Introduction and Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It's October 2, 2020, and you're in for a real treat today. I am super excited to be interviewing Carl Jungblood. And let me tell you a little bit about Carl and why we're doing this interview.

John Dehlin [00:00:20] It has long been the approach or the philosophy of Mormon Stories podcast to interview people kind of all along the believing or faith spectrum. Orthodox Mormons, apologists, believing Mormons, liberal progressive Mormons, ex Mormons, post Mormons. If I'm being totally honest and candid, in the past year or two, and maybe even a lot since my excommunication, I've been a little bit grouchy and I've been focusing on being critical of the church, of truth claims about the church, of kind of being ragey against the church, of interviewing people who've left the church. And that's probably not going anywhere, to be honest. But I think it's important that I always continue to bring on interesting people that represent different sides of the belief spectrum, of the orthodoxy spectrum, and that's what we're doing today.

John Dehlin [00:01:10] If any of you remember my interviews with Dan Witherspoon from years and years ago where he would talk about Middle Way Mormonism, if any of you remember my interviews with Terrell Gibbons or, you know, know, Richard Bushman or whatever, and even my recent interview with Joe Tippetts, this is going to be that sort of interview, but it's with a new. A new voice, a new face. Not necessarily new to everyone, but maybe new to many of you. Carl Youngblood is someone who I think has been listening to Mormon stories for, I don't know, seven, 10 years. What do you think, Carl?

Carl Youngblood [00:01:42] Yeah, it's been a long time. I think I listened to your very first episodes and have followed along on and off since then. I've always called myself a reluctant supporter and forgive me for using that phrase, but mostly because, like, you know, I was always listen to it and go like, I wish you'd asked this question or that question.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] Yeah, yeah.

Carl Youngblood [00:02:05] And. But then I had to hand it to you that you were the guy who actually went out and did it. I kept thinking I should do a podcast and it's been like 10 years now and I still haven't done it. So.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] No, it's good.

Carl Youngblood [00:02:16] I take my hat off to you and I've donated, you know, in the past, and I really do believe that what you're doing is important and helps a lot of people.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Carl Youngblood [00:02:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:27] And we'll get back to that. But let me just give you a proper introduction. So Carl's been listening for a long time. Thoughtful guy. I think we were both on the Spock with the Beard forum at one point. Is that right?

Carl Youngblood [00:02:40] I had forgotten that you were there, but we were. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] A long, long time ago, there was an Internet forum called Spock with the Beard. I met him and some other dudes like Joey and Lincoln. And eventually some of those relationships turned into something called the Mormon Transhumanism Association. Carl is one of the co founders of the Mormon Transhumanism Association. He's currently a board member. We're going to get into what transhumanism is, and then we're going to get into what Mormon transhumanism is. But it's a thing and it's cool and interesting and we're going to talk about it. So Carl's been involved in that and, you know, Carl's just kind of got his own story. But I think where we're going to kind of really get into the meat in this presentation is, is that Carl represents another voice in holding down what I often call the middle way of Mormonism, which is, you know, there's orthodox fundamentalist Mormonism, and then there's sort of critical ex Mormonism, post Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:03:41] And then in the middle, there are. There are these voices like Dan Witherspoon, like Adam Miller, like a lot of the neo apologists today, frankly, that are basically saying, you don't have to be in or out. It doesn't have to be all true or all false.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] It. There can be sort of these nuanced middle way approaches that. That aren't. That are LGBT friendly, that aren't literalistic, but that also aren't throw it all out kind of the keep. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of perspectives. And Carl is a new voice who's basically taking his. His philosophies and approaches with humanism, with. With transhumanism, and incorporating them into, let's just say what I'm going to call a middle way approach to Mormonism, where he'll probably have equal critiques of Bruce R. McConkey, like Neo Orthodoxy, as he calls it. But he'll also have critiques of sort of all, I'm gonna say my words, ragey, angry ex Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] And he wants to say, hey, I've got another way of looking at this, and we're gonna explore that. So we're gonna Talk about Carl's background. We're gonna talk about what is humanism, transhumanism. Then we're gonna talk a little bit about what, what Mormon transhumanism is. And then we're gonna have Carl kind of say, here's what I don't like about neo orthodoxy, but here's what I don't like about ragey critical ex Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:05:06] And here's why I think people should at least take a look at or know about the possibility of a different way, which I can summarize as Mormon transhumanism. And Carl, you may want to summarize it in some other way. How did that do for my introduction?

Carl Youngblood [00:05:22] That's totally great. You know, we're each coming from a different perspective. I felt like that did a decent job. So thanks a lot for having me, John. And I look forward to engaging with you and your listeners and just sharing some ideas and also telling my story. So thank. Thanks again.

What Is Mormon Transhumanism?

John Dehlin [00:05:42] My pleasure. And we have a few comments already. I want to just give a shout out to Lincoln Cannon. Lincoln is also, I think, one of the co founders of the Transhumanism Association.

Carl Youngblood [00:05:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:54] And he writes. I like the introduction, John. So we've got Lincoln's blessing. We've got a Jacob Sobeck who says transhumanism is amazing. So we've already got some people who are liking this idea of transhumanism. And I just also want to welcome our live listeners who are joining us through YouTube or Facebook Live. We really love, if we can, having these dynamic conversations where people have questions, people have comments, people have concerns, whatever it is. We would love to have this be interactive where we can, Carl and I can have a dialogue. If any of you have input or feedback or concerns, you can voice those and we can weave kind of real time comments in. I hope that's not too annoying for those who are listening to this recording later. But I think it adds kind of a fun dimension. How about you, Carl? What do you think?

Carl Youngblood [00:06:49] Totally agree. And one of the things I said to you as we were preparing for this is that like, while I haven't been perfect at it, I've really tried my best to try to be kind of similar in every context that I find myself and to even with like more traditional members of the church or with, you know, secular atheists or people coming from different backgrounds, I've tried to, as best I can, express myself in a similar way and try and actually I've spent a lot of my time working on ecumenical ways of describing how I feel about things that I think hopefully go over a little better than some of the more, you know, just canned ways of responding. So let's. Let's see how it goes.

John Dehlin [00:07:36] Okay. All right. Well, let's always begin like we do, with the typical Mormon stories podcast, and let's just hear a bit about your background and what. What brings you to the point where you are now and kind of your Mormon story, because I think it's unique in some important ways and interesting.

Carl Youngblood's Early Life and Faith

Carl Youngblood [00:07:54] Yeah, so let's see. I think a good place to start would just be, you know, I was born in California to parents who are both members of the church. One interesting sort of twist in their story is that my parents were converts, but my mom came from a long line of Mormons that date back to the pioneers.

Carl Youngblood [00:08:17] I have a great, great grandfather who was John Hafen, who was a famous painter for the church, who was actually commissioned to go to Paris and study with the great impressionists so that he could come back and help paint the murals in the Salt Lake Temple.

Carl Youngblood [00:08:35] But later on, one of his kids went in a more fundamentalist direction, and that's where my mom descends from. And what's interesting is that she was raised with some traditions of Mormonism. Like, they still sort of kept the word of wisdom, but.

Carl Youngblood [00:08:53] But they didn't, you know, have most of the teachings. And. And later on, she found the church and decided to join. And my parents converted, and they met in California and got married. And I think early on just had a hard family life. And with each pregnancy, my mom kind of got more depressed. She had some sort of postpartum depression going on.

Carl Youngblood [00:09:26] But I think she also was dealing with some challenges from her past. And my dad one day had the bishop come up to him. The bishop happened to serve on the Board of education somehow in their local community. And he said, did you know that I had this case come up where your kids are, like, being considered to be placed in foster care? And my dad kind of freaked out and had no clue because I think he was perhaps a bit of an absentee father. I don't know. He just was away at work a lot.

Carl Youngblood [00:09:57] But he kind of realized it was a problem because my mom had been keeping us out of school. She had started to get sort of more extreme in her views and thought that the school system was satanic or something, and she was keeping us home, and we had no clue what was going on. But anyway, so my dad kind of freaked out, and he decided that moving to a different venue would be the right way. To. Or the best possibility of gaining custody of his kids. And so he moved to Provo, and through a series of, I guess what I look back would say, fortunate events, he ultimately did gain custody.

Carl Youngblood [00:10:39] But it was interesting that the judge actually reversed his decision. And it was because my mom at the time was living with a roommate who went to the judge and actually said, this lady is not. This woman is not capable of taking care of kids right now. She's not. Not everything's right in her head. And.

Carl Youngblood [00:11:00] And the judge actually reversed his decision. And my dad, about a year later, he remarried to a woman who had six kids of her own. So we were kind of a Brady Bunch family, where there were nine of us for a while there, although some of the older ones left the house soon after. But that was kind of an interesting, weird. And for us, it was. It was a traumatic childhood because our mom was the nice one. Like, even though she probably had a lot of problems, we had no clue about them as kids. We just thought of her as mom, so.

Carl Youngblood [00:11:40] And my dad was more of the kind of mean one who was, like, more prone to anger and to yell occasionally. And so for us, it was just like one change after another. It was really kind of tumultuous.

Carl Youngblood [00:11:54] And at about 7 years old, I found myself in this new household where suddenly there's, like, tons of kids and none of my own things were my own things anymore. And if you left something out and it got ruined, it was your fault. And that was hard as a kid to experience all those changes.

Carl Youngblood [00:12:12] Another thing I think that really marked my childhood was that when I was eight years old, I kind of remember this because. Because I'd just been baptized not too long before, but an older person did something to me that I later came to realize was a form of sexual abuse. And that caused me a lot of guilt at the time. And I thought I was a little kid who didn't really have much of a.

Carl Youngblood [00:12:39] An understanding of, like, the repentance process and forgive forgiveness of your sins and the way it, you know, probably should have been taught to me. And so. So, you know, at 8 years old, I thought I had lost my one chance at, you know, redemption. And.

Carl Youngblood [00:12:58] And I think I made for a pretty difficult Sunday school student, you know, because I was always asking the hard questions and kind of defiant a little bit and asking weird questions, my teachers. And that didn't always go over well. And, you know, by the way, if I'm just rambling here, just let me know.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] No, not at all. And I'm Just, you know, I, I'm just resonating with, with this. You know, you're an eight year old kid or however old you were and you're feeling like you already blew it and lost your chance. That, I mean, it reminds me of scrupulosity a little bit, but it just, yeah, more than anything it just feels kind of heavy and sad that you would be taking things so seriously that something would happen to you, it wasn't your fault, and yet you would be feeling like I kind of blew it at such a young age that, that just. I'm feeling with you that that must have been really heavy as a kid.

Carl Youngblood [00:13:56] Yeah, because I mean, even at an early age I think you're taught about moral choices and how you're supposed to listen to what you know is right and stuff like that and you don't know how to distinguish the magnitude of one action versus another. And so I thought to myself, well, I, you know, maybe, maybe some, something could have happened differently or whatever and I could have made a different choice and avoided that problem. And so anyway, yeah, it was hard and I think because I thought I was sort of doomed already at an early age, I actually, you know, was more difficult, more probing, a little bit more rebellious.

Carl Youngblood [00:14:40] And I went through this sort of like kind of crisis or faith struggle in a way there with that all the way at an earlier age than a typical kid would have, I think. And everything was a life and death struggle, Everything was really serious. And in some ways, yeah, like you're saying, it's pretty hard on a kid who's pretty young. In retrospect, I can see that it wasn't my fault. It was something, you know, that someone else should have been a lot more thoughtful and careful about, you know, placing me in that circumstance. And I think this is probably something that happens a lot in com, in families where, you know, just a lot of stuff is going on, there's a lot of kids, people aren't always paying attention.

Carl Youngblood [00:15:19] I think even back then it might have been worse where people were less informed about the possibility of stuff like this. But at any rate, I took a long time to really build up the courage to talk to my bishop about it. But I eventually, when I was about, I don't know, 14 or so, I did. And it was just a great relief to actually share it with someone to go through those steps. And even if, you know, nowadays I would have obviously look at it, the whole experience differently. I think that caused me to really grow in my testimony of the church and so by the time I was 16 or so, I was quite gung ho and quite enthusiastic about the gospel.

Carl Youngblood [00:16:12] A lot of experiences in my life, I sort of, like, figured out how to get better grades. I stopped being so defiant, you know? And there was one other experience that actually kind of touched me, and that was. That was kind of weird. I just thought of it. But I think it's worth sharing that, like, during this time of my growing up years, when I was in junior high, my mom had, on and off, been wanting visitation rights. And so one time she had us visit with her up in Salt Lake, and she had asked her local patriarch to actually, like, give us each a blessing.

Carl Youngblood [00:16:54] Not like a official patriarchal blessing, but like, just a priesthood blessing. And it was really weird for me because when the patriarch put his hands on my head, as opposed to my brother and sister, like, their blessing, as I recall, was pretty normal. But when he put his hands on my head, he just, like, sat there for a long time, and he started kind of, like, weeping a little bit, and I wasn't sure what was going on, but then he started talking to me. And I don't remember everything he said, but one of the things that kind of stuck with me to this, to this day is that he told me that I had been.

Carl Youngblood [00:17:35] That I had had hatred in my heart and that I was misjudging others, and that I. And he. And he said it not in, like a. Not in like a mean or a judgmental way, but more just like in a pleading kind of a way where he. He looked. He sounded scared, actually, when he talked to me when he gave the blessing. And.

Carl Youngblood [00:18:01] And I think I was open enough to the experience of that that it started getting me thinking about myself. And I started wondering if maybe some of the ways that I've been projecting my problems on other people and blaming others could have been partly of my own making. And I remember junior high is always a hard time for kids. You know, growing up, I remember looking at a lot of the sort of stereotypical cliques that you have in school and just like, judging a lot of other kids who were probably just equally insecure as I was, as though they were, like, totally fake or, you know, whatever, depending on what clique they were in.

Carl Youngblood [00:18:46] And I realized that it's, like, equally bad to be sort of identifying yourself as the out crowd and judging the in crowd as it is to be in the in crowd judging the out crowd, right? And I think I started changing my attitude. And that was one of those pivotal moments as I, in addition to my eventual willingness to talk to my bishop about some of this stuff, that kind of boosted my testimony to the point where by the time I was in high school, maybe in my sophomore year, I started really becoming really enthusiastic about the church. And eventually I was like on the seminary council in my senior year and super excited to go out on a mission.

Carl Youngblood [00:19:30] Wanted to go, like as soon as I could. It was 19 back then. But I left right away after my first year at byu. I spent. I was into music a lot in high school and I got the Sterling Scholar in music. I played the clarinet and the saxophone. And so I started BYU as a music major, music performance major on clarinet. And I went on a mission. A year later, was called to Brazil.

Carl Youngblood [00:20:03] I loved my mission. It was amazing, but super hard. But it was an awesome opportunity for learning another language, which was really eye opening for me. I was. I felt like I had this natural ability for it and a lot of people.

Carl Youngblood [00:20:24] I ended up loving it so much that I got a bachelor's degree in Portuguese when I got back to the Y. And I still have a lot of friendships that I stay in touch with to this day down in Brazil. And that's been a huge part of my life. Even in my professional career. I've managed teams of software engineers in Brazil as well and regularly communicate in Portuguese.

Carl Youngblood [00:20:49] You know, it's. It's like, it's like a very fluent second language for me even now. So I'm super grateful for that and also just grateful for the opportunity to interact with people of like, very humble circumstances who were nonetheless intriguing, interesting, fascinating.

Carl Youngblood [00:21:07] You know, people just like any other people you meet who have a story to tell. And that was, that was a huge experience for me to kind of focus on others for a while. So back at byu, I, I was doing a.

Mission, Marriage, and Early Doubts

Carl Youngblood [00:21:26] You know, for the first two or three years after returning, I was, you know, dating, looking around, trying to follow my mission President's council to, you know, be seeking a marriage as quickly as possible, which, honestly, in retrospect, I wish I'd given myself more time. I didn't figure out half of the things that I actually wanted to do with my life until I was already married and had a lot of obligations and responsibilities that would make it more difficult to do them.

Carl Youngblood [00:21:59] But at any rate, I met my wife, Cammie in my, like, roughly, I'd say sophomore, junior year, and we were both in the same apartment complex. She was also going to byu. She was also from Provo. We got married about a year after we Met.

Carl Youngblood [00:22:23] And I remember that I started at that time I was working professionally as a software engineer, really on the cutting edge of Web development and Internet programming and all that kind of stuff. And so more so than most, I think I was exposed to a lot of the just explosion of information that was happening on the Web at that time, where more and more information was being posted. And so I started reading and learning about more challenging issues in church history.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Around what year? Around what year is this?

Carl Youngblood [00:23:01] This would have been around 19. So I was married in 99. And it was just around that time, I'd say maybe 99, 2000 or so, you know, right during the first.com boom, if you remember that time.

John Dehlin [00:23:19] Yeah, yeah.

Carl Youngblood [00:23:21] And, like, one of the first things that I ran into as I was researching church history was I ran into some fundamentalist tracks, actually some, you know, writings of different fundamentalist groups. I think I found a guy who was, like, in the UK somewhere who happened to have some splinter group that was talking about the period of Utah polygamy and how John Taylor had supposedly received a revelation that the new and everlasting covenant was actually everlasting. And the Savior, in response to him, his question about whether it could be abolished had said, how can I abolish an everlasting covenant? Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:13] Yeah.

Carl Youngblood [00:24:14] And that was when he was staying at the house of Edwin Woolley, I think. And there were others, like, watching guard. And, you know, everyone was afraid of the feds who were hunting down polygamists, especially leaders of the church, and trying to confiscate property and all that kind of stuff.

Carl Youngblood [00:24:33] And, you know, partly because of that, the sealing power itself was kind of, like, granted to lots of people to sort of act autonomously and seal people in polygamous marriages and just. Just so they could, you know, keep doing what they thought was important. Right.

Carl Youngblood [00:24:54] And. And so I started reading this, and I'm like, what if that's true? You know, and then I remember they even said that there had been some prophecies, like, along those same lines, where by the time Heber J. Grant, or by the time the seventh president of the church, whoever that would be, was called, that the church would have fallen into a state of apostasy.

Carl Youngblood [00:25:20] And I remember just wondering about this and, you know, like, being intrigued. And I even sent an email to this guy, and I was like, hey, I've been reading your website, and it's kind of made me think. And, you know, he's like, oh, it's good that you're thinking about this. You should. You Know, should inquire of the Lord to see if this is right, you know, and all this stuff. So I was a little disturbed by that. I remember at the same time, near or around that time, running into a guy named Fred Collier at the BYU bookstore, of all places, who is a practicing, you know, like, fundamentalist, right?

Carl Youngblood [00:25:56] And we were both looking at, like, the LDS books section at the time, and he was, like, telling me stuff. And I. I think we struck up a conversation, and we were talking all the way out to the car, and he was, like, telling me about his experience researching Mormon polygamy. Just happened to be, like, a church, like, history buff and. But got super into this and got sucked into. And he decided he needed to start practicing, and he got excommunicated and all sorts of stuff. And that was kind of scary for me because I was still a very faithful member, but I was open to conversation.

Carl Youngblood [00:26:34] Right. I think I've always kind of been that way where I sort of try to be diplomatic in my conversations and would never just shut something down if someone had a different opinion than I do. Right. So that was weird.

Carl Youngblood [00:26:53] But it wasn't too long after encountering that stuff that I studied more and then saw that, like, each generation of church leaders started kind of disagreeing with the previous ones in some ways. And. And so rather than being, like. Rather than being really disturbed by fundamentalism for very long, what I think the next temptation for me was was more of a form of, like, loss of belief or atheism, because it was just like thinking, well, they're all kind of contradicting each other to some degree. Each one of them has taught some things as being absolutely essential that are no longer even practiced anymore. And so it's like either they were the sort of the.

Carl Youngblood [00:27:45] The Lord's mouthpiece as we think of prophets in a lot of. Or as a lot of Mormons are raised to think of prophets, right? Or they are each just trying to do something, do their best with whatever inspiration they have, but are often making mistakes. And the possibility that they were as prone to error as they seem to be was disturbing to me. Right. And so I didn't, like, change any of my behavior immediately, but I remember sharing some of it with my wife, being a little bit afraid to share with her, but, like, talking it over with her to some degree and talking through some of this stuff and just kind of being disturbed by it.

Carl Youngblood [00:28:34] And I think around this same time, we were living in this sort of, like, new. This war where there were, like, apartments and homes and Combination of young newlyweds and older families in Orem. And I basically, one of my friends from Elders Quorum who knew that I like to kind of get into more sort of thoughtful discussions, I guess, in a church setting, said, hey, there's this guy you totally have to meet.

Carl Youngblood [00:29:12] He had already moved out of our ward into another ward, and in that other ward was a guy named Lincoln Cannon, who happens to be listening to the stream today. But he invited me over to Lincoln's house for discussion, and we really hit it off. Had a lot of ideas in common, also a lot of new ideas. Each member of the discussion challenged each other in different interesting ways. And it was this place where we could sort of, like, share our feelings and throw some crazy idea out there and not be afraid of how the other person would react. Like, they might not even agree with you.

Carl Youngblood [00:29:53] They might actually push back on you and express a difference of opinion. But there was a feeling of mutual respect and a willingness and interest in trying on new ideas and exploring new ideas and not being afraid of those ideas, or at least less so than in other settings that I'd found. And so it was. It was really helpful for me in my faith struggles and journey at that time.

Carl Youngblood [00:30:23] And that turned into this, like, monthly discussion group that was going on for several years around that same time, you know, I was introduced to Joey and Andy and some of the other people in that swab or Spock with a beard bulletin board.

Early Mormon Internet Communities

John Dehlin [00:30:47] This is totally. This is just totally geeky.

Carl Youngblood [00:30:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:50] Oh, actually, just, first of all, I just want to connect with you that, you know, as I'm emotionally connecting to what you're saying I am. I'm identifying with a lot of what. Of what's in your story. Just, you know, my parents were divorced. The church was a really important part of my upbringing.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] You know, my patriarchal blessing and blessings I got from priesthood leaders are really important. I was super jazzed by going on a mission. I started investigating the Internet a lot, you know, right around the same time you did. So I'm really channeling all that. And I also just want to say that, you know, I got into following Internet stuff before the, you know, 2004, which was before the blogs emerged, like, by Common Consent and like, Times and Seasons and feminist Mormon housewives. You know, a lot of. A lot of people listening now just don't even remember that era. Pre podcast, but. But even pre blog, there were these Internet forums, like, Further Light Knowledge and, you know, new order Mormon, 16 white

Carl Youngblood [00:31:57] stone, stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Spock with the beard was. The people don't even know what these forums were or how they worked. But I, I remember getting invited to Swab or Spock with a Beard, and I remember joining it and going, wow, this is like a bunch of young, cool, hip people. Totally know about difficult stuff with the church. And I even remember attending a party probably in 2004, where I met. I met some of you guys. But I mean, I guess, I guess it would be interesting to just spend a minute on what Swab was and how it was important and how it was different from what we have now and why it was kind of cool, if you want to share, because I think it's kind of cool even if it's a little bit geeky.

Carl Youngblood [00:32:39] Yeah, I mean, it was geeky, but one thing that was interesting about it was that there were a wide variety of people on it and not all of them were nerds. Right. Some of them were pretty cool. Some of them were what I would even think about.

John Dehlin [00:32:51] For the record, I think nerds are the coolest people around. So I don't mean that disparagingly, of course.

Carl Youngblood [00:32:58] Yeah. And it's funny too, how Nerdom has gained a certain hero status lately where it's like all of the things that used to be nerdy have become more mainstream, like comic books and superheroes and Lord of the Rings and Star wars and all that kind of stuff. Like, I mean, I guess you could argue Star wars was always popular, but like, there's a certain, like, subgroup of total nerds at a time and that would like this stuff and, you know, not that many people who are into it, but I think that Internet culture made a lot of these things.

Carl Youngblood [00:33:36] They created, you know, forums for people to find like minded individuals that just didn't exist before. And so I think in a lot of ways the Internet has totally helped people, even at the same time that it's exacerbated certain problems that we're experiencing now with, you know, like social media bubbles and increased polarity and other things. I mean, there's, there's some privacy issues, there's some major issues, but it also has created these forums where people who would otherwise be in some small town and have nobody that they can relate to and might even be suicidal or struggling with other issues could find a community of like hundreds of other people like them who could value them and, and relate to them. And it was a real godsend for a lot of people, you know, and Swab was kind of like.

John Dehlin [00:34:31] There was also, I don't know if you remember, there was this video, there's this book and video that came out, I don't know when, early 2000s, I'm thinking, called Triumph of the Nerds. And it basically spotlighted Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and others and. And it basically said the nerds are taking over and tech has become cool. And so in that way, you know, the nerds have become kind of cool. I think Elon Musk is a super nerd and he's one of the most admired people in the world right now. So anyway, we don't need to. But talk about Swab, because if you want, and what swab meant at the time, because that's a fun little part of geeky, nerdy Mormon history that's kind of erased. But it was meaningful at the time.

Carl Youngblood [00:35:13] Yeah, totally. And man, we're not leaving the topic of nerdery. I mean, this is going to keep going, I think, in the course of our discussion here, because some of the stuff that I'm going to share is also going to sound kind of nerdy. So anyway, I own it. I try not to.

Carl Youngblood [00:35:31] I just try to embrace it. So Swab was this place where a lot of cool people of both genders and maybe even other genders would get together. And it was kind of. It was one of those forums where most people had a handle. They didn't have. They had an alias of some kind. They didn't have like their actual name. And so they could kind of have this alter ego. And I mean, they still mostly spoke from their own opinions, but it was like a place where you could have an unfiltered discussion about various topics. Most of them were Mormons.

Carl Youngblood [00:36:13] And there were a lot of different categories of topics that you could choose from. And you'd click in to one of those, you know, subgroups of the. The forum and then you would start a conversation and there was just one long unthreaded thing that you would just. People would keep posting on and some conversations would go for like years, you know, and give some examples.

John Dehlin [00:36:37] Give some examples.

Carl Youngblood [00:36:39] Yeah. So there were stuff about church history and crazy things that Brigham Young has said, and there was other stuff about body piercings and whether they were okay or not and what, you know, just like more contemporary issues with church practice frustrations that people had about, you know, just the way some types of just kind of like church lady type judgmentalism occurred at church.

John Dehlin [00:37:12] I guess it's a lot like Reddit is now.

