Most LDS Faith Crises Start in the Wrong Place. Here's Where to Begin.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you or a loved one are struggling with your faith, you need to watch this episode because this is a very logical walkthrough of how to actually build and evaluate your testimony. We've got Walker Wright with us today. Welcome to the show. And you've recently written a book, Nourishing the Roots, Seeking the Foundations of Latter Day Saint Testimony, published by fair. And it is an incredibly logical methodological way to look through a faith crisis, but has nothing to do with polygamy, that has nothing to do with the book of Abraham, race in the priesthood, LGBTQ issues. And it starts with like the bare roots foundation of what it even means to exist and why you can believe in a God. So Walker, tell us a little bit about yourself. [00:00:39] Speaker B: So I write on economics, on politics, on religion. I've published a number of different journals on those different topics. Currently I work at a Yale based institute that is dedicated to promoting free speech and intellectual diversity. At Yale, I've also worked in the public policy think tank space, doing similar work there. But yeah, I've just, I've been interested in these, in these topics and these ideas for a long time and been writing on them for probably the last decade or so. [00:01:07] Speaker C: I want to know why you left out the fact that you've also published on James Bond. Yeah, well, yes, the biggest and the first vision. [00:01:15] Speaker D: A few people have written on both James Bond and the first vision. That's true. [00:01:19] Speaker A: Super Big Flex. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes, Big Big Flex. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Your book is called Nourishing the Roots and you talk about this metaphor of there being roots but, but also branches. Can you explain what that means in the context of having a faith crisis or dealing with your testimony? [00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah, so you know, when you think of a tree, obviously the roots is what gives life to everything else. And so I use this metaphor, as I mentioned, I got it from Elder Uchtdorf, but I place it in the context of actually the typical recommend interview questions. And so I start with the first three questions which is do you have a testimony or faith in and a testimony of God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Ghost. And then the second one is do you have a testim of the atonement of Jesus Christ? And then the third one is do you have a testimony of the restoration? And those are the first three questions. And you notice they even build off of each other because if you don't believe in God, you're not going to believe in Jesus, you're not believing the restoration, and then and so forth. If you don't believe in the restoration, why would you care about the word of wisdom or whatever. Or tithing. Yeah, exactly. And so even within that, it builds off of it. And I see those as being like, these are the fundamentals, these are, these are the roots. [00:02:26] Speaker D: Kind of the three pillars in some ways. Right, exactly. Islam has five pillars. We have three. [00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:31] Speaker D: You know, God, that Jesus was the Christ and performed an atonement and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. [00:02:37] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:02:37] Speaker D: And from there you build your structure. [00:02:39] Speaker B: And even beyond Joseph Smith being a prophet, but also everything that came. [00:02:43] Speaker D: The restoration, priesthood, keys and revelations. Exactly, yeah. [00:02:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I mean, along with Islam, right. We have, they have their confession. [00:02:53] Speaker D: There's no God but God. No God but God is his messenger, [00:02:56] Speaker C: Muhammad is his messenger. And the way you actually ended your presentation yesterday, it seemed like it was ripping off of that kind of. It was. [00:03:04] Speaker B: That's funny that you say that. I wasn't meaning to. [00:03:06] Speaker A: So, Walker, you presented at the fair conference recently and you were able to kind of showcase your basic ideas there. [00:03:13] Speaker C: But it was something like, God exists, Jesus is Christ and Joseph is, is this prophet. [00:03:21] Speaker B: That's true. Maybe. Probably that was osmosis of some sort. [00:03:25] Speaker D: So in your analogy, though, those are kind of the roots we're talking about here. Right, exactly. And then from there you have your branches that emerge from those roots that can be whatever else is in our [00:03:35] Speaker A: religion, DNA in the Book of Mormon, polygamy and priesthood keys, temple stuff, and [00:03:40] Speaker B: even positive things like, you know, the Word of Wisdom or tithing or even [00:03:44] Speaker C: positive things like, know when we put forth evidence for the Book of Mormon or whatever. Right. Like no, no inscription from the ancient near east or no find from Mesoamerica is going to overcome someone's foundational issues with like the existence of God, the possibility of miracles and like the resurrection of Jesus. Like if, if you are, if you are a stone cold atheist, there's, there's no, nothing comes out of the ground that's going to change your fundamental belief that you don't get books from angels and translate them by miracles. [00:04:15] Speaker D: We've seen this many examples with secular critics where when we do point to evidence for the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham, what's the response, guys? Oh, lucky guess. That was a lucky guess. Anybody could have known that. