [01:14:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] And so it's. It's a fundamentally different proposition than like, what an investigator, like an FBI or a police investigator do, which is let's look at all the evidence and then go where the evidence leads.

Jim Bennett [01:15:08] Right.

John Dehlin [01:15:09] And I think that's part of where people are coming from.

Jim Bennett [01:15:12] Well, and do you do that? Sure, Yeah, I did precisely that. I mean, I. There's. Well, I didn't do that when I read the God Makers. Right. I didn't do that when I was actively wrestling with a lot of these questions. By the time I got to Jeremy Runnels and the CES letter, I had answered these questions in my own mind for myself a long time earlier. So the idea that I came at this as sort of a tabula rasa and was just willing to lead wherever the truth led me, that would be disingenuous of me to say. That's what I did. I read the CES letter within the framework of my own experiences and my own answers to these questions at which I had already arrived before I read the CES letter. So, yeah, so there was never a point in the CES letter where I was sort of reopening the case because for me, the case had been closed a long time ago. That's not to say that the case hadn't been open at one point, but by the time I got to the CBS letter, that's where I was following on that.

What Is Faith and How Does Belief Work

John Dehlin [01:16:28] And we've covered this before, so you can give just a summation, but Trent asks since belief, and I think you've acknowledged this, since belief ultimately relies on faith or feelings, and you've added evidence combined with feelings and inspiration. But since it's, since belief is predominantly a faithful kind of enterprise, why bother entertaining questions of evidence at all against or for the validity of the church's truth claims? Why not just say, hey, I know all the stuff and yet I still believe. Why even bother to talk about Egyptology or DNA or anything and just say, this isn't. It's. It's belief, it's faith.

Jim Bennett [01:17:11] Well, this is where on Facebook, I dug out that Austin Farrar quote. I think it was in response to this.

John Dehlin [01:17:18] I think that you're saying the absence of an argument sometimes leaves a vacuum that doesn't allow faith to flourish. Is that your assumption?

Jim Bennett [01:17:28] I think that's a good way to put it. I, you know, if I, when I was throwing questions at my father as a teenager, if he had just, just have faith, if that had been his answer, I wouldn't be in the church. But his faith and my faith don't rest on sort of that kind of logical. I hate to say this because what I'm telling you, my faith is not, you know, my faith and logic, they don't get along. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the kind of logical arguments that I will make in defense of my faith I think can be logically sustained, but they are not the foundation of my, my faith. The foundation of my faith, and I really believe the foundation of every faith is in a personal encounter with the divine and a personal encounter with the divine. Somebody else. I'm not sure if we were going to get to this question. But Sam Pinson, he's been on your former bishop. Yeah, we went at it on Facebook.

John Dehlin [01:18:30] Shout out to Sam.

Jim Bennett [01:18:31] Shout out to Sam.

John Dehlin [01:18:32] We love you, Sam. You're awesome. Former bishop am in Idaho. Great guy.

Jim Bennett [01:18:36] I don't know him.

John Dehlin [01:18:36] Sarah Pinson to his kids. Thorough, brilliant.

Jim Bennett [01:18:40] He seems brilliant. I don't know him personally, but we went at it and he kept talking about scientific verification and falsification of faith. And the example he would use is, okay, well, if I tell you that there are little green men dancing on the ceiling and I just have faith that they're there, well, they're not there and I can scientifically prove they're not there. And he has a great point. But most people's religious experiences don't come with sort of an objectively verifiable component. If I tell you I have felt God's love, you don't have a scientific tool to measure that or falsify that. You know, I was. This discussion began when he kept saying, well, what do you say to all the people in the Catholic church or the Muslims and all this? Who they all feel like they felt God's love and they've had an encounter with the divine. What do you say to them? And I say, I. I take him at face value. And it's like, I can't. I can't falsify it. It's just the same thing with Jeremy Runnels. I can't look into Jeremy Runnels soul and, you know, if he has some kind of nefarious purpose for what he is doing. I haven't seen that manifest. Everything that I've seen on face value is he's a guy who doubted and he asked some questions and this is where he ended up.

John Dehlin [01:20:00] And just to, I think to redirect. I think Sam would follow up with this question. I don't think he's asking you to condemn the beliefs or faith of Muslims or Catholics or Jews or any other believer.

Jim Bennett [01:20:13] Right.

John Dehlin [01:20:13] I think he's asking you to redirect that to yourself and say, how can I, Jim Bennett, trust these feelings that I've had? This testimony that I have based on these experiences. When a member of the FLDS church claims to have had witness born to them that Warren Jeffs is the prophet and. And a David Koresh follower had a witness so undeniable that they're willing to stay in a building as it burned down with their children or give their right. Give their wife to David Koresh like, or fly planes into the twin towers like how can you stand on your experiences or your convictions based on your experiences, knowing that there's 7 billion people that have had conflicting experiences using the same method? Why didn't that. Why does that, not in your mind, make you doubt your own foundation?

Jim Bennett [01:21:12] Well, in the 1838 First Vision account, Joseph Smith comes out and says, I knew that I had seen a vision and I could not deny it. No, I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it. And those have always been very resonant words to me. In that my experience with God that I cannot convey to you. I cannot open my soul and let you look in and say, oh, geez, that's legit. Oh, wow. Now I know what you're talking about, Jim. That, to me, is powerful enough and resonant enough that I don't feel like I have any choice but to trust it. And the fact that other people come and say, well, I've had an experience equally as resonant, equally as powerful, telling me the diametrically opposed position from yours, what am I supposed to do with that? Am I supposed to say, okay, well, then mine must not be legit? Or am I supposed to say, well, then yours must not be legit? Or am I supposed to say, I can't know what's going on inside your soul? I have no idea. I can make a guess. If your soul's telling you you should crash planes into the Twin Towers, my guess is that there's something wrong with what's going on there. But all I can do is say, I like Joseph, I haven't seen a vision. I haven't seen the Father and the Son, but I have encountered the divine, and I know it, and I know that God knows it, and I can't deny it. And that's where I am.

John Dehlin [01:23:16] Some people reinterpret, you know, because we all had, I think, experiences that we, some of us claim were conditioned right to. To interpret in a way that concluded the church was true. In other words, you're. You're reading the Book of Mormon and you're 16, and you're told that you're going to get some witness, and then you're, like, feeling bad about mistakes you made. And then you read something about, you know, Mosiah or Helaman or whatever, I'm of the younger, and you just get this overwhelming emotional experience, and you're prime to interpret that as meaning, well, that's it. You added, the church is true. That's the Holy Ghost. So you're the whole context of how you interpret those feelings is sort of carefully conditioned from the time that you're a child. And so what many people do, and I'm not asking you to do this, I'm more exploring. If you have gone through this or if you relate to it or how you've avoided it, is. Is that what a lot of people do is they don't go, well, the Catholics and other people are false or they basically go, well, I guess I. Maybe those interpretations that I held were conditioned and maybe, maybe they were just neurons, maybe it was just chemicals in my brain, maybe it was some connection to the divine, but it doesn't necessarily mean the church was true. Or maybe it was just all brainwashing, I don't know. But what I know is that the conclusions that I arrived at were very carefully conditioned in me. I had parents that wanted me to have that experience. I had this entire congregation, grandparents, siblings, this huge social apparatus that's going to like pat you on the head and say, good boy, Jim, good job with that testimony. Now you go on that mission and you go convert other people to the church and oh, aren't you a good boy? And oh, we really honor you. And. And then, and then there are also, you know, you don't want to disappoint the grandparents. You don't want to disappoint your parents. You don't. There might be job implications. You might get ostracized from the family. Like, there are a lot of real social, familial, and even financial pressures to. To arrive at and keep the exact interpretations that you have clung to. And what some people do is they're like, I don't know how to make sense of all that. But I. But I've thought about enough other people and the situation, the context that I'm in to realize. And I'm going to say something that is going to be offensive to some people. I don't mean to be calling the church a cult, but I'm going to use a term that's often used in the cult scenario. No one who's in a cult thinks they're in a cult. And I can say no one in a high demand religion, you know, no one who's conditioned thinks they've been conditioned.

Jim Bennett [01:26:21] Right.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] So what's kept you from doing what Sam Pinson did and others and just said, I can't really rely on that. Given all the conditioning and the pressures and the context and all the other people that believe totally orthogonal or disjointed things, I can no longer stand on that epistemology, I just have to say, at worst, at best, I don't know what that all meant when I had that experience. Or at worst, from a believing standpoint, to just say that's no longer a reliable means of, of, of arriving at conclusions. What's kept you from doing that? Introspection and arriving at that sort of conclusion?

Conditioning, Authenticity, and Belief

Jim Bennett [01:27:06] Conditioning. I've been conditioned not to arrive at that conclusion.

John Dehlin [01:27:10] No, come on.

Jim Bennett [01:27:14] But I mean, the, the problem with that question is that if that were the right answer, I mean, you know, if the answer is conditioning, I wouldn't have any kind of way of knowing that.

John Dehlin [01:27:25] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:27:25] I mean, if I've been conditioned and brainwashed to the point where.

John Dehlin [01:27:28] And I'm not calling you brainwashed.

Jim Bennett [01:27:30] No. Well, but, but I mean, so those are offensive terms. No, it's not.

John Dehlin [01:27:34] Brainwashing are not useful terms.

Jim Bennett [01:27:36] It's that.

John Dehlin [01:27:37] I just want to say that it's

Jim Bennett [01:27:38] that, it's that answering that there are limits to a way anybody can answer that question, because I have to start asking the question. And I've gone through this sort of mental exercise, you know, what if I were born a Muslim? What if I were born here? What if I were, you know, this, that and the other? I don't know anybody who hasn't gone through that to some degree. But yeah, I've gone through that exercise quite a bit. You know, at what point do I get to say I have questioned the possibility of conditioning enough that I can say that there's something genuine at the core of the claim that I'm making? And I don't know that you can ever get to that point. I mean, I don't know. I've often thought too, I've said, you know, I can leave the Church, but I will always to some degree see the world as a Latter Day Saint. You know, that my worldview is always going to be shaped, but there's no way I can ever fully expunge that. I don't know right now. I wouldn't want to. But you know, I see that in a lot of people who have left the church is like they're still Mormon to the core in a lot of ways.

John Dehlin [01:28:55] That's how I think of myself.

Jim Bennett [01:28:56] Yeah. And, and you know, that's. But I mean, that's everybody, you know, Catholics who leave the Catholic Church, there's still a core of them. There's part of it that's always going to be part of that. So how do I, you know, to assess the legitimacy of my encounter with God? I have to sort of filter out anything that could have conditioned me to do that. I don't even know how I would begin to try to do that. This may not be. I'll just give you a little a story here. I dated a girl my freshman year at usc. She was a Catholic. And. And she ended up joining the church. She actually joined the church after we broke up. And she is still, as far as I know, I don't have any contact with her, but she's still a faithful member of the church today. And I went through the missionary discussions with her. And, you know, this is all during the same time when I've been reading the God Makers. You know, this is when I'm wrestling with this. And I went through the missionary discussions and I saw how she responded to them and saw sort of a light come on in her life and I saw these wonderful elders teaching her. And I went through all this and I thought, okay, great. And that was a really strong impetus for me to say, okay, well, I want to go on a mission. Then I want to be like these guys. This is good. And when I got out in the mission field, when I got to Scotland, I would tell this dramatic story of my own conversion that I was a non believer or a disbeliever. And then I saw the light come on in her eyes and I had this experience. And that's when I became a believer. And I kind of rehearsed this story to the point where it was, I think, pretty dramatically compelling. I'm a pretty good actor. And I told this story and every time I told just felt more and more saccharine. And it felt, you know, it's hollow and empty. And I mean, each time. And I try to muster up the kind of emotional conviction to sell it and it just. No. And if I find like, you weren't a non believer, you idiot, that's not true. You were a believer when you went through all this, that strengthened your faith, but you were a believer. And by telling that story that way, you're discounting all these experiences you had growing up and all your conversations with your father and all this wonderful stuff that happened. And I finally went, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I would tell a far less colorful story about my own testimony that I could live with. And it wasn't dramatic and it wasn't big, but it was, yeah, I'm a believer. And this is why. And this is because I have felt the hand of God in my life from all these kinds of places. And so I can live with that. You know. So when you tell me, okay, well, you know, how is that reliable, Jim? How is that reliable? How can you know when you say neurons in your brain. Of course it's neurons in your brain. I think that's all part of the religious experience. It was. Reza Aslan came and spoke at Sunstone. He says, of course religion happens in the brain. That's where it happens. That doesn't discount.

John Dehlin [01:32:49] I think they mean psychological versus divine.

Jim Bennett [01:32:51] Sure, sure, sure. But. Well, that's another discussion. The point is that there is no way that I can separate all of my experiences from who I am and somehow legitimize the core of my faith by saying it's somehow. This is something I arrived at without all of that. I arrived at because of all of that. Is that conditioning? Is that brainwashing? Is that an authentic.

John Dehlin [01:33:22] Or is that an authentic divine?

Jim Bennett [01:33:24] Or is it both at the same time?

John Dehlin [01:33:26] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:33:26] Or pieces of both? I mean, there are things that I've been conditioned, you know, we talked about in the. In the last session about all, you know, the little factory and all that kind of stuff that conditioned me to have a very unhealthy relationship with my own body. You know, I look at that conditioning and go, that really would rather not have had that. Thank you. You know, so. But all the experiences of my life have led to who I am and where I am and to the conviction that I have. And. And I cannot. I cannot justify it to anybody else, only to say that I am at peace with it and. And I have confidence in it, and I'm going to continue to have confidence in it.

John Dehlin [01:34:12] It's a bit of a loaded question because the only acceptable answer is what you started with, which is, I'm a product of my conditioning, which can be set up in a way to just negate anyone's experience.

Jim Bennett [01:34:24] You know what I'm saying? Who isn't a product of their conditioning.

John Dehlin [01:34:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I mean, that's so. That's why I found your response so, so refreshing. And I wasn't sure if you're joking, and.

Jim Bennett [01:34:35] Well, I wasn't sure if I was joking either.

John Dehlin [01:34:39] And that's why I was surprised when earlier in this conversation, when people accuse you of being an apologist because of the social sort of context that you live in, you take homage with that. Like, can you explain why when people go, well, you know, I really believe. I tend to believe this, and that's why I don't want to be offensive to you, but I tend to view it this way, that when someone's an apologist. It's almost always someone who has a lot of privilege in the church, someone who's had a lot of benefits from the church, somebody whose parents or siblings or spouse would be super disappointed if they left the church. Somebody who would probably. Somebody who often has a financial incentive to remain in the church, either directly or indirectly. So directly would be Daniel Peterson or I would say Patrick Mason or Spencer Fluman. You know, these guys are literally either funded by. Directly by the church or by rich donors that fund their positions, or like a doctor or a lawyer, someone who, like, if they announced publicly that they didn't believe they would lose clientele, they would lose business.

Jim Bennett [01:35:49] So.

John Dehlin [01:35:50] So there does seem to be a profile of a lot of apologists where you can kind of explain their defense of the church by all the social pressures that probably keep them in. And if the parents are dead and the spouse is no longer a believer and all the kids aren't a believer and their job is totally independent and they've had some really bad things happen, well, those people tend to leave and don't tend to become apologists. And so why do you take umbrage with people that say kind of that your apologetics is largely shaped by your. Your conditioning in your context?

Jim Bennett [01:36:33] Well, again, I mean, everything is shaped by my conditioning and context.

John Dehlin [01:36:36] Why do you take umbrage when people.

Jim Bennett [01:36:38] Well, I take umbrage that I have some kind of nefarious motive that I haven't.

John Dehlin [01:36:41] Not nefarious, but.

Jim Bennett [01:36:42] Well, you know, the. The assumption conditioned. There's something I'm not telling you. I don't believe that there's something. Okay, okay. You know, I. I get. I get.

John Dehlin [01:36:52] Okay.

Jim Bennett [01:36:53] I mean, I'm not getting paid to do this. Right. I'm not getting paid.

John Dehlin [01:36:56] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:36:57] Professionally, throughout my life, I have never held a job where my church membership was. I've never been in danger of losing my job for not being a church member. Maybe down at Tuacan, they might have cast me askance because I think that they're very strong sort of church membership down there. But, you know, right now, the company I'm working for, I'm the only active member of the church that's involved with it. You know, so my family. Yeah, my family would be disappointed. My mother would be disappointed if I were to leave the church, but she wouldn't. She would not take any action whatsoever to remove me from the family. You know, our extended family includes many people who have left the church, and they're as included in the family as anybody else.

John Dehlin [01:37:59] They have the same status.

Jim Bennett [01:38:00] Yeah. They're not in my.

John Dehlin [01:38:03] They're not whispered about or excluded from conversation in my family. Demean in some way.

Jim Bennett [01:38:08] No, they are not. I mean, I. And I recognize that that may not be typical. I'm not speaking for every family. I'm speaking for my family, meaning your parents and siblings. My parents and siblings, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles. On my wife's side of the family, she has two siblings out of seven that have left the church, and they are every bit as part. Much part of the family and respected. And respected.