Carl Youngblood [00:37:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] Maybe the difference is it's. It was private.

Carl Youngblood [00:37:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] You had to be invited to join. And if you got in then, then you would see all these threads and those are the two things that come to mind. And just really quickly, do you. Where did. What are the term Spock with the beard? Why would a private Internet forum for geeky Mormons be named Spock with a beard?

Carl Youngblood [00:37:40] So, you know, I don't. You may know more about this than I do, but one of the things I recall was that someone even made some like, I think, icons or something that showed like Brigham Young's beard and Spock together. I can't remember exactly, but does that ring a bell?

John Dehlin [00:37:59] I don't know. It doesn't matter.

Carl Youngblood [00:38:01] But, but at any rate, it was just, as far as I'm concerned, just some weird combination of words like, I honestly don't know who, what, what that idea came up with. Maybe one of our listeners does, but it was kind of eclectic and weird and the name of it fit with the strangeness of the people who came, who went, who, you know, participated in the group. So it seemed to be, it seemed to fit pretty well.

Origins of the Mormon Transhumanist Association

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Is it fair to say that Mormon transhumanism kind of grew out of SWAB a little bit?

Carl Youngblood [00:38:36] Definitely. I would say that some of our important encounters with certain individuals who became influential in the association started there for sure. Or at least I would say that a lot of their good discussions took place there. Some of them had met on a forum called beliefnet prior to Spock with a Beard and then invited each other to join SWAB when. When it got started. Right,

John Dehlin [00:39:08] right.

Carl Youngblood [00:39:08] But then, you know, I joined the group that later turned into the Mormon Transhumanist association around the time that SWAB was just getting started. So, yeah, that's when I first joined in terms of an online presence.

John Dehlin [00:39:26] Sure. Okay, so before we jump into. I mean, what I'm dying to ask you is kind of how you started navigating concerns about Mormon truth claims. But are there other parts of your biography that you think are really important to. Yeah, in terms of background, before we

Carl Youngblood [00:39:46] jump into that, I think probably just I could, like, I could, I could touch on the highlights of what got me to. Now in just a few minutes and then, and then we can dig into those more deeply.

Carl Youngblood [00:40:03] So, you know, this monthly discussion group became a really important place for people to explore challenges in their faith and in different stages. Like each one of us was maybe more down or more up and more positive, more negative about church related things. And we were really good. I think there's a great sounding board for A lot of us started out as mostly guys, but the group became more diverse as time went on.

Connections Between Transhumanism and Mormon Theology

Carl Youngblood [00:40:31] And one of the things we were talking about that I, you know, I think we'll touch on more in the discussion, but was just we were noticing how a lot of the things that are happening in the modern world with the way that technology is rapidly changing the human condition, that those things seemed like, eerily familiar in just a different way.

Carl Youngblood [00:40:58] When you compare them with the prophecies of the last days that some Mormons have, right. That are in our. Our DNC and in some of our scriptures, these ideas that, like the. Just that the world would be transfigured, that when that day comes, that people would live to the age of a tree or live a very long time, that maybe humanity would achieve a type of immortality. And also that this process would be sort of a. Well, while it would, for some, be a rapid transformation, it would not be something that was just absolutely immediate. It would be like something that was sort of accelerating and the pace of it was increasing.

Carl Youngblood [00:41:51] Right. And at the same time we were. We learned about this secular movement called transhumanism, which was talking about the way technology changes the human condition. So if I could, like, summarize that term. It's just that transhumanism is about the ethical use of science and technology to improve the human condition, basically.

Carl Youngblood [00:42:17] So transhumanists tend to be fairly favorable about technology, but there are some who are sort of like pessimists about the future and others who are more optimistic about the future. And all of them are pretty interested in the future and the ways that things are changing quickly and both potential benefits of new technology, but also the risks in a lot of ways, although they may seem like sort of like science nerds or technology software type nerds who are really into geeky things and various tech things, and sometimes people, they've been characterized as like technological cheerleaders.

Carl Youngblood [00:43:02] They are often more informed about what could go wrong as well in the future. And sorry, I'm getting a little too deep, but basically we just discovered there were a lot of parallels there between this movement and some of its predictions and also Mormon prophecy. And we were starting to think about to ourselves, like, what if a lot of the things that people think will just happen from a faith perspective, like the second coming of Jesus, like the transformation of the Earth, like the celestial kingdom. You know, we're taught that this world is actually what. Where the celestial kingdom will be, and that it will be a transformation of the existing world and not Some sort of new place that we're going to be that's totally spiritual, that we're just gonna be zapped to, that has no physical nature at all.

Carl Youngblood [00:43:57] And that was something that was very prominent in Mormonism in particular, was this idea that, like, only the spirit and the body, inseparably connected, can receive a fullness of joy. And that like, salvation is physical, it's not just a spiritual thing. And so we started seeing these interesting parallels and we're like, what if all this stuff that Mormons have been just assuming and taking for granted, that's just going to happen whether, regardless of what they do or not? What if the way many people have been thinking about this more passively actually depends on our choices right now as to whether it actually even happens?

Carl Youngblood [00:44:34] And what if we need to exercise, say, a more active faith in the. In better futures, better outcomes in the future to make those outcomes even happen? What if it's more of a participatory form of salvation rather than a salvation that requires no work on our part at all? We felt that there were like, clues in Mormonism already that pointed in that direction where, you know, Mormons were a very active faith, a very industrious faith that felt that it was their responsibility to use the means that the Lord had already blessed them with to make the world a better place. They moved to Nauvoo and they totally drained the swamp and they fixed it all up and made it a nice place.

Carl Youngblood [00:45:18] And at one point it was the fastest growing city in the state of Illinois. And so we felt like Mormonism fit really well with this sort of like positive techno progressivism that transhumanism was, was promoting. And we thought maybe we need to do something more active to show that we really actually have faith rather than just sitting back and watching things happen. And so in 2006, we decided to like formally organize as a non profit that would mostly be doing advocacy for these ideas, but also would be doing like, service projects or, you know, donations to worthy causes and other stuff like that. And the organization sort of grew and progressed from there, and my own career ended up being in software engineering.

Carl Youngblood [00:46:16] I got too scared of music as a profession. All the grown ups in my life, you know, made me think that it probably wouldn't go anywhere. And I think in retrospect I've realized that, like, I've seen friends succeed in the arts and so I know it can be done. And I feel like I was just too afraid to blaze my own trail, but. But I've had a Very fortunate career in software engineering. I currently work.

Carl Youngblood [00:46:45] I moved around the country a little bit. I think it's worth mentioning that I've also been afflicted with a severe extreme case of wanderlust. And so, like in 2009, on a whim, I moved my entire family to Norway and lived in Norway for four years and then was transferred within the company I was working for at the time, Cisco Systems. I was transferred to the uk. We spent a year in the UK where I was actually called to serve in a bishopric.

Carl Youngblood [00:47:19] And that was in 2013, 2014. We eventually came back and decided to settle in Provo because most of our Mormon transhumanist friends were also in Provo. And I've since then worked for a number of software startups in Utah, to the point where some of my colleagues have called me the Forrest Gump of Utah startups. Because in the same way that, like Forrest Gump in that famous movie just happens to be at all these important historical events as they're taking place, I happen to have just gotten, I guess, fortunate enough to be a part of a number of successful startups in Provo, including, like mycomputer.com which became Omniture, which was eventually acquired by Adobe.

Carl Youngblood [00:48:13] Also Podium, which is doing really well with some outreach software for brick and mortar stores and also expanding in other ways. And also Divi, which is like reforming and innovating in the space of expense tracking for companies. And I currently work for Amazon Web Services.

Carl Youngblood [00:48:40] I've been super into blockchain technology and cryptocurrency and got in really, really early in 2010, back when hardly anyone knew about it, and was convinced that it would change the world. And it since has exploded. And now I work as a blockchain specialist for Amazon Web Services remotely from my house in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:49:03] So did you invest, did you invest. Did you invest a bunch of money in bitcoin early on?

Carl Youngblood [00:49:09] Let's just say that I've been pretty fortunate to have with my cryptocurrency investments. I don't want to get into more detail than that, but yeah, congratulations.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] That's always nice.

Carl Youngblood [00:49:22] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] Well, fun. Okay. I didn't want to stop. You were there other.

Carl Youngblood [00:49:29] Yeah. And I hope it didn't ramble for too long, but I just wanted to kind of catch you up to the point that we're at.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] That's what we do. We start with the background. And that's a great background. It's really interesting. Okay, so if I can summarize what I. What I think I heard you say about transhumanism is that the transhumanism is about the advancement of humanity through technology.

John Dehlin [00:49:52] And that, as you were thinking, and this is kind of my first question, you know, when we are, when we are raised, let's just call it, use your term as neo orthodox Mormons or as we orthodox Mormons. Bruce R. McConkie, CES Mormons were kind of taught that there'll be a resurrection, that our bodies will be resurrected, that Jesus will come again, that the earth will be transformed into what, the sea of glass or whatever, the crazy kind of theology that Joseph Smith talked about.

John Dehlin [00:50:24] And then there's all the stuff about the atonement. And here's where I'm going to start kind of trying to tease out some differences. There's a. Maybe there's an orthodox or literalistic way where you kind of are thinking, well, angels or God's priesthood are going to come down and make all this happen. That almost feels like superstition. That almost feels supernatural.

Carl Youngblood [00:50:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:50] And that, that some people aren't into that kind of supernatural stuff, the hocus pocus magic. So there's a way to say, I don't know if I'm really behind that kind of superstitious thing, but new technology, geeky kind of an approach is like, what if technology can advance to the point where a lot of these myths or doctrines or theological components can actually come true, just in less of a supernatural way, but more of in an advanced technological way. And in that sense, where a more orthodox supernatural Mormonism may not be so appealing, maybe a super advanced techno infusion of Mormon theology can become interesting again.

John Dehlin [00:51:46] So it's a way. I'm not saying you're trying to like salvage Mormonism, but it's sort of an interesting way to say, okay, not that, but let's fuse it with cool tech nerdy stuff. And maybe this is kind of a fun way to shape your life around something where you can have the best of, you know, the myth and the energy and the community and even the spirituality of religion. You can keep that, but get rid of some of the hokey, kooky supernatural stuff, infuse it with an ambitious view of technology and kind of have your cake and eat it too. You can be a super geeky techno nerd that also can.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] Can embrace and benefit from the best things about religion and kind of have your cake and eat it too. Is that. Tell me if I'm totally off there or if I'm.

Carl Youngblood [00:52:35] No, I mean, you're, you're catching on to a lot of things. Although I guess what I would say is that the more we studied the statements of, like, some of the sort of founding thinkers and influential people in Mormonism, the more we realized that actually Mormonism, perhaps in an earlier time, was closer to this vision of the future than it is now. And actually neo orthodoxy, in a way, we. It was something we were trying to rescue Mormonism from. Right. Because if you think about the history there, you see this, this point in time and, and it's been interesting actually to hear some of your recent guests. What's her. Sorry, I forget her first name, but Montez, who's been on recently with her

John Dehlin [00:53:32] PhD work, that's Shannon Caldwell Montes.

Carl Youngblood [00:53:35] Yeah. Yeah. She's shared a lot of interesting things and interesting periods in church history where people have expressed, I would say, views that are like, more compatible with this understanding. You know, if you think about even some of the revelations of Mormonism. Well, I, I totally agree that Mormons from the earliest times, even Joseph Smith, have always thought of spirit as like, something real.

Carl Youngblood [00:54:09] The DNC itself says that there is no such thing as immaterial matter, but only, you know, something that's in a more refined state. Right. So all spirit is matter according to Joseph Smith and according to our scripture. And so therefore, like any type of spiritual phenomena, even if they're things that appear to be miraculous, are things that ultimately must be explainable according to Mormon cosmology. Right.

Carl Youngblood [00:54:40] They're things that maybe only gods understand. Right. But they are things that are understandable. Right. And I think that's the key there, is that in some ways, I think some leaders, some members of the church, have almost suffered from a kind of.

Carl Youngblood [00:55:00] A kind of copycat syndrome where they were really envious of a type of inerrantism that is more part of mainstream conservative Christianity in the United States. And they've always been a little bit jealous, I think, to some degree, of not being fully accepted by mainstream Christianity, especially some of the most literalist types of Christians, to the point where they've become overly obsessed with this. Like you think about, for example, in the 80s, a big concern for many of the leaders of the church was the God makers.

Carl Youngblood [00:55:38] It was this video published by some evangelical or conservative Christians talking about all the crazy, weird stuff in Mormonism. And it was at that point that, or I shouldn't say all, but like, a number of things that when explained in a certain way would sound really kooky. And I think it greatly disturbed a number of leaders, and they felt that it was important to start emphasizing the Christianity of the church in the 80s more than they had been previously. But if you look at the growth trajectory of the church prior to that, in like the 60s and 70s, like, I mean, notwithstanding some fake growth that was a result of some eras, like the baseball baptisms and other things like that, the church still, in terms of actual number of units and number of stakes, was growing a lot more than it is growing now.

Carl Youngblood [00:56:40] And I think that a lot of this was the result of, like, the fact that people weren't necessarily looking for a church that was very similar to the other mainstream Christian churches out there already. And so in a way, what we were doing is we were fixing what wasn't broken, in my opinion. And I think we were also hiding under a bushel. Some of the greatest hits of Mormonism, which is this idea that, like, we live in a naturalistic universe that can be fully understood, that God is not a totally different species of being from us, but actually just in a different phase of development, and that we all have both the potential and the destiny of becoming like God, like our heavenly parents, and ultimately gaining a control over our environment to the point where, for all intents and purposes, we would seem to be gods.

Carl Youngblood [00:57:41] And I think you could even argue that today, if you were to somehow resurrect a Neanderthal from 50,000 years ago and place them in a modern city and just have them, you know, look around and somehow you can communicate with them, they would be strongly tempted to worship you as a God because of how amazing your capacities were.

Carl Youngblood [00:58:09] Your everyday technology that you use every day would make you seem awe inspiring, I think, to a being who, you know, who's experienced a much different type of existence than ours.

John Dehlin [00:58:23] Yeah, if you sort of, you know, if we were hypothetically to have some island that never got developed and they're all kind of, you know, less advanced technologically. We fly in with a helicopter, we have machine guns. If somebody defies us, we shoot them down with our machine gun. We, we ride around on motorcycles, you know, we're healing diseases. You're, you're basically just saying that, that if we could have the perspective of how far we've come as a species, we would realize that if you, if you take that line of growth of advancement and then project it out into the future, you know, you ain't seen nothing yet.

John Dehlin [00:59:06] We could, we maybe we could even become godlike even more. Like, we're already godlike now to species 5,8000 years ago, with the power that we have. If we keep. If we. If we keep that line going, or even maybe the growth is exponential, how amazing can we come. And what. And just so I can connect. Try and relate to what you're saying and connect it back to my understanding of Mormonism. I remember a talk that D. Michael Quinn gave once. It was during that scandal where Gordon B. Hinckley was interviewed on. I don't know if it was 60 minutes or with Time magazine, but it was during that time where, like, Gordon B.

John Dehlin [00:59:43] Hinckley was kind of on a press tour. I don't know if it was the Olympics or what it was, why he was talking on Larry King Live and being interviewed with Time, but it was sort of that area where he's saying, we don't believe in polygamy anymore. That's no longer doctrinal. Well, there was also this sort of controversy where with the God Makers and I think 60 minutes or time, there's like, Mormons believe you could become a God someday.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] And Gordon B. Hinckley said when he was asked about that, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. And it caused this big uproar because all the Sunstone people that were paying attention were like, whoa, wait a minute. That was core Joseph Smith. That was, like the apex of Joseph Smith theology before he got killed. And that's some of the most beautiful theology that we hold as Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:00:30] And it's like, why is Gordon B. Hinckley kind of throwing that under the bus just because Ed Decker's throwing a little heat with his God Makers movie? And I remember a presentation D. Michael Quinn gave at Sunstone where he basically said, and again, D. Michael Quinn is an excommunicated gay Mormon scholar, but he's also a believing Mormon. And I remember him saying then that he felt like Gordon B. Hinckley was selling our birthright for a mess of porridge. Those are. Those are terms that D. Michael Quinn gave, in other words, to D. Michael Quinn, some of those beliefs about the theosis and our ability to become gods were to him some of the most beautiful parts of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:01:12] And he was sad to see Gordon B. Hinckley and others kind of downplaying and dismissing that to accommodate and appease the evangelicals so that we could appear more Christian, more. More. More traditionally or even evangelically Christian. He's throwing us some of our most beautiful doctrines. And what I hear you saying is transhumanism is a way to sort of say, wait a minute, let's not throw that away.

John Dehlin [01:01:37] But let's also not be hokey and supernatural. What if we could become even more and more godlike in ways we can't even imagine through the advancement of technology?

Becoming Gods and Eternal Progression

Carl Youngblood [01:01:48] Yeah, absolutely. And I would say that, like, what's funny about President Hinckley's statement there is that even at that time, I guess from one perspective, you could say, well, it's true that, like, you know, not every day does the topic of specifically becoming gods get brought up in church. And so someone could argue that this equivocation on his part was, like, fair. But I actually think, like, you're saying it was mostly motivated by the desire, like, a fear of being misunderstood. Right. Because if you look at even our. One of our, like, favorite primary songs, I Am a Child of God, it's, like, right there, like, this doctrine.

Carl Youngblood [01:02:31] Even if maybe we could emphasize it more, and maybe the King Follett sermon, which really goes into it, should be canonized. You know, I would love to see that. It. It still is pretty prevalent. And I would say that, like, I know of no other religious organization that teaches the concept of theosis or, like, becoming gods as prominently as Mormonism does. Like, the. The next biggest one that comes to mind is the Eastern Orthodox Church, which talks about the divine nature of every human being and how we all partake of God's divine nature. But I think that even there, they're not quite as explicit about emphasizing the nature of God's being as being, like, exactly the same as us.

Carl Youngblood [01:03:26] Right. And so I would say we're probably the ones who emphasize that more than any other group that I know of. And I think that's a unique contribution of Mormonism that is precious or should be.

John Dehlin [01:03:42] Yeah. Well, is this an okay time for me to kind of start asking you about your beliefs? And it's tricky because I know that transhumanism doesn't have, like, a uniform, codified theology. And if I start asking you about your religious beliefs, there's going to be a difference between kind of what you believe or what your version of even Mormon transhumanism is and what other Mormon transhumanists are going to believe. But I do think it might be interesting to kind of put some meat on the bones via me. Me giving. Giving you sort of an interview about your Mormon beliefs, what you do and don't believe in an orthodox way, and then how your understanding of transhumanism informs your restructured Mormon beliefs. Is that.

Carl Youngblood [01:04:29] Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's go for it.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Is that an okay place to start?

Carl Youngblood [01:04:35] Sure. Let's okay.

John Dehlin [01:04:36] And then we'll get into your critique of both neo orthodoxy. Or we can. Or we can explore that as we're going along. Both your critique of neo orthodoxy and of, you know. And one of the things I'm just going to say is that, you know, a lot of. A lot of more liberal and progressive Mormon intellectuals just kind of shut the door on me. They're like, john's an angry bad guy. He's anti Mormon. He's not smart enough. He's not nuanced enough or whatever. And they just kind of have moved on. And I. I get that because I'm doing a specific thing and not everything I do is going to be tasteful to a lot of people.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] One of the reasons I brought you on is because even though you and I have even had some disagreements that sometimes, on my end at least got spirited, I don't know if you. You usually keep a pretty cool head. We've even had some pretty serious disagreements at times. I don't know if I've blocked your band. You at times, or unfriended you. I'm not sure how heated it's gotten, but you've sort of stuck in. And you're kind of one of these guys that, like, whether it's with Sam Pinson or me or others or on the Mormon Stories podcast community, you are willing to engage with angry.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] Let's just call it angry ex Mormons and are tenacious enough and patient enough to sort of challenge us, which I like. I don't. I'm not the type of guy that doesn't like to be challenged or doesn't like to be critiqued. I like to be challenged. I like to be critiqued. I like thoughtful discourse. And you have really modeled, more than almost anyone I can name, you've modeled sort of like not just shutting us out, but continually engaging in a patient and thoughtful way. And so I think that would be fun to just kind of. And I hope you'll feel free to critique me and people like me or things that. And we can just have a fun, robust dialogue.

Carl Youngblood [01:06:30] Yeah. And if I could maybe explain this weird quest of mine in a way. Like, I don't know why, but I think I've been afflicted with this. Like, I just. I'm really uncomfortable with partisanship of any kind. Right. So when I'm in a church setting and I hear, like, a bunch of people in Sunday school talking about how awesome the church is and how we're so great, I'll be the first one to raise my hand and point out something we're not doing very well. Right. And in a, like, in a similar way, I, I, when I'm in, you know, like a more, you know, critical forum, like Mormon stories, maybe I will probably be the first one or one of the first ones to point out what I see as, you know, nuances or flaws or challenges in the claims of being that are being made.

Carl Youngblood [01:07:28] And it is perhaps kind of annoying. And to the extent it is annoying, I apologize in advance. It's just hard for me not to be this way.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] No, you have nothing to apologize for. And I think it's, you know, I don't like echo chambers. And honestly, politically, I'm not partisan. I'm not, I, I'm not a, I worry about Donald Trump, but I'm not Democrat and I don't love Joe Biden, like, and I don't love partisanship either. I do think that there's some differences between, for me, religion and politics that are kind of serious. But I actually share with you this idea of not liking partisanship and really liking thoughtful exchanges and dialogue. So you don't have to apologize. I really value it and I think we need more of it. And I think too often orthodox Mormons are in their silo, apologetic Mormons are in their silo, snooty liberal progressive Mormons are kind of in their silo.

John Dehlin [01:08:31] And then frustrated, angry, ragey ex Mormons are kind of in their silo. And we don't have enough cross pollination between these silos. So you don't have to apologize. I like it.

Carl Youngblood [01:08:42] Yeah. Thanks. And I should say that I think that even we who claim to try to be above the fray a little bit and to, you know, not be as partisan, I think we got to be honest with ourselves about how, like, there is a trade off. Right. Like, if I'm never willing to take a side in anything and if I'm like, in from a political perspective, if I'm always just saying, oh, I hate both parties and not engaging sufficiently in my civic responsibilities, then I could also be failing to like, make a difference where, where it's needed. Right. So I don't want to be like, I, I do want to say that, like there is, I don't know, there's a time and place maybe for people to be loyal to a certain group and each person is grab gravitates for, towards different groups.

Carl Youngblood [01:09:41] Like, you found your calling in life helping people who are struggling with, you know, some of the difficulties of navigating faith, especially in a Changing time. And actually I'm super fascinated with that whole thing as well, and hope we get a chance to get into that aspect of, like, reinterpreting narratives and what that looks like. But that's where you felt like you needed to go, and I think that that's okay. And other people are called to different callings. And the main thing I want us to keep doing is I want us to be able to keep talking to each other and not completely pigeonhole someone else because their choices are different from mine. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:10:25] Totally. Totally makes sense. So this is fun. Let's dig in. Should we dig in?

Carl Youngblood [01:10:29] Awesome. Yeah, let's do it.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] Okay. And if you want to, if there at any point you want to say, like, let's say I ask you about God, right? There's maybe there's Carl Youngblood's view, maybe that's the same as an average transhumanistic view, or maybe there's different strands. So feel free to just sort of distinguish, when necessary, between any of that. Does that make sense?

Carl Youngblood [01:10:52] Sure, no problem.

Heavenly Mother and Evolving Mormon Cosmology

John Dehlin [01:10:53] Okay, so with the standard orthodox Mormon view of like, heavenly father, male, you know, sitting on high, probably is definitely married to at least one heavenly mother, is. Is possibly married to multiple heavenly mothers, you know, created the universe. Where are you on? Let's start with the God question. Where are you on that? And talk about transhumanism too.

Carl Youngblood [01:11:19] Yeah. So this is something that I've really pondered a lot and struggled with because, like, more and more I think I see the world around me is if there is any supreme being, the influence of this being is harder and harder to discern. Right. In the sense that, like almost everything we learn about science and physics and the way things function and health and whether someone lives and dies, it seems like more and more we're able to both explain and even control these kinds of things.

Carl Youngblood [01:12:00] And for those who believe that, like, God is in whatever the things we can't explain are, that he's over in that part of things, it's been harder and harder. And that's sometimes called the God of the gaps fallacy. Right. Which is that, like, anything that we can explain, like the origin of life or whatever it is, must be attributed, to God. Right, right.

Carl Youngblood [01:12:27] And so just growing up in the modern world, you know, learning about evolution, learning about things in the course of your education, even in a church run school, you are exposed to all these ideas that are very compelling explanations for how the universe got to where it is now.

Carl Youngblood [01:12:49] There may not be. There's always more questions There we never get all the answers. But, like, you know, we can look at the universe and how it functions, and a lot of it can be explained. And so this traditional notion of some sort of man God with a long white beard, you know, perched on a cloud somewhere, looking down on us and having a lot of, you know, human attributes, like he's depicted in the scriptures, as well as the Mormon edition of, like, a paired God of both male and female, is challenging because it's, like, so literalistic that it becomes a little hard to, I don't know, to reconcile that with what you're learning about science and technology and other things like that.

Carl Youngblood [01:13:45] Also with what observing just in terms of, like, the efficacy of prayer. And is it. Is it important for me to be trying to communicate with this being right in some way? And so. So I think a lot of us, myself included in the Mormon Transhumanist Association, a lot of the friends that I've interacted with over the years have struggled with our. What our faith in God looks like and where we eventually land. But I think, once again, some of the ways that transhumanism has helped me to maybe reconcile or redeem my faith in. In God has been through my understanding of science and technology.

Carl Youngblood [01:14:34] So I do believe that if we look at the vastness of space and the universe and all of the planets that are out there, all the solar systems, all the galaxies, I don't know if you've ever seen that picture of the Hubble deep space field, but where, like, one astronomer decided that he was going to use some expensive telescope time and move it to a place where that was just black, right? Where they didn't see any stars and move the Hubble to that space. And people were like, what a waste. You know, this is super expensive telescope time. What are you thinking? You know, he did it.