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that evidence isn't going to compel you to belief unless if you're at least open to the possibility of belief in the first place. [00:04:31] Speaker C: Yeah, right. [00:04:32] Speaker B: I even say in the book, you know, towards the end of the chapter on the resurrection of Jesus. I point out that a lot of times you'll get these complicated arguments as to why Christianity can't be true. I'm like, you don't need complicated arguments. You just say, dead people don't come back to life. [00:04:44] Speaker A: Right, yeah. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Like, that's it, done, we're done. What else is there to talk about? Or, you know, in the terms of the restoration, it's like, well, people don't translate books with magic rocks. That just doesn't happen. And I'm like, it's not that complicated. And so also, if that's where you're going to start, then it's like, well, yeah, you're kind of. You're going to have trouble. But if you start at the beginning as to kind of like, well, it's. Is this the reality in which God exists? Do mir. Is mir. Are miracles possible? Well, then that lays the foundation. We're like, well, okay, maybe I can take the resurrection more seriously, but if you just start at the resurrection, it's a little bit harder. I mean, admittedly, yeah, I really love [00:05:20] Speaker A: this metaphor and I've really. I resonated with it a lot because people have made tons of metaphors for faith over the years. I mean, I remember Brucey Hafen has talked about there's like, primary questions and there's secondary questions. It's kind of like this bullseye. There's concentric circles. And that was a really helpful framework. But it's. It's a very abstract concept in some ways. And it's not sure how, like, the two connect to each other, but this idea of, like, an organic plant that has roots, and if you nourish the roots, the branches also get nourished. Like, I find that so helpful because you can see how the two connect to each other. And you can see how, like, if you're trying to, like, water a branch, it's actually gonna cause the whole tree to die. But if you're nourishing the roots, everything else can flourish. And I loved that. [00:06:00] Speaker C: Well, and it's not just. And the primary versus secondary questions, which I think comes from Larry Corbridge rather than Bruce C. Hafen. [00:06:07] Speaker A: Well, Hafen, include it in his book as well. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:10] Speaker C: Well, in any case, I mean, I do think there's. To your point. Yeah, when you nourish the roots, the branches stay strong. I think the way Larry Corbridge put it was that when you answer the primary questions, the secondary questions take care of themselves or pale in importance. But it's also true that, like, branches can be lopped off, they can be trimmed, they can be cut, you can prune. And the organism as a whole stay strong and healthy. And in fact, it can actually be sometimes good to do those sorts of things. And so that also just kind of puts in perspective sometimes this thing that you might be struggling with, it might be a branch that's actually okay to just clip off. Right, Just cut that off. You may, maybe your problem is you think that your way of thinking about profits is this gangly branch that doesn't need to be there. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's. Well, and it's one of those things where, because I get it, the idea of like I could even see someone criticizing this, saying that, oh well, you're just saying not to pay attention to all these things that are the real problems or whatever. I'm like, no, I'm very much for you tackling these issues. I have, like, it's, it's, you should do that. [00:07:16] Speaker D: Eventually you're going to have to address [00:07:17] Speaker B: the, you're going to have to. And honestly, like the gospel, the idea of being curious and seeking more, greater light and knowledge and all that type of stuff, that's a religious, as far as I'm concerned, obligation. You should be doing these things. But if you haven't really done the work to nourish these roots, like to even think through those core elements, well, then you're probably going to struggle when you get up to those things. And so it's just a matter of doing the first necessary work to even get up to those things. [00:07:46] Speaker C: The groundwork. [00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah, they say exactly. Till the ground a bit, you know. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Okay, so your, your three pillars, your three like foundational things are God, Jesus Christ and then the restoration. Why that order? [00:07:57] Speaker B: Well, in part because there's no restoration if there's no God. There's no atonement or resurrection if there's no God. And so you have to start with that first pillar question of is there even a God, a God to worship, a God that could restore any of those types of things? [00:08:13] Speaker A: So stepping back even to just like our bare fundamentals, can you briefly walk through the logic of why existence is even here or why you would come to the conclusion that existence can't be seen, self existent, or even a big accident? [00:08:27] Speaker D: Right. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Are we a happy accident? [00:08:30] Speaker C: Let's go all the way back. What's the first route really like? [00:08:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:34] Speaker C: Where does this begin? [00:08:35] Speaker B: So it begins with existence. And honestly, I think one of the reasons a book like this hasn't really existed in Latter Day Saint literature Is because some of the arguments I'm using are usually considered to be like classical theist arguments. And since we're not classical theists, we believe in a physical God. I think a lot of the times those get jettisoned because it's like, well, it doesn't work for us. I'm like, I, I wouldn't jettison them so quickly. Asking questions about like, why is there existence at all? Why does anything exist at all? [00:09:04] Speaker D: Something other than nothing, right? [00:09:05] Speaker C: Why is there something at all? [00:09:07] Speaker A: Atoms? Why are there particles floating in space? [00:09:09] Speaker B: It could have been just nothing. And nothing's not like a different thing. It's literally no thing. It's non existence. We don't have that. We have existence. That's weird. Where it's kind of like why is that there? And then you start to think, well, where did existence come from? And it's like, well then literally nothing can predate existence. Nothing could have brought existence into existence [00:09:35] Speaker A: otherwise that thing existed. [00:09:37] Speaker B: Otherwise yeah, it would fall into the sphere of existence. It's just a contradiction in terms really. [00:09:43] Speaker A: My brain a little bit. [00:09:44] Speaker B: I mean it's very abstract, but it's one of those things where it's kind of like you can do the Descartes thing of like, well, we think therefore like we I exist, Things seem to exist. I don't think we're in the Matrix. You know, it's kind of like even then the Matrix would have to exist. Like it's just like things exist. And so it's like that. Why? Why is that even there? That's really odd. And where did that come from? And you start to kind of drill down into it and you start saying like, well it couldn't be dependent on something else because that would mean there was something else that existed, you know, which would then be existence, you know, so it can't depend on something else. So it would have to be independent, it would have to be self ex. And others have used the language of it's necessary meaning that it couldn't have not existed because it's what makes everything in existence exist. And then when you take all those things, it's like, well it also seems to have been around forever, so it's eternal. And that's just buzzword. Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's just that's ontological. So that just gets you existence. So there's something about existence that is eternal self existence and so forth. But not only that, it's not just that things exist, it's that it's suspiciously intelligible. Like you look around and it's like, oh, well, there seems to be a rationale and orderliness to things. [00:11:00] Speaker D: There's rules that sort of. [00:11:01] Speaker B: There's laws of nature, the laws of physics. [00:11:05] Speaker D: Where did those come from? [00:11:06] Speaker B: Yeah, why does math work? Why does math work with these physical laws? Like, there's no real reason to think that. Well, it should be that way, really. Why? It could have been a mismatch. Like, you know, we don't have to have math, you don't have to have laws. And this is the thing is a lot of the times even some people who don't believe in God or don't think things are meaningless and so forth will still say, yeah, but the laws of nature and the laws of physics. I'm like, look, I don't think you're really taking into consideration that if you say we live in a meaningless existence or reality, then that also means that those laws aren't actually laws. Those are just things we're making up. We're just projecting these fictions onto a nonsensical reality. There's no sense to actually be made. And so there's no cause and effect. That's going too far. It's literally just this kind of metaphysical nihilism where