John Dehlin [01:38:37] Really?

Jim Bennett [01:38:38] Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm not going to back down from that.

John Dehlin [01:38:44] Good.

Jim Bennett [01:38:44] But I. But, but I recognize. I do recognize that is not the case in a large number of families, but I do. And I don't have any fear. I have fear that my mother would be disappointed in me.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] And oftentimes that's one of the biggest.

Jim Bennett [01:38:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:58] Motivating factors. Yeah.

Jim Bennett [01:39:00] And, you know, actually. And I would say that when I was younger, when I was. When I was contemplating not going on a mission. Yeah, that was huge. But at the same time, I remember finally getting the courage to tell my father, maybe I don't want to go on a mission. Maybe I don't want to go on a mission if I'm just going just because it's expected of me. And his response was, well, if that's why you're going on a mission, you shouldn't go on a mission. And that was like lifting a pressure cooker. That was like, oh, okay, so if I don't go on a mission, you're not going to throw me to the wall? But, yeah, I certainly had that fear a lot more when I was younger. So I'm not trying to downplay that in anybody else's family and downplay that. That's not a very real powerful problem and issue. But I do not live in fear of being rejected by my family. And I made it very clear to my children. So far, all of my children are still in the church, but I've made it very clear to them explicitly, not just implicitly, if you leave the church, I will not cease to love you and not cease to support you. So that's how we're teaching our kids. And. And I think that's important. So. So I just take. It's not that I take umbrage or I'm offended when people. It's just. Can you just deal with me?

John Dehlin [01:40:25] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [01:40:25] Take me at face value. Right. It's going to be easier for both of us if you'll just take me at face value.

John Dehlin [01:40:32] I appreciate that. And just to explain, like I, I sometimes have been hard on Givens Flumen, Mason Peterson, Guy Muhlstein, you know, professional apologists and, or professional progressive Mormons, you know, who are getting Deseret book contracts and who are flown all over the world to these special firesides and Bushmen, you know, just have kind of an elite status and lots of privilege and financial opportunity and compensation for the fact that they are, you know, are engaging in defense of the church. And I don't like any mean spiritedness or you know, questioning of people's motives and at the same time taken from someone who has, you know, left the church or has been kicked out of the church. It is a non trivial thing. In your marriage.

Jim Bennett [01:41:32] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:41:33] With your children, raising your children, trying to figure out 30, 40, 50 years into your life how to start over. All the friends you lose, all the community you lose, the backbiting. I have, you know, I have in laws who don't want us around in laws that, that have cut off real, any meaningful connection with our kids, you know, aunts, uncles, grandparents that really, they'll say they love us all, but they don't really act like it. Right. We've disappointed so many parents and siblings and aunts and uncles and grandkids and there's been real limits to financial and occupational opportunities. And I don't think I'm unique.

Jim Bennett [01:42:21] I don't think you're unique.

John Dehlin [01:42:22] It's a severe and it's a brutal thing to make that decision. And the only thing I just want to add is when then we get in the realm of like, well, you're defending the church and we're criticizing the church. It's not a level playing field in terms of like, oh, well, some are for and some are against. Well, you could read the evidence both ways. There's a massive amount of benefit that people in your position receive from staying in it and a massive amount of pressures that are bearing upon people who defend. And then on our side, a massive amount of sacrifice and pain and suffering and difficulty and judgment and loss that came at the expense of us following our conscience. And sometimes it's like, oh, well, you could look at the evidence one way or the other. And there are reasonable ways to believe and not believe. And you know, reasonable people believe and reasonable people not believe. It's not quite, it's not like that. It's like you guys have all the reason and benefit and pressure to keep believing and we all get it because we were there and we have been through so much pain and suffering and punishment, being called liars and whispering campaigns and losing friends and community sacrificing for that kind of like Galileo, kind of like Malcolm Martin Luther King or, you know, pick a civil rights leader that Rosa Parks. That's the type of suffering. You get to take our stance. And so it's hard to communicate that in a way that. Where we're not demeaning you guys. Right. Because that's not helpful. But I sometimes feel like you guys act like we're all. It's like, oh, take it or leave it. You can believe it or not, but we're not on the same level of. Kind of objectivity. We're not on the same level of objectivity. Like.

Jim Bennett [01:44:36] Objectivity. That's an interesting word.

John Dehlin [01:44:38] No, but there's this sort of postmodern thing where it's like there's, you know, there is no truth. Everybody, you know, you could, anyone could look at evidence. There's a difference between maintaining a position because of all the conditioning and social pressure and all the severe consequence if you were to change your position and being in a position where you have almost everything to lose and yet you're making the difficult decision anyway. And sometimes I just wish people in your position could just have that really forefront in their brain when you engage with people like us, because it is a fundamentally different position to be in and it's not equal in terms of objectivity.

Jim Bennett [01:45:25] I thank you very much for sharing that because I think people need to hear that. I think I need to hear that. I think other people in the church need to hear that. I remember talking to a cousin who left the church. This was 25 years ago at least. And her comment, which I didn't understand at the time, she says, this is the biggest loss I have ever suffered. And I just. That's a weird way to put it. What do you mean? And she went on to talk about exactly what you're describing. I mean, the amount of loss and the amount of pain that comes when people leave the church and people in the church treat them unkindly, treat them uncharitably.

Mixed-Faith Marriages and Church Relationships

John Dehlin [01:46:15] And

Jim Bennett [01:46:17] the other issue, you raised this at the beginning of that. It's one thing to have your parents disappointed in you or even your children disappointed in you, but a mixed faith marriage, to have your spouse disappointed in

John Dehlin [01:46:35] you or threaten to leave you or

Jim Bennett [01:46:36] threaten to leave you, That's almost more than I can. If my wife were to say to me, stay in the church or I'm going to leave you, that Would rip my soul. We have not had that discussion. And actually, I think we're actually pretty simpatico in terms of where we stand the church. And so that's not something that I worry about. I'm not saying that as a reality I'm dealing with. I'm saying that as a hypothetical. There is no question that there are massive pressures, social pressures, community pressures to stay faithful. There's no question. And it would be wonderful if we could alleviate that, even to the smallest degree, you know, when the church. My uncle, who was a stake president in Los Angeles, would continually write letters to the brethren insisting that they needed to waive the requirement to wait a year before a temple sealing. You know, if you get a civil marriage, up until very recently, you had to wait a year until the temple sealing. And people wanted to have civil marriages so they could include people who couldn't go into the temple who were in the family, and that wouldn't happen. And, you know, converts particularly, who are the only members in their family who get sealed in the temple, have to tell their fathers that they can't walk them down the aisle. It just rips the family in half. And my uncle would write these letters to the brethren, and he finally got a letter back saying, we've got all of your letters previous. You don't need to write us anymore. And when the church finally changed that just last year, I think, or maybe within the last two years, I thought, wonderful. We're taking a step that alleviates some of that pressure. How many people keep a temple recommendation and they don't believe, but they want to be able to see their child get married, and so they're paying their tithing and they're attending their meetings, and they're doing all of this just to be able to have that one critical moment in their family's life and history and be together. You know, I look at that and

John Dehlin [01:49:12] go,

Jim Bennett [01:49:16] we need to be looking at that. We need to alleviate that. I would very much like to see the culture of the church change, that everybody has a civil, open, public wedding prior to their sealing. I'd like to see the church say, you know what? Our ceilings are not marriages anymore. Go get married, and then you can come get a sealing. I think that would heal so many wounds that have been inflicted unnecessarily. Because in Scotland, where I serve my mission, legally that's the case. You have to have a public ceremony. So even when I was there in the 1980s, everybody that got married in the temple got married civilly first, and everybody could come to the civil, civil wedding, you know, you know, so. But no, I am, all I am doing is endorsing 100% what you are saying there. I would like to see less of that. I would like to. Any parent who would dare shun their child over a faith crisis, that parent needs to repent. Jim Bennett says you need to repent. According to Jim Bennett, Mormonism. But anybody, anybody who shuns anybody over a faith crisis needs to repent. That's just nonsense. I have so many wonderful friends who are my friends in the church and then they left the church and they are still my wonderful friends. And that should be the case in every family with every friendship.

John Dehlin [01:50:49] I appreciate that. And I, I also want to extend it to the engagement of critics versus apologists because just to summarize, it's. It's one thing to argue the evidence from a position where you have everything to gain by interpreting them in, in your favor versus a position where you have almost everything to lose by interpreting them in your favor. And yet so many apologists. Worst case, Scott Gordon, John Lynch, Kwaku, you know, Cardinalis, you're going to tell us that we're liars, that we're, you know, doing it for money, that we're intentionally breaking up families for money. That's the worst case. But the best case is often like they never really believed, they were lazy, they wanted to sin. You know, these other. And I almost feel like there should be sort of if, if Patrick Mason or Spencer Fluman or Richard Bushman or Terrell Givens wants to engage, they should start by saying, here are my biases, you know, I'm getting paid. I'm on contract with Deseret Book, I work for the Maxwell Institute, I, I sit in some chair at Utah State that's literally funded by super wealthy Mormons. And that's how I got this job. And so I acknowledge that my family, my social networks, all this status, you know, is a pressure on me to interpret the evidences the way that I do. And I'm just going to acknowledge that and acknowledge that when I talk to you, John Dillon, Jeremy Reynolds, Mike Norton, whoever, that you've sacrificed so much for interpreting the things that you have so much derision, so much loss that when I, when I give you believing members, this interpretation of Nahum, there's a lot of pressure on me, a lot of conditioning in me that, that has me read the evidence in that way. I think that's fair to say. But it's probably super unrealistic for me to ask but do you get on

Jim Bennett [01:52:56] saying, I get what you're saying, and I would even go so far as to say it's fair for you to say. Where I would differ is in whether or not it's productive in that if you want to disqualify Patrick Mason or Spencer Fluman, and I don't. No. But. But. But when. When. When. When that becomes sort of front and center in the discussion, that can be used to disqualify you.

John Dehlin [01:53:28] Yeah, and I don't like that either.

Jim Bennett [01:53:29] I mean, it's like, okay, well, I don't want to hear what. You don't matter. I don't know. It's not you don't matter. It's. It's what It.

John Dehlin [01:53:35] It.

Jim Bennett [01:53:35] It's. It's. It's the flip side of me saying, well, Jeremy Reynolds is a liar, so don't read the CES letter. Well, Patrick Mason's getting paid by Utah State, so don't. Don't believe what he says about Nahum.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] Yeah, you don't want that either.

Jim Bennett [01:53:51] I mean, I think we need to have a conversation where we acknowledge all of these things and all of these pressures. But if we're going to talk about the issues, the weight or the merit of the NAHOM argument does not rest on how Patrick Mason is getting paid. Patrick Mason, incidentally, I just have to say this shout out to, I know Patrick just in passing, but I know and adore his parents. His father was our home teacher, Mike Mason. He spoke at my twin son's baptism, was the most diligent, marvelous home teacher. Just. And his mother, I don't know if she takes friend requests from people she doesn't know, but if you can get her to be your Facebook friend, she is the funniest person on Facebook. I know. She's just brilliant, and she's such a wonderful human being. Just. That's such a magnificent family.

John Dehlin [01:54:47] And so is Patrick. Patrick is an amazing Patrick. All my interactions with him, he's an amazing human.

Jim Bennett [01:54:53] So the bottom line is that's a discussion we need to have. We need to have a discussion that acknowledges your pain and your sacrifice and the sacrifices and pain of all those who've lost their faith and have been ostracized because of it. We have to acknowledge the privilege of anybody in any circumstance, but certainly the privilege that comes from, hey, I receive all of this benefit from being a member of the church, and one of the reasons people are members of the church is that there's a lot of benefit to being a member of the church. I think that's a good thing. I think that the fact that the church provides a lot of benefit means that it provides a lot of benefit. But. But when you start to sort of dive into an issue and the conversation strays from okay, well, I don't know if this is correct to well, here's what your motives really are.

John Dehlin [01:55:49] It's not productive.

Jim Bennett [01:55:50] Then it's not productive no matter which side is doing it.

John Dehlin [01:55:53] So we have to find a way to navigate all this, and I think

Jim Bennett [01:55:55] we have to find a way, I'm

John Dehlin [01:55:56] just saying, to move the discourse forward from where it's traditionally been.

Jim Bennett [01:56:02] Right.

John Dehlin [01:56:02] I think we need to find a way to incorporate these sorts of thoughts.

Jim Bennett [01:56:06] I agree. 100.

John Dehlin [01:56:09] Okay. All right, the next set of questions. This is going back to your response to Jeremy's To Jeremy CS letter a listener wrote Jeremy Runnels wrote over a thousand plus pages of apologetic responses and rebuttals to attacks on the CES letter from Fair Mormon, Daniel Peterson and others. Why did you ignore all these expansions and clarifications and detailed responses when you wrote your reply? Because it was almost like Jeremy wrote a version one and then a version two, and then with all the responses he really refined and clarified. And by responding to version one or even version two, you're sort of not representing his more refined, clarified arguments, and you're kind of arguing against his weak, least mature arguments and omitting a lot of very important clarifications that he would have made. Does that make sense?

Timeline and Tone of the CES Letter Reply

Jim Bennett [01:57:18] Okay, well, so just give you a bit of the timeline here. So Jeremy wrote his letter, And I think 2013, I don't know when I became aware of was at least a year, maybe two after that. I mean, I don't think I was aware of it prior to 2015, and I think I stumbled on it in maybe the, the aftermath of the the November 2015 policy. I can't be sure of that. I don't know. I don't know. But I didn't decide to write a reply until I lost my job in 2016. That was probably February of 2016 is when I sort of started cutting and pasting from my blog. You know, my reply consists of an aggregate of things that I had written before, sort of compiled in response to him. But I completed it in April of 2016. I don't know the extent to which Jeremy's. Additional material, rebuttals to the rebuttals, rebuttals to the rebuttals, and all that kind of stuff. I don't know how much of that existed in 2016? I think some of it did. And I even think I remember at the time looking at it going, I would like to eventually get to this too. But My reply is 150,000 words and it had consumed my life for two months. And I was like, I'm done with this. I replied to the letter, I'm done with this. In 2018, I went back and looked at my reply because Jeremy had released a second version of the letter. I mean, I know he had been revising it all along to some degree, but he had. He had announced he had released a second definitive version, updated version of the letter. And I went back and thought, oh well, I'll just update my reply. And what was exhausting was that my updated reply, my second reply and the one that people pull up now, it's over 50% of it is new material. In my reply, I went back and substantially revised it. Part of it was because Jeremy had revised what he'd written. But also part of it was I got rid of some junk in my first reply that I didn't like. And I re. You know, I. So I rewrote it and I thought I was making better arguments the second time. But the thing that I did do in that was incorporate his reply to Daniel Peterson where he talked about that was titled something about zombies. You know, Daniel Peterson had made a comment at a fair Mormon conference talking about going through anti Mormon zombie hell. And Jeremy wrote a massive piece responding to that and how upset he was at Daniel Peterson going ad hominem against him, calling him a zombie and how terrible and all these ad hominem attacks. And I went in there and I said, the problem, Jeremy, is that he wasn't calling you a zombie. The zombie thing comes up. He talks about, Jeremy has a section about the Book of Mormon names that comes from a book by Vernal Hawley who argues the Spalding manuscript theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon. Jeremy does not argue the Spalding manuscript theory for the Book of Mormon. He stays away from it. But Vernal Hawley does. And in his Fair Mormon presentation, Daniel Peterson said the Spaulding manuscript, you keep driving a stake through it. It's like a zombie. It keeps coming back over and over. It just keeps coming back. And I said, the antecedent for zombie is the Spalding theory of the Book of Mormon's origin. Jeremy, it's not Daniel Peterson saying you are a zombie. And so I go into that at length and in fact, at lunch I talked to him about that. Jeremy called Daniel Peterson and apologized to him for that. And, you know, so to Jeremy's credit, maybe I wasn't supposed to say that. So the reality is, the second time around, I very much tried to engage with that. I started actually engaging with Jeremy's response to Fair Mormon, and I gave up only because it was just treading all of the same ground that was in the CES letter. In my mind, it was just the same stuff. And he was mad at fair for how fair was saying certain things and this, that, and the other. And so I kind of looked at that and go, I don't know that that would be productive. And so I just didn't do that. But I've read it, read Jeremy's other stuff and the reply that exists now, I want to go back and revise it even further because the first page of the second reply was written before I'd met Jeremy. And there's stuff in there I'd like to take out that I don't think is charitable. Jeremy. I really do feel like I stick stay away from attacking Jeremy in the reply. But in that second, in that second version, I recount the fact that Jeremy had said some things about me, you know, in reference. And so I get snarky with Jeremy and that that goes against what I. The standard I had set for myself. So I need to go back and fix that.

John Dehlin [02:03:00] That actually ties into the another question from Sam Pinson. He writes, I attempted to read a faithful response, but was put off by the author's insulting tone and silly arguments. So I couldn't finish it. So do you feel like, and I know that you, in your mind, it's really important to separate attacks on the person from attacks on their argument. I've had several people write in and say that they felt like your attacks on Jeremy's arguments and positions were kind of snarky and disrespectful or dismissive. Do you agree with that? Is that what you just kind of said?