Carl Youngblood [01:15:11] And it turns out. And I can't remember if it's a he or she, so I apologize if I forget the person, but turns out that, like, every centimeter, every, like, little speck on that. That photographic image was filled with a whole galaxy, just like they were. Like, there are more galaxies in the universe than there are sands, grains of sand on the oceans of the planet Earth, right? So when you think of that in the vastness of the universe and the possibility of even multiple universes existing, the idea of the multiverse, it just seems to me that the likelihood of our planet being the only planet on which life has emerged and the likelihood of our planet being the.

Carl Youngblood [01:16:00] The planet with the most advanced forms of life to have emerged is really, really, really, really small. Right? So I think it's much more likely that somewhere in the universe, somewhere other civilizations have emerged that are, are as advanced or more or far more advanced than ours.

Carl Youngblood [01:16:25] And if you look at the pace of our technological innovation, we're increasing in technological capacity at an exponential rate. So assuming that we don't eventually destroy our civilization and completely obliterate it, even 100 years from now, our technologies would appear absolutely astounding. I mean, in the same way that nobody at the turn of the 20th century could have imagined while riding their horse that someday they would be cruising across the highways of the United States, in some cases in Nevada at faster than 100 miles per hour or cruising on a supersonic jet across the Atlantic Ocean.

Carl Youngblood [01:17:11] You know, like we right now, from our perspective, have no clue what the inhabitants of the 2100s are going to be experiencing. It's just going to be mind blowing, right? And that's only 100 years. And so if you then take it like 10,000 years into the future, I don't know, 100,000 years, if there are some civilizations that don't destroy themselves, there are bound to be beings who are absolutely godlike in their abilities. And what's highly ironic about this is that one of the arch militant atheists themselves, Richard Dawkins, in his book the God Delusion, says the same thing where he says basically, you know, there are very probably in our universe somewhere beings and civilizations that would be far more astounding than the brightest dreams of even the most speculative theologians.

Carl Youngblood [01:18:08] Right? But he claims that these beings would not be gods because they didn't start out that way, right? That they started from simpler forms and progressed to more advanced forms. But the thing is that that notion of a progressing God is like totally native to Mormonism. It's like it's our bread and butter. It's like not offensive or, I mean it's a, it's a heresy from a traditional Christian perspective. But from our perspective, that's not surprising, right? Like that's something we've been sort of taught from ever since the King followed discourse to now, right?

John Dehlin [01:18:48] So, so as I think about, so

Carl Youngblood [01:18:53] then I think of God as that there are bound to exist beings who would qualify as gods in the universe somewhere. And so I'm a theist in that sense. I believe in the existence of God or gods. And I think of God not just as an individual, but as a community of beings, just the same way as we would think of a celestial pantheon. You Know, when we eventually, you know, in a Mormon heaven somewhere, go there with our loved ones, it's more than just God the Father and Jesus Christ. It's like a whole family of gods. Right?

John Dehlin [01:19:37] Yeah. So. So thank you for that. And I think that sets up a really good kind of example of, of maybe how one transhumanist would kind of process Mormon theology. And, and, and so you'll. You'll have to bear with me as I kind of, like, take it. Really.

Carl Youngblood [01:19:57] Sure. Like. Like, go ahead, give me your best shot. Like, I, I don't mind if you want to critique it in any way.

John Dehlin [01:20:07] So, no, I'm not critiquing. So. So there. And we'll. I think we'll be coming back, so we need to kind of set a framework. So when you think about what Joseph Smith taught. Right. Joseph Smith said, oh, you know, God isn't God, isn't this weird sort of God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost. Well, I mean, originally, Joseph Smith had a very traditional trinitarian theology about God. We know that because the Book of Mormon in 1830 reflects it. So do the discourses on faith. But we know that by, let's just say 1838 or 1840, Joseph Smith's theology starts to evolve. And all of a sudden he is. There's this couplet that he ends with, like you referenced in the King Fallet discourse. As man is God once was, and as God is man may become, so God. God becomes very anthropomorphic at that point. I mean, in the Old Testament, he's

Carl Youngblood [01:20:59] already very Lorenzo Snow, who says that couplet as sort of like a summary of the King Follett sermon. But absolutely, you're right. You're right on board with that.

John Dehlin [01:21:08] So. So in Joseph Smith's evolving Mormonism, by the time he dies, if we believe that Lorenzo Snow kind of is understanding what Joseph was saying towards the end, it's this very anthropomorphic God. And we know that. We know that Joseph Smith favored Old Testament Bible.

Carl Youngblood [01:21:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:26] In that the Old Testament God is jealous, he's angry. You know, Moses sees the finger of God, Right. And so, yeah, yeah, it's a very anthropomorphic God. And Joseph's, like, riffing on different, probably borrowing and, you know, different things from around him. He sort of makes this leap which many people, like Terrell Givens would say is super beautiful. Right. It's that literally, literally, literally that God was once like us. He was a human on a planet that probably had its own savior, its own Jesus. And this is the Mormonism I was raised on. And that at some point that God, human, that. That pre God, which was human, was so righteous, obeyed the priesthood, obeyed the commandments, was righteous, died, got resurrected, he had his own God.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] Right. And then at some point went to God school and got his own set of planets and got married, you know, took his wife with him and had his own wives. Wife or wives, and started creating planets and had these spiritual offspring. And then we are now in that new cycle where we have the potential. So God was a human.

John Dehlin [01:22:51] God is anthropomorphic. And now he's created a bunch of spiritual and now physical offspring, and now we have the chance to become gods ourselves. Like, that is what I was raised believing. And what you laid out is a very different thing. And whatever it is, which is cool and interesting, it's not. It's not that. It's not what I just described.

Carl Youngblood [01:23:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:19] So, like, so we're. I think as we talk about all these doctrines, we're gonna have to sort of navigate this tension between what is historically Mormonism and what you're advancing, which isn't Mormonism, but it's a flavor of Mormonism that can be cool or interesting. So how do you. How do you address the idea that. That beautiful description of your theology, what that is, is not Mormonism to most people that were raised Mormon?

Carl Youngblood [01:23:51] Yeah, this is really good. I mean, one of the, you know, first questions you might ask of this kind of God is like, what's the. Okay, maybe there are advanced beings in the universe somewhere who are. And I will address your point about this being somehow different than what we're taught in some settings. Right.

Carl Youngblood [01:24:11] As well. But, you know, the first question is, like, what good does this understand? Let's. Let's even admit that maybe there are amazing advanced beings in the universe somewhere. Like, why would I ever pray to these beings? Like, is there. Is there some important reason for me to do that?

Carl Youngblood [01:24:31] And I think that there can be many benefits from the act of prayer beyond just like that I'm actually somehow communicating with a being somewhere. But even then, I think that the possibility of me actually being. Communicating with advanced beings is possible in the sense that, like, another important aspect that's a strong concept in transhumanism as well, is this. This concept of the simulation hypothesis, which is the idea that what we're experiencing right now may not be the bedrock layer of existence. If you've ever seen the Matrix, you know, you. You can think of this idea that, like, we might be in some kind of a dimension where There are beings who have the ability to observe this, this state that we're in now from the outside, in a way.

The Simulation Hypothesis and Mormon Thought

Carl Youngblood [01:25:30] And that if, you know, if. What's really weird about this hypothesis is that it actually says like, if you look at future of humanity, there are only three possibilities. There's. One is that that we will never choose to simulate other worlds, or that our simulations will never achieve the quality that they'll be indistinguishable from what you and I are experiencing right now. Or the third possibility is that we're living in a simulation right now, and those are the only three logical possibilities. Because if those other two are not somethings, we go down. If we choose to keep creating simulations, and if we do have the ability to eventually simulate things so well that we could not tell the difference between what we're experiencing right now, then the likelihood of us being the bedrock or the very first civilization to ever create such a simulation would be extremely low.

Carl Youngblood [01:26:33] It would be far more likely that other civilizations have already created many of these and we happen to be in one of theirs, rather than we being like the ones who created the very first one. It's kind of mind blowing. So if that didn't totally make sense, I would totally forgive anyone for not understanding it right away. But the reason why I share this is because I think that there could even be an argument made for this conception of God as being a being in some other dimension of existence that we could potentially communicate with in ways that would.

Carl Youngblood [01:27:10] That we might not understand fully how they're working. But I would also say let's even just presuppose that all we've got is this universe, that there are no other simulations out there and we're just thinking of beings like the beings I described.

Carl Youngblood [01:27:27] What would such a being really value? Would they value you telling them how awesome they are all the time? Or would they actually value you, like, trying to behave in virtuous and noble ways? There's a famous saying from, you know, it's in Jane Austen's novels, like, but it started before her, but it says imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And what I like about this is I think this is a model for true worship. Like when we're worshiping God, I think God would prefer for us, rather than just telling God how awesome God is all the time, I think God, if there is a God, would prefer to have beings who strive to be like that person, to strive to live a better life, to be kinder, to be more productive, more helpful, more Help, you know, just do more to bless other people.

Carl Youngblood [01:28:33] And so I think that the best way that we can worship a being, a supreme being or a community of beings, if they are out there, is to try to be like them. And that that form of worship is far more noble than merely praising them in the form of prayer or whatever.

Carl Youngblood [01:28:52] So I share that as a preliminary. But in terms of reconciling this conception of God, what I would say is I think of it as. It's totally compatible with what we've been taught as members of the church. It's not like I'm saying something that is. Well, let me clarify some interpretations of the teachings. Might hear what I just said and say, that's totally bogus. That's not what we've been taught. But my argument would be more that they've sort of extrapolated a lot of additional superstitions on top of the core principles, and that they are not necessarily the only way that things could be. And then I would also even go further and say, like, if you assume some of the things you described of, like, God being an actual human being, Homo sapiens, on some other planet, whose DNA sequence is precisely the same as ours, Right.

Carl Youngblood [01:30:01] That introduces all sorts of other challenges that do that result from overfitting a teaching into a specific physical manifestation of that teaching. Right. You start to get into all sorts of nonsense around, like, how do you explain this? How do you explain that? And I think that what we're experiencing

John Dehlin [01:30:28] here, talking about, like, does God have a belly button?

Carl Youngblood [01:30:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:32] Who was God's God? Who was God's God? Does God use his ears? Does God use his. Does he go the bathroom when he. When he fathers spiritual children? Does he actually copulate? Like, is that the sort of crazy.

Carl Youngblood [01:30:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] Stuff you're saying?

Carl Youngblood [01:30:51] Those kinds of overfitting, a literalistic interpretation, actually reach a brick wall where they no longer make a lot of sense for people and they become more challenging for them to deal with. And that our church and our religion, our faith, our teaching should be robust enough to, like, accommodate people in that mode of questioning and, like, provide them with some kind of way of making sense of things that's still meaningful and beneficial.

Carl Youngblood [01:31:33] And this is actually one of the fundamental challenges of faith and religion that has been described in a personal hero of mine. I would say maybe hero is the wrong word. But a religious. Highly influential theologian named Paul Tillich talks about this moment when your narratives break down, you know, when you start to realize that these stories you've been given, you know, when you pick them apart, they don't make a whole lot of sense, and that there's things that you can't figure out. Right. And he. He points out that, like, this is inherent because faith is made of symbols. Right. Faith isn't just a bunch of.

Carl Youngblood [01:32:22] It's not like an instruction manual with a bunch of, like, precise, like, mathematical definitions of what God is like and how miracles work and all the other things that you might associate with religion. Right. Religion is made out of symbols that were either written down or shared in some other form that acquired meaning to a group of people and then that were perpetuated in some way. Right.

Carl Youngblood [01:32:54] But the problem comes when we take our limp, our symbols too literally and we're unwilling to do what Tillich calls breaking the myth. Right. Breaking the myth is not to discard a narrative that you've been given, but it's to see in that narrative important qualities or values or meaningful interpretations that are beyond the surface level meaning of the words.

Carl Youngblood [01:33:25] And Tillich would claim that that's like, the only real meat and potatoes of religion. Like that. If you try to confine a religion only to its literalistic claims, you're actually enervating it. You're draining it of all its strength and its capacity to motivate. So.

John Dehlin [01:33:46] So, yeah, so that what. You know, what this reminds me of, And I. I've read Tillich in the past, and. And. And, you know, Fowler stages of faith was kind of one of the very early topics that I covered on Mormon stories, where James Fowler talks about stage three, religiosity, which is very literalistic and orthodox. And then stage four, where you have the dark night of the soul. And then stage five, where you reconstruct your religiosity in more of a metaphorical or symbolic way, and you engage not because it's true, but because there's value and you find value in the myth. And so I guess I just want to keep trying to focus on the implications and the implications of what you're saying and trying to relate it to the Mormonism that I know and that a lot of our listeners relate to.

Belief in an Anthropomorphic God

John Dehlin [01:34:33] Because when I asked you about, do you believe in an anthropomorphic God and Jesus? You talked a lot about what you do believe. But what I really want to address is the model that we've all been raised in with Mormonism, which is that the way that we learn truth is because we have these men, and they are always men designated as prophets, seers, and revelators.

John Dehlin [01:35:05] They're the ones who have the special Access to an anthropomorphic God. It's not the God that you talk about when they tell us what you know. These are the men who we are told as Mormons, communicate directly with God in a privileged way that we don't. They get information that we don't. Joseph Smith talks to God and God says, you know, there's three degrees of glory and there's a celestial, terrestrial and a celestial. And here's what you have to do to get into the celestial and to stay out of outer darkness. And here's what need to do terrestrial. Here's no, you know, and here's. Here are the ordinances you need to perform to get into the different levels.

John Dehlin [01:35:44] And here. And if you're polygamist and if you really get all your ordinances, then you go to the sl. You know, the prophets are being very specific, saying we get information, you don't. Here's what the information is. God is anthropomorphic. We are talking to him in a very literal way, just like humans talk. And here's what God says you're supposed to believe and do.

John Dehlin [01:36:08] That is a very specific proposition that pretty much all people who join the Mormon Church or who are raised in the Mormon Church, that's the understanding about God that we're kind of on the plan about. And when you go to General Conference or when you listen to General Conference and you read the talks in the ensign, this is what God is, and this is the way it's structured.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] That and whatever it is that you believe which is beautiful and has value, I'm asking you to address just this very concrete kind of question, which is that your beautiful riff on what a progressive transhumanistic Mormonism can or should, maybe even should be is different from what we're all taught and how we're all raised. And. And so there's at least two things that I'm grappling with. One is that you're not specifically addressing the fact that you're sort of changing. You're kind of saying, not that, not what we've all been taught, not what the prophet seers and revelators tell us to believe, not what we all understand to be Israel Mormonism, not that, but this other thing, which begs two questions.

John Dehlin [01:37:28] How is this Mormonism to just sort of disregard what these men as prophet seers and revelators with their scripture tell us is God? How can you explain that? You're sort of saying, not that, but they're still. Somehow we're still supposed to respect them as prophets, seers and revelators. And then the second thing is, who is Carl or who are these transhumanists to be giving us a new version of Mormonism when we all know who. Who and where the authority comes from? Okay, so specifically.

Carl Youngblood [01:37:59] Right. Okay. So first of all, I would say is that. Sorry, go ahead. What was that?

John Dehlin [01:38:05] I think this is just a foundational question that helps us all get on the same page where if you talk more about your transhumanistic views, which I want to, and I want to show respect for that, it doesn't address this fundamental concern, which is the truth comes from the prophets, not Carl and Carl's saying, not what the prophets say, but what Carl says. Yeah, what you're saying. So how do we bridge that? And why should we even listen to you? And how do you get off disregarding what the prophets are telling us is the reality?

Carl Youngblood [01:38:39] So I guess, first of all, what I'd say is, thank you for bearing with me long enough for me to explain some of these concepts because they. Well, it hasn't been like hours and hours. It's taken some time. And sometimes it takes a little bit of thoughtful discussion to really, you know, get at least a glimpse of what I'm trying to explain here.

Carl Youngblood [01:39:03] But what I would also say is, like, this is where I find myself kind of criticizing both the. What I call the neo orthodox version of Mormonism, which is this version that has come from this envy of more traditional mainstream Christianity that is I think, really not as Mormon as the kind of Mormonism that I'm describing, the more what I would think of as more authentic Mormonism.

Carl Youngblood [01:39:31] And it's more the result of this, like, wannabe Christianity that's been in some ways ashamed of some of the heresies of Mormonism that are our greatest hits. And so I criticize that neo orthodox perspective. And it's not. It hasn't always been as prevalent as it is now. I mean, I wouldn't say that. I'm sure, I would agree that literalism has always been present throughout Mormonism and that there are many trappings of literalism in our founding stories and all sorts of other other things. So I'm not denying that at all. But I am saying that I think some of the sort of fundamental core concepts are incompatible with some of these claims that you're talking about and that.

Carl Youngblood [01:40:26] And I criticize both the neo orthodox interpretation there of anyone who would try to take the teaching about God being, like, more specific than it needs to be in terms of, like, is God a human right? Like, let's break that down. When. When someone says, well, God is a glorified man, right?

Carl Youngblood [01:40:54] When they say man, do they mean Homo sapiens? Do they mean Homo erectus? Do they mean, you know, like, once again, we're getting into all these silly things when you start to ask it more and more literally, and that's what I would say that any teacher who tries to get too literal, even the general authorities, even the gospel doctrine manuals, you know, to the extent that any of those is trying to literally define, like, what God's DNA looks like, they're missing their mark. But I would also argue in response to what you've said here that, like, that for the most part, our teachings don't go that far.

Carl Youngblood [01:41:31] They don't, like, try to claim that God is the same exact species of, like, with the same exact DNA as. As humanity. They don't even get into DNA, Right? So even at their most literal, you know, level, they leave some things up for interpretation.

Carl Youngblood [01:41:53] And I would also say that, like, I don't think so in critique of the critics of Mormonism. I think part of what they do is you've got these really juvenile explanations of God that are totally fine if that's just because you're trying to simplify it and that's what you've been taught. But they're not fine if you're trying to shove them down people's throats and say it's not right for you to think any other way. And so that's where I get frustrated with individuals like Joseph Fielding Smith, who tried to insist that when he was arguing with some of his colleagues in the Quorum, that evolution doesn't exist, even.

Carl Youngblood [01:42:44] Which is something that even today, none of the general authorities would openly claim every single one of them to a person. They might tell you in private, if you're off the record, if there. There may be a few disbelievers in evolution on the Quorum, but I think most of them, if they were ever, they would just not say anything. But I think that if even there are some believers in evolution in the Quorum, and that most of them would never make that a requirement for orthodoxy. Right? So what I'm getting at is that this notion of what it means to be an orthodox Mormon is overly narrow, both from the super extreme.

Carl Youngblood [01:43:34] I call it neo orthodox because it wasn't always around this way. So it's neo. It's new, right? This new extreme that I think reached its pinnacle in Bruce R. McConkey and that we're still like, Recovering from it. I think this wasn't always this way. And I also think that like the critics of Mormonism, you, you included here, I think you're even claiming that what is being taught is more narrow than it actually is. I mean, I'm not saying that it's not very literal in some ways, but I think you're creating a version that is overly narrow, partly to bolster your own narrative of how ridiculous it is. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:44:22] Well, I mean, that. That would be. Could be true if you could know my motives. You know what I'm saying?

Carl Youngblood [01:44:31] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:44:32] I'm certainly not intentionally trying to do that.

Carl Youngblood [01:44:35] Yeah. Forgive me if I'm attributing to you, like, I'm probably only describing some of your motivations. I think that maybe. Well, I think just like, when I'm creating an argument for why I think something should be the way it is, I'm going to try to use everything I can at my disposal that's fair, that's not a fallacy to try to boost my position. And I think sometimes we get a little carried away. And I just think that some critics of religion and Mormonism specifically do this too. Like, have you heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

John Dehlin [01:45:10] Of course.

Carl Youngblood [01:45:11] Yeah. So I think part of the reason why the critics use this particular imagery is because it's very ridiculous. Right. Inspires. It provokes laughter and ridicule. Right. And so if they had instead chosen some slightly more palatable version of a God to describe as an alternate religion, I think it wouldn't have had the same ability to mock as. As the Flying Spaghetti Monster has. Right. And so I think that's an example of a type of critique of religion that is designed to exaggerate the ridiculousness of certain things. And I'm not saying you are anywhere close to that, but I am saying that to some extent, it makes your job easier as a critic of religion and the church specifically, to present the most extreme version of literalness possible that can still be acknowledged as legitimate in some way. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:46:15] Yeah. So, okay, so what I want to just pause and note is that there's also. I know enough about Mormon transhumanism to know that there's a lot of cool, thoughtful people who have a lot of really cool ideas about how transhumanism can be merged with Mormonism in cool ways. And I don't want that to be eclipsed in this interview by us getting in the weeds of, like, truth claim stuff. So saying that as kind of a. A disclaimer, I Want to, I do want if we could put this to bed even quickly. I'm cool with that because I, I don't want. I want. Don't want to eclipse the beauty of Mormon transhumanism, but I'm trying to get you to acknowledge just something very simple that I think should be very obvious and clear. And then once we stipulate it, then we don't have to keep coming back to it.

Carl Youngblood [01:47:21] But sure, okay.

John Dehlin [01:47:23] And I told you I was gonna. I. Sure you saw my, my video on truth and Mormonism from, from my, you know, my, my new YouTube channel, Understanding Mormonism. And in that I talk about the fact that, you know, when somebody is either raised Mormon, you know, from childhood to now, when they're in primary, you know, or when someone joins the church, you know, we all know the plan of salvation, we all know the plan of happiness. We all know core Mormon doctrine. It's that, it's that God, you know, was once a man, that God is now an exalted human, that God has a wife,

John Dehlin [01:48:06] that God had spirit children, that we're all spirit children of God, that we're here on the earth to get bodies so that then we can die and be resurrected, that Jesus came to the earth literally as the son of God, you know, to get resurrected, that this is the one true church, that Joseph Smith is a true prophet unlike any other human on the planet, that he got exclusive priesthood authority, that we need to get the ordinances so that we can return to Heavenly Father, that Mormon scripture is the word of God. You know, I don't have to repeat this. This is all very clear and obvious Mormon doctrine in theology. I'm not taking extreme positions.

Carl Youngblood [01:48:49] Right.

John Dehlin [01:48:50] What, what everyone understands to be Mormon theology. And, and that's, that's the proposition that investigators sign up for, and that's what we're indoctrinated into as Mormons. And that there's no confusion. There's maybe around the peripheries of like, of some of these things, you can find orthodox Mormons that are going to disagree. But this basic narrative is what, what a huge percentage of. Of Mormons all over the world are going to all agree to. And.

Carl Youngblood [01:49:24] Right.

John Dehlin [01:49:24] You're advancing is different than that. And so I, well, so I guess

Carl Youngblood [01:49:28] I would argue it's not as different as, I mean, like most of the things you described. I would be okay teaching in some way that sounded similar. Does that make sense? Like, I'm okay teaching that we're children of God.

Carl Youngblood [01:49:42] I just don't want to get into details like claiming that God's DNA is the same as ours or something like that. You know, like. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm not so sure that a lot of the things you described are. I have a problem with. I do have some issues with, like, the claims of exclusive authority. I. I would characterize them differently. I would emphasize different aspects. But. And I. And so I disagree with some things that you've said, and I would choose to describe them differently. And I also agree that they're often taught this way.

Carl Youngblood [01:50:21] And. But what I'm also trying to say is that I don't think that has to be the case. I don't think it. I think there are ways we could improve, reform, make room for other interpretations. And I disagree or I sort of get frustrated with both the neo orthodox who claim otherwise as well as the critics who claim otherwise, that it's, like, irredeemable, it's not possible to fix this problem. There are huge problems with the ways that some things are emphasized and taught in church that I don't want to downplay. And I do agree that the proposition for a lot of members, including those investigating the church, that they are often explained something that later on, just like me, they come to struggle with because they start to learn that there are challenges in the faith.

Carl Youngblood [01:51:28] And so. But what. I guess part of where I would nuance this a little bit is that, like, I think one of the big challenges is that every single member of the church, including the leaders, is at a different stage of literalism here. Right.

Carl Youngblood [01:51:44] I think that many of the leaders are in a. So Tillich distinguishes between the two different phases of literalism. He calls one naturalism, natural literalism, and the other reactive literalism. And he says that natural literalism is sort of normal and unavoidable because, like, just as when you're a kid, you're described things in more simple terms, and then later on you come to realize that they're more complex.

Carl Youngblood [01:52:14] When you're sort of new to any religious tradition, including when you're teaching it to other people, you might describe things in a more naive way that even you as the teacher don't fully see the problems with. Right. And he says this is kind of like just the way the memes are spread and the way that religion is spread and the way ideas are spread generally, that they're always simplified to some extent. That's both helpful but also wrong.

Carl Youngblood [01:52:42] And that there comes a time when you start to question your narratives. And where he says that the Real problem is, is when people engage in reactive literalism, which is trying to suppress free thinking and prevent people from asking these questions in the first place and telling them, no, you need to listen to me and my authority and what you're doing is wrong and stop questioning and get out of here and that kind of stuff. Right. That's totally wrong. And so to the extent that the leadership is doing that, I would call them to repentance for so doing and say, get back to real Mormonism.

Carl Youngblood [01:53:17] And, and, but I would also say that it's really hard to sometimes know this because, like, there was a time when I thought this way too. And if the current me were to encounter that old me, we might be arguing with each other. Right. So I don't know. It's, it's hard. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:53:36] Yeah. Yeah. Let me bring in Sam Pinson because Sam's making some comments. Sure. And, and I'm only just gonna, I'm just, I'm only bringing him in. Well, one, because it's fun to bring in other people's perspectives, but also because it, it, it's reflecting and confirming kind of the things I'm feeling. So Sam.

Carl Youngblood [01:53:55] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:56] You and Sam.

Carl Youngblood [01:53:57] We actually were in graduate school together in the CS department of byu.

John Dehlin [01:54:01] Yeah. And for those of you, I know

Carl Youngblood [01:54:04] him from Facebook more. I mean, it's not like he's a really close friend, but anyway, I consider him a friend.

John Dehlin [01:54:08] Yeah. So recently I interviewed Sam Pinson and his wife and two of his children. Sam was recently, I'm telling the audience that Sam was a bishop in Ammon, Idaho, until recently, found out about all these problems with the church and lost his faith, and now is kind of outspoken with his concerns about Mormonism. And it's fun to see Sam and Carl kind of debate a little bit on Sam's wall and on Carl's wall. But Sam writes, john is asking you to acknowledge that what you are promoting is not Mormonism and further to explain how it is that you, Carl, have these insights that those called to lead do not have.