nothing matters. Nothing. Like there's. There's no cause or effect, there's no meaning, no purpose at all, even in the physical structure of reality. And people might be sitting there going like, well, that's insane. I agree, I think that's. But I think that is the implication if you go in that direction. And so if you say, well, I think that's nuts. Well, yeah, I'm right there with you. I think it's nuts too. I think it is intelligible and that's weird. I don't think we should expect that. And so that should maybe make you go, well, why is it intelligible? Why is there existence at all? And to me, to connect it to Latter Day Saint theology rather than classical theism, it's. You have in the revelations from Joseph Smith something like the light of truth that is not created or made and it fills the immensity of space and it governs all things and gives light to the moon, the stars and whatever, and enlightens minds and so on. Now we don't have a great, you know, explanation as to what that is exactly, but it's this, it's. It kind of plays the role in Latter Day Saint theology of what I think, you know, the role of God plays in classical theism or in Platonism or Aristotelianism. It's some kind of first cause fundamental ground of being that gives governance to all things and intelligibility to all things. And I think you should take something like that seriously. [00:13:20] Speaker A: And then from there, where does, like, morality come from? [00:13:23] Speaker B: Yes, morality. So that's the other thing. It's like if you start to say, well, I don't. I don't think there are real, you know, moral values, at some point, you kind of have to come to a choice of whether or not you think morality exists. [00:13:35] Speaker D: You even just have to, like, pretend that it does, even if you don't actually believe it does. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Right. You know, it's. [00:13:39] Speaker D: You know, nobody actually lives their life as if morality doesn't exist. Exist as a real, meaningful category. Exactly. At most, they'll admit it. There's very few nihilistic or atheistic writers I've seen who will, like. They will admit that morality is just like an arbitrary fiction, but then they'll say, well, even though I'm just gonna, like, pretend it is, because that's how things work. Right. You know. [00:14:00] Speaker C: Right. [00:14:00] Speaker D: Or it's how our society. [00:14:01] Speaker C: I don't want to live in a society that rejects morality, basically. [00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Rejects this thing that we made up. It becomes this thing of where it's kind of like, there's still this impulse to kind of like, well, I still think I should be moral. I still feel I should be moral. And there's been a variety of, you know, explanations for that to where it's kind of like, well, that comes from our evolutionary development. Well, that's how we learn to cooperate as a species and so forth. And I don't deny any of that. But that just because it came out of an evolutionary development doesn't automatically make it objectively good. It just means that, well, that's just how we. [00:14:32] Speaker D: It was a useful evolutionary tool. [00:14:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:34] Speaker D: That our monkey brains developed. [00:14:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:36] Speaker A: And could have developed to be, like, very violent or very hostile instead. [00:14:40] Speaker B: And honestly, we did. [00:14:41] Speaker A: And we still have violent tendencies, but we don't. [00:14:44] Speaker B: But we don't say those things as objectively. Good. We see those as. [00:14:47] Speaker C: We see those things as. That's, like, the part of our natures that we think we need to tame. [00:14:52] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:14:52] Speaker C: We need to. [00:14:54] Speaker A: And that's universal across all humanity. Like, oh, violence, hostility, bad. Cooperation, good. [00:14:58] Speaker C: Why do we think we need to quell that innate desire to just bash Steven's head and take his stance? [00:15:05] Speaker D: Hey, man, careful. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Don't take my massive library. [00:15:08] Speaker D: Don't take my books. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Upstairs. [00:15:10] Speaker B: Right. And. And I just think at some point, that's why I say, I'm like, look, do you think the Holocaust was evil? Like, objectively evil? Not that you preferred it didn't happen. Not that you think, oh, well, society would work better if it hadn't happened. Whatever you think it was objectively evil or immoral or bad, and if you think it was objectively evil, then that you pro. That probably means that you think there are objective moral values and why should any kind of moral sense exist in a meaningless, you know, reality? And also, when you start to think of moral values, that really does indicate a kind of should we should behave a particular way, which implies a kind of, well, there's a proper way to be a human