Jim Bennett [02:03:37] So when the videos came out, when the Quaker videos came out and are just dripping with snark and dripping with direct attacks on people, I went, oh, I'm reaping the whirlwind. I did this. I mean, they quote me several times in those videos.

John Dehlin [02:03:56] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [02:03:56] And. But, but what that did is it led me to go back and actually reread my stuff. And I went, at least in my mind, I thought I stuck to that line pretty well. I mean, you still can't find any place. I do say things like, I Get exasperated. For instance, like in the view of the Hebrew section, I'm like, jeremy, you clearly haven't read this. You clearly haven't read View of the Hebrews, and that matters. I mean, you're making an argument you don't understand. So is that a personal attack against Jeremy? I don't think it is. I think.

John Dehlin [02:04:38] No. Against his argument.

Jim Bennett [02:04:39] It's against his argument, but it's. Is it.

John Dehlin [02:04:41] I'm saying people are saying snarkiness.

Jim Bennett [02:04:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:04:44] About his arguments, not about personal attacks.

Jim Bennett [02:04:47] Yeah. I mean, so I get snarky in that way. I mean, I get frustrated. Reading the CES letter, You know, Jeremy will cite an. You know, the very first. The very first thing in CBS letter about the King James. This is bad, because now it's going to sound like I'm quoting Kwaku because they were quoting me, only they added an extra measure of snark to make it even less. Less palatable. But, you know, he. In his first CS letter, he talks about King James errors in the Book of Mormon, and his source is a Wikipedia article about King James errors in the Book of Mormon. Well, since it was first published, the Wikipedia article is changed not by me, but by somebody who pointed out that these weren't errors, they were variants. In other words, these were things that weren't wrong. They were just different, and they were unique to the King James Bible. But so he ends up in the second version linking to an article that doesn't say anything like what he's claiming it's saying. And so I get very snarky, and I'm like, you're. You're linking to articles that you don't understand, that you haven't read. You haven't read your own source materials. You need to read your own source materials if you're gonna be making these arguments. So, yeah, there's still considerable snark in my reply, and I probably would. I know, I know. Jeremy, when he went through his second CES letter, he talked about what he called his tone problems. There were so many tone problems. And he's. And he has lowered. Lowered the volume on those. And I probably would be wise to do the same, you know, because the, The. The complaints about the snark, you know, they're. They're not unjustified. There is a lot of snark there.

John Dehlin [02:06:32] What I imagine might be hard for you is, one, to justify the time, but two, you know that this is probably the most effective response ever offered to Jeremy's CES letter. And I imagine that you would not want to mess with that. If it's. If it's the most effective response to date, that's not.

Jim Bennett [02:06:54] I don't think the strength of the response is in the snark, necessarily. The snark is just kind of what comes naturally to me. Like, for instance, with Jeremy. With Jeremy, some of the offense that Jeremy took is justified, but unintended. Does that make sense? For instance, at the beginning of my second one, somebody had posted a picture of Jeremy Runnels Photoshopped on Joseph Smith's body holding the CES letter, looking very regal. And I juxtaposed that picture with my head, with unkempt hair, with a hobo stick. You know, it's like, here's just some hobo talking to Jeremy Reynolds. And I thought that was self deprecating. You know, I thought I was making myself the butt of the joke. And Jeremy, when I met him, was like, put me on Joseph Smith's body. You're making me look like a pompous ass. You know, am I allowed to say ass? On the Rolling Stories podcast, Joseph Fieldy McConkie liked to say the word ass because it was biblical. So I come by it honestly. But. And that wasn't my intent. My intent was not to make fun of him. And one of the things that I. That I had done also in the same kind of vein, is that, you know, I had to find a way to differentiate Jeremy's words from my words, because I'll write a big section of the. Of the CES letter and then I'll write my response right after it. And so I say at the beginning, Jeremy's words will be written in green, the color of life, and my words will be written in black, the color of darkness. And I thought, I'm just kind of being self deprecating. And other people have looked at that and said, well, that's just so snarky and obnoxious. You're making fun of Jeremy's words. And I thought, well, no, that's not. That wasn't my intent. But I can certainly see why somebody would. Would think that. Well, the merits of my response do not depend on me making some goofy little snarky joke about the color of the text. Right. I could go in there and I think I could. I think I could soften that tone considerably. And not. And not to the detriment of the substance of the reply or impact. Or impact. I don't think so.

Book of Abraham Treatment and LDS Discussions Critique

John Dehlin [02:09:10] Okay. Okay. This is a question about your treatment of the book of Abraham. And it comes from LDS Discussions, which is an amazing resource. Okay, he wrote. So check out LDS Discussions. It's an amazing resource of writings that deal with truth claims. LDS discussions.com I believe is the URL. But LDS discussions writes in your section about the Book of Abraham. Does they believe that you use personal attacks on Kevin Matthew and that is both deceptive and misleading. They write Kevin Matthews simply compiled the works of Dr. Robert Rittner and others to complete the infographics on the correct translations of the facsimiles. And yet Eugene Benny used the attack used an attack on Matthew as being a musician to discredit the section of the CES letter. In other words, their reading of your argument was that Matthew was a musician and therefore he isn't credible. And, and because Jeremy referenced the infographics that were designed by Matthew, a musician, that that discredits the CES letter. And then I was sad to learn that the fair Mormon Kwaku and they adopted your criticism of the CES letters use of Matthew to then say that that you know the Jer that the arguments against Book of Abraham weren't credible. And this is particularly disturbing because there, there's plenty of evidence that the one of the most reputable Egyptologists in the world, Robert Rittner, he chairs the only chair of Egyptology in the Western Hemisphere. He's got books and hours of credible criticisms. And so to tell everybody that the arguments against the Book of Abraham aren't credible because the infographics were designed by a musician and thus Jeremy is incredible. That just felt like a really disingenuous low blow both to the CES letter and to the substance of the arguments against the Book of Abraham. And all that seems to be tied back to you.

Jim Bennett [02:11:31] Oh well, this tied back to me again. I mean, whatever happened in the Kwaku videos, at least, at least on that point, that does come back to me. I don't think that's an accurate representation of of what I did in my reply. So, so let me give you as much context as I can. Jeremy doesn't cite Robert Rittner in his first CES letter, probably because Robert Rittner I don't think Robert Rittner's rebuttal to the Church essay had come out yet. Jeremy in 2013, I'm not even sure if the Church's essay had come out yet. It may have, but Kevin Matthew does not draw from Robert Rittner. Kevin Matthew also did not design the infographic. So what happened is you get to the Book of Abraham section in Jeremy's first CES letter. And rather than any kind of argument, Jeremy just slaps these two infographics up and he says, Egyptologists all say the Book of Abraham is nonsense. And then up comes the infographic. And at the bottom of the infographic is a link. So. So when I'm reading the CES letter, I'm like, well, where is this infographic getting its information? And the infographic is getting its information from a website and from an article written by a guy named Kevin Matthew. I had no idea who Kevin Matthew is. Is. And so I went, okay, I'm going to try to find who Kevin Matthie is. Kevin Matthey is by all accounts an extraordinarily accomplished musician and composer. And you go to his website and he lists all of his awards and all of this. And I couldn't see any possible, any kind of credential that would demonstrate that Kevin Matthews opinion about the Book of Abraham should carry any more weight than Jim Bennett's opinion about the Book of Abraham. I even contrast my own music theater credentials with Kevin Matthew and say, I've got some great musical theater credentials and here's my musical theater history. That does not make me an expert on Egyptology. And near as I can tell, Kevin Matthew is not an expert on Egyptology. And Kevin Matthey doesn't cite Robert Rittner as a source. Doesn't cite any sources. He just says this is what Egyptologists say. And so the argument was an argument from authority on Jeremy's part saying, all the Egyptologists say this is wrong. And here's the graphic that proves it. Well, your Egyptologist is a musician. I'm not attacking Kevin Matthew. I'm sure he's an extraordinary musician, but he's not an Egyptologist. And if he's the guy you're going to cite and your argument is going to be an argument from authority, it wasn't even sort of an engagement with the content of the Book of Abraham. It was, look, Egyptologists all say the Book of Abraham is a fraud, and then all you do is link to a musician. I think it's absolutely fair to point out to the guy you're linking to does not have the credentials and the authority that you're claiming that he had.

John Dehlin [02:14:45] Wasn't it a musician's summary of the Egyptologist's arguments? So to bring up the credentials of the musician is kind of a red herring and a destruction. Because if Matthew is basically just trying to summarize in graphical form, well, he didn't make the real arguments made by credible Egyptologists.

Jim Bennett [02:15:06] No, I. I don't know if he made the graphic or not, but the graphic links to him. And. And in the article, he doesn't cite any Egyptologists by name. He doesn't say. He just says, this is. This is. I mean, I don't doubt necessarily. I don't doubt at all that he's looked at some Egyptologists, but which ones who. Where. I mean, one of the things that he cites, for instance, is this is what. There's a graphic that's like, this is what facsimile one really looked like. Rather than the priest with a human head. It was a priest with a jackal's head. And it redraws facsimile one as sort of a modern. This is what facsimile one really looked like. Well, I think that's extraordinarily disingenuous because we don't have a graphic that looks like that. That's somebody estimating what they think facsimile one looked like. And in the CES letter, you don't get that sense. And the only authority we have saying, yes, this is what this must have looked like is a musician.

John Dehlin [02:16:13] No, we have Robert Rittner. Well, we have Robert showing several other examples of almost identical, you know, breathing permits, you know, funerary texts. Funerary texts that have the exact same images on them, where we know that that should be a jackal head.

Jim Bennett [02:16:30] Well, except for the CES letter produces those two. Produces a series of images that don't look anything like facsimile one to me, because the main difference is you've got a live body on the altar in facsimile 1. And in all of the images produced in the CES letter, you have the jackals, head, priests over a sarcophagus. All of these have a sarcophagus. And I look at that, and I even said in my first reply to Jeremy, you have actually done me a great service in terms of one of my biggest problems with the Book of Abraham, because I remember having a conversation with an architect who used to do some work for the Church, and he was leaving over the Book of Abraham, and he described to me, he says, this is what all of these images look like. They all look the same. And here I am looking at these issues and these images and saying, they don't look the same. These are sarcophaguses. These are not live bodies. Facsimile 1. There's something different happening here. Now, that's, of course, with all of Jim Bennett's musical Egypt, Egyptological credential saying that. But my point on all of the Kevin Matthew stuff, and I actually would like to meet Kevin Matthew because I don't know if he's heard me using his name in vain over all this time. But it's certainly nothing bordering on a personal attack. I don't have anything against Kevin Matthews.

John Dehlin [02:17:45] No, I think the argument is it's misleading that basically you're trying to discredit the CES letter when I don't think there's going to be a credible Egyptologist alive that isn't going to say we know what the head of that body should have been. It should have been a jackal. And we've got Robert Rittner on saying that that should have been, that that should have been all that matters. I think a lot of people just feel like bringing in this other guy or even you giving your opinion really isn't relevant. It just discredits the CBS letter. When the point Jeremy was making, which is that Joseph got all the areas where Joseph tried to fill in the missing papyrus, he got deeply wrong. Which makes total sense since you yourself agree that all of Joseph Smith's translations are completely wrong. So to then discredit Jeremy Runnels CES letter by invoking the music degrees of Kevin Matthew feels like a real, you know, red herring, slash misleading distortion of the credibility the CES letter when really, you know, the points Jeremy making were credible. Right. Joseph got a bunch of things significantly wrong. And you could have said that. You could have said here's what Robert Ritter says and there's a lot of credible evidence to the substance behind these arguments.

Jim Bennett [02:19:11] Robert Rittner is mentioned specifically by name in the second version. And I reply to his, his assertions.

John Dehlin [02:19:20] You hear what I'm saying, right?

Jim Bennett [02:19:21] Yeah. But what I'm saying is I was dealing with the CES letter as presented to me. You know, my understanding of the Book of Abraham has been informed quite a bit since I've written that to some degree. You know, when I went on Bill Real is when, when Brian Hauglet sort of made his announcement and that's had me re evaluate some of my ideas on this. So I think at the time I wrote my first version of it, I was more open to, to some more of the more apologetic arguments than I, I than I am now. That said, the CES letter as constituted at the time when I was responding to it was making an argument that had real problems because the argument Jeremy wasn't even addressing sort of the content of, of the Egyptological arguments just so much as hand waving. All the Egyptologists say, say it's wrong. And the only source he had was a musician. And I think it's entirely appropriate to say, jeremy, it's your responsibility if you're making this argument, that you need to present the argument with the people who have the authority to make the argument.

John Dehlin [02:20:35] I was just gonna say, I think Jeremy's intent was to present the graphics that a musician used to summarize the prevailing scholarly understanding.

Jim Bennett [02:20:49] Well, okay. I mean. And that's fine. I mean, I can certainly understand the concern as to what I did here. I push back very strongly that I'm attacking Kevin Matthew.

John Dehlin [02:21:05] No, I didn't say that.

Jim Bennett [02:21:06] No, but the question does. The question says I rely on personal attacks on Kevin Matthew to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I don't. I don't ever attack Kevin Matthew. I would have. I have no desire to attack Kevin Matthew.

John Dehlin [02:21:19] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:21:19] But if Kevin Matthew ever decides to tell me that he's an Egyptologist, I'm gonna push back and say, you're not.

John Dehlin [02:21:26] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:21:26] You're no more an Egyptologist than I am.

John Dehlin [02:21:28] Yeah. I'm just saying there's something at the root of this, which is that Joseph got a bunch of things wrong. And an honest response is, yeah, he got a bunch of things wrong. Not. Oh, the, The. The training of the person that put the graphics together is not. He's not. That's. That's. Well, that's kind of misleading. That could be seen as misleading or deceptive.

Jim Bennett [02:21:46] Well, it would be misleading and deceptive to say that that's the entirety of my argument in my Book of Abraham section.

John Dehlin [02:21:53] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:21:54] I mean, I go at great lengths to talk about all kinds of problems with the Book of Abraham. And I give the lengthy version of the goofy version I gave you about the Jim Bennett mis, you know, reappropriation of symbols idea. I mean, I, I. Kev, the Kevin Matthew segment is addressing a very specific thing that Jeremy did.

John Dehlin [02:22:14] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:22:15] And it is not the entirety of my argument about the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [02:22:18] All right. Okay. Next question. This is, this is also. This is from Mike of LDS Discussions. You, in your introduction of a response to Jeremy's CS letter, wrote that the CES letter quote, is bad scholarship, making arguments that its own author doesn't seem to understand, citing sources he hasn't bothered to read. Overall, its charges do not stand up to scrutiny, and it is possible to confront each and everyone, to them head on and come out with the strength and testimony of the restored gospel on the other side. Then, Mike, the close Quote, Mike then adds, if you go through Jim Bennett's reply, you can find all sorts of shortcuts that you use to avoid the problem. The Book of Abraham is a great example, but you can also see where you wave away King James Version errors, biblical scholarship, how you hide behind Joseph. Not writing anything down is an excuse for the inconsistencies with the first vision, priesthood, restoration, etc. The fact that Joseph Smith did not write these things contemporaneously down does not negate the, the evidence we do have, whether it's Joseph words being dictated, the stories around him are telling that Joseph taught them, et cetera. Mike says, I just don't understand how you, Jim Bennett, claim that Jeremy is citing resources he hasn't bothered to read. When you, Jim Bennett, many of your sections are quote, citing sources you haven't bothered to read. And your section on the Book of Abraham is a person. Well, he says a personal attack on Kevin Matthew. I say a red herring or, or a, you know, something that's a misleading attack.

Jim Bennett [02:23:57] Right.

John Dehlin [02:23:58] But that you're not applying the same level of scholarship and rigor that you're accusing Jeremy of not following. And so your response is just as, as sloppy and, or as avoiding rigor and, and original citations as Jeremy is. And so you're kind of guilty in many ways for the things you're accusing Jeremy of. Even worse because you use a lot, you do a lot of hand wavy like, well, I'm going to give the Book of Abraham a lot of credit because I really got have a strong witness of the Book of Mormon. There's nothing scholarly or you know, that's, that's way worse than what Jeremy is doing. And so are you really holding Jeremy to a standard you're not living up to?

Jim Bennett [02:24:43] How many words do I get in response? For the most part, the reply has to speak for itself on a lot of that. I mean if you want to just say I'm hand waving all throughout. I don't know how I can, what I can say other than no, I'm not, you know what I mean? I can only respond to specifics. We've gone over Kevin Matthew. I don't know that we need to dive into that.

John Dehlin [02:25:12] Definitely not.

Jim Bennett [02:25:12] I mean if you want to dive into Joseph Smith and First Vision, I mean we talked about that extensively.

John Dehlin [02:25:18] Do you think you live up to the scholarly standards that you are accusing Jeremy of not living up to?

Jim Bennett [02:25:24] Yes, I do. I do.

John Dehlin [02:25:26] Your reply is more scholarly.