John Dehlin [01:54:49] And then Sam goes on to say, it's not, it's really not a hard question, but you keep evading for some reason, and I'm not, I don't think you're. And he also says, yes, Carl is a friend. And I, I, I'm not trying to accuse you of trying to evade something. I think you are giving your best earnest answer. But let me, let me try and ask in a different way.

Carl Youngblood [01:55:09] Sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:10] That, you know, we all have an understanding about what a car is a car, generally speaking, for, for the. Without like, going to extreme exceptions. A car has four wheels. A car has an engine.

Carl Youngblood [01:55:25] Right.

John Dehlin [01:55:25] A car has a steering wheel. You get in it, you close the door, and you start moving at a faster rate than you could if you were walking. And traditionally it's had a gasoline engine, but recently, now, now they're electronic cars, but both get to be cars because they still have four wheels and you still get in him and you still drive around, and that's what a car is. And nobody is going to reasonably argue what a car is. And if you do, you're. You're really being difficult because we all kind of know what a car is. Can we agree with that?

Carl Youngblood [01:56:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:02] Do you agree with that? What's that?

Carl Youngblood [01:56:06] I think I see where you're going with this, but keep going.

John Dehlin [01:56:08] Okay, yeah, let me just finish. So. So we all kind of know what Mormonism is. It's the things I've described. And yes, you can redefine all these terms and come up with a progressive form of Mormonism. Eugene England did that. Lowell Bennion did that. Dan Witherspoon does that.

Who Defines Authentic Mormonism?

John Dehlin [01:56:29] Maxine Hanks does that. You know, Terrell Givens is trying to do that, and Richard Bushman and Patrick Mason and Spencer Fluman. They're all trying to redefine a new. You know, there are a lot of people leaving the church, right, because they. They feel like what they were taught is no longer was never, and is not true. And they're saying I wasn't. What I was taught wasn't true, or what I've discovered disproves what I was taught as being unsustainable. So I'm leaving.

John Dehlin [01:57:04] And that's one path to take. So one path to take is to stay in orthodox Mormonism, which is. They don't really have a lot of confusion about what Mormonism is. Yes, there may be some slight disagreements around the margins, but just like with the car, they're all going to agree about what Mormonism is. That's one left.

Carl Youngblood [01:57:22] I don't actually think that's even sustainable for a lot of people. Like, there might be a few, but I think they're high. They're engaging in reactive literalism in order to sustain that narrative. Right.

John Dehlin [01:57:33] I just think they're. They're keeping it simple. They're not trying to make it more confusing than it is. They, they know that God was once anthropomorphic. They know that. Anthropomorphic, that humans can become gods. They know that there's Three degrees of Glory. They know that Joseph Smith talks to God in a way we don't. They know the Book of Mormon.

Carl Youngblood [01:57:50] No, I agree with that. I agree with that. But I would just claim that anyone who is in that state is more in this sort of natural literalism state where they haven't been exposed to challenges in their narrative that are sufficiently troubling to cause them to need to figure out how to make sense of all this. Right. Either they've shelved it. They've done any number of things that just makes them think that they don't need to pursue that line of reasoning further. Right.

John Dehlin [01:58:20] But that would include Russell M. Nelson, our prophet. All of the disagree.

Carl Youngblood [01:58:27] Okay, I would disagree on that. I would say I actually think that to the extent people like President Nelson and other leaders are aware of the issues, but then repress them, that they're engaging in unrighteous dominion and reactive literalism. Right. This is different from natural literalism. And this is something that is wrong. Right.

Carl Youngblood [01:58:51] So. So I think that's an important distinction to make. Like, if you're just going your own way and Mormonism makes sense to you and you're doing your best to practice it the way you've learned and. And you don't see a need for making like, you don't see a strong conflict in these things. That would be natural literalism. And that happens all the time. And some people are always that way. They just never see the need. They have other things that are doing. And I actually think many of these people are amazing. And I don't want that to sound like a.

Carl Youngblood [01:59:29] Like, I don't think it's like in the grand eternal scheme of things, it's like something you should stay in forever. But I think that you could totally live your whole life and never need to go further there because maybe you're choosing your calling in life is to do something else. You feel drawn in a different direction. Maybe you're an incredible gymnast or an incredible musician or whatever it is you are, that just causes you never to really feel the need to question. And it makes sense and it works for you. And I don't want to, like, forcibly enlighten you, if I even could, which I can't.

Carl Youngblood [02:00:05] Right. So I don't want to criticize that type of person. And I acknowledge that some leaders are in that situation, but I think most leaders, because of the nature of their role, they start to get exposed to at least some of this. Right.

Carl Youngblood [02:00:23] And some of them are totally unequipped to deal with it and all they know how to do is to say to people like stop looking at it. But it's clearly like you, like you point out it's not working. Right. That the progress of the church amongst the demographics that are encountering this information and that have a enough education to be troubled by it.

Carl Youngblood [02:00:45] It's not doing very well. Right. Yeah. And I, I want to include, give you the opportunity to respond better. So does that make sense so far?

John Dehlin [02:00:56] Yeah, yeah. And, and so just to bring in different sides, Lincoln is saying, I don't think it's fair to privilege 1980s Mormonism above all others. So thanks for that comment, Lincoln. Lola writes, I call myself a non traditional Mormon. I don't ask for permission from my leaders, but from my God. I make no apologies and have been accepted as a single mom by choice at church. I attend church on my own terms and feel good about it.

John Dehlin [02:01:23] Through though know that others wonder about my faith. I don't care. I just don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm also voting for Biden though. He's not perfect. So, so like I get, I get what I, I think I understand what's going on.

John Dehlin [02:01:39] I, I think I understand that. I, I do think there is, I think just like we all understand what a car is, I think we all understand what orthodox Mormonism is and I don't think it doesn't exist. I feel like you're gaslighting me.

Carl Youngblood [02:01:55] Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [02:01:56] Well, I totally exist. And I'm not saying you're saying it doesn't exist. I think it exists.

Carl Youngblood [02:02:02] I wouldn't at all, I wouldn't at all claim that it doesn't exist. Like I just barely got through saying that there are tons of Mormons who have this more literalistic viewpoint and it's being taught and it's being perpetuated in the church. Did I ever.

John Dehlin [02:02:17] No, no, no, no. I'm just saying if someone were to tell me I wasn't including you, if someone were to tell me that there isn't a clear, you know, over overwhelming consensus on what Mormonism is.

Carl Youngblood [02:02:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:33] I think it would be somewhere like 90% of the active membership would be able to agree on what Mormonism is. It's the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets in America on gold plates. It was translated by Joseph Smith with the Urim and Thummim. It's Gordon Russell M. Nelson's the prophet. Today we're the one true church with exclusive authority. We all know, we really all know what orthodox Mormonism is. And it's 90% of Mormons out there. And then there's a. There's.

Carl Youngblood [02:03:05] So I guess I would just. Sorry, you finished? I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [02:03:10] So whatever that number is, 75%, 60%, 90%. It's this prevailing narrative. We all understand it, we all know what a car is, we all know what Mormonism is. It's what the general authorities teach in General conference, every single general conference which is coming up this weekend. It's what's in the manuals, it's what's correlated. And I think all reasonable people are going to agree what that is, with some fringy exceptions.

Carl Youngblood [02:03:38] Yeah. And I think that if you and I were to like point by point, if we had the time, which we don't go through a lot of these claims of what you call traditional Mormonism, I think that I would want to say that what I'm doing is like I'm changing out the side mirrors on the car.

Carl Youngblood [02:04:01] I might even be adding like new wheels or like adding six wheels instead of four or whatever. But ultimately the car is still getting us to a certain place and it's serving some function. And I guess I would also point out that in the same way that Lincoln mentioned 1980s Mormonism, we should also clarify. I know we're talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but I think it's instructive to look at other Mormon traditions outside of our own church. Because what I'm thinking is like really long term perspective, I'm thinking along the lines of like, where will the church be in 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years?

Carl Youngblood [02:04:41] And in the same way that like other churches that are older than ours have experienced schisms and disruptions and reinterpretations and different movements, I expect ours to have that as well. And we've already seen like the community of Christ, for example, kind of take a fairly radical departure from a more literalistic interpretation of its teachings a few decades ago towards a less one in which different kinds of different ways of thinking are more openly spoken about. And so I think they could claim to be a branch of Mormonism with just as much legitimacy as we claim to be a branch of Mormonism. And I wouldn't want to claim that our Mormonism or that this specific brand of Mormonism is the only valid one.

Carl Youngblood [02:05:39] So that's when you say, like, what I'm describing is not Mormonism, it's something else. It's Carl's crazy idea. And forgive me, I'm Not, I'm putting words in your mouth. I know you didn't say it that way, but to the extent the, that what I'm saying fits, I hear you saying you're changing the definitions. Sam and I also have these debates a lot where he claims I'm changing the definition of what religion is, for example, and no, in fact, the definition I'm using of religion is one that's valued by many anthropologists. It's more academic definition, but it's still a valid definition. And just because he hadn't really heard about it or researched it prior to our discussing it doesn't mean that it's not real.

Carl Youngblood [02:06:24] And so sometimes when I'm debating with a critic, I feel that. I feel like this, where it's like they're saying, oh, well, that's not the Mormonism I was raised with. And I say, well, yeah, to a lot of, to a large extent, neither was it the one I was raised with. But I, and that's fine. But I would say, like, if you then want to go on and say that's not real mortal Mormonism, that is not authentic Mormonism, then I start to get more, a little bit more, you know, animated because I feel like this is very authentic Mormonism and that I can make a strong claim for why it's authentic from our own scriptures and from our own general authorities.

Carl Youngblood [02:07:04] That's not to say that, like, there are aren't other Mormonisms that may be even more predominant that are, that are incompatible with this view. Right. But I would just argue. The only thing I would, I would strongly object to is the claim that it's not authentic Mormonism, that somehow this is like some is Carl's crazy idea or it's crazy Mormon transhumanism, but it doesn't really have a basis in our scriptures and in our, in our core teachings, because I think that it has a strong basis there.

Carl Youngblood [02:07:40] I, you know, I agree that there are ways in which it's totally compatible with this neo orthodox view that we're talking about. I don't, I don't know if that helps at all. I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [02:07:51] Yeah, it, it does. I, well, you know, there, there are listeners that are getting very frustrated. So like, Bishop is saying they really need to move on from this point. He's saying no argument is changing. They're just talking around each other. Other people are saying very similar things. Yeah. ClarkDB says, can we move on to transhumanism, please? And I thought we were, and I addressed that. We, we were risking not exploring the beauty of transhumanism. And I apologize for that. I acknowledge it. But I'm also going to say that that's because I just wanted to try and reach a quick consensus about one thing, which is that, you know, if I were to hold up this thing right here and ask you, what is that? What. What are you going to say?

Carl Youngblood [02:08:40] Right, It's a pen.

John Dehlin [02:08:42] It's a pen. Right. And if I were to hold up this, what would you say that is, right?

Carl Youngblood [02:08:47] Well, it's kind of small in my view, but it's. I can't tell.

John Dehlin [02:08:50] And if I'm going to hold up this, you're going to say, well, right. So, like, words have meaning. And this is where things get really hard. I just think there really is a general consensus of what Mormonism is, and I think people are sold into that general consensus of what Mormonism is at any given time. And that's what.

Tension Between Liberal and Orthodox Mormonism

John Dehlin [02:09:18] When I pay money, it's because of that understanding of Mormonism. When I give two years of my mission service, it's because of that version of Mormonism. And when I teach people on my mission to join the church, I'm teaching them the same version of Mormonism that I bought into. When a gay kid decides to try and do reparative therapy, it's because they have a certain understanding of Mormonism that they didn't just, like, you know, misunderstand.

John Dehlin [02:09:49] They were taught a certain version of Mormonism, and that's why they go through reparative therapy that makes them eventually want to kill themselves because they believed in the same version of Mormonism that's as real as this pen. And so all I'm trying to. We could have stopped this 30 minutes ago and moved on if you would just concede. And you don't have to, but what I was hoping you would do is just concede that, like, there's orthodox Mormonism, which we can all agree upon as much as we can agree that this is a pen. Even though I chewed on the end, it's still a pen.

John Dehlin [02:10:24] There is orthodox Mormonism that we all understand what that is. And what you're talking about with trans Mormonism, transhumanism is not that it. And you know, Lincoln is saying, well, it's an extension of it. No, it's not. Like, either either God was an anthropo is either God is an anthropomorphic being or not. Not the big lengthy explanation that you gave. Either Jesus was a human, but also God and was resurrected, or he's not. And we could either say he was or he wasn't and Joseph Smith is God's prophet on the earth, or he's not. And we can. We can go through this exercise of redefining all the words so that then we can say, no, you're making it too simplistic, John.

John Dehlin [02:11:07] Let's redefine all the words, and then we can actually expand Mormonism. But that's changing it from a car. Once it's not on four wheels, once it's flying, or once it's no longer moving, or once it's in the ocean, it's no longer a car. And so we've changed it. And I'm just saying we could have ended this a long time ago. For those who are frustrated, you're not willing to concede that you're fundamentally changing Mormonism to something totally foreign to Mormonism by extending it and morphing it. And again, by changing it, you're not just changing the rear view mirror, you're taking the wheels off, putting a helicopter on it and flying around, and then it's going into the ocean, but you're still wanting to call it a car when what you've transformed it to is indistinguishable from what all of the rest of us would agree is Mormonism.

John Dehlin [02:12:00] And it's what progressives do, and it's fine. I think a lot of us take exception with the idea that you really are still dealing with Mormonism. What you're really dealing with is something that is like fan fiction, it's like a remix, but it's just totally not Mormonism at that point. In other words, we would be saying Carl knows more than Russell M. Nelson or Joseph Smith about what Mormonism is.

John Dehlin [02:12:33] And why should we listen to you? That's the whole problem, is that we either believe these guys and what they're telling us, or we don't. And if we don't, then we decide where we want to go from here. But it almost feels like a bait and switch to have us all joined or participated in Mormonism under a certain set of understandings that we all can reach agreement on. But then have Carl or Dan Witherspoon or Terrell Givens say, no, not that it's this cool new thing, but you. But it's still. But it's still the same thing. It's just a new and improved version where a lot of us are like, wait a minute, if it's that, then I either want to say that is true or not.

John Dehlin [02:13:14] And if it's not, I'm going To back up and say, screw Joseph Smith. Screw the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was a charlatan and a fraud. The Book of Mormon is a plagiarist fan fiction version of the Bible. Throw it all out. And now I got to figure out what to do with my life because the foundation is crumbled and rotten.

John Dehlin [02:13:36] And Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith was a sexual predator, not a prophet. And the Book of Mormon is fan fiction, not God's scripture on the earth. So throw it all out. And now I've got to back up and figure out how to start all over again. And what you're saying is, is not that, but this new cool thing that's indistinguishable from Mormonism, except you're throwing in some Mormon theologies and ideas here and there. Come with me on this journey and forget the fact that it was a fraud, that Joseph was a charlatan, that the Book of Mormon is fan fiction, and that all these people that have suffered, gay people, feminists, lesbians, intellectuals, excommunicated people, all of us, we were simplistic and naive and too literal.

John Dehlin [02:14:24] It's this new cool thing that people should have followed when in reality we were just reacting to the Mormonism we were all taught. And you're creating something totally new. It almost feels like a bait and switch or like a little gaslighty thing. Unless you just say no, transhumanism is not really Mormonism. It's. It's this new cool thing that we're exploring. But you're right, all of that that you were taught is wrong and it was never right, and it's not good.

John Dehlin [02:14:57] But. But we can riff on it and then create something good from it. But you have to address that before you go on to. This is the perspective of me and probably many of our listeners. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, and I do want to explain, explore the beauties of transhumanism. But it. But for those who are angry at me and frustrated, I think this is really important because there's the.

John Dehlin [02:15:22] There's the divorces, there's the broken families, there's all the time, the money, the reputation that generations and generations have funneled into the church under a certain set of circumstances and understandings, under a certain contract. And what I feel anyone does that tries to create a new version of Mormonism is they're saying no, just kind of move on to something else without there being a reconciliation and an auditing and sort of a.

John Dehlin [02:15:56] Some sort of atonement or Making right of the fact that so many of us were misled or deceived or bought into something that wasn't. That wasn't real.

Carl Youngblood [02:16:08] Okay, so there's a lot of things that you said there, and I hope you'll give me a chance to just try to briefly touch on some of them. What I would say, first of all, is that the things that you described that have caused a lot of pain and heartache for a lot of people and that make the church an unsafe place for many, I don't want to say for everyone, but for a significant number of people are very real problems that should be addressed, that should be atoned for, that should be redeemed. And I don't at all mean to downplay that. I can see many ways that myself or my own family, if had we been in different circumstances where we might have made the decision that it was better for us or safer for us to not participate in church, I can.

Carl Youngblood [02:16:59] I have several friends who've made different decisions than I have, whose decisions I respect and validate and honor. And so by no means would I claim that these problems that you're describing don't exist. I would also say, though, that to some extent, by saying that there is no legitimate form of Mormonism besides what you describe and that that form that you've described is irredeemable, if you're going to make those two claims that there is no other form of it and that it's irredeemable.

John Dehlin [02:17:37] Wait, I don't, I don't want you to wreck your straw man. I, I'm not saying that there aren't other legitimate ways to be Mormon. I just, I just think that you have to acknowledge that you're creating a new. A new thing that really isn't the original thing that caused the pain that was, that was built on deception, that was built on fraud, that was founded by someone who's likely a sexual predator, that we weren't taught the truth about that, that the scriptures aren't what we thought. And that means before you, like, say, take this code, take this fork in the code and come with me with a new branch of the code, acknowledged that the original code wasn't what we were told, didn't serve its.

John Dehlin [02:18:24] Wasn't what we were told and really hurt a lot of people and in and of itself was sort of fraudulent and misleading and harmful. And at that point, if you say, look, yes, all of that is. The Book of Mormon isn't historical. It's not an ancient record of Native Americans, prophets don't really talk to God in any privileged way.

John Dehlin [02:18:47] And God's not really an anthropomorphic being, and Jesus wasn't really resurrected like we thought. But we think there's enough cool stuff here to do a fork. I just think you have to be honest about that reconciliation before you say, come with me on this new Mormon journey. It's not that your new Mormon journey isn't valid. I think it's awesome. I love creativity, new approaches. But there isn't a. I think there needs to be a reconciliation before you can say, even though Joseph Smith was a sexual predator, even though the Book of Mormon isn't historical, if words meet anything, it's not an ancient record.

John Dehlin [02:19:26] Our church isn't the one true church. There's still a lot of cool ways we can take Mormonism. Can you acknowledge that so that then we can go with you on this journey of what Mormonism has become to you and others? Does that make sense?

Carl Youngblood [02:19:42] Yeah. So, I mean, and when those kinds of issues and problems and difficulties that you're describing come up, and sometimes I bring them up when others are claiming they don't exist, I address them, I talk about them. But to then jump to the conclusion that the entire movement, for some reason, is irredeemable or that what I presented is completely irreconcilable, I think that is where you go from just claiming that we're emphasizing different things to then claiming that we're talking about entirely different beasts here. And that's where I struggle. I think you're engaging in a form of reductionism here where it's like you're reducing this to a simpler situation than it actually is because it's easier to describe in a way that makes it.

Carl Youngblood [02:20:34] So. This is absolutely problematic to its core, and there's no way to make this work at all. And so that's where I struggle, is that I do agree that these issues need to be acknowledged and that they need to be worked through, But I don't think that that necessarily means that there's just nothing of value left over at all. And so to the extent that's what you're describing, I disagree with that.

John Dehlin [02:21:05] And that's. And that's. We're not. It's. I know that many of the people that really want to learn about transhumanism are frustrated right now. Some of them have. Many of them have dropped off. I apologize. For me, this is very important. So if people can't bear with me, that's fine. But this is important. I don't want you to make a straw man of my argument. I did not say that there's nothing redeemable about Mormonism. I never said that. I don't believe that. I do believe there's good in Mormonism. I also don't believe that there's no way to create a riff or a. A remix of Mormonism that has value. I think that's valid and I think that's worthwhile. So you keep recharacterizing what I'm saying in ways that don't at all reflect what I'm saying.

Carl Youngblood [02:21:54] Yeah, but I think the reason why I'm trying to say it this way is that it seems to me like what you're saying is, Carl, what you're describing is not Mormonism. Right. And I think that's fair to say you're saying it's a different car. It's not even a car. It's, you know, and all I'm saying is like, I acknowledge the incompatibilities. I acknowledge the challenges, the problems, the things that need to be fixed, the things that need to be redeemed. I acknowledge that these are valid reasons to leave. I acknowledge that they're very difficult. I only would take issue with those who would claim that what I'm proposing is not Mormonism at all. When you go that far, I feel like that's not being fair with me. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:22:39] Yes. Yes. Yes. So, yes, if you're saying the word Joseph Smith, if you're saying the word Mormon, if you're incorporating Mormon scripture, if you bring Jello or some types of casseroles to your transhumanist events, if you all come from a Mormon tradition, of course it's a form of Mormonism. Right. Of course it is.

Carl Youngblood [02:23:03] Right.

John Dehlin [02:23:03] It's a branch, it's a form, it's a, It's a Mormon infused movement. Of course it is. Right.

Carl Youngblood [02:23:11] Yeah. Also that we're not, we're not shying away from these problems you're describing. Like, we discuss them ad nauseam. Right. So that's. The other thing is, like, it's not like we're trying to claim that these bad things you're describing don't exist at all. Right.

John Dehlin [02:23:29] No, and I, and I get that too. And I. One of the things I love about you is that you are. That you are willing to acknowledge the problems with the church. You're always like, yes, the leaders frustrate me. And you know, and they're still good here. And I still, you know, I still find value here. And I, I get that. I have no problem with that. There is there, there. And people are frustrated with me and I promise we'll get to transhumanism. But I'm not going to just say this isn't important because it's what's on the minds of me and most of the people. And I think it's at the core of. This is really at the core of why you and I sometimes have tension. So if we don't talk about it, we're really just glossing over one of the main things that brought us to this conversation. So if listeners can.

Carl Youngblood [02:24:16] Yeah. And I want to say that I totally welcome it. Like, some people even on swab would complain that I think they called Lincoln robot prophet because he was like, in. He was able to sustain long conversations long since long after everyone else had lost interest. Right. And I think I've found some inspiration in him in that I honestly, I love to discuss these things and I actually, to me, like, I feel like a lot of people are struggling and want to talk about them and need to feel validated, and I want to do that and I want to. I want to acknowledge that. And so for me, it honestly hasn't bothered me at all.

Carl Youngblood [02:25:03] Totally, like, hasn't bothered me to the extent that some of your audience is annoyed. I also feel bad about that and don't. That's not what I want. But I actually think I agree with you that it's very important and I want to give it whatever time it needs because I think it's. It's important to address.

John Dehlin [02:25:21] Okay. So look, so we'll just have to say for all the people that want to understand more about Mormon transhumanism, two things will have to happen. Either you'll have to just be patient until we get to it.

Carl Youngblood [02:25:33] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:25:33] Or you can tune out and. And reach out to reach out to Carl or Lincoln or others or go to the website.

Carl Youngblood [02:25:42] That might be a really easy way of is. And I would even be willing to help with this is I could find the times, the timestamps, when different topics got raised.

John Dehlin [02:25:52] Yeah, totally.

Carl Youngblood [02:25:53] Just do a simple list. And if someone wanted to just skip to the parts that was Mormon transhumanism, they could do that.

John Dehlin [02:25:58] Let's do that. Let's do that. But I think we can wrap this up pretty quickly if you're willing to cooperate. So, like, so let me just.

Carl Youngblood [02:26:05] I'm still. I'm still cool and.

John Dehlin [02:26:07] Okay.

Carl Youngblood [02:26:08] I want to tell you that, like, I care about you and I don't feel bad about anything you've Raised and I want to talk about this stuff and you know, like, you, you are an important person to me and so are the people who are listening. Okay, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:26:22] Thank you, brother. Okay, so, like, let me just. There is a degree to which. So I'll, I'll try and explain this in a different way to see if we can reach consensus on one point. Okay, sure.

The Book of Mormon as Historical and Spiritual Text

Carl Youngblood [02:26:36] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:26:37] So there were either golden plates or not. And the golden plates were either written by Moroni and engraved with the etcher thing and carried and buried and Joseph discovered them or not, right?

Carl Youngblood [02:26:56] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:26:58] And if, and if there were, if an angel delivered golden place to Joseph Smith and those golden plates were written by the ancestors of the Native Americans, thousand, two thousand years ago, then Mormonism's on, Right? The orthodox Mormon view is on. If there weren't golden plates, if there wasn't an angel delivering golden plates, and if those golden plates weren't written by Native American ancestors, then Joseph Smith was misleading us. It really, it really. He was telling us something that wasn't true. Now whether he believed in his mind it was true or not is a separate thing.

Carl Youngblood [02:27:40] Well, is it though? I think those two things are related. Like, I think if he thought in his mind that it was true somehow, I mean, we can get into the details of how he might have. I think that's different than that. Then his claims, then the claim that he is deceiving others would, would change because if he felt that these were real or that the economy.

John Dehlin [02:28:04] Before you, before you say that, let me just stop, okay. Do you believe that there were actual golden plates delivered by an angel to Joseph Smith, written by the ancestors to the Native Americans?

Carl Youngblood [02:28:15] I don't.

John Dehlin [02:28:15] Yes or no?

Carl Youngblood [02:28:16] I don't personally believe in that. I. Okay, as far as, as far as the historicity of the record that became the Book of Mormon, I don't completely negate the possibility of there being historical elements in the Book of Mormon, but I definitely think that there's strong evidence for anachronisms in the Book of Mormon that are of 19th century origin. So, like, I'm sort of agnostic on the question of whether the Book of Mormon is not historical at all or whether it contains some elements that are historical. But I think that it definitely contains some elements that are of. They're coming from Joseph Smith and his worldview.

John Dehlin [02:28:58] Okay.

Carl Youngblood [02:28:58] Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:28:59] Yes. And what I heard you just say is the, the foundational, the founding narrative of Mormonism, which is that Joseph, an angel, Moroni, appeared to Joseph and said, I've got plates for you, and eventually you could dig them up, and then once you dig them up, you can translate them. That founding narrative of Mormonism, that is what like got everyone interested in Mormonism and makes everyone from then to now sort of like really give 10% of their income and sacrifice. You're saying that foundational pillar of Mormonism you don't believe ever happened.

Carl Youngblood [02:29:37] So when I would quibble with the claim that that is an absolutely astounding, essential element of being, I'm just asking

John Dehlin [02:29:44] you to acknowledge it. Just say yes. I don't believe that because you don't.

Carl Youngblood [02:29:49] I, I don't believe the, what you described there. I don't believe. I. But you added a whole bunch of extra other stuff where you claim that this was an absolutely essential pillar of the Mormon claims. And that's where I would differ is I would just say I don't think that the historicity of the Book of Mormon is absolutely essential to the Mormon narrative. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:30:14] Well, I understand what you're saying, but I'm. I'm reading Rough Stone Rolling. I'm reading Dan Vogel, I'm reading, you know, Grant Palmer, I'm reading Richard Bushman, and I'm reading how the church got formed, right? And it's like Joseph Smith was a treasure digger and then that jig was up because he was thrown in jail.

John Dehlin [02:30:37] And then he's like, hey, everyone. And even before then he's like, hey, everyone. An angel appeared to me and he told me there's these buried golden plates. And everybody's like, whoa, does Joseph have special powers? And there's a golden plates.

John Dehlin [02:30:51] This is the history of the Native Americans. And like Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmers. And everybody's like, there's really golden plates. And Joseph really has the power to translate and, and whoa. Joseph produced a book. It's really from golden plates. I mean, I just, I mean, it's. That's why I mentioned the term gaslighting, because like, you're telling me that that wasn't central to why people join the church and continue to join the church.

Carl Youngblood [02:31:19] I didn't say that. I said I don't think it's central to like whatever you want to claim is absolutely essential to be a Mormon. I'm not saying that it wasn't an important aspect of many believers faith. Right, so what you're saying right now is you're saying that like, I mean, you're. It's just, it seems a bit like a bait and switch to some degree because I will admit that, you know, like, I don't personally have a strong conviction of the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I'm, like, somewhat open to some elements being historical, but I think there are also definitely elements that are not historical. Right. And then you're saying that.

John Dehlin [02:32:02] But it's more than that. You're saying you don't believe there were golden plates and then an angel delivered golden plates.

Carl Youngblood [02:32:09] But I. Yeah, you're right. I. Yeah, sure, that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:15] Which means that either he was intentionally misleading us. I mean, how is it not that he was intentionally misleading us? Because he's literally having witnesses feel plates underneath the cloth.

Carl Youngblood [02:32:28] So, I mean, on this question, I think the explanation that actually for me seems to fit the historical facts that we do know the best is one theorized by religious anthropologist Ann Toews at. I think it's UC Davis or one of the Universities of California, but anyway. Or Santa Barbara or something. But anyway, she presents the idea that Joseph, you know, we do know, at various times in his life has expressed this, like, strong idea of the concept of proxies and also the idea of magical talismans or objects that had the ability to, like, basically take on properties that were, like, endowed with, you know, I don't know, power of some kind.

Carl Youngblood [02:33:22] And we see this even in the Book of Mormon where the brother Jared brings these stones and they're touched by the hand of the Lord and then they take on these. These powers. Also the concept of baptisms for the dead, other things like that. She thinks that Joseph sincerely believed that he had acquired these records from the angel Moroni in a kind of trance, like vision. Right. That he had, in which he basically had a proxy object of some kind. Because we know that he showed some people this thing that was under cloth that when you touch it, it clinked like it as though it were made out of metal or something.

Carl Youngblood [02:34:09] Something stiff and metallic feeling. He. So here theory is that he basically, like, had a lot. He was very visionary, had lots of ideas about the inhabitants of other time periods and that he truly believed that he had experienced a vision of the angel Moroni and that this object had taken on these properties and that it would only that it couldn't be shown to, like, people who didn't have the faith to understand that concept. And therefore he only showed it in a few, you know, narrow situations.

Carl Youngblood [02:34:51] You know, if you look at, like, the account of the three witnesses, they. They claim to have only seen in vision what they saw and with the. Their spiritual Eyes and not their natural eyes. And then you have DNC 76, the often referred to as the vision of the celestial kingdom, where you have actual members present in the room at the same time who are not seeing the vision. And where you have Joseph and Sidney Rigdon talking back and forth to each other, saying what they saw and asking each other if they're seeing the same thing. So their understanding of that vision is also one that is somehow spiritual in nature and not something that their natural eyes are observing and that the natural eyes of those who are in the room are observing.

Carl Youngblood [02:35:40] So I guess putting all of these things together, I think that Ann Tave's understanding of this situation as something that Joseph could still have sincerely believed had happened and been put into some kind of proxy object is something that for me makes more sense because of what I perceive as Joseph's sincerity coming out through his various experience that he's having. I don't think that he's carrying on some really elaborate like conspiracy that he's somehow able to act like a really sincere believer. But deep inside he knows that he's deceiving everyone around him and he's just able to pull this off. I personally feel like he expressed too much sincere affect an emotion at different times in his lives, from life, from what we do have recorded about him that he just does.

Carl Youngblood [02:36:36] It doesn't fit the pattern to me of this arch deceiver. Right. I understand though, that that is a very plausible explanation for what's going on here, given the nature of the facts. Right. I just think personally that I think Joseph did, did believe.

Carl Youngblood [02:36:57] I think he probably engaged in some types of deception in some situations. For example, in the eight witnesses, their account is a lot more sketchy in terms of what exactly happened. And from what I've read, it's very possible that they were shown characters like a transcript of the characters that were in the plates and not the plates themselves. Even though the final account of the eight witnesses says that they hefted the plates. Right. So in that case, this is more of a situation where somehow the statement, the testimony of the actual witnesses, if this is what happened, was exaggerated beyond what they actually experienced and they were persuaded to sign it.

Carl Youngblood [02:37:49] So you could look at that as a kind of deception or as an exaggeration at least. And I think that this would be for me a better explanation of probably what happened. But I still don't think that that goes to the level of perfectly like being a smoking gun that Joseph was completely insincere and deceiving. Everyone the entire time. I think that could have been just more like a. A fish story. And he just wanted it to be more grandiose and more physical than it actually was and, you know, engaged in some level of deception to do that. And I don't. And I think he should.

Carl Youngblood [02:38:29] I think he should be held to account for that someday. In the balance of everything that that is. That, as well as his dishonesty regarding his practice of polygamy in some cases with. Especially with his wife Emma, are things I think he needs to account for. Right.

Carl Youngblood [02:38:48] So this is a long, long answer, but that's, like, touching on some of the issues that you raised specifically. Right. Sorry, John, I've lost your audio.

John Dehlin [02:39:01] So just got to make sure. Just got to make sure I heard you right. You're saying there definitely were not golden plates?

Carl Youngblood [02:39:13] No, I'm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I don't think so. That's my opinion. I don't think that there were golden plates.

John Dehlin [02:39:20] Okay. And. And so when Emma says that she was dusting around and the plates were on the table with a cloth over it, and she had to lift them up and said they were 40 or 50 pounds to dust under them,

Carl Youngblood [02:39:39] I think that was something else.

John Dehlin [02:39:41] So Joseph must have put them there, giving Emma the impression that they were golden plates, when in reality there was something else he put there to make her think were golden plates when they weren't.

Carl Youngblood [02:39:55] I think that he sincerely believed that those were the golden plates that he had seen in vision, because they had been. Essentially, the characteristics of the plates have been imbued in that object. I think he thinks of it like a horcrux or like a talisman of some kind. You know, like something that is the essence of something has been put inside of. Does that make sense? This is how I think he thinks of it.

John Dehlin [02:40:22] So in his mind, he's like, I'm going to create these fake tin plates.

Carl Youngblood [02:40:29] Yeah, I don't think there are.

John Dehlin [02:40:31] So. So the angel told me that there's golden. I'm telling everyone that the angel told me that there's golden plates in the hill, but there really are spiritual plates. But I need to create a body for the spiritual plates. So I'm going to fashion a bunch of tin plates, and then God's going to infuse the tin plates with. With the spirit of the golden plates, and then I'm going to make everyone think so. So that. But I'm going to cover them so that people can't see them, because God says they're not Supposed to see them. And, but, but, but, but still he's saying that, that Moroni gave him the plates where he didn't just receive plates, he made them. And so isn't that a deception that he, that he made them, but he's telling people that Moroni gave them to him. Isn't that a deception?

Carl Youngblood [02:41:26] Yeah, I mean, I think that if you take this theory of Antaves and you, you know, assume that that's what happened, and I admit it's weird. I mean, I just think that, like I said, I think it explains his sincerity better than another, another way of looking at it.

Carl Youngblood [02:41:44] I think that essentially he could in all good conscience, basically, given his worldview of, you know, this idea that magic is all around him, that if you don't hide something up to the Lord, it could, like, somehow sink through the earth and disappear on you. He had a lot of weird ideas that were part of the folk magic of his era.

Carl Youngblood [02:42:08] I think that he could have sincerely believed that these were the plates, the very ones, because they had been endowed with that power, that they essentially became that, but that it would be something that someone would only be able to know if they had experienced the same vision or experience and trance or whatever you want to call it that he had.

Carl Youngblood [02:42:31] And therefore. Therefore, like, that there would be a need to keep them covered. Right. I, I don't see that as a deception so much as like, him believing that they were this thing, but that that was something that would only be. That only someone of faith would be aware of.

John Dehlin [02:42:51] Okay, I think I get what you're getting at. Let me ask you a sub question.

Carl Youngblood [02:42:56] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:42:57] Do you believe that there was literally a Lehi and a Nephi and that they left Jerusalem 600 BC, made a boat, got on a boat, came to America and that they populated America? Do you believe that that literally happened?

Carl Youngblood [02:43:15] I think, like, I'm pretty agnostic about that. I think it's unlikely, but I don't. I don't want to completely rule it out. Like I said, I think that the Book of Mormon has historical or may have historical elements. I know that it had. I'm confident that it has anachronisms, but it may have. There may be some events that are described in the Book of Mormon that are true. Like, I don't want to use the word true because it's so loaded, but that are historical accounts of actual individuals that are. That match some real people in some era in some way.

Carl Youngblood [02:43:53] I'm not willing to completely deny that Joseph may have somehow channeled some kind of an awareness of something that happened in history, but I don't think. I don't find that essential or that there's strong evidence for that based on the account. And I think that there are aspects of the account that are problematic, like the fact that Lehi would not have had the writings of Deutero Isaiah on the plates of brass. Right. So I think that's an important problem. Also the fact that the Babylonian captivity of the. Of Jerusalem was not really the. Was not really like a general captivity the way it was described in the Book of Mormon, but rather just something that only affected the elite.

Carl Youngblood [02:44:48] And the lay people of the time pretty much just kept living in Jerusalem the way they always had, according to my understanding. I'm not, I'm not an expert historian here, by the way.

John Dehlin [02:45:00] Well, I mean, and believe me, I. This stuff, this stuff is important to me and to others because of, of the, of the demands of Mormonism and the ways that Mormonism can hurt people. And so, and so what, what, what? I, I've been really trying to get to the bottom of this more and more recently.

John Dehlin [02:45:23] And what seems, you know, you were sort of, you were willing to say, one, that there probably weren't gold plates, and two, there probably wasn't a Nephi or a Lehi or a Mormon or Moroni or, you know, any. That there may be some hints of real things that happened that the essence of which was captured in the Book of Mormon. But, like, that's not what the Book of Mormon's saying. The Book of Mormon's saying is, there was a Lehi, there was a Nephi, there was a Laman, there was a Lemuel, there's a Benjamin, there's a Mosiah. There was. They lived here, they wrote on the plates, they passed them down, and they deliver golden plates.

John Dehlin [02:45:59] And the book isn't saying, this is an essence of similar things in some cases that happened, that becomes, you know, some text. They're saying this is a. The book itself says this is a literal history they got written on golden plates. And so, and so that's important to me because.

John Dehlin [02:46:24] Because that's what, that's the proposition that we've all signed up for. That's what everybody was sold into. And I know I'm repeating myself, but yes, there's some metaphorical and spiritual value in the text of the Book of Mormon, but what you're basically saying is, is that the basic founding narrative that Joseph Smith told everybody about isn't what everyone understands, who's orthodox. And you're Not. This isn't.

John Dehlin [02:46:53] When people. When missionaries go out and convert someone to the church, it's not. Joseph Smith, you know, had a vision and then made some tin plates and infused it with the spirit of some other plates that he thought was real.

John Dehlin [02:47:10] About a history of people that really didn't exist. But that is an essence of some things that may have happened. But it's really not a history. But there's spiritual value in it. That's. That's a proposition that literally nobody gets baptized for and that literally nobody goes on a mission because they heard of it's.

Carl Youngblood [02:47:31] So I actually, I would disagree with that claim. Like, this is where I think maybe we could touch on Tilich a little bit, if it's all right with you. Because I actually think this is super important. I do think that a lot of religions start out in a very real literalist mode, but I actually think that if they stick with that, then what happens is that there's this, like, period where the religion is very much in keeping with the zeitgeist. Right. So like Joseph Smith. And this is.

Joseph Smith, Scripture, and Prophetic Imagination

Carl Youngblood [02:48:02] This is something I actually wrote in response to one of your Facebook posts. If it's all right, I'd just like to briefly touch on it. But like, one thing that I remember you saying is that you were, like you said, if I did and said those things, referring to Joseph Smith, you wouldn't think of me as a prophet. You'd want to lock me up.

Carl Youngblood [02:48:25] And I said, in response to that, I said, there's all too little religious and secular imagination around prophets. Prophets can't be divorced from their cultural context. Setting aside all sorts of mistakes and misdeeds that I think Joseph still has to answer for, the claims he made were viable possibilities for the time and place in which he made them. They were what the philosopher William James called living options. That is idea that a sufficient number of people in that time and place could believe in and get behind someone today making the same claims would be seen as a candidate for the asylum or a fundamentalist. But the actual prophets of today would be saying far different things, things that resonate with people and start social movements.

Carl Youngblood [02:49:10] That's really the primary criterion, that they identify a pressing need and articulate it in a way that deeply resonates with others. Joseph Smith's own revelations about prophecy were radically liberal. I will speak unto all nations of the earth, and they shall write it. There were exceedingly many prophets among us. Anyone with the testimony of Jesus is a prophet. Hence my claim that both religious and secular people lack Imagination. Prophets aren't clones of past heroes. They are new heroes for our times, and they show up in unexpected places. And I would add parenthetically that they usually aren't exceptionally virtuous either.

Carl Youngblood [02:49:48] Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the old ones. Seek what they sought. So thanks for letting me read that. But basically what I'm getting at there is these were, like, things that made sense for Joseph's time and place. The claim and the things that were in the Book of Mormon were very relevant to the questions and concerns of his day and his era. Right.

Carl Youngblood [02:50:12] And I think that. I do believe that he sincerely thought that what he was channeling and receiving was historical. I don't think that they necessarily had to be historical in order to motivate people. And actually, I think that's one of the sort of frustrating and genius parts of religion, is that religion, it just kind of happens. It emerges because somebody at some specific time and place is moved to say something or do something, or feels very strongly that something is needed, something's important that's lacking. And they articulate it in a way that really resonates with people to the. To where it mobilizes them, it galvanizes them, and they do this in good and bad ways.

Carl Youngblood [02:51:04] There are, like, people who I would consider prophetic who have done profoundly evil things as well. That's not to say that I think Joseph was a completely evil person, but I just think he's a problematic individual who has both flaws and good qualities as well, and that we shouldn't be assuming that he's like some saint or whatever.

Carl Youngblood [02:51:29] But I think that now. So Joseph received something that moved the people of his day and changed history. It was so compelling that it, like, caused people to, like, relocate from where they were and totally change their whole way of life and start cities out of nothing, out of the wilderness. And the Book of Mormon also addressed really important things. And I still find it to be totally deserving of the. The name scripture, even if it's not historical, but a new prophet of today. And what I think that Mormonism calls each generation to do is to receive new revelation that's relevant to the time and place that they're in now and not the time and place that they were in back in Joseph's time.

John Dehlin [02:52:21] So I. I really do understand what, what you're doing. I understand that you're basically saying there's spiritual and metaphorical and symbolic and moral value to what Joseph Smith created. He's created a. A community. He's created a theology he's created a. A church. He's created a.

Carl Youngblood [02:52:50] A

John Dehlin [02:52:53] way of thinking, a way of life that has inspired millions and continues to inspire millions. And let's, let's. Let's. Let's not constrict ourselves to some rigid way of thinking about it. Let's have an expansive. Let's have an expansive way to think about it. Let's not ascribe to Joseph the worst motives and the worst interpretations of his behavior. Let's hold him to account for the mistakes he made. But let's also have a charitable interpretation of his motives and intentions, particularly within the context of the time. And let's. And let's see what beautiful things we can do together going forward.

Carl Youngblood [02:53:47] And I still think he did things that were pretty bad for his time.

John Dehlin [02:53:51] Yeah, you said that. Yeah, Yeah.

Carl Youngblood [02:53:53] I don't want to say that. I don't want to give. When you say charitable interpretation. I don't want to, like, sugarcoat it. Like, I don't want to say that he was like, yeah, better. Yeah, not. Didn't have many faults, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [02:54:11] Right. Yeah. And I don't think you're doing that.

Carl Youngblood [02:54:15] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:54:16] And I, you know, maybe we've just taken a long time to get to something very specific, but I'll just. If I can just kind of summarize, because I do have people telling me they're really glad we're having this conversation. And even if some of the people that really wanted to focus on transhumanism are mad that we've gone into this, it was always my intent to go into this. And this is one of the main reasons I was interested in interviewing you. So I. Sorry. Not. Sorry, Without. Without disrespect to those people. This was always what I wanted to talk to you about. And this is at the core of why you and I have disagreements.

John Dehlin [02:54:49] But as I'm trying to understand what. What happened with Joseph Smith and, you know, there's this really cool book that I'm reading about the mound builder myth, and we've had Dan Vogel and John Hamer and others on. What I think is a more reasonable explanation is that the treasure digging was up. Joseph Smith had a fascination with Native Americans and their origins. Like most of America at the time, we can find 10 different authors who wrote books speculating on the origins of Native Americans at the time, including. Including Ethan Smith and the View of the Hebrews. But there are at least nine other books that do that.

John Dehlin [02:55:34] I've been reading about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin all Saying, where are these mound builders? Where do these Native Americans come from? And because America was so super racist and because we were killing and taking land from the Native Americans, and because we found these beautiful, big, huge mounds, we didn't have John Deere equipment back then, so we didn't know how these mounds got here. And certainly because we're dehumanizing these Native Americans, we can't ascribe to them any virtues at all.

John Dehlin [02:56:09] So this myth arises in the 1600s and 1700s that there must have been a white race who created these mounds and this pottery and this art, because these savages could never have done it. So there must have been another white race that created these cool things. And oh, we've been reading the Bible and the Bible talks about the lost 10 tribes. It must have been Jews that were this white race that created these mounds that were killed off by these bad savages. And so then you start to get in the 1700s and the late 1700s, different authors that are speculating, that are speculating on, on where the, where the Native Americans came from and what happened to the white race that clearly was responsible for all the good things, because all these dark natives were responsible for just bad things.

John Dehlin [02:57:05] So let's merge our understanding of the Tower of Babel and Adam and eve and a 6,000 year old earth and the lost 10 tribes of Israel. Let's try and explain that. And so you get one account, two accounts, three accounts. Ninth account is View of the Hebrews. Solomon Spalding is one account.

John Dehlin [02:57:26] And Joseph Smith sort of says, I know, and Oliver Cowdery potentially, who was in the congregation of Ethan Smith, right, in Vermont, who had View of the Hebrews and read that version. At some point somebody said, let's take our own stab at it.

John Dehlin [02:57:46] Let's create a version of the history of the Native Americans and it's got the dark race and the white race, like 10 other authors had talked about before. And let's incorporate Isaiah just like View of the Hebrews did. And let's talk about a white race and a dark race and the dark race killing off the white race, just like View of the Hebrews did and Joseph Smith's iteration. Let's throw in the Sermon on the Mount and let's throw in evangelical sermons that are being given. And because we don't know any better, let's throw in horses and steel and swords and helmets and shields, because that's our worldview at the time, the 19th century, early 19th century worldview.

John Dehlin [02:58:31] And let's, by the way, let's throw in Joseph Smith's own family narratives of his father, Joseph Smith Sr's vision of the Tree of life life. And let's throw in a lot of Joseph's own biographical stuff of a younger brother who's telling his dad what's true, brothers who don't quite have it right. And let's throw in a bunch of prophecies about how cool Joseph Smith's gonna be when he's born and how prophetic and awesome Joseph Smith is going to be. Let's write that in. So I'm actually literally forecasting my own awesomeness as the authority. But is pseudepigrapha so that people will think it's really cool and believe it?

John Dehlin [02:59:10] And let's make all these claims and resolve all these family disputes and evangelical Protestant disagreements of the time. Let's just do some cool remix fan fiction of the Bible and tell everyone that it. Because if it's just Joseph Smith writing it, who are you? But if God gave an angel golden plates, that's a real history.

John Dehlin [02:59:34] And I'm using special powers to translate these golden plates. And then I'm giving you a real history with God's real word as a prophet that's telling a New Testament of Jesus Christ. That's more impressive. That's more interesting. That's kind of like pseudepigrapha. That's like, whoa, I'm an uneducated, superstitious farm boy.

John Dehlin [02:59:57] That's interesting. If it's God and a prophet and angels, and I'll pay attention to that, versus some weird remix of the Bible of an uneducated farm boy, which is what it maybe was. That's more interesting. And so Joseph weaves this tale of this eccentric, elaborate origin of the book, when in reality it's just a lukewarm remix fan fiction of the Bible from an uneducated farm boy that's just got jambalaya and all the cultural milieu thrown in, sold as ancient scripture revealed and transcribed by a prophet. I think I know that I'm kind of obnoxious and exaggerating. I think that's a much more realistic Occam's Razor explanation for what happened versus your version, which is like a version of Mormonism that no one has ever taught anyone, ever.

John Dehlin [03:01:00] No one has ever gotten baptized because of your version of Mormonism. No one's ever gone on a mission because of your version of Mormonism. And all I'm saying is, is so.

Carl Youngblood [03:01:11] Actually, I would disagree with.

John Dehlin [03:01:13] Let me just make a final point. When you and I have disagreements on Facebook. When you critique an ex Mormon or a critical Mormon for ex Mormon, post Mormon for their critiques. What I think the gap is, is that what we want you to do is say, yes, John, you're actually right. That thing that everyone was sold into isn't true. There were no golden plates. There was no Angel Moroni, there was no Lehi, no Nephi, none of that. But there's probably still some spiritual stuff that might be valid. And what's most important is good things have come from it and we can all move there.

John Dehlin [03:01:54] If you could just stipulate all that and say it's a totally. It's probably a more reasonable and logical perspective that ex Mormons have that none of it's true. And I'll just agree with that being probably true, but it's still worth building something new off of anyway, then we're all good. But instead, what I think you do is sort of say, oh, but it doesn't have to be that way, and you're getting it wrong. Ex Mormons and critical Mormons and Jeremy Reynolds and John Dehlin, you're making it simplistic or you're making it monolithic. It's more expansive. And what I think the difference is that what you call more expansive is really not the Mormonism that any of us signed up for.

Critiques of Institutional Mormonism

John Dehlin [03:02:40] It's more an aspirational version of a Mormonism that you think could be really cool. But a lot of us are saying no. We were sold into something very specific and tangible and real, and we were hurt by that. And we want our time back or our money back, or we want an apology or we want those LGBT lives back, or all the sacrifices people made under a specific narrative that needs to be accounted for before. And let's all agree on that and say Joseph Smith, whatever he did, we were all misled at the outcome of what really happened versus what Joseph Smith said happened and what we were taught happened.

John Dehlin [03:03:25] We were all misled, and a lot of people got hurt, and a lot of people spent a lot of time and money on something that wasn't true. Let's just have an accounting for that in a recognition of it. And then once we're all sort of agreeing that that happened and there's atonement and apologies and atonement and reconciliation to not do a false narrative anymore, then, yeah, let's go on and see what beautiful things we can create. But without that reconciliation and acknowledgment, with just the, hey, let's go see what's beautiful. Forget that stuff. Let's go see what's beautiful. There's a lot of us that are like, no way.

John Dehlin [03:04:06] We thought we were buying a car and it wasn't a car. And that matters and that needs to be reconciled and atoned for before we go on to something beautiful and expansive and new. Does any of that make sense?

Carl Youngblood [03:04:21] Yeah, a lot of it makes a lot of sense. And forgive me that it's like you mentioned so many things, it's hard for me to address them systematically and I wouldn't want to try to do so because I think that addressing them systematically would be a bit long winded as well. But I do think there's a few points that I could touch on that are important to address.

Carl Youngblood [03:04:46] Let me see if I can remember. So I think that it's really important. You know, I talked about that I didn't necess. So your, your explanation for how Joseph Smith's telling of the narratives that appear in the Book of Mormon makes sense from the perspective of Joseph Smith's worldview and his time and place and what other people are talking about. And I've already conceded that like, I've already conceded that many elements of the Book of Mormon can seem to be influenced by Joseph Smith's worldview and the 19th century setting of the Book of Mormon.

Carl Youngblood [03:05:34] That said, like I there are subversive elements in the Book of Mormon that I think are, that counteract some of the narratives you're describing. So for example, there's this teaching in the Book of Mormon that a remnant of Jacob would be among the, the Gentiles and that if the Gentiles didn't repent, that they would be destroyed by this remnant. Right. And there's also, in a number of places in the book, there are narratives around like prophetic authority that are quite subversive when viewed in light of the modern church. Like there's, you know, a part where the, where Abinadi and Samuel the Lamanite, they're both clearly prophetic, divinely inspired individuals in the narrative who had no ecclesiastical authority whatsoever and actually who opposed the church leaders of their time and place.

Carl Youngblood [03:06:43] And in fact, Samuel the Lamanite isn't even included in the scriptural account of the Nephites until the Savior himself says to the Nephites, why haven't you included Samuel's words? Right. So the Nephites clearly didn't consider Samuel to be a prophet until the Savior acknowledged him as such. Or at least that's what the narrative seems to indicate. So I think there are interesting subversive elements in the Book of Mormon that counteract some of the racist tendencies that you're describing in interesting ways that I think that I personally find inspiring.