Jim Bennett [02:25:29] Okay, more scholarly. All right. I mean. I think I read my sources in Places where Jeremy did not read his. So I think in that kind of. I mean, if that's the accusation he said, because he's reading that part where I accused Jeremy and that. That's one of my biggest frustrations with the CES letter is that the sources that he cites aren't saying what he thinks they are saying. I mean, and. And I mean, I read through all of the stinking view of the Hebrews, for heaven's sakes. I want a gold star for that somehow. But. But for me to just sort of say, yes, I stand by my. My impeccable scholarship, I don't know that I'm willing to go that far. I'm sure you will find places in there where I fall short of that. But I do think that in terms of actually reading all of the sources, I do think I reach a higher standard than Jeremy did.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:26:32] And I think. And the only evidence I have of that is that the reply stands for itself. I mean, some of the things on Facebook. One guy just listed all the things in the CES letter and says, well, what about this, this, this, this, and this? And I was like, Well, I wrote 150,000 words, dude. I mean, I mean, do I need to re. Summarize this? I mean, if you have a question, then look at what I actually wrote. And, you know, so, okay, so, okay.

John Dehlin [02:27:03] And we'll just jump through a bunch of these. We don't have to, like, go too deep in any of them. Mike also writes, huge and Bennett are the origin for the idea that Jeremy Reynolds compared Joseph Sears, Stone and Peepstone using to a Ouija board, which, of course, the Fair Mormon group used and incorporated into their videos, and that this is a dishonest distraction from the problem, that Jeremy was not claiming that Joseph Smith used a Ouija board and that. That it was, you know, Jeremy was making just an. Using Ouija board as an example. But somehow that gets twisted by you and then by fair into a claim that Jeremy was. Was never making. Do you have a response to that? Then I have a second part to that question

Jim Bennett [02:27:51] that was deceptive. Jeremy. Jeremy describes the Rock in the Hat

John Dehlin [02:27:54] as a Ouija board, but not literally. Right? Like, well,

Jim Bennett [02:28:01] I remember when I read it in the reply, I'm like, I didn't. I didn't understand why anybody would reference a Ouija board.

John Dehlin [02:28:08] I think it was probably snark. Okay, that's what I'm guessing.

Jim Bennett [02:28:11] That's fine. And my only response to that and my reply was, rock and rocks and hats don't look like Ouija boards. And I put a picture of a Ouija board and I put a picture of a rock and a hat. And so you got snark matched with snark. Was that dishonest of me? I don't think so. Was it rude or snarky? Yeah, probably. Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [02:28:32] I think it. It. I don't think things like that do our sincere readers a service because it real. A lot of this stuff doesn't strike to the heart of the issue. You know what I mean?

Jim Bennett [02:28:43] Well, I don't think one way or the other that strikes to the heart of the issue. But. But should I not have done that? I mean, I genuinely thought he was comparing the rocking the hat to the Ouija board. And I thought that was silly and so I made a silly response to it.

Book of Mormon Translation Methods and Challenges

John Dehlin [02:28:56] Okay, second part of this question. Your answer on the Book of Mormon translation. And you, you said something very similar to this in our interview. And this is Mike summarizing it is. The Book of Mormon is a bona fide miracle with unmistakable marks of antiquity. The that could not have been produced by anyone living in 1830. No other explanation other than the one offered by Joseph Smith can account for its existence. You do not make it disappear by simply repeating a mantra about a rock and a hat. Mike's response is. And many listeners wrote in about this, any serious scholar can tell you exactly why the Book of Mormon could not have been produced by anyone living before 1830. That there are so many things that it brings up that are issues being debated in the 1820s, so many anachronisms that. That co opt artifacts and. And principles and debates and evidences of up upstate New York in the 1820s that literally the only way to explain it is that it's written by somebody in the 1820s versus a book authored in antiquity. So. So. And then to go on and on the one hand talk about scholarship, but then for you to conclude that if. If no one can come up with a theory that explains in detail exactly how the book was created. It must have been an angel that delivered golden plates influenced by God. That's the only reasonable explanation. There's so many people that see that as this egregious jump. L. Ron Hubbard produced a bunch of fictional things that are hard to explain. JRR Tolkien wrote a bunch of amazing books. Can any of us know exactly how any author ever writes any book? So for you to on the one hand talk about scholarship and sort of decry Jeremy's lack of scholarship and then to make this huge leap that it must have been an angel that delivered golden plates and then Joseph looked in a seer stone with a hat without the plates in the room to produce the Book of Mormon because no other explanation makes sense. You jump to the least, to the argument that makes the absolute least sense that angels deliver golden Bibles and that Joseph can. Do you see what I'm saying?

Jim Bennett [02:31:24] Of course. Yeah, of course. I mean, you're certainly not the first person to say that. I mean, I think people have been saying that to Joseph Smith and everybody since then in the context of what I'm talking about with regard to the Book of Mormon. And I think we've covered this rather extensively in our conversations. But the point that I make, the reason I say that is that I'm trying not to repeat myself, but is that Jeremy offers somewhere around five different explanations for where the Book of Mormon came from. And they're all kind of incomplete explanations. And I insist that the fact that you can't come up with a sort of. All right, great. So angels are ridiculous and Joseph's a fraud and the Book of Mormon is nonsense. And you can point to me, to the anachronism, 19th century material and you can point to all of these sorts of things and say, so Joseph's nonsense. And then I come back and say, all right, well then how did the Book of Mormon, how was the Book of Mormon written?

John Dehlin [02:32:36] But my answer is the burden isn't on.

Jim Bennett [02:32:39] The burden is not on the doubter to prove that the Book of Mormon is false. I will 100% agree with you.

John Dehlin [02:32:49] There's not saying that extraordinary claims, extraordinary

Jim Bennett [02:32:51] claims require extraordinary evidence. Extraordinary evidence.

John Dehlin [02:32:54] So don't shift the burden. That's burden shifting, right? That's, it's not our job to figure that out. Like there, there are some plausible theories, all in a, you know, in a court of law, you need as a plausible theory, which is John Hamer's given one. If you take the time to, to listen to Dan Vogel or to watch, we don't have to know exactly how it happened, because if it wasn't angels delivering golden plates, what we know is that Joseph was doing something with some Martin Harris or Oliver Cowdery or who knows who he was doing it with. But we know that there was something going on there. Maybe there was paper in the hat, who knows, maybe somebody, he got a manuscript from somebody else. Maybe it was just a great imagination. But we don't have to come up to you with the answer because they, if, if it wasn't as he claimed, they were secret about it and didn't want people to know how they really came up with it. And so we don't have that information. Just like we don't. We weren't there to watch Joseph Smith have sex with the 14 year old. So we don't have evidence that he didn't have sex.

Jim Bennett [02:33:55] We had evidence that he did.

John Dehlin [02:33:57] No, but you see, what I'm saying is that to put, to do the burden shifting back on us, many people feel that's, that's a disingenuous tactic for you to try and do that.

Jim Bennett [02:34:07] My tactic, okay, the question, the burden is 100% on the believers. We do not have to prove to. You do not have to prove that the Book of Mormon is not true. But it's like with atheists, when you talk to an atheist and they talk about burden shifting and it's like you're trying to shift the burden as to whether I have to prove to you there is no God. I'm asking a different question. Like with the atheist, the question becomes why is there something instead of nothing? Those answers, there isn't a burden necessarily one way or the other. It's how do you answer that question? And where did the Book of Mormon come from? Is a question to which I have yet to see a compelling secular answer. And that's a different question from is the Book of Mormon true? You know, the fact that you can't come up with a secular explanation does not mean automatically that it must have been angels and gold plates. I understand that. I recognize that. My point in my reply to the CES letter is that Jeremy's arguments get weaker because there's so many different ones. I mean, either Joseph stole the Book of Mormon from view of the Hebrews or he stole it from the first book of Napoleon.

John Dehlin [02:35:37] But I don't know a serious critic that believes he plagiarized the view of the Hebrews that, that we talked about this, that's kind of a red herring. But it's more like this. It's more like fan fiction. It's like nobody would expect. You know what fan fiction is, right?

Jim Bennett [02:35:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:35:51] You know what?

Jim Bennett [02:35:52] That I've written some.

John Dehlin [02:35:53] Okay, so like Harry Potter fan fiction.

Jim Bennett [02:35:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:55] If somebody were to come up with Harry Potter fan fiction before J.K. rowling even wrote Harry Potter books, that would be miraculous.

Jim Bennett [02:36:04] Right.

John Dehlin [02:36:05] But if somebody comes up with Harry Potter fan fiction afterwards and incorporates, you know, technology or evidence or historical features that happened after the, the original J.K. rowling books come out, you know, that's a good indication that basically they absorb. They took the founding text, which is the Bible. In Joseph Smith's case, it's the J.K. rowling book in this example. Then they took their own life experiences, other books they read, other things they know about the world, other understandings, and they mix it all up together into a new narrative. And we know that Joseph was a incredible storyteller. His own mom says that, that he could tell stories for hours by the fireplace about Native Americans. We know that he, we know that his dad had a dream much like Lehi's dream. We know that many of the Protestant sermons that Joseph Smith that appear in the Book of Mormon have direct ties or indirect ties to many of the sermons that Joseph would have listened to in the burned over district. We know that many of the passages are copied directly out of versions of the Bible that Joseph Smith would have had in either it's Isaiah or, you know, Third Nephi. Like it. We know it's not. Nobody's claiming that he's plagiarizing the, the view of the Hebrews. And for you to keep making that argument makes that. Well, okay, let's, let's, let's go.

Jim Bennett [02:37:37] In my CEO reply, I was responding to specific arguments.

John Dehlin [02:37:41] That's fair. But let's go deeper now because I don't know a serious person that's claiming that. And I would be curious to really think that Jeremy's really believing that other

Jim Bennett [02:37:49] than to say Fran Brody makes that argument Von Brody makes.

John Dehlin [02:37:53] I don't think anybody's claiming that it's like copy paste. No, but it's, it's more that, that it's what we try to talk about before, which is take the mountain builder myth, take the holy bio. It's what Grant Palmer argued in an insider's view, which I don't know if you've read or not, but it's.

Jim Bennett [02:38:11] I have not read all of it. I've read and I've read the pieces of it that are referenced in the CES letter.

John Dehlin [02:38:16] Okay, well, here's what I'm saying. Take Joseph Smith's own biography of being a younger brother with older brothers, of having a visionary dad, right? Take Joseph's own biography of his dad's dream that becomes Lehi's dream. Take that, Take the Bible, all the Isaiah that he copies from the Bible, all the New Testament that he copies into Third Nephi. Take all the sermons from the burned over district. Take, you know, the mound builder myth and all the Lamanite knee high stuff, Nephite stuff, all the view of the Hebrew stuff, but also the stuff that was in other books like that. It becomes a series of stories. And take Joseph's own fascination with Native American lore and his ability to tell stories and captivate people for hours and hours and hours at a time. Take all that plus months and months and months or even years of preparation and potential manuscript writing, depending on how you interpret what he was doing for those years between 1827 and 1830. Take the potential involvement of Oliver Cowdery, maybe Sidney Rigdon, who knows who some other figures potentially, then you've got. And how awfully grammatically incorrect the poor spelling, the run on sentences. You've got a pretty good sense for how it came together without knowing exactly how it came to get comes together. I think that's. I think that's how anyone who didn't have strong motivations to interpret the evidence as divine is going to come up with it. So. So to jump to it has to be delivered by an angel with golden plates. No, it doesn't have to. It's not as remarkable a book as. As we think because we've been conditioned to think it's remarkable. Can you not, can you. Can you ignore. Can you see that point of view?

Jim Bennett [02:40:10] I can see that point of view and I can still very strongly disagree with it.

John Dehlin [02:40:15] Okay.

Jim Bennett [02:40:17] Because I think the Book of Mormon is extraordinarily remarkable substantively, far beyond sort of this pastiche of all of these kinds of cultural things that are being pulled from all over the place. I think I really firmly believe the Book of Mormon is by far, by far the strongest argument for the authenticity of the Restoration. And my father, when he wrote his book, he did it because he had just read the book. Mormon America. Do you remember that?

John Dehlin [02:40:50] Yep. Ostlers.

Jim Bennett [02:40:51] Ostlers.

John Dehlin [02:40:52] Not Mormon. Ostlers.

Jim Bennett [02:40:54] Yeah, Different. Osterswalkers. There are a lot of ostlers.

John Dehlin [02:40:56] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [02:40:57] But he was just very frustrated at the beginning because they said the Book of Mormon and everybody knows it's just such an obvious fraud and then just kind of moved on from that. And there is such a weight of scholarship that Jim Bennett can't wield necessarily. But there is faithful scholarship, there is substantial. The Book of Mormon bears close reading in a way that a kind of, you know, cut and paste or whatever. You know, this is just stuff that's bubbling around. I mean, the profundity of the Book of Mormon, the consistency of the Book of Mormon, the. I mean, just. You just go through it and. I mean, I don't know that we are equipped here today to sit here, because I get the sense that if we wanted to, we could sit here and hammer out and, you know, we could get into the weeds and we could start hammering around nahom and chiasmus and all these other kinds of things and we could go through that. And I don't know that I'm equipped necessarily to do that, but I am not willing to just sort of concede, oh, yeah, I know the only reason you believe it is because you're conditioned to believe it, because it's really. There's nothing there. Because there's a lot there and there's a lot of scholarship there and a lot of faithful scholarship there that needs to be engaged with and that I don't think a lot of critics are willing to engage with, because I think people equate sort of the Book of Abraham with the Book of Mormon in terms of, well, the Book of Mormon must be just as slight. I mean, that's kind of how Jeremy does it in the CES letter with his three clunkers analogy is like, you got all these clunkers, so of course you can just dismiss the Book of Mormon. It's like you can't. The Book of Mormon stands there, and there is so much there you have to answer for. If you're going to just sort of wave it away as being nothing but a kind of 19th century, you know, great storytelling, whatever it is you want to say about it, there's a lot more meat there. And I, you know, I don't know that I am equipped here. I mean, if you want to have a lengthy kind of discussion as to the kind of meat that we're doing, I'm probably going to come up short. I've read enough of it to find it compelling. But again, but you're right, the bottom line is that the divine experience that comes from the Book of Mormon is the reason why I'm willing to defend it this ardently. If it were the Urantia Book, which is many people point to as a book that's amazing, and they can't really explain how it came to be, I wouldn't be as eager to defend it as I am the Book of Mormon, maybe I should read the Urantia Book and maybe there's something there.

John Dehlin [02:43:46] Or the sealed portion.

Jim Bennett [02:43:47] I've read the sealed portion. I'm okay. I'm good. And again, I don't want to get sued, but. So I will absolutely concede the burden shifting that often takes place and that I'm trying not to add to, but I probably am it is not your job to prove the Book of Mormon isn't true. But my argument is I have yet to find a convincing secular explanation for the Book of Mormon's existence. And even that argument is couched in the fact that a convincing secular explanation for his existence is not the basis for my faith.

John Dehlin [02:44:37] Yeah. As a thank you for that. And, and as a follow up. Go ahead.

Jim Bennett [02:44:45] Are we getting too heated here? Are we, are we still good? You're not mad at me, are you?

John Dehlin [02:44:48] No, no, no, I'm not mad at all. Are you feeling. I hope I'm not doing.

Jim Bennett [02:44:52] You're very passionate and I appreciate that.

John Dehlin [02:44:53] I know some, someone said I was yelling at some point, but, but, but

Jim Bennett [02:44:56] I, I don't want, I mean, I'm

John Dehlin [02:44:58] not mad at all.

Jim Bennett [02:44:59] I, I, I, I, I want you to know how much I respect your position and how reasonable I find your position, but I am not willing to sort of give ground. This is, this is one of the things with Bill Real is that saying, I respect your position was often interpreted as I really agree with your position.

John Dehlin [02:45:18] No, no, I don't even want that. I don't expect it. I don't want.

Jim Bennett [02:45:20] Because I don't, I don't.

John Dehlin [02:45:21] I just want a direct engagement.

Jim Bennett [02:45:24] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:45:24] And we're doing it, and I love it, and I'm super grateful. And just in response, I don't want you to feel disrespected and I don't want you to agree with me. I want to have this meaty, substantive engagement, and I think we're having it. So I'm delighted if my audience thinks I'm being too angry or passionate. I'm not angry. I am passionate. This is the real me. But it's out of respect and gratitude that we're having this conversation. That's how I feel. All right. Okay. So does it going back to kind of the experts thing, like Michael Koh, Right. Did you ever see my interview with Michael Koh?

Jim Bennett [02:46:04] I think I read pieces of a transcript of it.

John Dehlin [02:46:07] Okay. So I go to, you know, Yale University, the world's number one Mesoamerican archaeologist, anthropologist, who's a specialist of the time period that the Book of Mormon, you know, and he just goes through and tells you all the ways that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century document and runs counter to not only listing all the things that are in the Book of Mormon that shouldn't be there, but all the things that aren't in the Book of Mormon that should be there and how any credible archaeologist who's not on the BYU payroll or, you know, funded by the church, is going to just say, this is ridiculous. This is obviously a 19th century document. Do that with Robert Rittner in the Book of Abraham. Right. And then you talk about the majesty of the Book of Mormon and how incredible it is, and Givens does this and others. There aren't really many, if any, scholars that. That take the Book of Mormon. That, you know, it's like Mark Twain.