Carl Youngblood [03:07:24] So regardless of what. Where those came from and what their origins are, I don't find the book to be, like, without important lessons, even for our day, that it's not this something that we have to first say it's all garbage, so that we can get on with things and then fully reconcile and atone, and then we can maybe do something.

Carl Youngblood [03:07:47] I want to say instead that there's more going on there and it's more powerful and moving and inspiring than maybe you're acknowledging, even if its origins are not ancient or historical. The other thing I want to say is around just that a lot of the things that you described are things that I also, like, think are wrong and that should be accounted for. Like anyone who is currently, you know, the. The way lgbt, LGBTQ people are treated in the church, in many cases, the way they've been treated historically, I think that's just absolutely a problem and that these. These are things that still haven't been fully atoned for and fully apologized for and redeemed.

Carl Youngblood [03:08:39] I think there are many other aspects of church practice and history that are problematic, and I want those things to be redeemed. But I think that it's also important to be clear and sort of practical about what you're proposing here. You seem to be proposing that, like, from top to bottom, from the earliest, say, newest convert to the church, who happens to be telling one of their friends about the church, all the way up to the most senior member of the 12, that they should categorically and unanimously, all at once, first acknowledge and explain everything that's wrong until something can be fixed, right? Until we can move on and go to some better, cooler thing.

Carl Youngblood [03:09:35] And what I would like to propose instead is that no human organization at all, in any time in history, and today as well, has ever had this situation where there's anywhere close to unanimity amongst the members of that organization, as well as its leadership, in many cases, that they could even get to a point where they could reach a significant enough consensus to be able to achieve something like what you're describing. I actually, instead, would say that one of the coping mechanisms for me personally, and I've said this before on this program, but, like, I can see ways that my life could have gone in different directions, and I would have felt like, for whatever reason, it wasn't the best choice for me.

Carl Youngblood [03:10:24] To stay right? Or. And I totally respect those who've chosen to keep themselves safe in other ways because for their situation, it wasn't the right thing. But I still think that what you're describing of like this just all of a sudden every single element, from top to bottom, makes restitution and atonement and fully does that. I think that that's not practical or possible. And I think that actually instead it's something that can only happen in a kind of gradual way and that it is already happening to some extent and will continue. I mean, I think the church will continue to hemorrhage members and will continue to have troubles.

Carl Youngblood [03:11:11] In some ways. I actually want the situation to get more desperate so that the church is willing to take more risks with people who have less conventional ideas and willing to be more humble about where it stands and what it could, what. What would take it in better directions.

Carl Youngblood [03:11:32] But it's this thing that is very complicated and it's not possible to have. Like, there is no consensus right now amongst the leadership about this. And so part of what's allowed me to cope, given my own frustrations, which vary and have been significant, is stoicism. Honestly, like, my conviction is that all of us should lower our expectations, both of the church and also of the other organizations that we're a part of. Every company that I've ever worked for has been often very disappointing. And the degree to which it actually abides by the principles that it claims to have has often been really disillusioning.

Carl Youngblood [03:12:22] In the same way, I'm really frustrated at my country and many of the. Of its leaders right now. And to some extent, I can escape from these bonds and change the situation. Like, I could go to another country. Like I lived in other countries in my lifetime. I could also go to another church, or I could abandon the church entirely.

Carl Youngblood [03:12:44] And for some reason, some people, that is the right answer. That's the thing that will be safest and best and most conducive to their progress and improvement as a person. But wherever you go, you're going to be disappointed. And that's part of what's allowed me to cope with both my personal relationships and my church relationships and other relationships that I have in my community and other ways has been to actually lower my expectations of others, to realize that it's way more complicated and hard to get everyone on the same page and willing to move forward. But I still feel that there is something worth doing that with and that there, rather than like, kill it all, destroy it all, knock it all down, destroy the country, start everything from scratch again, Essentially do the software equivalent of, like, abandon the entire code base and just writing everything from scratch again.

Carl Youngblood [03:13:43] I think that that prospect of. Of taking the human race and just like, scratching it all out and starting over again in all of its forms and organizations is completely infeasible. And that instead I have to kind of take wherever I've been planted, wherever I happen to have been placed, and try to make something better from where I'm at. And my view of what that looks like is going to be different from yours. And each of us is in our own corner of the vineyard, is working to improve the lives of those around us. I know you're doing it with your ministry to the people of Mormon stories, and I just happen to, because of my circumstances in life, been drawn in the direction I'm currently in. But I don't blame you for choosing the direction you have, nor the others who've chosen different directions.

John Dehlin [03:14:39] Well, you're. You're being a good sport, and a lot of people are really mad at me, and, and some people are valuing the conversation. And again, I just apologize to the people who are. Who are annoyed, but this is really important to me. I think that a way to kind of wrap this part up is just to say that I think there are two reasonable positions here.

John Dehlin [03:15:01] I think that. I think it's reasonable to conclude that the church is a fraud, that Joseph Smith was a charlatan, that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator, that the church, what it claims to be now isn't what it claims to be, that we were all sold into something that wasn't true.

John Dehlin [03:15:26] And because we were sold into something that wasn't true, then we're mad about that, we're angry about that. We don't want to be a part of it, and we want to make sure everybody inside knows that they are also paying tithing and reputation and time and money to something that wasn't what it claims to be. I think that's a reasonable conclusion. Just like

Carl Youngblood [03:15:52] I agree with you there. I think that I know many people who I consider good friends who've come to that conclusion, and they're still my good friends, and I still care about them.

John Dehlin [03:16:01] Them.

Carl Youngblood [03:16:01] Yeah, And I. I do agree that, like, I might have worded some of the ways you describe things slightly differently, but I still agree with that position. Like, I think that, yeah, that that's fair to. To. To believe. Right.

John Dehlin [03:16:18] And. And I think that it's also a reasonable position to take to say, there's good here, let's have an advanced perspective. Let's have a more sophisticated worldview. Let's evolve, and let's not reduce Mormonism to something too simplistic. There's actually some really cool, nifty, sophisticated kernels in here sometimes that even unfortunately got marginalized. Yeah, let's mine the coolness of Mormonism and let's realize that it's flawed and let's acknowledge the flaws, but let's also not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's mine the cool stuff and let's take all the good scientific and advanced knowledge that we can have and let's use it as a foundation to see what cool things we can build and what cool directions we can go in. And, and. And that could be really fun and meaningful and worthwhile.

Carl Youngblood [03:17:23] Yeah, and I, I appreciate you acknowledging both of those positions. I think they're both reasonable. If I could. I think this is a good segue in a way into some of the. More things along the lines that some of the audiences asked for that I think is maybe challenging a little bit to someone who's coming from a per. A purely, like, atheistic, secular perspective.

Carl Youngblood [03:17:47] And if it's all right, I'd like to. I guess what I'd like to touch on here is that I do think that. And when I said earlier that I felt like true using the word true and truth is loaded because they have so many different meanings to different people.

Carl Youngblood [03:18:05] There's an aspect of our exploration in the. In the Mormon transhumanist Association, as well as just with some of my friends, they've helped me to learn more about philosophy in ways that have really enriched and like, blown my mind. And one of the things that is a challenging claim from a very famous philosopher at the previous turn of the century, William James, who was kind of like one of the big wigs at Harvard at the time and was one of the prominent proponents of a new philosophical movement called pragmatism.

Carl Youngblood [03:18:44] But this philosophical movement basically claims that truth isn't a static thing, that truth is something that even though it looks like in retrospect, it's something that is just sitting there and that we discover it and then. Then we know it's true, that it's actually more of a malleable and participatory thing. So, for example, like, if no human being had ever been intrigued by looking at the birds and seeing the possibility, thinking of the possibilities of human flight, that, that they would Never have, like, sought to research and discover the technologies that eventually led to us being able to fly. Under certain conditions, you could claim that, like the.

Carl Youngblood [03:19:38] The claim humans cannot fly is a truthful claim, a valid factual claim. But under certain conditions, that claim is no longer true because humans have actually participated in the discovery of truth to the point where they've learned how to create certain conditions where humans can fly.

Carl Youngblood [03:20:00] And so in that way, there are certain truths, not all of them, but certain truths that depend upon our actual willingness to make them happen, right? They depend on our desires. And what I'm getting at here is that there are ways that humans could drive their future progress and growth in both technology and in religion that would depend on their own desires to do that.

Carl Youngblood [03:20:33] There's a passage, for example, from a famous philosopher named, I think, something Chamberlain, who was actually not excommunicated, but fired from BYU during this period when everyone in the church was debating evolution and the student body was totally upset about it. That was something that you guys talked about recently in one of your other programs. And he was really inspiring to a lot of people. And he said if there's. Even if. He said even if Mormonism isn't true, we could make it true by essentially working to the point where it became such. Right? So I think what he means by that is that many of the visions of what the future might look like, of a Zion like people and like a celestial kingdom and a kind of harmonious human community are things that we could believe in enough to try to work towards, right?

Carl Youngblood [03:21:35] And that if we decided that we didn't believe in them, they would never happen. It's like there are some states of humanity that can only get. We can only get to by exerted effort rather than just like that. If we just let random passive things happen, that they'll actually happen.

Carl Youngblood [03:21:53] And William James said on occasion, he said the capacity of the strenuous mood lies so deep down among our natural human possibilities that even if there were no metaphysical or traditional grounds for believing in a God, people would postulate one simply as a pretext for. For living hard and getting out of the game of existence. Its keenest possibilities of zest, every sort of energy and endurance of courage and capacity for handling life's evils is set free in those who have religious faith. For this reason, the strenuous type of character will, on the battlefield of human history, always outwear the easygoing type. And religion will drive irreligion to the wall.

Carl Youngblood [03:22:45] I find this quote from William James very disturbing, especially for Someone who is approaching this from, like, more of a secular, like, just atheistic perspective. Because what it says is that, like, faith is this strong motivating thing for people. Faith in whatever, you know, like a prophet has articulated a vision. It could be something about Zion. It could be.

Carl Youngblood [03:23:18] I. I see for me, prophecy is much more broad. Like, it could be something like a vision of a more racially harmonious America. Like the prophet Martin Luther King Jr. Shared with us in the 60s during the Civil rights era, a vision of a more independent India, like the prophet Mahatma Gandhi shared with his people during the last century.

Carl Youngblood [03:23:44] The thing is that whatever these prophets articulate galvanizes people to act. And those people essentially become religious. They become zealous for this cause. And in many cases, there might also be a belief in some kind of a supreme being. But from an anthropological perspective, a religion doesn't even have to require a belief in a supernatural for it to be a religion.

Carl Youngblood [03:24:12] But this collection of ideas and concepts is so real to these people, is so valid that they are going to work to make them happen, whether they exist or not. And what James is saying here is that, like, if you just live your life in a more easygoing way, in a more lackadaisical way, that you're going to be trampled upon by the more zealous people in the world for good or ill. Like, I'm not saying that all these people are good. Like, some of them might be extremely what we think of as evil. Like, they could be like Nazis or some horrible movement that we feel the need to combat and to fight against.

Carl Youngblood [03:24:55] But the only way that we can fight against evil religion and the kind of like, spreading of authoritarianism or whatever kinds of really viral ideologies that are happening in our society is for us to create counter. To counterbalance them with positive faith. That is, regardless of whether it claims in the existence of the supernatural is motivated to act towards a cause. And so what's disturbing about what James is sharing here is that, like, if we just want to be completely secular on the sidelines and claim that there is no.

Carl Youngblood [03:25:36] That this is the best way to be. It might be kind of weak sauce to combat fundamentalism and extremism in our culture. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [03:25:48] Yeah, I mean, I, I was reading through the quotes that you. That you wrote on your. On that document that we kind of used to prepare. And, and as you. As some of those quotes. And I can go back and look, but I'll just paraphrase.

Carl Youngblood [03:26:02] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [03:26:03] Some of the authors, you, You One quote in particular basically made the point that what religion is, and I'm probably just restating some of the things you just said, but religion is, is. It's. It's a set of symbols, a set of teachings, a community leaders, examples that provides this kind of energizing force.

John Dehlin [03:26:26] And here's where I'm going to agree with you. You know, it's the type of force that gets people to pay 10% of their income. It's the type of force that gets people to get up in the morning and go to three hours of church. And not only that, but get up two hours earlier and go to Bishop's council before you go to three hours of church. And then to go to your home teaching and to give casseroles to the sick and to serve as young men's or young women's leader and to work in the temple and to dedicate and commit your entire life to the building of something that results in tens of thousands of buildings and these beautiful temples and art and beautiful families and wonderful people.

John Dehlin [03:27:09] A Carl Jungblood or a John De Lynn or a Carolyn Pearson or a Joanna Brooks or there's a million millions of beautiful Mormons out there that come out of this beautiful tradition. And it was this. It wasn't weak sauce that got them there. It was bold. Truth claims may or may not have been true, but like visionary, bold, exciting, captivating theology and doctrine that, you know, was what it was for its time. And it's got us to where it is. And if we don't throw it away and if we can find a way to reshape it with continuing revelation, it can continue to be this bold, exciting future that can positively transform humanity and that won't get drowned out in weak secularism or where you can't get a secular person to give a dollar, let alone 10%.

John Dehlin [03:28:05] And you can't get a secular person to show up at a Sunday meeting because they'd rather drink coffee and sit in bed and read a book or watch Netflix. As I've tried to create secular communities like Oasis or whatever, it's hard to get people to show up. And people may get. Get excited for 10 minutes or three days or a month, but people that were leaders three months ago have quit. Within three months, these communities are all either dead or limping along.

John Dehlin [03:28:40] And as. As they often say about liberals, it's like herding cats and they're too worried about their own worlds. And they don't sacrifice, they don't commit, they don't make real efforts to community and if, if the, if we as humanity are facing sort of radical fundamentalist Islam which let's just say, you know, by someone like Sam Harris is going to say that's dangerous.

Carl Youngblood [03:29:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:09] That's gonna like we don't want jihad, we don't want a, a religious totalitarian sort of caliphate killing everyone who doesn't agree and then dominating the world with Quran based extremism. Weak sauce secularism isn't going to compete with that.

John Dehlin [03:29:35] But maybe a progressive but still religious worldview can be strong enough sauce to compete in the marketplace of well being so humanity can emerge better and stronger and cooler and more advanced and more enlightened versus all the secular people have one kid and they get killed off by all the high birth rate religious fundamentalists such that humanity gets drowned out and we get, get thrown back into another dark ages or medieval times versus advance into really beautiful futures. It's a strong sauce, morphed, flexible transhumanist inspired religious worldview that's going to give us a best shot at a positive future for humanity versus this weak sauce secularism that's really going to eat its, devour itself and dwindle and seed humanity to the high birth rate, burgeoning fundamentalist religious wackos.

Carl Youngblood [03:30:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:30:51] Stating your position.

Carl Youngblood [03:30:53] Yeah, yeah. And I mean it sounds like you at least agree to some extent here. And I guess what I would say is that Tillich brings an interesting insight here where these strong sauce religions as you call them, like don't stay that way and can't stay that way forever. And I think this is his brilliant insight. Right. And we're seeing it right now with fundamentalist Islam. We're seeing it with sort of, I, I hesitate to call it fundamentalist Mormonism, but at least more neo orthodox Mormonism. Right. Where, because obviously you might get confused with the FLDS and, and that kind of thing, but anyway, that it's no longer motivating to the extent that it used to.

The Challenges Facing Progressive Mormonism

Carl Youngblood [03:31:46] Right. And this is where I was getting at when I said that like for Joseph's time and place, it was like, it really was viral. It was like really motivational. It made sense both to him and to all the people around him. I mean that like you were saying that the narratives in the Book of Mormon just fit so well.

Carl Youngblood [03:32:06] And, and what, what Tillich is pointing out is just that like, you know, these, you know, these signposts that we claim are eternal and these truths that we claim are eternal may stay where they are, but we keep moving like as a society, we keep changing and the things that used to motivate us no longer motivate us. Like now, when a missionary goes out to preach the gospel, they not only have to, like, persuade a person that they have the answer, they have a form of salvation that will help them. They have to actually persuade the person that they even need help to begin with, that they even need redemption.

Carl Youngblood [03:32:46] Right. Whereas, you know, in Joseph Smith's time, like, it was widely accepted that everybody was in need of redemption and everyone was sinful and they needed some kind of saving. Right. That's not even widely accepted anymore. So. So the job of a missionary is that much harder. And Tilip just observes that, like, it's important, like, until someone is willing to confront these clashes between the. The narrative, the symbols as they've been passed down to us and the challenges and insights and motivations of our current time, that it's just going to be more and more out of touch, that things are just going to get worse and worse.

Carl Youngblood [03:33:32] And churches that are unwilling to break that myth. And by. By breaking it, he means you're not discarding it, but you are recognizing in the symbols they're narrative and mythical qualities beyond just their literal meaning. Right. Unless they do this, they run the risk of being, you know, end up on. Ending up on the dust heap of history. And for me, when I discovered this concept from Tillich and from a guy named Richard Holloway, who was a real hero of mine, who first shared this idea of Paul Tillich with me, I. That totally changed my. That was a turning point in my faith because it showed me that instead of being bad in questioning these things, that I wasn't being bad, but that actually I was striving for something more, that I was trying to resist something that was no longer working.

Carl Youngblood [03:34:33] Right. And before, I felt guilty about it. But I think that after I realized that I was actually trying to get rid of idolatry in my life. I mean, there's. There's this really interesting passage. If it's all right, I'm just. It's very short. I think I can read it quickly. But he says basically that. He says the presupposition of such literalism is that God is a being acting in time and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being affected by them like any other being in the universe.

Carl Youngblood [03:35:13] Literalism deprives God of his ultimacy and religiously speaking of his majesty, it draws him down to the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite, and the conditional. In the last analysis, it's not rational criticism of the myth which is decisive, but the inner religious criticism. Faith, if it takes its symbols literally, becomes idolatrous. It calls something ultimate which is less than ultimate. Faith, conscious of the symbolic character of its symbols, gives God the honor which is due him. And so what he's saying is that like, no matter what your conception of God is, it's going to need tweaking. It's never going to be perfect.

Carl Youngblood [03:35:57] No matter what a prophet receives in vision, it's never going to be like, absolutely ideal and, and eternal and immutable. But it will, it will be like, it will start to show its age over time. And the things that made it relevant and interesting will get like, less and less relevant and less and less interesting. And if a religious movement is unwilling to break open these narratives and find in them meanings that still make sense, that still motivate, that still inspire people, then it will just get more and more marginalized until it just fails. And so even though these strong sauce religions start out strong, they don't stay that way unless they adapt.

Carl Youngblood [03:36:46] And I think that's what we're experiencing right now. And so I think my goal is to join Mormon transhumanism to the extent that it exists already, to join this vision of Mormonism that believes in eternal truth, believes in eternal progress, and believes in our divine destiny of becoming gods, or to create it to the extent that it doesn't exist already.

Carl Youngblood [03:37:16] So if another movement came along that was more perfectly aligned with this vision of what it means to be like Christ, to actually aspire to a Christian life that is truly emulating Christ rather than just praising him, that tries to actually become like our heavenly parents, if that religion doesn't exist, I'll try to create it. If it does exist, I'll try to join it and enhance it and improve it.

Carl Youngblood [03:37:51] And I think that it very well could happen that religions will form in different ways and that what ends up happening with the church might be different. But I still see a lot of things that could be improved and reformed and built up. And so right now it seems to me like Mormonism, despite wanting to hide this, hide its talent under a bushel, is still. Still has a lot to contribute in this area that I would like to enhance and improve.

John Dehlin [03:38:24] So I'm trying to put myself in your shoes to. So do you go, do you go to church most Sundays pre covered?

Carl Youngblood [03:38:34] Yeah, I do. Although, you know, with COVID I've been mostly just doing like a Sunday school with some friends and family,

John Dehlin [03:38:43] but.

Carl Youngblood [03:38:43] But yeah, I mean Most of the time we're in church every Sunday.

John Dehlin [03:38:46] Okay. And, and so I'm, you know, I'm thinking in my mind, like, man, if, if Carl Youngblood were my elders quorum instructor, that might be fun to go, right? Like, I'm thinking if Lincoln Cannon or Blake Osler is a Blair or Blake Blair Ostler. Like, if I could, if I could hang around those people, that'd be fun. Like, they're smart, they're cool, they're hip, they're progressive.

John Dehlin [03:39:15] But you know, that's not modern Mormonism. That's not Russell M. Nelson Mormonism, that's not Dallin H. Oaks Mormonism. And so now that I'm switching gears away from sort of the truth claim stuff and just kind of working in your vision, I'm wondering how frustrating it is for you to be in a church that's run as a gerontocracy by non ogenerians who are not only not progressive, they're almost regressive in their racist, sexist and homophobic kind of worldviews.

John Dehlin [03:39:52] Number one, is that super hard that you're painting a beautiful vision of what Mormonism can be, but it's almost like our current leadership is like lead weights with the chain dragging the church from becoming progressive versus being what we would want prophet and revelators to be, which is being out ahead and leading the change.

John Dehlin [03:40:15] Number one, is that super frustrating for you? And number two, do you ever see, is it always going to be that way? And if so, is it going to take forever for us to achieve what you're talking about? Can we ever become a cool, strong sauce religion? Or are we always going to be sort of like 30 years behind the times? Ezra Tap Benson. You know, the ghost of Ezra Tap Benson and Markey Peterson continually haunting us.

John Dehlin [03:40:45] Yeah. Or is the church going to just bleed all the cool people out to the point where it's you and Lincoln and Blair just kind of going, well, I guess there are three of us left. Or do you see some brighter future and how do we get there? Because I love your vision. I'm just wondering if it's frustrating right now and how we get to where you want to go.

Carl Youngblood [03:41:08] Yeah, it is frustrating. I find myself more and more alienated from a lot of what our sort of upper leadership is expressing. Although not completely. Like, I. I still find things to admire, tidbits that I enjoy. Inspiration. I actually still admire most of the leaders of the church. I mean, even the ones that are pretty grumpy and sort of like, what's the Word retrogressive or whatever you want to call it.

Carl Youngblood [03:41:48] Reactionary is the word I'm looking for. I admire some aspects of them, like I admire their, their dedication, their hard work, their achievements in life. Right. Many of them are very distinguished individuals who've achieved significant things in their lives.

Carl Youngblood [03:42:09] I'm. But I find myself more and more alienated from the upper leadership. But in this, in the, in a similar way, though, my day to day experiences of Mormonism don't often involve them that much. I mean, they do kind of. But like I find in my own personal ward a lot of sympathy for what I find in, excuse me, inspiring in the church and what I find inspiring in Mormonism.

Carl Youngblood [03:42:41] I find a lot of just fellow feeling with my fellow Latter Day Saints. There are people who are not intellectual at all who I still admire or care about. We help each other. We, you know, if we call each other up and we need some help in a neighborly way, we do that.

Carl Youngblood [03:43:01] I really admire that also. I live really close to BYU campus and there are a lot of people in my ward who've had to go out, out of state, go to a secular university, get a PhD, be exposed to ideas that are very different from their own, and still reconcile that and make sense of it. And I think that results in a more thoughtful faith that I appreciate. So as we were contemplating moving back to the States after spending five years in Europe, I was like talking to my wife. I'm not sure I wanted to live in Provo, but then also feeling like a lot of my friends were there.

Carl Youngblood [03:43:39] And it was partly like we had done the suburban thing where we lived in a cookie cutter house that looked the same as all the other houses and had a family that was in roughly the same age as all the other families, roughly the same size. And while that wasn't completely bad and we still have good friends from those times, it was also more frustrating, I think, than being in a ward where you have a wider range of ages and backgrounds and you have a decent intellectual influence. So that's helpful for me and I acknowledge that that's not the same, same for everyone and that some people don't have that.

Carl Youngblood [03:44:21] So. And the other thing I would say is just you talked about like, whether it's going to get to the point where just we're the only ones left. I guess I would just say that, like, I think that. Well, first of all, the church hasn't always been the way it is now. One really startling figure that you can see from like the last century and this is funny because, like, sometimes with my friends, I would say, wouldn't it have been cool to be like a member of the church back in the 30s when like multiple apostles had study groups at their house and they would debate and discuss the latest ideas written by the best sellers of their times.

Carl Youngblood [03:45:05] And they were like very progressive and thought that actually they had more things to reveal and learn and that Mormonism would be influential and instrumental in that process, but that new things were being revealed all the time and they weren't just polishing the legacy of the pioneers. And in that sense, and my friend Don Bradley responded to my musing this way. He said, like, I used to think that way too, but he said, if you think about it, it would be kind of depressing to be a progressive 30s Mormon, or whatever you want to call it, early turn of the century Mormon, where the whole country is leaning progressive.

Carl Youngblood [03:45:46] The church is also. And you're watching the sun go down on Mormon progressivism and it's just getting more and more authoritarian, more and more sort of like fideistic, and it's just like doubling down on just neo orthodoxy and believe just because you have to believe and not because we have any good reason for it and that kind of thing, that would be super depressing.

Carl Youngblood [03:46:15] And to just reiterate that this was really a different church back then. There was a survey that was administered to the student body of BYU in like 1935, and the same survey was administered in 75. So that's a 50 year time span. And one question I think is really enlightening, and that is there's this question where they said, do you believe in a personal devil? And in the 30s, like less than 20% of the respondents of the survey claimed belief in a personal devil, whatever you think that means. That was the wording of the question, do you believe in a personal devil?

Carl Youngblood [03:47:00] In 75, like over 95% of all the respondents said, yes. That's like a huge sea change in the attitudes of young people in the church from 50 years prior to that time when I would say it was like the apex of neo orthodoxy. Right.

Carl Youngblood [03:47:21] And so that example for me illustrates that it's possible for the church to think differently about things in different eras and that we may yet see a time and a place when either the church or something that it's morphed into looks significantly different than what it does now.

Carl Youngblood [03:47:39] One other quick thing I would say is that I think our leadership structure makes this change and this frustration with progressivism worse. And that is that because we live in this, because we have, through accident, the accidents of history, basically adopted a gerontocracy, as you call it, where someone has to die in order for a vacancy to occur in the 12.

Carl Youngblood [03:48:08] It just means that, like, our leadership is always going to be three generations behind, at least given our present way of living. But I think their transhumanism is going to also be weird in that, like in our own lifetimes, it's very likely that we will achieve biological immortality and be able to extend human lifespan indefinitely. And can you only imagine the horror of having a gerontocracy that never dies? Right. Like that could be bad. Right.

Carl Youngblood [03:48:43] I think governance structures both in the church and out of the church will need to adjust to these new realities that technology is going to enable.

John Dehlin [03:48:55] Yeah, that's fascinating. So how do you have a sense for how many trans Mormon transhumanists there are?

Size, Growth, and Future of the Association

Carl Youngblood [03:49:05] Yeah, so our membership is pretty close to a thousand members. And it's been growing like at an exponential rate, but a slow exponential. It's still small. Right. And I would say about 10% of those members are paying dues. Paying members, meaning that they can participate in our board elections and also get a free ticket to our annual conference.

Carl Youngblood [03:49:37] And I would say that also the makeup of the organization has changed a lot. Like in our early days we're mostly men, but now among our voting members, there's actually a number of women and a lot of women in the leadership. I think the board is like maybe 40% women.

Carl Youngblood [03:50:02] And I think this, I find this kind of. I think there's more we need to do in terms of inclusivity. Like, we're still largely white, and I think part of that is just the result of us being primarily made up of Utah Mormons. But I would like to see us do more outreach with other ethnic groups.

Carl Youngblood [03:50:27] But I do think it's nice that, like, when you go to a Mormon transhumanist meetup, you're very likely to encounter like a nearly equal number of men and women. And that's kind of unusual for like, I think it is anyway, for a lot of nerdy groups out there, techie type groups.

Carl Youngblood [03:50:45] So I really value that and I find that it's, it's. It's great to have the contributions of people like Blair and people like ARC CEO Michael N. Gardner. And so, yeah, I like that.

John Dehlin [03:50:59] So about how many dues paying members

Carl Youngblood [03:51:01] right now we have roughly 10% of the actual membership, which I think is, I want to say, like maybe 900. I haven't looked at the stats lately, so like, I think that our dues paying members are like maybe not quite 90, but like maybe 60 or something like that. I. I need to give somewhere between

John Dehlin [03:51:22] 50 and 100 people.

Carl Youngblood [03:51:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:51:24] Transhumanists pay dues, huh?

Carl Youngblood [03:51:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:51:28] And when you guys have these annual conferences about on average how many people show up?

Carl Youngblood [03:51:36] I think our biggest turnouts have been around like 100 and our lowest or like more like 30, 40. It's just varied from year to year and degree of like how much pounding the pavement we've done to try to get people to join or to participate. One cool thing about our conferences that we do is that we invite both like a Mormon scholar as well as a transhumanist to join the conference. And they are often coming from like such bizarrely different backgrounds that it makes for really interesting conversations we've had. Like, so one guy that you may have heard of is a guy named Aubrey De Gray who has a really long beard and he's one of the prominent figures who's promoting and funding and, and like engaging in longevity research.

Carl Youngblood [03:52:32] We've had guys who've like invented important, think important electronic things. Others who are like leaders in the world transhumanist organization, which is very secular and the. It's been really interesting to try to engage in outreach with a very least, like I would say a fairly anti religious, secular group of transhumanists and fairly religious, you know, non secular group of Mormons and try to build bridges there.

John Dehlin [03:53:09] I was impressed as I looked through your videos on YouTube. You had Richard Bushman, you had Rosalind Welch, you had Christine Hagland, like, you know, Adam Miller. Yeah. You've had some, you know, within progressive Mormonism.

Carl Youngblood [03:53:26] Right.

John Dehlin [03:53:27] Big names and so that's. That's kind of cool.

Carl Youngblood [03:53:31] Thanks. Yeah, we've enjoyed their contributions and it's been fun to have them to watch them squirm a little bit as they try to like have something interesting to say to Mormon transhumanists because like, for, you know, a lot of them, they haven't been as familiar with it. But I think that when they read more about us and learn about the topics that are of interest to us, they find some common ground and things that they've really valued. Richard Bushman had some cool things to say in his talk where he felt like we were carrying on the tradition of people like B.H. roberts and Talmadge and other. Other intellectuals in Mormon. In Mormonism. Right.

John Dehlin [03:54:16] Yeah, for sure. That didn't end well for Roberts and Talmage and Others, necessarily. But I love that the speaker spirit remains alive because it's better to have that than pure neo orthodoxy, right?

Carl Youngblood [03:54:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:54:30] I have a fun comment from John Ogden. John Ogden's a friend of mine from way back. John writes the MTA meetups are consistently engaging. Lots of intelligent, fun people. Thanks for sharing that, John. How many places are there?

Carl Youngblood [03:54:48] Board of directors.

John Dehlin [03:54:50] Oh, cool. Yeah, John's a good guy. How many. Where are meetings being held regularly? And is it. Is it just in a single place or are there multiple places? And, you know, how big are the meetups when they happen?

Carl Youngblood [03:55:04] We've been conducting them virtually or, you know, as a transhumanist who is super into, like, the Matrix or whatever, might think, like, where we're all going to end up someday, I don't know. But just since COVID we've been doing mostly over zoom, which makes it easier for a lot of people from out of state to join. We have some great members who are not in Utah who would love to be able to join more often. We also have this guy who's a professional anthropologist who has been studying us for a while and is writing a book about us.

Carl Youngblood [03:55:38] We were written up in the New Yorker magazine. There's a really cool article that I think is worth reading as well as, like, a feature on Medium. But the. Usually if you just go to so meetup.com and search for Mormon transhumanism, I think you'll find us.

Carl Youngblood [03:55:58] And then the announcements of when those. Those meetups are going to be held, and then, you know, when. When we get out of this crazy pandemic time, they'll probably be. They've been being held at my house here and at another house in Provo.

Carl Youngblood [03:56:19] And we've. We've been willing to open up other chapters in other areas, but, like, there hasn't been a critical enough mass to really keep it going. So it's mostly been in. In Provo and Orem.

John Dehlin [03:56:32] So the. The meetup group that you were talking about, I just googled it and I'm just pasting a link to it now. It is the meetup group in Utah Valley, right?

Carl Youngblood [03:56:43] Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [03:56:45] Okay. All right, So I just pasted a link to that. Would you say that prior to Covid, the movement, in terms of, like, active participation, was increasing, flat, or kind of slowly slightly decreasing? I'm just curious.

Carl Youngblood [03:57:02] I would say, like, in the last couple of years, it's been a little more flat, hasn't been growing as quickly. And I think part of that has been the result of, like, each at different phases in our history, we've had different levels of people willing to contribute and able to contribute, I should say. And so I think that that varies over time. And sometimes we've had. Had more, and sometimes we've had less. I think it's been a little more flat, but it's still growing. And I do think that we have a lot of members who are eager to get more involved, but we haven't adequately, like, harnessed their. Their willingness. Right. So there's more we could do, for sure.

John Dehlin [03:57:48] I do think. And tell me if you agree that that basically when the church did well, when the church came out with the exclusion policy and then the reversal and they excommunicated, you know, a bunch of people, it seems like that kind of dealt a bit of a blow to progressive Mormon causes, whether it's Mormon housewives or the blogger nackle or even things like affirmation or other types of groups that were trying to navigate kind of this middle way.

John Dehlin [03:58:29] It seems like some of the more just really harsh decisions that the church has made just kind of pushed a bunch of people out of the church and made it so progressive Mormon causes kind of were set back in terms of their vitality because there are just so many people that were willing to sort of work the progressive causes and work on the fringes.

John Dehlin [03:58:55] But then when the brethren kind of went bridges too far, a bunch of people just said, I'm out of here. I don't want anything to do with the church. Is that. Is that fair to. Is that your read as well?

Carl Youngblood [03:59:06] So I think to some extent it's true. It's happened to us as well. There are some members who have felt like the MTA was kind of like a temporary respite from struggles that they were having, reconciling some issues they were having with the church, their faith struggles, but that ultimately, for whatever reason, they kind of kept getting further distance from Mormonism to where some of these issues were no longer interesting to them.

Carl Youngblood [03:59:39] But there have been a number of people for whom Mormon transhumanism has actually been like a lifeline in that it's provided for them a way of reinvigorating, like, what they loved about the church and what they feel they're not getting enough of, enough stimulation in their traditional church settings because they're like, they don't want to just give it all up. It's like, I mean, you and I probably have both experienced this where, like, there's this really bitter pill to swallow when you're.

Carl Youngblood [04:00:16] You Feel like the rug's been pulled out from under you. Your faith is different than you thought it was, and you're just kind of like, you know, what's. What's there, what is there still, what's there, what's. Of substance still.

Carl Youngblood [04:00:31] And for some event, some people, like, including myself, there's been a frustration with this sort of like, fastidious dogmatic loyalty for its own sake without any, like, adherence to principle, you know, that. That we sometimes see in being promoted by some people in church, including some of the leaders, and a desire for, like, that time when Mormonism was exciting and expansive and progressive and like, we could openly speculate from the pulpit and no one would get all.

Carl Youngblood [04:01:07] Get their, you know, pants in a wad or whatever for that. And it was just like a little more flex. There was more flexible and just like, people might think you're a little weird, but they still loved you, you know? And like, I think that there's been, in some ways, I don't know, it's a mixed bag, but in some ways it's gotten worse. Some ways it's gotten better.

Carl Youngblood [04:01:33] But at any rate, like, yeah, I think that some people have really. We've already had people tell us, for example, that they both got baptized in the church because of Mormon transhumanism and that they went on a mission because of Mormon transhumanism and that they, like, came back to the church.

Carl Youngblood [04:01:53] Some of them have been re. Baptized or just reinvigorated in their faith because of this. So as weird as it sounds, what we were saying earlier about you need a strong sauce religion versus a weak sauce. Well, right now a lot of people are feeling like the existing neo orthodoxy is kind of weak sauce.

Carl Youngblood [04:02:16] It's not compelling enough for them anymore. And they. It's not no longer in sync with the pressing issues of our time. And so, like, they want to see a faith that's more vigorous and that's more like, for whom the problems that we currently face in the world are, like, serious. They're, like, important, and we can do something about them, you know?

John Dehlin [04:02:43] Yeah. And so do you. Okay, so something I love about every transhumanist I've met, Mormon transhumanist I've met, is just this kind of optimism. I don't want to say, you know, it's. It's an optimism. It's basically technologically, it's. It's basically saying, you don't even understand how bright and incredible our future is.

Transhumanist Views on Technology and the Future

Carl Youngblood [04:03:10] Right. And I think generally, yes, although one interesting thing, like, I was saying is that because transhumanists often obsess about all the crazy, what they call existential risks that we could run into as a civilization, they're also thinking about really exotic failure scenarios that a lot of people might not think about. Like, just to name a few examples, like right now we're not doing a good job of scanning the solar system for as many asteroids as we could, and it's possible we could get hit by like an extinction level event.

Carl Youngblood [04:03:46] Of course, climate change is a huge thing, but like another one that's not as common is like the gray goo threat, which is this idea that nanotechnology is, this concept that you could construct at a molecular level things that would make it like, allow you to build amazing structures very quickly that you couldn't build nowadays, where like little mini robots at the sort of miniature microscopic level would be construct using raw materials to construct copies of themselves and then build larger and larger structures. But if someone wanted to create a malicious nanobot, they could essentially make a nanobot that made copies of itself and consumed all material that was within its reach.

Carl Youngblood [04:04:36] And they could essentially cover the world in gray goo, like turn everything into just something useless. Right. It's a totally weird idea, but it's like something that people who are thinking about nano assembly and some of the technologies coming online are considering malicious ways that these technologies could be used, or even accidental ways that we could screw them up.

Carl Youngblood [04:04:59] And so transhumanists, some of them are very paranoid about problems, but generally I agree that they are confident that we can work through these problems and that actually that's the only way. Like if you look at, for example, the carrying capacity of the earth right now, we have a population that's bigger than ever. It's like, what is it, seven, over seven billion.

Carl Youngblood [04:05:25] And which is way more than it was just a century ago. And although demographers predict that there's going to be like a peak where we will reach a peak population that will start to decline, it's still obviously we're having a tremendous impact on our environment that is extincting a lot of species and causing lots of problems. And so these are serious threats that we need to deal with. And so transhumanists are like, but, but, but the thing is, is that we could never go back to the technology that we used previously to solve this issue. Because, like, it wasn't until the invention of say, nitrogen based fertilizers that we were able to sustain a population of more than a billion on the planet.

Carl Youngblood [04:06:11] So if we decided we Wanted to go back in some kind of nostalgic way to, like, a previous era where things were in more harmony or balance than we think they were. You know, what would. What that would actually mean is that we would have massive extinction and massive starvation.

Carl Youngblood [04:06:31] And so, like. So the only way through these problems is to identify the new challenges presented by new technology. It solves certain problems and creates new ones, and then we have to, like, look at the way it solves those or the new problems and use our ingenuity to solve yet further problems.

John Dehlin [04:06:52] So it's not purely optimistic or idealist.

Carl Youngblood [04:06:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:06:57] Transhumanism also recognizes the risks and the problems with technology, and things could turn out very badly as well.

Carl Youngblood [04:07:06] Yeah. Like, Elon Musk is a great example. He's super paranoid about. About.

John Dehlin [04:07:11] Does he identify as transhumanist? Does he?

Carl Youngblood [04:07:14] I think he has on occasion. And he definitely is drinking the Kool Aid, even if he hasn't specifically called himself that, but he has lots of friends who do and who espouse those ideas. But he's really concerned about runaway artificial intelligence to the point where he's, like, started a company called Neuralink that is creating a computer that can replace a little section of your skull that can communicate directly with your brain and potentially enable you to communicate directly with the brains of other people. It's starting out as a technology to try to cure people who had been paralyzed or have nerve damage that's harmed them in really serious ways.

Carl Youngblood [04:08:00] But like all technologies, it starts out in a small way, and it kind of expands in its usage. And he's openly acknowledged that he sees it eventually being used to create, like, a mind computer link that would allow us to basically control and interact with computers more efficiently and directly using our thoughts. And the reason why he sees this as important, and I actually personally do as well, is that when you think about artificial intelligence and the exponential progress of technology, the challenge is that the human brain is not evolving at a quick rate. Humans are still evolving, but it takes many centuries for human abilities to change as a result of evolution.

Carl Youngblood [04:08:52] Our brains have this limited capacity. They're still amazing, but they can only do so much in an individual brain. And you can't, like, take lots of brains and put them on a problem and somehow solve that problem very much faster. You're still limited by our ability to communicate with each other and share our ideas and acquire knowledge. And so what's happening is that, like, when we eventually, if we do ever invent artificial intelligence that is robust enough to be as smart as A person or to act, you know, mostly as. As well as a person could, then it probably won't take very long for that intelligence to increase its resources and essentially surpass us.

Carl Youngblood [04:09:36] Because it's. If it's made out of computers, then they can just add more memory, add more computation, and depending on their architecture, they might be able to eke out much more advanced, like, solve many more problems at the same time than we could as individuals. And so what this means is that our computers, if this trend continues, our computers will surpass us. And at that point, there's only like, two options. Like, either they're hostile and we have like, a Terminator scenario where they, like, try to destroy us, or they're friendly and benign and we kind of become their pets, right? Where we basically are nowhere near advanced enough to comprehend even what they're thinking, what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Carl Youngblood [04:10:24] But all of our needs are taken care of, and we've essentially ceased to progress as a species. And so from a. Both a Mormon transhumanist perspective and I think as just general human race, the idea that we would ever stop progressing and stop learning and stop growing is kind of goes against our whole nature. And if there's anything that you could say characterizes humanity, it's like that we constantly seek to extend our boundaries because, like, you can't point to a specific time and place and say, oh, that was what it was like to be humans, you know, looking at the days of early days of agriculture or the early days of the medieval period or whatever and say, oh, well, that was the ideal human.

Carl Youngblood [04:11:11] What it seems to be is that at each phase, humans are constantly trying to extend their ability to control their environment in ways that help them to achieve their goals. Right. In both good and bad ways. Right. And I don't think that aspect of our character is going to go away. So I think that the only way for us to actually continue to progress once artificial general intelligence is invented is for us to unite with our computers and essentially in careful, measured ways, enhance ourselves so that we can continue to understand what's happening and to maintain control over it so it doesn't catch us blindsided.

John Dehlin [04:12:01] I love it. So let me ask you this. What do you see? Do you see? Do you even have a vision or a hope or a theory on what could happen within Mormonism to transform it from, I think, what we agree is becoming a bit of a weak sauce religion into a vital kind of strong sauce religion that could then put it on the track of living up to the aspirations of many, many of you, you know, Mormon transhumanists. Do you even have a theory of like, how we could break out of the cycle of the nonogenarian, you know, what's the word? Gerontocracy, the non engenarian gerontocracy. And, and start moving in really cool directions? Any, any theories on how that might happen?

Mormon Governance and Leadership Reform

Carl Youngblood [04:13:07] Yeah, I love those. That's a lot of syllables. Nonagenarian, gerontocracy. So, yeah, I do have some ideas about this. I, I guess as I said earlier, I kind of want to see, I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm relishing this because it's painful. It's causing a lot of challenges for everyone and, and for church leaders as well. They're like seeing more and more people become disaffected and they just are doubling down on techniques that aren't working as well anymore. And they're, I'm sure they're frustrated. You know, they're like, you know, what's going wrong here?

Carl Youngblood [04:13:47] I think one challenging thing with this. Well, what I was going to say is that as the church continues to struggle with its growth, I think it may experience some things that would just make it more and more desperate for new ideas. Right. If it's not achieving the continuity that it needs to really continue to strengthen and maintain the vigor of the church, it might be more willing to try new things. And there are also individuals rising in the ranks of church leadership who are more open to new ideas, I think. But at the same time, the weird thing about that is technology is also progressing exponentially.

Carl Youngblood [04:14:40] So organizations of all kinds, not just religious, will have to adapt more quickly to these changes if they want to keep up. So even at the same time that our governance structure is allowing new ideas to come through, I don't think it's coping well enough to sustain things eternally into the future. And so I do think that we may see changes in governance structure. So like, we might see things like some concept of an emeritus status. We might also just see things where, like there's a greater willingness among the leadership to call individuals of more, a wider variety of backgrounds than just business or just the professional backgrounds like law and medical and, and business and things like that.

Carl Youngblood [04:15:31] Right. I think that it would be awesome to have some blue collar leaders among the church. It would be awesome to have like we used to have. In some, some ways it'd be awesome to have some educators like, I don't know, there have been Some in the past, but also some scientists like, and some, some people like Talmadge and others. I'd say the closest thing to some of those lately would have been like, Elder Scott, but even then he was more of an engineer than a scientist. So I think someone with a truly academic background would be. Would be awesome. I think now maybe Elder Gong is the one who most like, closely approximates that.

Carl Youngblood [04:16:16] But I would like to see things like maybe having an emeritus concept or yeah, calling younger leaders those things might help. Another really interesting challenge with this is that the growth of the church isn't uniform. So like, at the same time that a more educated segment of Mormons, who are the ones who are largely providing the funding that Mormonism is using to expand in the rest of the world, there is like, much more growth in the developing world where education is improving, but still not as good as it is here and where fundamentalism and traditional beliefs are more prevalent.

Carl Youngblood [04:17:06] And so you got the church growing in a place where it's even more maybe misogynistic or where there's more machismo and more of those traditional views, where there's more anti LGBT sentiments. And you're already seeing schisms in some churches where the, the churches that are more governed by common consent are like splitting, where like, the leaders from Africa are disagreeing with the ones from Europe and things like that. And that's been a bit a struggle. And I think we might also experience things like that where the church is like, growing in one place and not and shrinking in the other. And it could become a more fundamentalist church as a result of that.

Carl Youngblood [04:17:52] But I kind of feel like sooner or later those fundamentalist views don't work. They don't keep working. So. But, but it's hard because, like, it also depends on what your vantage point is. Like, you and I, approaching this from a very relatively intellectual perspective, are seeing all these challenges and problems, but somebody who's like, in Brazil or Africa, like, for them, the church may be a huge step up, a major improvement to their lives, even someone in rural America, like, who's not as intellectual as I am, there might be such a. It might be just such an improvement to what they've. The troubles they've been having in their life that like, it's a big step up for them.

Carl Youngblood [04:18:38] Right. It helps them in a lot of ways. So, like, it's. It depends on your vantage point to some degree, but I'd like to see that. I'd also like to see, like, returning a little bit to our Roots in terms of a more radical view of prophecy.

Carl Youngblood [04:18:58] Where we believe in the Book of Mormon when it says that I will call, that I will speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it, and the earth will be judged by the books that are written. Where we really believe that anyone with the testimony of Jesus has the spirit of prophecy, anyone with who's inspired to say something could be prophetic. And where we like are willing to see inspiration as coming from the body of the Saints and not just like as a thinking of it and conceiving of it in purely top down terms.

Carl Youngblood [04:19:35] I mean, I think the funny thing is that it's been functionally that way since our beginning. Like almost all. There's this great talk by Clayton Christensen where he points out that like almost all of the auxiliaries of the church and various other programs were started by some lay member who just like saw a need that wasn't being met and started doing it. And then their local units picked up on it and decided to make it a thing. And then it eventually got adopted by the larger memberships of the church.

Carl Youngblood [04:20:06] I think that, that it was awesome. I think that's kind of harder to do now. We're getting more calcified in the structure of the church. But I think that still in a lot of ways those kind of innovations are how the church has progressed in the past and probably how it will keep progressing in the future if it, if it is going to progress at all.

John Dehlin [04:20:32] And I do still think that the Mormon transhumanist movement at its core is very optimistic and hopeful, or at least in what I've experienced of it. And I'm hearing a lot of that in what you're saying, that you're hoping for a better day. You're hoping for a return to the way we were in the early 20th century with talons and Woodstow and Eyring and a more appreciation for diversity of thoughts and a more respect for science.

John Dehlin [04:21:04] And I don't know if you listen to my. Yeah, you did with my interviews with Shannon Caldwell Montez about the Mormon meetings of 1922, but it's as frustrating as it was reading through her thesis. I've known for decades how amazing Mormonism was, how more amazing it was then than sometimes it is now in terms of science and progress and technology and diversity.

John Dehlin [04:21:32] And frankly, it created all these amazing professors that I had at BYU in the 80s, Ted Lyon and Lynn England and Clayton White and Eugene England and just all these amazing professors, Cecilia Farr and Gail Houston. And it would be so great if we could just get back to that. Like, you don't even need to, like, become super progressive and modern, but, man, if we could just get back to that disposition, how powerful that could be, you know?

Carl Youngblood [04:22:04] Totally. And I would. I do want to give credit to a number of professors. I think there is constantly a new generation of professors at byu. And while I agree that there's been some kinds of crackdowns or some kinds of authoritarian tendencies, and sometimes in places, I'm not so sure we're at the very worst part of that. Like, it might be a little better than it has been in the past. Like, if you think of September 6th as maybe a low point. Right. It might be a little better.

Carl Youngblood [04:22:36] And I certainly felt like when I went to graduate school at BYU for a while, I was doing Portuguese before I switched gears and went into computer science for my graduate research. And I took a literary theory course from David Laraway, who's still at byu. And, like, he totally opened my eyes to postmodernism, to structuralism, to deconstructionism, other. Other trends in critique, ways of critiquing texts and productions and. And literary just works that are still, like, part of the way that, you know, that today's critical theorists engage in various questions, engage with various questions. And I felt like he gave me a good base. Like, he really exposed me to a lot of things and that I learned a lot from that experience.

Carl Youngblood [04:23:40] And I'm, like, super glad that I had these older or even people who are only a few years older than me who, like, opened my eyes that there's tons of stuff to learn out there. And just because none of your Sunday school teachers taught you that, it doesn't mean that it's not valid and valuable and helpful and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [04:24:02] Totally. Just a couple micro questions.

Carl Youngblood [04:24:07] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:24:08] Do Mormon transhumanists tend to be more Democrat versus Republican, or are they split? Are they more libertarian? Is there a tendency towards one political philosophy or party affiliation over another?

Carl Youngblood [04:24:26] Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that, like, we definitely have, you know, both conservatives and progressives. I think that we're predominantly progressive politically, but we have had some prominent leaders who are conservative and some of them who've actually left because they felt like they.

Carl Youngblood [04:24:49] The topics of discussion were not as interesting to them as other things that they wanted to talk about. And I think it's been challenging. Like, we've. We've actually tried really hard. I think we could try harder. I think there's more we could do. But we have tried hard to make it a kind of place where you could come from both the perspective of a very believing member who's very traditional in their views, who still sees a lot of resonances with Mormon transhumanism and is more interested in, like, the technological angle and just the way things are changing in the present era and all this kind of stuff, even if they have a more traditional view of the tenets of Mormonism as well as someone who is more willing to test, to push the boundaries and reinterpret things and would be more what you'd call progressive or whatever.

Carl Youngblood [04:25:43] And that could be not just on religious things, but also political things, like just there, you know, some who are more like, critical of, of Republicans and some who are less. And I would say that it definitely leans progressive, but there are some libertarians and Republicans among us as well. And we've also tried to be really friendly with people who don't believe in God as well. Like, we've got some atheist members in the, in the group who, some of whom still identify as Mormon but claim they're atheists and that they're more like they've been raised with Mormon values. Right.

Carl Youngblood [04:26:27] But they, but they call themselves atheists. One of them is very interesting. I'm thinking of a guy who claims to be atheist because he says God doesn't exist yet, but he thinks God will exist in the future.

John Dehlin [04:26:44] That's so, that's so awesome. So I, I, I'm going to say I'm going to repeat myself in one aspect. I'm, I'm not apologetic that we, that we dove into that kind of truth claims discussion because it was one of the main reasons I wanted to bring you on. But I'm also, I know that we lost a lot of the audience that was just interested in hearing more about Mormon transhumanism, and I feel bad about that. So I want to, I want to just extend to you potentially an invitation to bring you back on at some point and, and just, we can just focus on that now that we've had that conversation and just have you spend an hour or two just talking about Mormon transhumanism and what it means.

Jesus, Priesthood, Gender, and Sexuality in Transhumanist Mormonism

John Dehlin [04:27:33] But, you know, because it's kind of late and you probably need to go to the bathroom and we probably need to eat dinner and we probably have obligations. I don't want to end without asking you to do, to try something creative. Will you try something creative with me?