Jim Bennett [02:47:12] It's like you read it and Chloroform in print.

John Dehlin [02:47:15] Yeah. It's like any of any. Anyone who's not getting all this conditioning and social pressure to think it's amazing reads it and kind of says it's kind of boring or it's tedious or it's not that interesting or. Or it's clearly a fraud. Does it. Like when you just. You and other apologists do this too, they blow off Michael Coe, they attack Michael Coe's character or they dismiss his scholarship or Rittner's a bad guy or, you know, whatever it is, or he's

Jim Bennett [02:47:41] dumb or like Michael Cole. He's the cannibal, right? He's a cannibal. I'm just trying to find some way to, you know, that was a joke. I don't know anything about Michael, and

John Dehlin [02:47:51] I would not have passed away this last year.

Jim Bennett [02:47:53] Oh, I'm very sorry.

John Dehlin [02:47:53] It's okay. It's okay. He's a great guy. I've met him personally. But I just like, when I talk to apologists, I want to hear them go, wow, Michael. Michael Coe is the guy and Robert Ritter is the guy. And if they're saying this, and if they're not just saying this, but if they're saying that all their peers agree with them who aren't Mormon and that their Mormon scholarly peers, like guy like Mostein, like John. John.

Jim Bennett [02:48:23] John Sorensen.

John Dehlin [02:48:24] Sorensen. They're laughing stocks in. In our discipline. I would want apologists to go, yeah, we've got real problems there in the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham clearly have real problems there. But it's like, you guys don't even skip a beat. It's like, nope, here's why. Rah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Givens Ghee. You know, nibbling was incredible. And there's not even like a pause to say it means a lot that the world's best scholars have taken months or years of their lives to look at this very, very deeply and has found it to be ridiculous. Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, others. Instead, you're going to go, it's such a marvelous book. When only Mormons are saying, it's a marvelous book, why can't you guys take pause and acknowledge the significance of those. Of those professionals weighing in? Because that matters. If we're going to ever say the word scholarship, if we're going to ever argue evidence or science, that should give you guys way more pause than you almost. It's just like. It's like a speed bump and then you're off defending. Where's the serious consideration and the respect for scholarship and science?

Jim Bennett [02:49:50] First of all, I want to make sure that people don't think. I think, Michael, I think you're kidding. Well, I'm kidding in the sense.

John Dehlin [02:49:57] I mean, I don't think you meant any disrespect.

Jim Bennett [02:49:59] Well, I would never, ever even consider.

John Dehlin [02:50:02] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [02:50:02] Attacking Michael Coe or Robert. I don't. I don't know either man at all. I don't know anything about either man other than their credentials and other than. And all of those kinds of things. One of the things I said to Jeremy in the first CES letter reply, which was written prior to Robert Rittner's rebuttal, or at least Robert Rittner's rebuttal is not mentioned, is that one of the reasons why people have not rebutted the Book of Abraham is that it's almost beneath contempt in the Egyptological community. 99% of Egyptologists couldn't care less. And I remember reading an exchange between William Hamblin, who was Daniel Peterson's writing partner on a number of things, and he was arguing with a scholar about the Book of Mormon, and the scholar insisted that there was no evidence for the Book of Mormon. And Bill Hamblin, who also just passed away this last year, was pushing back and saying, there is evidence. There's no proof, but there's a difference between proof and evidence. And here's the evidence, and I'm citing evidence. And this scholar kept pushing back and finally said, I've never admitted that there's evidence for the Book of Mormon. That's like admitting that there's evidence for Bigfoot. Taking the Book of Mormon seriously is like taking Bigfoot seriously. And so the idea that you have this huge preponderance of scholars who have engaged with the Book of Mormon and found it to be fraudulent is nonsense. You have this huge preponderance of scholars who think the Book of Mormon is beneath contempt, who think the Book of Mormon is Bigfoot, is nonsense. I mean, none of them are going to waste a second on it now. Michael Coefficient decides to engage with it. And, you know, I'd have to. I cannot. I don't have the credentials, ability, or even the knowledge of what his arguments are to be able to sort of engage or try to debunk what Michael Coe has said. So I will let anything Michael Coe said stand and recognize that, yes, I am not saying that the only reason the Book of Mormon isn't taken seriously by scholarship is the fact that they ignore it. But the fact is they ignore it. So the idea that we have this massive preponderance of scholarly weight against it. Hugh Nibley, dad got criticized for quoting Hugh Nibley on a bunch of things. And somebody says, nobody agrees with Hugh Nibley. And Dad's response was, yeah, but nobody disagrees with him either, because Hugh Nibley is the only one who's looked at these issues and is paying attention to them.

John Dehlin [02:53:01] But let me push back on that. You get this. You get this. Clearly, if you would, if you'd watch the Robert Rittner interview, you'll remember this possibly and co would agree with this that if you're a Mesoamerican archeologist or anthropologist living in the United States teaching from the 60s to the 2000s, you're going to regularly have Mormon students in your class or, you know, other students that reference the Book of Mormon, that reference the Book of Abraham, that you can't be an Egyptologist in the developed world, Europe or Middle east or America, without the Book of Abraham coming up every year. I mean, Egyptologists were weighing in on the Book of Abraham, not just one. Like when the New York Times publishes its first piece of the Book of Abraham in 1912, they get like 8 of the world's leading Egyptologists to. To weigh in. And then I promise you that every decade from then until present, every major Egyptologist is regularly asked, wait, what about this thing Joseph Smith came up with?

Jim Bennett [02:54:12] What?

John Dehlin [02:54:12] So and Smithsonian gets regular letters where Mormons are writing in and saying, is it true that the Smithson uses the Book of Mormon as a. So any anthropologist, archaeologist or Egyptologist worth their weight in salt has a. Has at many points throughout their career been presented with the story of the Book of Abraham and the story of the Book of Mormon. And then they've like probably like opened it up or checked it out or looked at it or, and. And said, either this makes no sense or this is so silly it's not worth my time. So I kind of disagree with your argument that it's only been one or two scholars that have really thought Deeply about this. I think that's just not true. And, and, well, that's just one thing. I think they have. And I think many, many, many Egyptologists have substantiated over over a century what Robert Riddner now claims his. His mentor. His mentor. He was John Geese mentor.

Jim Bennett [02:55:18] Yeah. And he.

John Dehlin [02:55:19] He denounces John Geese scholarship as his mentor. That means something and it should mean something to you and to anyone who defends the Book of Abraham. I think same with co. Same with archeology and anthropology, in my view.

Jim Bennett [02:55:33] Well, and I. I'm reserving my defense for the Book of Mormon more than the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [02:55:37] Okay, well, let me.

Jim Bennett [02:55:38] You have a different circumstance with the Book of Mormon because you don't have the original source material to be able to say his translation is clearly wrong. Because we can match it up in the way that Robert Rittner does with the Joseph Smith papyri.

John Dehlin [02:55:52] But you guys, but you guys do explain away the Book of Abraham with the. With the.

Jim Bennett [02:55:56] You guys.

John Dehlin [02:55:58] Yeah. Apologists use the Catalyst theory. It's like you shift the goalposts. Joseph claimed he was translating the Book of Egypt. Egyptian. He had characters, he had an Alphabet, he had a grammar. And he claimed it was written by the hand of Abraham. He. He claimed that he was making an accurate translation when no one could tell him he wasn't. And then, because all that's been proven wrong, then apologists come up with the Catalyst theory, which moves the goalposts and makes it so it's completely disprovable. And that's really suspect, right? That's super suspect. And I, you know, I think apologists share the Catalyst theory way too casually when they're literally claiming that Joseph Smith didn't even know what he was doing and was misleading everyone in what he was doing. When you say the gift and power of God stuff, those are two different things.

Jim Bennett [02:56:53] Misleading everybody and not knowing what you're doing. You're not misleading somebody.

John Dehlin [02:56:56] He was doing both.

Jim Bennett [02:56:57] Well, he didn't know what he was

John Dehlin [02:56:59] doing, and he was telling people he was translating a document written by Abraham, which wasn't. Neither of those things were true. That's misleading people. Now, whether he was intentionally misleading people, you say he.

Jim Bennett [02:57:09] I think misleading goes to intent.

John Dehlin [02:57:10] Maybe he thought he was doing what. But then you're still misleading people, and that goes to the point of whether you're credible and crazy.

Jim Bennett [02:57:17] Well, right, yeah, we've had that discussion.

John Dehlin [02:57:20] I know, I know. Okay, well, to go to the Book of Mormon, though, you're saying you're not arguing with Michael Coe. But when you make your argument that what's an evidence of the Book of Mormon to you is that there are less anachronisms now than there were at the time Joseph wrote it, that, number one, is arguing with Robert Rittner. Because what he's done is he's taken months and years of his life to show.

Jim Bennett [02:57:44] Rittner is.

John Dehlin [02:57:44] Sorry, sorry, Coe. Coe has taken months and years of his life to show all the ways the Book of Mormon is egregiously anachronistic. And for you to go, I'm encouraged. It's ignoring the very serious and substantive, you know, statements that Coe has made about all the problems anachronistically with the Book of Mormon. And a lot of people really disagree with your argument that there's less anachronisms now than before, because when you look at the list of anachronisms that apologists come up with, it's like, big cities, really. Like, they did. Cortez didn't know that Native Americans could assemble a big city.

Jim Bennett [02:58:29] Cortez might have known. Joseph Smith wouldn't have known.

John Dehlin [02:58:32] Well, people in the 1800s knew that Cortez and the conquistadors had found really big cities, like the things that apologists claim as, like, anachronisms that have been disproven. But even so, there's so many egregious anachronisms that.

Jim Bennett [02:58:53] That to.

John Dehlin [02:58:54] To sort of say that it'd be like. It'd be like if Joseph Smith had Lamanites talking on a cell phone or Abraham Lincoln using a cell phone. That is so discrediting. The. The anachronisms in the Book of Mormon are so discrediting. Steels, horses, swords, the DNA evidence. There's the New Testament, Deutero, Isaiah. You kind of wave all that off and say, I'm not going to let any of that bug me. And in a way, you're waving off very serious scholarship by world experts. And I just wonder if you realize you're kind of doing that and that it has a net effect of being very deceptive, because it's like, well, Jim Smart. You know, John Sorensen's smart. So we're going to ignore Michael Coe and. And kind of blow off those really substantive, meaningful.

Jim Bennett [02:59:44] Why am I. Why am I being deceptive? I mean, do you think I'm lying?

John Dehlin [02:59:48] No, no, no, no, no. I don't think you're lying.

Jim Bennett [02:59:49] I mean, because you said. You said that it's misleading people.

John Dehlin [02:59:53] It's what people should be saying by all science and Credible scholarship is, the Book of Mormon has very serious problems. If we're going to claim that it's a night, that it's an ancient document. And even Richard Bushman in his latest interview with Peggy Fletcher Stack says that by all accounts the Book of Mormon really screams out to be a 19th century document. So for anyone to sort of claim, I really think there's a lot of credibility to the fact that it's ancient is literally like, you know, some, some claimed manuscript where Abraham Lincoln is talking on a cell phone and going, well, I'm, I'm so inspired by the talk that this manuscript seems to be attributing Abraham Lincoln to that. The fact that it also attributes him to having a cell phone. I'm going to just dismiss that. That's not a problem. It's very misleading to people who are really trying or wanting to get to the truth of the matter by you saying things like, oh, well, there's a couple anachronisms that have been dismissed since then. So anachronisms aren't really a problem. Do you know what I'm saying?

Anachronisms in the Book of Mormon

Jim Bennett [03:01:05] Yeah, I know what you're saying and you're saying an awful lot. And so, I mean, distill this the

John Dehlin [03:01:14] spirit of what I'm saying.

Jim Bennett [03:01:15] Oh, I get the spirit of what you're saying, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm conceding all those points. I'm not conceding the idea that the Book of Mormon is as ridiculous as Abraham Lincoln. Do you think there were horses about the horses before?

John Dehlin [03:01:32] But do you think there were horses in Central. What you seem to suggest is maybe we'll find remnants of horses. There's no serious scientist that thinks there were horses in the Americas during the time of the Book of Mormon. That should be a real big problem. And you're just like, well, I don't know, maybe we'll find them. You know what I'm saying? You're not conceding that that's a big problem. Or steel swords or steel. Right. You know, those are problems.

Jim Bennett [03:02:00] I'm just trying to figure out which. So which one of those do you want? Which rabbit hole do you want to dive down? Do you want to go down a steel. Do you want to go down horses? Do you want to go. Because, I mean in terms of all of these.

John Dehlin [03:02:10] The aggregate.

Jim Bennett [03:02:11] I want you to address the aggregate because the aggregate.

John Dehlin [03:02:14] The aggregate.

Jim Bennett [03:02:14] The, the aggregate is that when respects

John Dehlin [03:02:18] science and evidence, what's the aggregate, the respects, the scholars and the prevailing understanding, you know, And Michael Coe. What's. What's.

Jim Bennett [03:02:28] I haven't read Michael Coe. That's the thing. I.

John Dehlin [03:02:31] So should you be defending anachronisms without understanding the world leading?

Jim Bennett [03:02:35] I mean, maybe. I mean, I mean, if. If.

John Dehlin [03:02:39] Should you even be opining about anachronisms without being really familiar?

Jim Bennett [03:02:43] Well,

John Dehlin [03:02:48] I don't. I mean, I don't mean to be disrespectful. Like,

Jim Bennett [03:02:56] Should I be opining. I mean, do I.

John Dehlin [03:02:58] Should you be weighing in on the question of anachronisms without Coke?

Jim Bennett [03:03:03] Nobody should. Should be taking what I have to say on these subjects as being. Authoritative in any respect. Nobody should take what I have to say about how I've sort of wrestled with these ideas as anything but a lay member of the church. Not anybody with any kind of. I don't have any degree in anything other than. I have a. I have a theater degree. I have a master's of Business administration, you know, so if you want to run a live theater in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which I did for five years, I have a lot to say that's authoritative. So. So, I mean, I mean, just. Just the sheer weight and passion of that question just leaves me exhausted as to, okay, I mean, how do I. How what area do I approach? And, you know, and I am sure you could come back at me with something Michael Coe has said that I haven't thought of, and all I can do is throw up my hands. And so. And I think maybe this is one of the reasons why people, you know, do I have. But then it's question, should I even be opining about this? I think I should be. I should be opining about this, and I certainly should be taking from this an impetus. I mean, because now one of the things I want to do is as soon as we're done, I want to run out and read Michael Coe. And I'm like, I got to read this because you're talking to me about something that I'm not equipped to respond to you about. And I don't want you to summarize it right now or anything like that. So. So just sort of the sheer weight of that question, the sheer volume, the sheer size of it and the framing of it with all of the details about it's this ridiculous and all these people and this, that and the other. I'm not willing to concede the premise. Maybe I should be willing to concede the premise because I'm not informed enough to be able to give you an informed reply that would refute the premise, but I am not in my experience as a lay member of the church, talking to academics who find out I'm a Mormon and we talk about the Book of Mormon, There is a cursory familiarity with the Book of Mormon, but I have yet to meet anybody that has engaged in a serious study in the Book of Mormon who is not engaging with it from a religious standpoint. That's not an investigator of the church or that's not, you know, I've yet to meet an academic or have a conversation with an academic that's engaged in any kind of voluminous. I mean, who's engaged with the Book of Mormon and, you know, the Bill Hamblin experience of. I consider the Book of Mormon to be like Bigfoot. Anecdotally, that's been my experience in seeing people engage with it. That was my father's experience when he read the book by the Oslers. Of course, it's nonsense. Of course it's this. And it's not dishonest on the part of the academics. It's, you know, if you come to me with evidence of Bigfoot, my eyes are gonna glaze over, because I don't really consider Bigfoot to be a plausible sort of thing. Unless you're Spencer Kimball and you want to tell me Cain is Bigfoot, and then I'm gonna be embarrassed. But that's a whole. You know that whole story, don't you? But anyway, you know, I think the extent to which scholarship has engaged with the Book of Mormon. I think you have overstated that with all respect. To some degree, I don't think there has been a massive scholarly engagement with the Book of Mormon. I think there have been a handful of very thoughtful scholars, Michael Coe, likely one of them, who have. And certainly we ought to be taking their conclusions seriously. I want to go and read Michael Coe and take him serious.

John Dehlin [03:07:22] You know about Thomas Ferguson?

Jim Bennett [03:07:24] Yes. Thomas Ferguson is mentioned extensively in Jeremy's CES letter reply. My reply. And it's in Jeremy CES letter. And Michael Ferguson is not a. Thomas. Thomas, Sorry. Thomas Ferguson is not a scholar. Thomas Ferguson is an attorney who had an interest in archaeology and was going around asking native residents if they had any figurines of horses. John Sorensen had an experience with Thomas Ferguson. That Thomas Ferguson does not come away charitably. But the idea that Thomas Ferguson.

John Dehlin [03:07:57] Are you saying an apologist attacked a critic? Is that what you're saying?

Jim Bennett [03:08:03] No, I'm not. Because what John Sorensen says about Thomas Ferguson is. He describes Thomas Ferguson's academic attempt to prove the Book of Mormon and describes why it was deficient and why it fell short. This is one of the things, if you actually get into the CES letter and in my reply is that Jeremy is citing all of these scientists, one of whom is Kevin Matthew, the musician and one of whom is an animator of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes animated series and one of whom is Thomas Ferguson, who is an attorney, who is not a, an archaeologist who is leaned on to find archaeological evidence. You go through that and you go, these are the guys you're saying have the credentials. These are the scientific geniuses. The people that are cited in the CES letter do not rise to either Robert Rittner or Michael Coe's level of credibility academically. So you know, I, I, I, I, I, I think you can, we, we can, I can come up short trying to argue specific academic arguments that I am not qualified.

John Dehlin [03:09:14] Here's what I would love. Here's what I think should happen. I think that what should happen is anybody who's trying to answer faithful Mormons questions about anachronisms, if they're being honest and fair, should say something to the effect of. One of the, one of the problems that, that, that apparently exists in the Book of Mormon is that Joseph Smith included all these things that we know didn't exist during the time of, of the Native Americans in Missile in Mesoamerica and instead he included a bunch of stuff that shouldn't have been there.

Jim Bennett [03:09:53] Right, But I don't think that's really

John Dehlin [03:09:55] credible scholars, really credible scholars have reviewed the evidence and found that the Book of Mormon is deeply problematic because of these anachronisms. Now I still believe anyway, but because really serious scholars and you can insert the same type of language with Robert Rittner in the Book of Abraham. Right? And the 1920, 1912 Egyptologists, you, if you're, if you're wanting, if you're wanting to give the most fair and credible chance at reviewers to, to have the full picture, you would give those sorts of disclaimers. Instead of like finding some things to attack Jeremy about or to respond to this letter about, you would say there are real problematic, credible anachronisms in the case of the Book of Mormon or egregious translation errors in the case of the Book of Abraham. And they're all credible and scholars, credible, world class credible scholars back that up. You do that and then you say but I still believe in here, here's how. And I just wish, I wish that apologists would do that. Well, because that would be honest.

Jim Bennett [03:11:09] Well, okay, but I'm not fair. I'm not going to do that. And I think I'm going to be honest because I think what you have just described is not my position.

John Dehlin [03:11:21] My position only because you haven't taken the time to listen to Michael Coe's interviews and understand Michael Coe's arguments.

Jim Bennett [03:11:28] Well, I don't know if Michael Coe is going to put me over the top in terms of any of the kind of discussions or arguments I've had about this kind of thing. Thomas Ferguson didn't.

John Dehlin [03:11:43] That's no comparison.

Jim Bennett [03:11:43] Well, okay, but the point is, I certainly think that we should say there are anachronisms in the Book of Mormon that we cannot explain. And I will say that. And that is honest. But to say that we also have to say, and Joseph put them in there because they were part of his environment. And this. That to sort of arrive at the Book of Mormon. Absolutely. Because of these anachronisms. The Book of Mormon absolutely was a. Is a fictional creation of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [03:12:14] I didn't get there. No, I said. And still. I still believe. And here's how that's fine. Well, to acknowledge the level of scholarship that acknowledges substantive, significant problems which. Which there are.

Jim Bennett [03:12:30] Well, we disagree. And I guess I have to read Michael Coe to know how.

John Dehlin [03:12:33] Well, listen to my interview with him.

Jim Bennett [03:12:35] I will go listen to your interview with him.

John Dehlin [03:12:36] My first interview with him.

Jim Bennett [03:12:37] Okay, I can do that. I think we disagree as to what the level of scholarship is, what the level of engagement is, and how problematic the anachronisms are.

John Dehlin [03:12:51] So he's Yale's foremost Mesoamerican anthropologist.

Jim Bennett [03:12:55] I have to go. I mean, I have to go and engage the actual argument rather than. I mean, I can take your word for it, but I can also say that I have engaged in a lifelong study of the Book of Mormon that has included addressing the anachronisms. And so far I have not been troubled enough to feel like these are something which require me to reject the Book of Mormon. If Michael Coe reaches that level for me, I will let you know. But I don't know that it's productive for you to sit here and tell me. Well, you will. Once you read Michael Coe, if you are honest, you will. You'll reject the Book of Mormon. I think that unlikely, but I'm more than happy to look at it. And I would push back on the idea that I'm being dishonest or deceptive or disingenuous.

John Dehlin [03:13:52] I'm not claiming that you are intentionally being deceptive or dishonest. I'm claiming that providing responses that don't take the best available information and the best scholarship we have into account ends up misleading people who are seeking for sincere answers.

Jim Bennett [03:14:10] Well, Michael Coe doesn't show up in the CES letter. And so the response that I gave in the CES letter took Jeremy where he was and engaged with Jeremy in terms of the arguments he was making, which were Thomas Ferguson level arguments and not Michael Coe level arguments. So, you know, I am happy to engage. I think it's important. I would very much like to see any member of the church engage with Michael Coe and engage with the best possible scholarship on the subject. I don't. I think the foundation for the Book of Mormon's authenticity can survive that kind of scrutiny. I mean, the way you have framed this here in our discussion is it's so clearly a house of cards that the minute you see anything substantive, then you're going to have to see the whole thing fall. And my experience of the Book of Mormon in my intellectual engagement with the Book of Mormon, not just sort of my emotional or spiritual engagement, my intellectual engagement with the Book of Mormon suggests that that's not something I'm worried about and I could be absolutely wrong. And I have to read Michael Cohen, find out.

John Dehlin [03:15:28] Are you exhausted? How are you feeling?

Jim Bennett [03:15:30] Oh, I have a dry mouth. We have little white spots gathering in the edge of my mouth, so. Well, I want you to know how much I enjoy this. That may sound weird to somebody because

John Dehlin [03:15:44] listening to that, we're probably making a lot of people really uncomfortable because most people I meet are really uncomfortable with this intense level of discourse and they interpret it as anger or mean spiritedness or.

Jim Bennett [03:15:56] I don't feel you've been mean at all. I mean, I think you're asking very good and very hard questions and which I may or may not be answering even close to adequately. But I. I just enjoy the conversation. And you know what? I would really encourage other people to have these kinds of conversations with you or with anybody else and try to find a way to do it that you can enjoy rather than do it in a way that you feel like you're going to walk away and have hard feelings or be frustrated by it. So, anyway, well, are we out of time for this particular segment or.

Requests for Mormon Apologists

John Dehlin [03:16:39] No, I'm just wondering whether I've exhausted you and whether I've exhausted our listening audience because I have pages more of questions and criticisms. A lot of them are covering ground we've already covered.

Jim Bennett [03:16:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:16:51] And then some of them aren't. But I mean, I wonder how much value they're going to provide and how much further they're going to take us. You know what I'm saying?

Jim Bennett [03:17:01] Yeah. Is there anything that stands out that's something we haven't covered?

John Dehlin [03:17:08] I mean, I think. I think, honestly, I think what we should probably do for now, what I. What I put together are a list of requests that I would have for apologists.

Jim Bennett [03:17:26] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:17:27] That I think would help, because what. What I try to do is I try to think about how many. How many decades have we been having these conversations and how far have we gotten? I think we've been having these conversations for literally over a century, depending on how you look at it. And how far have we gotten? We've. We've done okay, but there's been more. Way, more heat than light.

Jim Bennett [03:17:52] Right.

John Dehlin [03:17:52] And so if I ask myself if this is kind of. This type of discourse is a breakthrough, and if maybe you had a slightly better experience with me than you did with Bill, and Bill, in your experience, was better than what people had seen before, that if we're inching towards an improved dialogue, what I wanted to ask myself, and maybe we'll have you back to answer more detailed questions. But we've gone three and a half hours, and I think that's enough for one sit down for a given day. So I reserve the right to have you back for another discussion. But what I wanted to maybe end with today is I put together a list of requests that I would have for apologists. I want to run them by you. And then I put together a starter list of requests that I imagine you might have for critics.

Jim Bennett [03:18:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:37] And then I want to give you a chance to expand on that because it's a way of trying to end in a constructive way and to end in a way that isn't so intense and is heated as it may have felt. So is that okay if we that way today?

Jim Bennett [03:18:50] Sure, let's do it.

John Dehlin [03:18:51] And then we may come back. All right. So here are some of my requests, and some of them you're already exceeding expectations. The first request I have for apologists is that they engage. I'm super upset, disappointed with Richard Bushman, with Terrell and Fiona Givens, with all the apologists that refuse to go out from behind their keyboards or their private, fair Mormon conferences or their blogs, Daniel Peterson. And engage with critics, with scholars in really meaningful, substantive ways. I think I applaud you for being willing to engage. And I. And I would like to see more apologists engaging more directly because it's hard to hate up close and per. I applaud you for pulling Jeremy into a, a burger shop and having a cheeseburger with Jeremy. I don't think Jeremy's ever going to forget that. And I think you made a friend in him until his dying day. And I think there's a lot of people that respect you. Don't, don't agree with one thing you've said, but it, but it. But adore you immensely for your being willing to engage.

Jim Bennett [03:20:06] That's very kind.

John Dehlin [03:20:07] And so my request, number one, is that more, more apologists are willing to engage directly with substantive scholars and critics. Any response to that? Other than you're a living example of it?

Jim Bennett [03:20:19] Oh, I, you're very, you're very kind and I would very much like to see more people engage.

John Dehlin [03:20:26] Okay. Number two, get rid of the ad hominem of, of attacking the person, their integrity, their motives. I agree with you. It's cowardly and ineffective. You've already made that point. Anything else you want to say about that?

Jim Bennett [03:20:41] Nope. Agree with 100%.

John Dehlin [03:20:43] Okay. A third is that sometimes there is outright dishonesty. And I'm going to make a claim. I'm not going to ask you to go on the record in this regard. But for example, Fair Mormon or Daniel Peterson or Book of Mormon Central or you know, more Good foundation or the Interpreter foundation claiming that they don't receive money from the Mormon Church when we know that either directly or very directly through indirect means they are being supported by the Mormon Church. That's just outright dishonest. And we, I don't, I really think it's bad when, when Christians, when Mormon apologists are just outright, blatantly dishonest or deceptive.

Jim Bennett [03:21:31] I think it's wrong when people are dishonest or deceptive. I, I'll leave it at that.

John Dehlin [03:21:36] Yeah. So, okay, these are softballs. The fourth thing I want to say, and we've really covered this today, I want to see apologists respect the experts. If someone is. It's hard because the truth is most scholars who aren't Mormon are going to see the Book of Mormon as a laughingstock and they do see the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists do see the Book of Abraham as a laughingstock, and I think that's a reasonable position. And so you're not going to get legions of scholars spending years of their careers because that's not going to advance them in their careers. All of their peers are going to say, why are you spending time on, on superstition, on stuff created by a huckster in the early 1900s, you know, so like. But when they do, when someone like Rittner or co does spend months or years of their lives engaging, I don't want to see apologists just come up with the Catalyst theory and then dismiss credible concerns like there should be always an acknowledgement and a highlighting that super credible serious scholars took the time and seriousness to weigh in and on behalf of their field. This is what they said. And we should all be sober in our consideration of these issues given that these serious scholars have given us the courtesy of taking the time to weigh in. And I would like to see you and others do that more than just create these sort of glib responses about anachronisms or, or the Catalyst theory that really dismisses out hand something that things that should be taken very seriously. Right. Well, with a lot of respect,

Jim Bennett [03:23:32] we've talked about Rick, we've talked about co.

John Dehlin [03:23:34] You get my point?

Jim Bennett [03:23:35] Yeah, I think the beginning of your point actually is part of my point, which is that, you know, they're not spending years and weeks and months of their life because it's a laughing stock, because it's silly. It's. It's beneath contempt. So I am not, I am not willing to concede to you that the Book of Mormon is just patently ridiculous and obviously ridiculous.

John Dehlin [03:23:57] I'm not asking you.

Jim Bennett [03:23:58] So. So I do think we need to engage with thoughtful scholarship and thoughtful scholars and we certainly need to make sure that we're not attacking them personally or ad hominem, any of that stuff.

John Dehlin [03:24:10] And I would just add or dismissing or ignoring the them that when you talk about anachronisms, now that you know, now that you've been warned that you don't talk about anachronisms ever again without reading, without getting a. Spending a couple hours listening to my podcast, hearing his arguments. And then when you talk to faithful people about anachronisms, you say probably the world's leading Mesoamerican anthropologist, archaeologists from Yale says that there are deep problems with the Book of Mormon and there's. He has really good and fair points speaking to questioners in that way so that they know it's not just a hand wavy dismissal, but there are credible problems. You know what I'm saying?

Jim Bennett [03:24:56] I know what you're saying.

John Dehlin [03:24:57] Is that fair for me to hope apologists will do that in the future or is that too much to ask?

Jim Bennett [03:25:04] It's fair to hope that apologists will engage with scholars in the future. I think it's too much to ask to have them sort of lead or include, not lead.

John Dehlin [03:25:15] Include.

Jim Bennett [03:25:16] Okay, incorporate, incorporate. I think it's important that we engage with scholars and we engage with the best scholarship.

John Dehlin [03:25:26] But that feels a little bit invasive because I'm saying it's amazing.

Jim Bennett [03:25:29] Because I don't want to concede that what Michael Coe had to say.

John Dehlin [03:25:33] Or Rittner. Or Rittner.

Jim Bennett [03:25:35] Well, and I'm again trying to separate the Book of Mormon from the Book of Abraham because I really think that they are different problems and different challenges. And I think the argument for the Book of Mormon is far stronger than the argument for the Book of Abraham. So that's why I'm bristling when you're equating the two. But I'm not willing to just sort of concede, well, yeah, Michael Coe has just demonstrated beyond all doubt. That's not what I'm asking Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:26:01] We're not connecting here. And I'm going to push the point because I want to just get really clear, hypothetical. Someone comes to you and says, I need your help, Jim. I'm having a faith crisis. My son's having a faith crisis. He sees all these anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. I think it would be fundamentally dishonest for you now that you've been told about Michael Ko, for you, A, not to go learn about Michael Coe and really seriously consider his arguments. And then B, when you're answering that prospective missionary or that adult that's got these serious questions, for you to not at least say in whatever response you give. There are super credible scholars that are, that have reviewed this deeply and have found significant problems with the core truth claims of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. And for you to incorporate those into whatever apologetic answers you give people. I'm asking you to consider doing that.

Jim Bennett [03:26:57] I will consider doing that.

John Dehlin [03:26:59] Why? Why are you not saying?

Jim Bennett [03:27:01] Because I haven't read Michael Coe yet.

John Dehlin [03:27:02] No, but I'm saying.

Jim Bennett [03:27:03] Okay, that's why, I mean, because, because I don't know if your characterization of Michael Coe, if I will agree with it, if I will agree that Michael Coe is, is. I mean, I, I.

Acknowledging Bias and Evaluating Expert Arguments

John Dehlin [03:27:18] Okay, let's say that you, you, you listen to the Michael Ko interview and you come to agree that he is a Yale anthropologist, he is an expert, and his arguments are super credible and make perfect sense.

Jim Bennett [03:27:30] If I find Michael Cohes argument super credible. And I, and I, you know, I think I would be dishonest if I did not acknowledge that.

John Dehlin [03:27:39] When you're giving answers to people, giving answers to people about anachronism.

Jim Bennett [03:27:42] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:27:44] And that's just. I would like to see apologists do that because it just feels fair and respectful to science.

Jim Bennett [03:27:48] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:27:51] I know I'm wearing you.

Jim Bennett [03:27:52] No, that's fine.

John Dehlin [03:27:53] You're a good sport. Do you like. Do you understand why people accuse you? This is a question that. Then I'm going to follow up with the request. Do you understand why people accuse you of somersaults and twisting?

Jim Bennett [03:28:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:28:09] Why, why do they do that?

Jim Bennett [03:28:13] I think they do that because they think that the, the, The evidence against the church is just so clear on its face that I must be engaged in some kind of difficult somersault because I'm not willing to say the evidence against the church is so clear on its face. I'm willing to say no. I think the evidence demonstrates that the church. I think the evidence for the church is strong. And I. None of the things you're saying to me are disruptive to my faith. And I think they say the only way you can do that is by ignoring reality. And I don't think that's what I'm doing. And I think that if you see the totality of what I've written in my 150,000 words and in the hours I've spent with you and with Bill Real and with others, you know, I, I don't think anybody can credibly accuse me a, of not knowing what the issues are or of ignoring them. You know, I got a message from one guy who was like, how can you ignore the CES letter? How can you still be the church and ignore the CES letter?

John Dehlin [03:29:28] Like, dude, 10,000 words.