Carl Youngblood [04:27:47] Sure.

John Dehlin [04:27:48] As a way to kind of close out.

Carl Youngblood [04:27:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:27:51] Okay. So I'm going to ask you I'm going to go through this laundry list of kind of typical aspects of Mormonism. Right.

Carl Youngblood [04:28:02] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:28:03] Like scripture, prophets, priesthood, God, Jesus, whatever, resurrection. And it's going to be kind of a lightning round where I'm going to have you do your best to define. To define each of those elements from your. From your point of view as a Mormon transhumanist. And the purpose is to kind of like give a sampler. Like, if there would be a menu of transhumanism, we're not going to give people the full meals that are available, but like little bites of various really rich menu items so that we can at least end today's discussion giving people a sampling of what Mormon transhumanism offers in the context of Mormonism. Will you try that with me?

Carl Youngblood [04:28:54] Yeah, I'd love to. And I just want to express a disclaimer that, well, what I'm presenting certainly jives with what maybe a number of other Mormon transhumanists believe. I don't want to, like, claim that it's totally authoritative. Right. This is probably, probably colored by my views, but I'll, I'll go for it with that disclaimer.

John Dehlin [04:29:16] Yeah, yeah, that's always true.

Carl Youngblood [04:29:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:29:20] Everyone who's ever speaking is not representing everyone or the organization. It's just kind of you. Okay, so here we go. We've already talked about God. Let's go to Jesus. So what does generally Jesus mean to you as a Mormon transhumanist in kind of a bite size sampler?

Carl Youngblood [04:29:41] I think he's the most noteworthy example of Christian discipleship and that through his actions, he basically engaged in a reconciliation process that is ongoing to this day. And this is something that involves not just him, but every other person in the world to the extent that they are following Christ.

John Dehlin [04:30:15] All right, let's do resurrection. What does resurrection mean to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:30:23] Resurrection for me is the, like, bringing back to life of the human race in a sort of ongoing process that starts with the individuals that we have the most information about and keeps going back as far as we can go.

John Dehlin [04:30:49] Excellent. Okay. Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, what does that mean to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:30:55] To me, that is sort of a mood, something that, like, provokes a common feeling. While there may be some intention behind it, there may be some actual identity associated with it, I prefer to think of it more like something that moves people to do things and I'm not sure where it comes from.

John Dehlin [04:31:27] Excellent. This is good. You're doing great. I'm loving this. Okay, how about what does baptism mean to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:31:37] So baptism for me is a symbol that signifies our willingness to adopt a Christ life. Right. And that has a ritualistic quality to us that binds us to the body of saints that we're joining when we engage in it. And that it's our way of like formally signifying our commitment to living the life, the type of life that Christ lived.

John Dehlin [04:32:10] Love it. What about the gift of the Holy Ghost? Is that different from. From what you said before about the Holy Ghost?

Carl Youngblood [04:32:17] Yeah, I think that it, it can be thought of as like an empowering ritual, an endowment, if you will, something that we're given that both once again, has a symbolic significance in, in that we're joining this community and we're being given spiritual gifts as a result of our joining it. But also it can be actually empowering in the sense that it can unlock within the human psyche abilities that a person may not have had if they were sort of not previously initiated in this way.

John Dehlin [04:33:06] Love it. Okay, what is, what is priesthood and priesthood authority mean to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:33:12] So I think of priesthood as like, I love that scripture that says like in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is made manifest. I think that priesthood is almost like a pattern where when we're using it properly, we're basically like demonstrating as best we can conceive of it, what God would do if God were here with us. And yes, it's confined to certain rituals that we perform as part of our community, but those rituals, when properly administered, should be done in a way that exemplifies a Christ like life.

John Dehlin [04:33:58] All right, Would you wish, would you wish that the priesthood were. The Mormon priesthood were both male and female?

Carl Youngblood [04:34:10] Yeah. I personally think that we have both historical precedent in the New Testament and in other just things that we have reference to that the early Christians did extend priesthood to women. And I believe that this, that it's possible to organize people in different ways and that half the time our inability to do so is our own hang ups. And not necessarily that there's anything inherently in, in like some sort of like dogmatic way of thinking about this, this pattern of governance that it just has to be this one way.

John Dehlin [04:34:58] So you, if possible, you'd like to see it.

Carl Youngblood [04:35:02] Yeah, I do. I think that it's just a matter of like adopting it in a way that people are willing to get behind it. Right. And I think that's a gradual process. I would love to see more of it. Right.

John Dehlin [04:35:21] Okay. What is a profit to a transhumanist?

Carl Youngblood [04:35:28] So I really, really like the Book of Mormon's definition of prophecy where prophets and prophets and leaders are not the same thing. Right. Even though we sustain the quorum of the twelve apostles as prophets, seers and revelators, they aren't the only prophets according to the Book of Mormon and according to Joseph Smith.

Carl Youngblood [04:35:53] You know, when a news reporter asked Joseph Smith if he was a prophet of God, he said yes, and so is anyone else with the testimony of Jesus. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. I think he had a radical notion of prophecy. And I think that prophets are called in every nation of the earth, as it says in DNC or sorry, in second Nephi.

Carl Youngblood [04:36:17] I think it's 2912 or something. The. I think we should more carefully distinguish between president, the person who holds the authority to make decisions on behalf of the entire church, which I totally respect and honor his authority to do so, and prophet, which is anybody who can speak when they feel so inspired. Words of benefit, words of comfort, and words of. Of, you know, inspiration.

John Dehlin [04:36:57] I love it. Okay, so what is Scripture then?

Carl Youngblood [04:37:05] So Scripture is when a prophet of any kind, like the ones in the Book of Mormon and like the ones Joseph described, decides to write it down and a community decides to perpetuate that those writings. I mean, I like to think of, like, inspired books or really amazing works, you know, of various kinds, as scriptural in a way, prophetic in a way. I wouldn't. I wouldn't hold them to the. With the same regard and reverence as I would hold a book like the Bible or the Book of Mormon that has been accepted by the entire community of saints as something that's authoritative to. For them. But I think of all of these other works, including works that were inspired by other prophets throughout the world, and even works that maybe aren't thought of as scripture as a type of scripture.

John Dehlin [04:38:11] Right. Very much a more flexible understanding and a lower bar to talk about your. To refer back to your points about stoicism. It's a lower bar for prophets and, and scripture.

Carl Youngblood [04:38:25] Yeah. And what's. What's interesting about this for me is that it takes a little bit of the pressure off of both the prophets and the scriptures to be, like, amazing. Right. Like, you can have a book that's inspiring, but that kind of has crappy parts or whatever. And like, let's be honest, the same goes for the scriptures we already have. So it's like, let's just be. Let's just be more willing to acknowledge that, you know, these are flaws. And like it says in the Book of Mormon, if there be flaws, they are the flaws of Men like, I think we sometimes assume that these books are, like, way more perfect than they are. I love to. Just to add one little thing. I love that Brigham Young said, you know, like, if the Bible or the Book of Mormon were received, again, it would differ in many instances than what it says now.

John Dehlin [04:39:15] Right. What, so what is Russell M. Nelson to you? And it's probably similar to your. To my question to you about prophets,

Carl Youngblood [04:39:27] but, yeah, to me, he is the one with the authority to act on behalf of the entire church. He has all of the keys that would be recognized by Mormon tradition, whatever you want to call it, to, to authorize any. Anything related to church governance that needs to be done. Right.

Carl Youngblood [04:39:53] I don't think of him as like the king of the world. Right. Which some people take this idea of prophet as somehow that he has authority over everybody in the entire world. I think, of course, he can preach to everyone in the world and his words, one would hope, would be designed to benefit everyone in the world and to invite them and encourage them to, you know, adopt a more Christlike lifestyle.

Carl Youngblood [04:40:26] But I don't think of it exactly the same way as maybe some members do. I think he has all the authority to govern the church, but that president and prophet are two different things, and we should be more careful about distinguishing between them. I think of him as prophetic as well, but I. I guess I would say that, like, I would love to see even more prophecy and inspiration coming out of the prophets, seers and revelators than we do, and that I sometimes see more of it coming from other sources besides just them.

John Dehlin [04:41:09] What, what is the. What is the Bible to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:41:14] The Bible is a record of some communities, covenants with God and their traditions about how the creation took place and the ways that they tried to make sense of their experiences in the world around them. Some passages are more just chronological accounts, and some of them are more inspirational at wisdom, homiletic. They have many different purposes and different authors and things. And I think a lot of it's inspired. Yeah. Not all of it.

John Dehlin [04:41:59] And Book of Mormon, same thing.

Carl Youngblood [04:42:02] Yeah. Very well, let me change. I would say, like, in terms of the Book of Mormon having been written by ancient historical characters. I'm less convinced of that than I am of, say, like, the New Testament or the Bible or the Old Testament. But I find that the accounts and the advice and the exhortations that are in the book are still worthy of contemplation, worthy of study, and can be very inspiring. There are some aspects that I disagree with that I resist or would alter in the same way that I think Brigham Young said that if they were received again, they would be altered because we only receive according to what our understanding is. And so I think there's new scripture to write and new revelation to be received every generation.

John Dehlin [04:43:06] Okay, what is. What is. What is death in the afterlife to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:43:19] So while I. While I try to maintain, like. Like a certain degree of, like, I don't know what's going to happen when I die. Exactly right. There's. There's a question that remains of, like, to what extent consciousness may exist in other forms beyond just the things that are happening in my brain right now. So I don't know for sure. But I do believe that someone who's embodied has a greater level of ability to influence their environment, a greater level of, like, personhood than someone who's in spirit only. And I don't completely reject the idea of some kind of spiritual form of existence, but for me, it would have to be measurable, observable in some way. It wouldn't be this magical, completely metaphysical thing that has no ability to influence anything or anyone at any in. At any level, right? If for it to be real, it would have to be measurable somehow,

John Dehlin [04:44:37] and it's not now.

Carl Youngblood [04:44:41] Well, so I think one interesting way of looking at spirit that is probably worth adding here is that it's a pattern of information, right? So you could think of your spirit or soul, if you will, as like, all of the things that, when put together, make John De Lin. John De Lin.

Carl Youngblood [04:45:01] And if at some future date, you know, using a. Using quantum archaeology and some new technologies that we have, and your loved one's recollection of who you are and how you behave, we get. We recreate a being that is like 99% you and indistinguishable from you, that we might all call it good enough, even if it's not exactly you, right? So you could. You could think of spirit as like. Or the soul is like, whatever.

Carl Youngblood [04:45:40] Rather than thinking of it as, like, the same atoms that make up your body, you could have different atoms that would be configured in the same pattern. And everyone would look at you and they would say, oh, that's John, right?

Carl Youngblood [04:45:52] So I think of spirit or the soul as I could. I mean, I'm sharing various thoughts about it. But one way of thinking of it as is that pattern of information that constitutes all of your life experiences accumulated that makes you who you are. You know,

John Dehlin [04:46:14] What is. So when you think about celestial, terrestrial and terrestrial and kind of like the judgment and the assignments of different kingdoms. What is. What sense do you make of that as a transhumanist?

Carl Youngblood [04:46:30] So I'm really a fan of the interpretation that the telestial kingdom is the world world in which we now live, which is something that we're taught in the temple and also something that's spoken of by various church leaders at different times.

Carl Youngblood [04:46:45] And I think that, like James E. Talmadge in Articles of Faith, first Edition, who spoke about the possibility of us progressing from kingdom to kingdom, that I. That those kingdoms are like future steps for our own Earth and for other earths like ours, and that eventually we will achieve a level of harmony and whatever you want to call it, civilization in our Earth, that it can be thought of as terrestrial in a way. You could almost already think that this kind of happens in that from one country to the next, you might see the rule of law work better and government be more transparent, and people live in greater peace with one another.

Carl Youngblood [04:47:44] I think in the similar way to how countries vary from one place to another, kingdoms probably vary, and that at a future date, that we will achieve greater degrees of glory than we now have, and that our Earth and our community is destined for this. In fact, there's this great quote from Brigham Young that I'd love to read if I could. He says, you may now be inclined to say, oh, this is too simple and childlike. We wish to hear the mysteries of the kingdoms, of the gods who have existed from eternity and of all the kingdoms in which they will dwell. We desire to have these things portrayed to our understandings.

Carl Youngblood [04:48:23] Allow me to inform you that you are in the midst of it all now, that you are in just as good a kingdom as you will ever attain to from now to all eternity, unless you make it yourselves by the grace of God, by the will of God, by the eternal priesthood of God, which is a code of laws perfectly calculated to govern and control eternal matter. If you and I do not, by this means make that better kingdom which we anticipate, we shall never enjoy it. We can only enjoy the kingdom we have labored to make.

John Dehlin [04:48:58] And what does that mean to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:49:00] So to me, that means that basically, like, if we want to see the terrestrial kingdom and the celestial kingdom, we kind of have to build it here on Earth. I love it.

John Dehlin [04:49:12] It's beautiful. What is the.

Carl Youngblood [04:49:15] I would argue this is actually more traditionally Christian in a lot of ways. Like, I think Christianity over time got really caught up in Platonism and the idea that there was some better realm that was completely spiritual. But if you look at the early Christians, they believed that the New Jerusalem was going to be on this earth. Earth, and that the renewal of the earth and the sort of heavenly glory was. Was a transformation of the existing earth rather than like being zapped over to some other realm.

John Dehlin [04:49:52] What it. What is the proclamation on the family to you?

Carl Youngblood [04:49:56] So I think of the proclamation as a writing, like an attempt at defining some important principles about families and individuals and gender that was written by a lawyer in Hawaii in preparation, or. I don't know if he's in Hawaii, but in preparation for some legislation that was being considered in the state of Hawaii that later on was viewed by the leadership of the higher leadership of the church as articulating well, their views about the nature of the family and of individuals and gender. And that although it hasn't been canonized, it has been strongly emphasized and.

Carl Youngblood [04:50:57] And touched upon in ways that I think have created a bit of a quandary for the leadership. As our understanding of gender and gender fluidity and more nuance in what gender is increases, and as we see that not all individuals, you know, that, I mean, hardly anyone has control over.

Carl Youngblood [04:51:26] As far as I know, no one has control over the ways that gender is manifest. Or for the large part, I mean, you could argue that in the future, gender will become more technologically determined. As we understand it better, it may be more possible to change. Change one's gender as best we can consider that also change one sex.

Carl Youngblood [04:51:51] And I think that especially when that becomes possible and when it becomes technologically possible for people of both the traditionally male perspective and a female perspective to biologically bear children, which I think may happen in the future, or at least produce offspring regards to whether they're burying them in the traditional way, I think this will also become a new challenge that will require new revelation to really address.

Carl Youngblood [04:52:25] But I do think that because the proclamation has been adopted as a sort of thing that we are referencing as a community, that within that, like, this is something that Rosalind actually talked about at one of our conferences, that now that we've got it, there are ways that we can interpret it and grapple with it that are still productive and meaningful. Like, she pointed out that not only does it have some dictates about gender that may be challenging for LGBTQ folks and others who love them, it also has, like, things about that fathers need to be nurturing their children and work closely with the.

Carl Youngblood [04:53:21] With their wives to raise kids in ways that, like, more misogynistic communities could benefit from. So what's interesting about the, the proclamation is that maybe both leaves some things to be desired for some communities as well as improves the status quo for other communities. And I've been talking long on that, so I think that's good enough.

John Dehlin [04:53:51] Is there a general stance about just being lgbt, firming, affirming or not, supporting same sex marriage or not? Is there a general, you know, stance for a transhumanist or just an average stance for the average transhumanist?

Carl Youngblood [04:54:11] I think that most of us are kind of in agreement that there are strong biological influences on gender. That, and, and that doesn't mean that they're the only ones. Like, that gender is not just biologically determined. And on that basis alone, it should never be thought of as, like, binding or non binding.

Carl Youngblood [04:54:44] We, we believe in a person's. An individual. I'd say generally most members of the MTA believe in a person's right to, like, leverage technology to influence their gender manifestation. And forgive me if the terminology I'm using is not like the best or the most typical, but we believe that, like, technology more and more will make this possible and that these are challenges that we need to discuss and consider and that they should influence our understanding of, you know, what gender is and how it works to a greater degree as we learn more. I also want to say that, like, while I generally, like, support individuals who wish to maybe say, go through conversion therapy.

Carl Youngblood [04:55:57] Therapy. Is that, is that the right term? I forget the. Just the term for if you are like, taking hormones to present more of one gender versus another. Right, yeah.

John Dehlin [04:56:09] No, I think we need to separate.

Carl Youngblood [04:56:11] Well, that's not the right term, but whatever.

John Dehlin [04:56:14] It's called sexuality. There's sexuality and there's gender. And so someone who's transitioning, maybe actively transitioning their gender. Is that what you're saying?

Carl Youngblood [04:56:23] That's what I'm referring to. So. And conversion therapy, of course, is the totally unethical practice of like, trying to make someone a gender that they're not.

John Dehlin [04:56:33] But no, no, no, no, no, no. I think, I think conversion therapy is trying to change someone's sexual orientation from what they naturally experience to something that a, frankly, a Christian church would want them to feel, which is other sex attraction instead of same sex attraction. That's conversion therapy. And that's, that's for sexual. That's for sexual attraction, which is totally different from gender, gender identity and gender presentation, which is more transitioning gender.

Carl Youngblood [04:57:05] Right. So gender presentation and any therapy that results from that, we generally, like, support the individual's right to do that. But I would Also just add that, like, because the technology is not fully understood and even like, lots of things about gender are not fully understood and what influences it. You know, we've already seen some individuals who've come to like, regret their. Any physical hormonal therapy that they've gone through. And so I guess I, all I would say is just that like, this is, this is bleeding edge technology and it may or may not always achieve the desired results. And so we support individuals who want to pursue this with the caveat that, like, it might be worth exercising a little bit of caution there because, you know, we're still learning things about it.

The Role of the LDS Church in a Transhumanist Framework

John Dehlin [04:58:05] For somebody that sort of sees the LDS Church as God's one true church on the earth, what, what might a, how might a transhumanist look at the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? The. The exceptionalism of it or non exceptionalism of it? The authority of it, The. The place of it in the world?

Carl Youngblood [04:58:27] Yeah, so I think that many of us prefer the sort of Terrell Gibbons approach of thinking of the church as having unique contributions to make in the world and a special mission to perform, rather than as being an exhaustive repository of all truth and all priesthood authority

John Dehlin [04:58:52] or is the best of all churches or.

Carl Youngblood [04:58:54] Right. And actually I, I truly believe that this is more faithful to our roots than, than the other view. I feel that while there are evidences in both directions, I feel that almost everybody that you read in, especially in the early days of Mormonism, is talking about how we embrace truth no matter where it can be found. And in fact, if we don't do it, that we're not good Mormons and even things like that, this church can't do it alone. But I think that that's just gotten more and more. As neo orthodoxy has been emphasized more and more, I think it's gotten more. It's gotten stronger.

John Dehlin [04:59:41] Well, beautiful. Well, before we kind of start wrapping up, is there any final thing about you or about transhumanism or about Mormonism or about Mormon transhumanism that in this, in this exchange you want to make sure and communicate. Before we wrap up for today,

Carl Youngblood [05:00:01] I just want to say, you know, thanks for engaging with me, John. I, I admit that, like, not all the topics that are super important to you are quite as important to me, but I do think that they're very important and I want to reciprocate and like give and take in the conversation. And so I am grateful that you've, you know, brought me on giving me a chance to share my ideas that we've had the chance to talk through some of these things. I'm sorry for those who wanted to jump more into the transhumanist side of things, if we spent a long time on some of those same old discussions that have been going on for a long time. But I agree with you that they are important and that there are a lot of people in different stages who are struggling, who where these are pressing issues and they're concerns are valid.

John Dehlin [05:01:02] Well, thank you. Really quickly, and you don't have to answer this, but one of our listeners, Gary Clark, says we would like to know if Carl has a temple recommend that for some that may be an offensive question. But you.

Carl Youngblood [05:01:15] Oh, I don't mind. I do. Yeah. And I, and I feel like when I respond to the questions that I can, that I can say, can I, I can affirm my response positively without feeling that I'm lying or deceiving somebody.

Carl Youngblood [05:01:36] And I could get into the details of each one if you wanted. But like, I do hold a current temple recommend and I, I, I prefer though, when I talk with my church leaders not to kind of like dump everything. I think about these things in a way that they're not really prepared to listen to or interested in. I mean, frankly, most of the time I get there, I get this sense of relief when all I say is yes, yes, no, no, whatever, you know, rather than elaborate on the answers. Right. So, so like, you know, I think that our leaders are not always best equipped to address all of these challenging topics.

Carl Youngblood [05:02:25] And like, I'm not going to give them some nuanced simony as, as we, you know, in every circumstance, if someone were to reach me out and like, ask me in detail, you know, like how I feel about this or that, I'd be happy to share and talk to them about it.

John Dehlin [05:02:44] I don't think this is likely, but if a church leader were to say to you, hey, you shouldn't have got on Mormon stories, or hey, those things you expressed on Mormon stories are very unorthodox. We may have to have a disciplinary council kind of thing. Like, do you think that's possible? Do you think there's a risk of that? And if so, how would you react to that sort of thing?

Carl Youngblood [05:03:09] I think there's probably like a remote risk. And I would say, I think that risk is actually higher outside of Utah than in, not entirely, but like in Utah, in any congregation, you have like a reasonable number of progressive and conservative members that like, if any leader tries to go rogue and impose a strong opinion on or a strong disciplinary action on one individual, I think the likelihood of them getting pushback is a little bit higher than, well, significantly higher in Utah than elsewhere. That's not to say that doesn't happen. I mean, you're a good example of somebody who, you know, persistently. And continue. I think you were in Utah when your disciplinary council took place, right?

John Dehlin [05:04:06] Say that again.

Carl Youngblood [05:04:08] Were you in Utah when you're.

John Dehlin [05:04:10] Yeah, I was in Logan. Yeah, I was in Logan.

Carl Youngblood [05:04:11] Yeah. So, like I say, I'm not saying that this never happens in Utah, but I think that it's more likely that you might have, like, a leader acting in isolation and being. Being more hardline in a place where they are more independent than. Than you would find in Utah. But I mean, it's not completely out of the question. And I guess I would just say in response to that, that, like, you know, just tell me which of the questions I didn't answer satisfactorily and, you know, I guess let's go from there.

John Dehlin [05:04:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, well, let me just say. Go ahead. What's that?

Carl Youngblood [05:04:59] I would think it was. Was pretty dumb, but anyway.

John Dehlin [05:05:02] Yeah. Yeah. Well, Carl, let me just say that I. I respect and adore you as a fellow human being. I really love and value the diplomacy, the resilience and persistence that you have engaging with, with people like me and others like me.

John Dehlin [05:05:24] I love your optimism. I love your intelligence. I really think that the transhumanists that I've met, the Mormon transhumanists that I've met, are super cool. I would love to hang out with you guys more. I hope that Mormonism moves more in your direction, and I hope your ranks swell. And if this podcast can have any influence on growing your movement, I hope it does. Let me sprinkle that dust over what we're doing today and just say, I think the world needs more people like you and Lincoln and Blair and even Don Bradley. I'll say. And I really, I'm really grateful that you would show me the respect of not just like, John's a bitter, angry, old ex Mormon and, you know, writing me off.

John Dehlin [05:06:20] But. But that you would come on the show, you would engage in. In the questions, show me the respect of that, but also allow things to get heated, but still stand and present your points of view. I just love it. I respect it, and I. I share that with you and I wish you guys just all the best, you and the Mormon Transhumanist Association. I hope you guys are just super successful.

Carl Youngblood [05:06:47] Thanks so much, John. And if it's any, you know, just a quick teaser, what we experience today, while it may have been more drawn out than a typical meetup with the Mormon transhumanists, I would say the same level of mutual respect exists there, typically and sometimes a level of disagreement. And we work through them and we try to. We try to give the floor to everyone and give them a chance to share their ideas. So we'd love to have you to hang out with you more and I hope we all get to hang out with each other more in the near future as we work through Covid. So thanks again. And I know it's been long, so thanks for your patience as well.

John Dehlin [05:07:26] And if somebody wants to join or learn more about the Mormon Transhumanist association, how do they do it?

Carl Youngblood [05:07:33] I would say they can find our Facebook page by just searching for Mormon transhumanists. They can also find our website by those same search words and that meetup link that you shared. And I can put together some links that we could share as well. As we talked about maybe a transcript of when different topics got covered that we might just, you know, include with this since it's such a long one.

Closing Reflections and Resources

John Dehlin [05:08:03] I love it. Okay, so the website URL is what,

Carl Youngblood [05:08:07] transfigurism.org but you can Google for us and find us, I think pretty easily.

John Dehlin [05:08:14] Okay. And because I adore her and her sister Kristen Gluth Cranny writes really interesting. Enjoyed learning more about mth. Thanks for the discussion. And there, there are lots of people who appreciated lots of positive comments that people are sharing and a lot of people appreciate it. Gary Clark writes, wonderful interview. Many thanks to Both John and Carl. 123M Neal writes, Never give up talking to people you disagree with. I love that. And then Brit B. Says only read the Holy Bible and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior. And that's not as much a comment that I appreciate as much as the others. So with any further ado, Carl, you're awesome listeners. Check out Mormon Transhumanism Association. Kudos to all of you guys and maybe we'll have you back, Carl, because you're a smart and a thoughtful, kind guy.

Carl Youngblood [05:09:15] Thank you so much, John. And I wish you the best as you try to work with your community and help people out and minister them however they need it.

John Dehlin [05:09:23] I appreciate it. All right, thanks Carl. Thanks all our listeners who joined us on Facebook and YouTube. We had Facebook problems today. Our Facebook streams all died. There's something going on between Streamyard and Facebook, but YouTube was strong. And so everyone on YouTube thanks so much and appreciate everyone who supports Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. Donate to us@mormonstories.org if you want to see this type of programming continue. Send us your feedback mormonstoriesmail.com if you like or don't like this, share your comments@mormonstories.org or in the YouTube channel or on Facebook. Please share these episodes if you can. Please stay in touch and we hope to see you all again soon on Mormon Stories. Take care everybody. Thanks Carl.

Carl Youngblood [05:10:08] See you later. Thanks guys.

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