Jim Bennett [03:29:30] What do I have to do to prove I haven't ignored the CES letter? I mean, you can certainly disagree with what I have said about the ces, but you can't say I've ignored it. Right. And you can't say, you can't say that I've just, you know, I'm walking around with my eyes closed.

John Dehlin [03:29:45] So that's. Let me, let me. Because I don't like us to get off on red herrings.

Jim Bennett [03:29:49] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:29:50] Or strawman. I'm not arguing that you've ignored the CS letter. You've engaged with it much more than I have. But what I am, what I think people mean when they talk about you being evasive or somersaults or back bends or gymnastics, you know, mental gymnastics. Mental gymnastics. What they're saying is, is if you look at the totality, Joseph smith freaking married 14 year olds. He married other men's wives. He said he was translating a document in that he didn't translate in that, didn't say anything that he said the Book of Mormon has all these problems. He lied about this, that and the other. There are all sorts of really serious problems. And you and so many other apologists are willing to go to such lengths redefining what the word translation means, creating a catalyst theory that makes it so Joseph doesn't have to have any responsibility for what he says, and that even claims that he didn't even know what he was really fundamentally doing. Like the lengths and breadths that apologists will go to, to explain away if I, you know, and this has been alluded to before, if I had propositioned your daughter or your wife, you would either at, at best try and get me in jail, at worst you might kill me. You're willing to extend to Joseph Smith so much forgiveness, so much empathy, so much understanding, so many excuses that it feels just like. It's called motivated reasoning. Right? It's a, it's a logical fallacy. It's, it's basically saying I will find any possible excuse to justify this outrageous behavior that has so many different domains of problems, from the treasure digging and the peep stones to the

Jim Bennett [03:31:42] hat in

John Dehlin [03:31:43] the translation, the Book of Mormon and the anachronisms and the Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith translation and the Adam Clark commentary and the polygamy and the Kirtland Banks scandal. And like there are so many really serious significant problems. But, but there, but, but what apologists end up doing is just making, you know, again, redefining what the word is is so that they can make it all somehow work. And again, it ties to the binding forces of Mormonism. And so my request to apologists is that they acknowledge just up front, I've got all these, I've got all these forces that, that lead me to make these interpretations. And I think I owe it to you, missionary who's considering going on a mission, woman who's considering leaving your husband because he lost his faith. As I give you these apologetic excuses or explanations, I owe you a disclaimer that I have all these biases and, and reasons for my answers that by so many accounts seem strained and, and outrageous. Do you, do you at all understand kind of what I'm getting out there? I know it's a super long and unreasonable question.

Jim Bennett [03:33:03] I think I do understand what you're getting at and it makes me very sad because it makes me feel like we've got a longer way to go than, than we may be.

John Dehlin [03:33:14] Well, I don't want you to be Sad. And I'm not trying to make you sad.

Jim Bennett [03:33:17] No, because. Because the way you have framed that, the way you have outlined that. Is, is so binary in terms of, I mean, look at all this and look at this and look at this and look at this. And, and this is the only way you can look at this. And this is the only way you can look at that. And if you don't look at it this way, you're engaged in mental gymnastics because the only way you can look at polygamy is look at Joseph Smith, you know, being some kind of a sexual predator. And the only way you can look at, I mean, you're, you're shaking your head.

John Dehlin [03:33:53] So let me restate. Let me restate. Well, when you, when you give an answer to try and resolve someone's concerns, I'm saying apologists to begin with. I'm going to give you a bunch of explanations for a bunch of difficult things. But I want to begin by claiming my biases, which is that I would disappoint a lot of people and there would be a lot of stress and strain in my life if I were to leave and abandon these beliefs. And so there are all sorts of benefits I get from staying in and bad things that would happen to me if I stopped believing. And I acknowledge up front that that deeply influences these answers. I'm going to be giving you today some sort of just disclaimer. A disclaimer about biases. Look, what a scientist. When a. Let's say that there's a scientist that's funded by an agency. Right. Let's say that McDonald's hires a scientist to study the health benefits of French fries.

Jim Bennett [03:34:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:34:55] It's ethical for the scientists to say I'm funded by McDonald's. Right. And I know that's an extreme example, but shouldn't apologists start when they give answers with a disclaimer of all the biases that would, that would influence the answers that they give people with sincere questions, or is that just unreasonable to ask?

Jim Bennett [03:35:18] It's not unreasonable to ask.

John Dehlin [03:35:19] Do you understand the spirit of the question?

Jim Bennett [03:35:21] I think I understand the spirit of the question, but I want to go back to the prior issue because this goes back to the mental gymnastics and this goes back to everything else because, you know, and again, qualifying this, I don't have an academic sort of background to. I don't have any kind of an academic background that gives me any credibility academically as a scholar, and I don't claim to be a scholar. I made statements in the reply that we've been over that. I look at the totality of the church and of the history of the church and of the scriptures of the church and the production of the scriptures of the church, including plural marriage and including all of those kinds of things, and my first reaction to it is one of awe for the faith and the sacrifice and the beauty of what I am seeing that is also marred by human error and human weakness and sin and difficulty. That is part of the human experience. But when you started to frame that whole question and you start to say, when you're talking to somebody who has faith and you're trying to tell them,

John Dehlin [03:36:44] no,

Jim Bennett [03:36:46] the Book of Mormon has so many problems, the Book of Abraham has so many problems, and polygamy has so many problems, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm engaged in mental gymnastics. If I can't look at that and just acknowledge that's a mess, and I need to run as far away from that as possible, because I look at that and I really believe, and I wouldn't be having this conversation with you if I didn't believe this, that you look at the totality of the church and you look at the totality of the ministry of Joseph Smith and even Brigham Young and all. All of the people who have followed since, and even the 15 men who stand in the highest offices of the Church today. And you look at all of that, and you look at it with your eyes wide open, and you look at all of it, warts and all, you're looking at something beautiful, that on the whole, you are looking at something that is majestic and eternal and glorious and God's hand is in it. And I firmly believe that. So, you know, you want to come back at me and tell me I'm engaging in mental gymnastics because I can.

John Dehlin [03:37:52] I'm not saying that.

Jim Bennett [03:37:53] No, you're not saying that. Plenty of people say that.

John Dehlin [03:37:55] I don't think that, actually.

Jim Bennett [03:37:56] Well, I appreciate, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But I mean, you look at that and I just. I just. I mean. And this goes to where we're going to get, which is what the. I think the critics should do. You got to deal with me at face value. You got to take me at face value. I'm not lying when I say that. And you can look at me and go, you must be nuts. You must be stupid. I have no idea how you could even say that, but that's where I am, and I'm there. And the reason I want to engage is I want the rest of the church to be There, too. And I think the reason people won't engage with you, you, or won't engage with critics is they're terrified. They're terrified of hearing a question where they don't have an appropriate answer for it, or they're terrified of looking stupid, or they're terrified of just being embarrassed. But I think the reason why I have faith that this church is going to continue and going to survive and even thrive even with all of these problems, is that that faith is not an ephemeral sort of product of conditioning that's going to just vanish and dry up and go away. I think people, you know, people encounter God in this church in a way that is significant and lasting, and that's going to continue regardless of how good my answers are or how bad my answers are or any other apologist or anything else. It's that old cliche that they talk about. The church has to be true or the missionaries would have ruined it long ago. The church, to me, human imperfection, has done everything it possibly can to ruin this church. And it hasn't ruined this church. And I don't believe it will ruin this church, because I believe this church has a glorious destiny and I want to be a part of it and I want to be helpful to it. And I am an imperfect vehicle, an imperfect messenger, and all I can do, I think the best way I can help the church is not say, well, I have the answers, and this is the answer. I have this faith that I have who I am. This is a real thing. I'm not going away. You know, when Jeremy first wrote me an email, he's like, your shelf is sagging. I could hear when you're talking, your shelf is sagging. My shelf isn't sagging. My shelf has sagged. At times in my life, I have wrestled some of the questions that were asked, what would it take to get you to doubt? And I look at that and I go, have you not listened to anything I've said? There have been times in my life where. I mean, in 2015, I was this close to just walking away from the church entirely. I wrestle with doubt. I will continue to wrestle with doubt, but I am firmly convinced, and you can tell me that it's because I'm irrational and that I'm. But I am firmly convinced that this is where God wants me and this is where I can do the most good. And I'm not going anywhere unless they kick me out because I talked to John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [03:41:23] So anyway, which they won't.

Jim Bennett [03:41:27] Well, I hope not.

John Dehlin [03:41:29] All right, well, I, I'm going to, I'm going to leave a lot of other questions to another day because that was such a beautiful answer. I, I feel like all the torture and pain I put you through was worth it because it produced such a beautiful response. I think that that response you just gave me was powerful and it was beautiful and I think it was sincere and I think it was good hearted and it was believable. And I think it was probably the most credible thing of all our time together was that, you know what I mean? And I loved it. And it doesn't offend me if it makes someone believe I'm. If, and if that makes, if their belief makes them happy, I don't mind. And I just, I appreciate the sincerity and the passion and the conviction and the honesty of that response.

Closing Reflections, Mutual Respect, and Final Thoughts

Jim Bennett [03:42:19] Well, well, then I want to say nice things about you if you're going to say nice things about me, but I really, I can't express in words strong enough how much I have enjoyed this exchange. You know, when we were going to do another one, when we said we're going to do another one, I've been looking forward to it ever since the last time. It's just. I can't wait to get back in there and have this conversation because I love having these conversations and you have made it so easy to have these kinds of conversations because it is very clear to me that, that you are, that your goal is to do good, that you are trying to do good and that you are trying to help people and bless their lives and, and you know, you see your role in doing that, I think maybe differently than I see my role in doing that, but I don't. I have told people who've asked me about this how surprised I am by how delightful you have been in these exchanges. And I just wanted to get that out there and let you know that I really have genuinely enjoyed this. Even when, and maybe even, especially when you have gotten as passionate and all of that, because the fact that you're even willing to do that with me and engage me that way shows respect to me and I have felt that and I am grateful for that. So I would hope that anybody watching this in or out of the church would, if they have the opportunity to engage with you, I hope they would jump at the chance because I think there is value in that. Even when, or maybe even, especially when the people who are engaging with you don't agree with me and you all come to different conclusions, the conversation itself has value and has power and we're not having these conversations in the church, out of the church. We're not having the kind of respectful, passionate, you know, conversations about things that matter and we need to have more of them. And I, and I applaud you to no end for your willingness to have them and for, and for those that you have had and for the conversation I've been able to have with you.

John Dehlin [03:44:50] Thank you. Thank you, Jim. And I just want to echo some, two things you said for me. Some people are like, John, you got too angry, you raised your voice too much. You, you know, like, for me, the most respect I can pay somebody is to give them my toughest questions because it shows that I think you're strong, I think you're sincere, I think you can take it. And it shows my time, it shows my passion, and it shows a level of respect. It shows respect in my mind, bringing you my most passionate, hardest questions. Number one, shows my deepest level of respect for you. If it's a family member, let's say my mom or dad or. I'm not going to bring them my hardest questions because I don't. Maybe I worry they're not going to be able to take it, or maybe they haven't thought about it enough or, you know, so. Or maybe it'll make them sad or maybe it'll take their faith away. You know what I mean? And I'm. No, no, no disrespect, mom or dad, if anyone's listening or whatever, but it, it, it is my deepest level of respect when I do what I just did. And then I think it, I think it brings out the strongest responses when I bring my strongest questions. So I don't do it in a spirit of. Got you. You're never going to hear me say, I sure beat Jim Bennett. I made him look like a fool. I'm only going to speak about you with respect. But I believe that my toughest questions brought out your best, most passionate responses. That's my belief. And it's. I think we're all better when we have these conversations. So, anyway, thank you for that beautiful response and your kind words back. Very generous. I'm not going to let ex Mormons and progressive Mormons off the hook, though. I want to end today with, if you don't give them feedback, I will. Because I've seen many, many, many comments and responses to you, Jim Bennett, that were very disappointing to me. And I think historically critics and myself included have engaged in levels of discourse that were not constructive. And I sometimes have been of sore offender in this regard. So if you don't come up with. I've given a bunch of recommendations for apologists. I have more to give, but I'm not going to list them today because I want to end it in four hours. But I do want to give you a chance to say, here's what I think would be more helpful for me, John de Lynn, and how I engage or for people who are unkind. And you've touched on some of these things. But let's give critics and nonbelievers their own medicine and see if they're tough enough to accept the type of feedback we're trying to give you.

Jim Bennett [03:47:43] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:47:44] Is there anything you haven't. I gave you this chance beforehand?

Jim Bennett [03:47:47] No.

John Dehlin [03:47:47] You seem to want to create a big list.

Jim Bennett [03:47:49] Well, I don't have. I don't know what that's about. Well, for the most part, my, my interactions, you know, my interactions one on one with critics have been largely positive. I guess maybe, maybe the first place I'd start is because my interaction with critics who I haven't engaged with haven't been positive. Like when I, when I watched the live comments to the premiere of the second episode and there's just this stream of, you know, Jim Bennett's an idiot. He's a fool.

John Dehlin [03:48:21] He's an idiot. He's a fool. He's doing somersaults. He's a world class gymnast.

Jim Bennett [03:48:26] He's.

John Dehlin [03:48:26] His shelf is breaking. You can hear his shelf crack.

Jim Bennett [03:48:29] Yeah, I mean, those, He's a dupe.

John Dehlin [03:48:31] He's, you know, he's on the payroll. Right.

Jim Bennett [03:48:35] Those just exhaust me.

John Dehlin [03:48:36] And you've already made this point.

Jim Bennett [03:48:37] I made that point. For instance, somebody on YouTube made a comment that my father was a racist and that offended me more than any other comment that anybody had made. But one of the things that I saw when my father was, was dying even is that public figures, this isn't quite the same thing, but public figures, people often think that they're not really people. They don't think of them as people. Like I remember reading in the comment section after my father died, somebody just wrote the words, ding dong, the witch is dead. And I just read that and I went, do you realize that he's just left behind this grieving family and we're all devastated and how on earth. And then other people bring up sort of political disagreements they had with him years ago and he's a political hack and the man just died. Right. Can you have enough respect to not say something about him that you wouldn't say? To him if you knew him as a human being. And I think that is not at all the exclusive province of critics, because I think Desnat and people in the church do this, too.

John Dehlin [03:49:48] Fair Mormon.

Jim Bennett [03:49:49] Well, certainly these fair Mormon videos, you talk about people, you talk about Jeremy Runnels, you talk about John Dehlin, or you talk about Jim Bennett, or you talk about, you know, you name it. You talk about a leader in the church.

John Dehlin [03:50:05] I'm just saying Scott Gordon and John lynch are telling people in emails that Jeremy and I are liars and are breaking up families for money. They're doing that, too.

Jim Bennett [03:50:14] Well, I, you know, I've got the emails. Send them to me. I'm supposed to go on Cardinalis podcast and I was supposed to do that this weekend, and he postponed it for another week. And I, And I very much want to confront him on that because I think that's absolutely wrong, whether it's Cardinalis or anybody else saying it comes from

John Dehlin [03:50:32] the top in that case.

Jim Bennett [03:50:33] Well, the point is. The point, the larger point is, is that we are so quick to say cutting things about people with whom we disagree that we would never say to them if we were engaging with them, if we knew them, if we saw them face to face. I don't think Scott Gordon, if you and he were eating lunch together and there weren't any cameras or anything around, it'd be very interesting to see what he would say to you if he would call you a liar to your face.

John Dehlin [03:51:04] That makes it more cowardly. If they're doing it behind.

Jim Bennett [03:51:06] Oh, I think it makes it. I. Well, it's what's not even behind the back, because the comments we make on the Internet, particularly. Yeah, I mean, these are public. These are. I read them. You know, I. If you want to say something nasty about me and you're going to put it in a comment on the YouTube channel or you're going to put it anywhere else, I'm going to see it, I'm going to read it, and it's not going to leave me. It's. It's going to be.

John Dehlin [03:51:30] It hurts.

Jim Bennett [03:51:30] It hurts. Of course it hurts. You know, the rule is, you know, never read the comments. I mean, and, you know, I ran for office, for heaven's sakes, and I've put myself out there on a number of fronts, and you got to have a thick skin, and I'm not going to sit here and whine and complain and moan. And, you know, that's part of the deal. And I recognize it's part of the deal. And I'm going to. It's not going to end my life. But it would be so nice if people on both sides treated the other side as a person. If you think I'm an idiot, if you think that what I'm saying is stupid, okay, who benefits when you throw something like that out there? Who benefits? Who do you help? Who do you lift? If you're going to call John Dehlin every name in the book, have you built the kingdom?

John Dehlin [03:52:25] Or Daniel Peterson if you call him bad names?

Jim Bennett [03:52:28] Sure.

John Dehlin [03:52:29] And that's why I don't like. We tend to dehumanize critics, dehumanize Scott Gordon, John lynch, you know, apologists, Givens, Bushman and I, I feel bad that I even brought it back to me. And because really, the point is you Mormon, you know, ex Mormons and critics, we, me, John de Lin, we have not been as kind and as loving and at times we've been mean and vicious and continue to be mean and vicious with, with well intended, human, good people that don't deserve to be smeared well and well.

Jim Bennett [03:53:08] And it's not even the smears too. It's.

John Dehlin [03:53:10] It's the kind of assumptions of motives.

Jim Bennett [03:53:13] Well, well, if you're out of the church and you're feeling a lot of pain and anger and frustration with the church and you lash out at a faithful member of the church, what have you accomplished? Maybe you feel better because you're feeling so much pain and that lashing out, I mean, I can understand where that pain comes from, but what that has done to your relationship with the faithful member of the church is, it's deepened the divide, it's driven a deeper wedge between the two of you. But I recognize just how painful and fraught these issues are. You know, you're a husband. I mean, these are conversations that happen between husbands and wives. And one's lost their faith and the other has not. And both sides are so capable of making the divide deeper unnecessarily by being unkind. And I just would like to see just, it's all about kindness for me. The older I get. I mean, that really is my religion, 100%. We just need to be kind. And if you're kind, it doesn't matter to me what church you go to. Just be kind.

John Dehlin [03:54:28] Anyway, any other requests that you want to make?

Jim Bennett [03:54:32] Oh, I need to tell Cardinalis that I'm not a boomer. Other than that.

John Dehlin [03:54:40] So can I offer a couple? And then you can say if you agree. So one thing I've noticed is that critics, critics of the church are often willing to grab rumor or evidence as if it's true when it's not necessarily substantiated. So like, so, so for example, if, if there's a rumor that John Bennett performed abortions and that's how Joseph Smith didn't have any progeny, well, how good, how is that, Is that just rumor? Is that just slander? Is that hearsay? I think there are a lot of credible historical criticisms, but there's also a lot of garbage out there, a lot of non credible stuff. And I do notice that sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, critics are very eager to glom on to anything that even sounds like it could be true if it takes the church down without holding up the same, same rigor or the same standard for evidence that they expect apologists to maintain. Does that make sense? And my brother calls me on this all the time, sloppy language, sloppy assumptions, fourth hand sources offered 50 years after the fact. And treating those, that type of evidence sometimes as if it's firsthand, you know, eyewitness testimony, does that make sense?

Jim Bennett [03:56:12] Sure it does. But again, every single thing you're saying can apply to both sides, right?

John Dehlin [03:56:17] But we do this. Critics do this.

Jim Bennett [03:56:20] I remember talking to an apologist who your listeners would recognize. I won't identify him, but he made the point. I was talking to him right after my conversation with Bill Real and he said, you know, very often people who leave the church just switch jerseys, you know, you know, and they are guilty of all, they're doing all the same things. They're accusing other people of doing.

John Dehlin [03:56:48] The binary worldview.

Jim Bennett [03:56:49] The binary worldview. And they're just as, you know, dogmatic. I mean, the church, the church, when the church could do no wrong and then finally something breaks and then the church can do no right. And so they're willing to glom onto any possible, anything that makes the church look bad. But certainly members of the church are guilty of that all the time. You know, all of the faith promoting rumors that you grow. Did you hear the story of the laundromat that blew up all over the place? You never heard that story. That was the mission story. I kept hearing that for years and years that these missionaries sent their, their garments to a laundromat and they tie dyed them so the missionaries brushed the dust off their feet and then the laundromat exploded. And this is proof that, I mean those, I mean those kinds of, you know, faith promoting rumor nonsense, the church thrives on them. Mormon folklore stuff, some of it's harmless, some of it isn't but yeah, it's really easy to. It's like, oh, this says something about the critics that, you know, let's pass it along without paying attention to it. Yeah, I can see people in and out of the church doing that.

John Dehlin [03:58:00] Yeah. What about the use of extreme language? So I've probably violated it here. Cult, pedophile. You know tscc, the acronym tscc. Yeah. Anything you want to say about the use of language? I'm priming you.

Jim Bennett [03:58:16] But no, I, Yeah, I mean the cult, the pedophile. I remember right after I wrote my reply, I went into ex Mormon Reddit and they kept talking about TSCC and I had no idea what it meant.

John Dehlin [03:58:32] Most of our listeners may not know

Jim Bennett [03:58:33] the so Called Church.

John Dehlin [03:58:35] It's what critics call the church. Instead of calling it the LDS church,

Jim Bennett [03:58:39] it's the so Called Church.

John Dehlin [03:58:40] The so Called church.

Jim Bennett [03:58:41] Well, apparently, because there have been leaders that have referred to so called critics. And so this is kind of a reverse the so Called Church. I even get bothered. Bothered is the wrong word. But I TBM and progmo, you know, the Desnats call me a progmo. And for a while I was a nom, a New Order Mormon. I think that's kind of fallen out of favor. Nobody uses that anymore. But tbm, when I was a tbm, True Believing Mormon or True Blue Mormon, I don't see those as useful. I see them as dismissive, even if they're descriptive. You know, even if somebody genuinely would apply as a tbm, it's a way of categorizing and slightly dehumanizing. If you could just deal with if somebody's a tbm, then you can just sort of dismiss everything they're saying because they're a tbm. I think engaging with people as individuals rather than as groups and we have language that tries to otherize and compartmentalize people in a way that isn't helpful, in my opinion.

John Dehlin [03:59:55] And if we just circle back to be kind, that's probably all.

Jim Bennett [03:59:59] Be kind. Be kind. Being kind does not mean you have to be weak or agree. Or agree. Agree. I don't think we've changed our minds on much, either one of us.

John Dehlin [04:00:11] Except you might listen to Michael.

Jim Bennett [04:00:13] I'll go and listen to Michael Coe. But I, I. You can have strong opinions. You can have fiery conversations that are a lot of fun if you're kind. Because, you know, even when you get animated, I'm never worried that you're going to start hurling invectives at me. You know, I can sense that none of that is coming from a place of unkindness. And that's hard. That's really hard. And to your credit, you do it well. But it's very hard to get, you know, really passionate about something and not just so just shut up, you jerk. You know, that's where you want to go. That's where it bubbles up, and you've got to fight that back. You've got to do everything you can in your power to say, you know what? No one is going to remember sort of the specifics of an argument, but they're going to remember there was a debate between Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal. Do you remember that?

John Dehlin [04:01:13] Yeah, 68.

Jim Bennett [04:01:14] 68, yep. And Gore Vidal said something, and Bill

John Dehlin [04:01:20] Buckley called him a queer, called him

Jim Bennett [04:01:22] a queer and threatened to. To punch him in the face. And Bill Buckley, to the end of his life, would speak about that, how much he regretted that and how ashamed he was of himself for that. And nothing else anybody remembers from that debate. Nobody remembers anything from that debate. They remember that Bill Buckley called Gore Vidal a queer and threatened to punch him in the face. Don't go there. Don't do that. You know, in politics, it's exactly the same. You know, the person who says something nasty in a debate, that's what you remember. We kind of been inured to that because Donald Trump says nothing but nasty things. But I don't know, nobody wants to get into politics on this.

John Dehlin [04:02:10] So no offense to lots of my listeners are Trump supporters. That's Jim's personal view. Not necessarily the opinion of Mormon stories are myself.

Jim Bennett [04:02:18] There you go. There you go. There you go. You worn out A little bit, but it was fun. It's a good.

John Dehlin [04:02:26] Worn out a little over four hours.

Jim Bennett [04:02:27] Oh, geez.

John Dehlin [04:02:28] Did we exceed 14? So you did 14 with Bill, right?

Jim Bennett [04:02:31] I did 14 with Bill. Yeah. We, we got the. How many. So we've done. Is this our fourth or fifth something? I don't know. But, but I, I've. I've enjoyed it. Let's do another 14.

John Dehlin [04:02:50] Okay. Last thing. I'm going to have you do one last thing. I've asked so much of you, but I'm asking you to do one. I'm gonna have you do one more thing. I'm tired, too.

Jim Bennett [04:02:56] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:02:56] If somebody is having doubts, if somebody is their faith is really struggling, they're wondering whether they can stay, whether they want to stay, whether the evidence allows them to stay, if you want to give them a closing plea or argument or just sets of rules of engagement or some advice so that they don't give it up too quickly or to their own detriment.

Jim Bennett [04:03:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:03:26] Make a final plea to the doubter or skeptic in terms of whatever advice you want to offer.

Jim Bennett [04:03:35] Talk to somebody and find somebody you can talk to. That's two different things. If you're concerned that you can't talk to a member of the family, that you can't talk to a bishop, if you're scared that somebody's going to come down on you for doubting, find somebody. Email me. I don't need to set myself up as a light to the world here, but I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you.

John Dehlin [04:04:03] Give me your email address.

Jim Bennett [04:04:04] Jimannonizer.com but don't leave the church until you have talked to somebody who is willing to listen to you and lend a sympathetic ear. And. And also. Don't think in black and white terms, regardless if you leave or if you stay. Because if you come across something that has shattered your shelf and you're terrified, you may think, well, this church has been lying to me all along. And the church suddenly, instantly sort of takes on the color of something sinister and something terrible that has been working against you, I would say remember that these people who you love, who are in the church with you, who you now may think are deceived and wrong, there is still a lot of goodness there and a lot of love there and a lot of decency there. And find a way to use that to strengthen your faith. Find a way to reach out to somebody decent, somebody kind, somebody helpful, who, you know, When Jeremy Runnels reached out to a CES director, that CES director didn't reply, didn't respond. And I wonder what would have happened if he had. If he had taken Jeremy in and sat down with him and listened to him for hours on end and walked through with him and mourned with him. And what that would have done to Jeremy, and what Jeremy got was silence. And that, I think, had an impact on him for the rest of his life. Find somebody to talk to. Find somebody. You don't have to suffer through this alone. You don't have to struggle through this alone. And I firmly believe that there are people there, and I firmly believe that the Lord is there. I mean, pour your soul out in prayer, but also pour your soul out in prayer to lead me to somebody that I can talk to. And I just think my own experience would be so different if I hadn't had a family that I could talk to, if I hadn't had that kind of a resource, look for that resource. And you know, Fred Rogers always used to say, when there's a disaster, look for the helpers. When there's a faith crisis, look for the helpers. Because there are helpers, there are good people there.

John Dehlin [04:06:59] What are the best resources? Books, YouTube channels, people, organizations. What are the best resources you can, you can point people to. Besides yourself?

Jim Bennett [04:07:11] Besides myself.

John Dehlin [04:07:12] In addition. Not. Not besides.

Jim Bennett [04:07:14] In addition.

John Dehlin [04:07:14] In addition to your awesome self. What are, what are some research. And I won't attack your recommendations if you say fairmormon. I'm fine with that.

Jim Bennett [04:07:25] I think Fair Mormon can be helpful for a. I mean, I've gone to fairmormon a number of times to just kind of see what their take is on it. I don't think faith crises are weathered by scholarship. That's the wrong word too. I am tired. I'm kind of going in circles. I don't think the reason I wouldn't point them to Fair Mormon is that if you have a faith crisis, reading Fair Mormon's explanation of the Kinderhook plates is not going to bring you back. The way to resolve a faith crisis is to restore faith in the God whose church we profess this to be. And so the way to resolve a faith crisis is to be able to turn to God. My faith crises were resolved through a sort of divine experience. And I think those are facilitated by individual one on one sorts of things. So I don't really know I'm going to fall short because I don't really know of the kind of faith crisis support groups that might be helpful. In fact, I haven't seen them out there. I'd like to see them sort of start bubbling up. I think they're resolved one on one. I think they're resolved. When you talk, you know, when you talk to a. There are church leaders you can talk to who understand this sort of thing. There are other church leaders you can talk to who don't. It is very much kind of a leadership roulette sort of thing there. But faith crises are resolved intimately and they're resolved personally. So. I would say go walk your dog and pray by screaming at the sky. Give a prayer that doesn't contain any King James English. You can even swear in it if you want to, you know, look up at the sky and yell, this is my problem. What's going on? And I think you will be amazed at who answers back. I think it's remarkable to me that my faith crisis has been resolved because God knew what was happening. And God responded to me when he reached out. And if God doesn't respond to you when you reached out, that's on him, not on me. So I think that's who I would point you to. I don't. I don't have a group or a book or any of that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [04:10:20] Maybe that's your next project is to create, well, a worldwide network of mentors and support groups for people in faith crisis.

Jim Bennett [04:10:29] I would love to see that happen.

John Dehlin [04:10:30] I could help you make that happen.

Jim Bennett [04:10:32] I'm good at that.

John Dehlin [04:10:33] I'm good at that kind of stuff.

Jim Bennett [04:10:34] Well, let's talk about this when the cameras go off.

John Dehlin [04:10:37] I can counsel, I can consult. You know, I'll. I'll help people in any worthy endeavor appreciate that. And that includes you, LDS Church. If you want to hire me as a consultant, I'll help solve all sorts of problems for you. No, I'm just kidding. Jim. That was beautiful. And you're beautiful. And I want to say I love you. And I want to say again, thank you for all your time and all your energy and efforts and passion, but mostly for your good heart. Thank you for your good heart and your good soul and your good spirit and for your friendship.

Jim Bennett [04:11:19] I thank you for all of those same things. And I'm just grateful beyond measure that you would spend this time with me.

John Dehlin [04:11:27] Do you think any good will come from this?

Jim Bennett [04:11:28] I sure hope so. I think some already has. Some from some of the messages I've gotten. I think some already has. And yes, I. I think more good will continue to come from it.

Outro and Listener Appreciation

John Dehlin [04:11:39] All right.

Jim Bennett [04:11:40] All right, everyone.

John Dehlin [04:11:41] If you made it through every hour, every minute of my interview with Jim Bennett, write down a promise from me that when Covid's over, I will invite you to a party. And this goes. If you. You know, the things I've said about Matt Harris and buying his books and reading them. If in any point I've promised you a dinner or an ice cream cone for making it all the way through, you now qualify again or for the first time for some special party or dinner or get together or engagement. Because if you made it through this entire series with Jim Bennett, I owe you something special. So maybe Jim and I will have a party when this is all over. We'll have you and we'll do something together and sing Kumbaya. But we owe you something really special. If you made it all the way through, email us and let us know if you did.

Jim Bennett [04:12:34] I want to hear from you.

John Dehlin [04:12:35] If you made it all the way through and hated it or loved it or somewhere in between. Email me@mormonstoriesmail.com I want to know if you donate to Mormon Stories podcast. You made this possible, so thank you for your donations. Pat yourself on the back. This wouldn't have happened without you. If you do not support Mormon Stories, the Oba Stories foundation and you think this was a good thing, if you benefit from it, or if you want to pay it forward to others, please become a donor. Go to mormonstories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor at whatever amount you can afford. And for as long as I get support, I will keep doing this. Please support Jeremy Runnels and the CES Letter if you feel so inclined. Please support Bill Real and rfm. Please support Alan Mount and Katie Mount and marriage on a Tightrope. If you support Fairmormon or Book of Mormon Central or the Interpreter Foundation. I can't believe I'm going to say this. Support them. The thing that I wish most is that all of you could send Jim. If you've appreciated Jim's efforts in in responding to the CES letter, I challenge you to email Jim@JimCannonizer.com and you say, jim, how do I throw you a few shekels to show you support? Because one thing is true. Jim hasn't gotten money from the people who have benefited from his work for providing that work, and he deserves support, too. So if any of you can figure out how to thank Jim for his work, even monetarily, I'm going to encourage people to do that as well. But most importantly, there are lots of things you can do. Share this stuff with others. Share these interviews. Give us positive reviews on the podcast app or in itunes. Give us positive reviews on Facebook. Share with everybody. Spread the word. Give us your feedback. Become supporters. Please support good efforts. Support Sunstone. Support any effort that tries to encourage positive. Support Patrick Mason. Support the Maxwell Institute. Support anyone who's trying to do good in this space.

Jim Bennett [04:14:48] Can I plug the beyond the Block Podcast?

John Dehlin [04:14:51] And you, Jim, who do you want to plug?

Jim Bennett [04:14:53] Well, Derek, Knox and James. Keep forgetting James's last name. The beyond the Block podcast is one that my family loves and leans on, so throw some shekels their way, too.

John Dehlin [04:15:04] Okay? I love it.

Jim Bennett [04:15:07] All right.

John Dehlin [04:15:07] All right. Thanks, everybody. You take care. And again, Jim, you're awesome. Please don't be a stranger.

Jim Bennett [04:15:12] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [04:15:13] Come back soon.

Jim Bennett [04:15:14] Looking forward to the ice cream party. That's fun.

John Dehlin [04:15:16] Or pizza. How about pizza and ice cream?

Jim Bennett [04:15:18] I could eat.

John Dehlin [04:15:19] Are you there?

Jim Bennett [04:15:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:15:20] All right.

Jim Bennett [04:15:21] You've lost £27, though. I know you can't eat pizza and ice cream.

John Dehlin [04:15:25] Well, I can save up and kind of have a cheat day. That's what I'll do. I'll have a cheat day.

Jim Bennett [04:15:29] All right. Sounds good. All right. All right.

John Dehlin [04:15:31] Thanks, Jim.

Jim Bennett [04:15:32] Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:15:32] Thanks, everybody. Take care. See you soon on Mormon Stories podcast.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.