being. There's a, you know, what's the. The classical term of. There's a telos. There's an end, there's a purpose, a goal orientation for the. Our. Our nature and what we're meant to be as human beings. And then you start saying, well, there's a purpose or meaning or a way you should be as a human being. Well, that's, that's purpose and that's meaning in a universe or reality. [00:16:14] Speaker A: That. [00:16:15] Speaker B: I guess that means it's not meaningless. [00:16:16] Speaker D: So what you just said reminded me of a quote that I read some years ago in the now defunct Weekly Standard, an old sort of conservative newspaper magazine back in the day. But it was a review of a book on Thomas Nagel, who was a famous neuroscientist. What was it? What is it like to be a bat or something he wrote back in the day? [00:16:35] Speaker B: I actually talked about this in chapter three. [00:16:36] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so. But there's this great quote by this reviewer, Andrew Ferguson, who is responding to what he calls the neo Darwinian materialists. And I know it's a little bit of long quote, but it kind of encapsulates perfectly we're saying. So I do want to read it here. [00:16:49] Speaker B: Quote. [00:16:50] Speaker D: You can sympathize with atheistic materialists for fudging on materialism as a philosophy of everything. It is an undeniable dragon. As a way of life, it would be even worse. Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it's lived as colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters. Materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but. Nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions, understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots wouldn't just be a materialist, he'd be a psychopath. Say what you will about atheistic materialists, from what I can tell, none of them is a psychopath. Not even close. I think that sums it up pretty well. [00:17:47] Speaker B: I think so. And really sometimes the objection will be like, well, yeah, we may not like it, but that's just, that's where the logic leads. And I'm like, the what leads? Yeah, like, what do you. Like, what do you mean? Like there's no rules of logic in a meaningless unit. Like, rationality doesn't exist, reasoning doesn't exist. This idea of like, well, that's just where the evidence. What are we even talking about anymore? If it's just meaningless gobbledygook that we're living in, then there is no rationality, [00:18:17] Speaker D: fictive illusion that we created this arbitrary thing we call language that our monkey brains just kind of came up that [00:18:23] Speaker B: have no inherent meaning and all this type of stuff. And so it seems silly, but. Because in my opinion it is. And I think you should sit there and go, that is silly. But when you say that, you should then go, oh, well, why is things that way? Okay, there's intelligibility seems to be at the foundation of everything. Why is that the case? [00:18:42] Speaker C: Right, so we've got. We exist. And that's actually kind of weird. [00:18:47] Speaker A: And it's eternal. [00:18:48] Speaker C: And it's eternal, self existent, necessary. As you say, there's something about existence that is all of those things, it's ordered. We live in an ordered cosmos that has some kind of natural laws. Rationality, rationality, things make sense. What's the next step? [00:19:06] Speaker B: So where I go from there is kind of to reinforce this intelligibility. And this gets more into the scientific aspect of fine tuning of the universe. And this is a very common argument used by a lot of theists. But fine tuning in a nutshell is basically that the physical universe that we exist in, intelligent life couldn't have developed unless it fell within a certain very narrow range of physical parameters. And there's a whole bunch of these. I list out just six from a very famous book by Martin Rees called Just Six Numbers. But just to give like one example, if the early universe had expanded slightly slower than it did, you know, the Big Bang was slightly slower, then gravity would have caused it to collapse in on itself before intelligent life really was able to get off the ground. If it had gone slightly faster, well then stars and Planets couldn't have clumped together. It all just would have spread apart really, really quickly and torn itself apart basically without life being able to get off the ground. That's just like one example. And it's kind of like, well, why does it have to fall within these very narrow range of physical parameters? And why, why should it? And should we expect that if it's just an accident? And when you put it together with this idea of like, oh, well, existence is weird and it seems to be orderly and so forth, and then you add these very fine tuned physical parameters, that's another thing where it's just odd and it reinforces this kind of intelligibility of reality that it's also within the physical structure itself. And that the fact that we're here is very, very lucky given, you know, that even when you look around the universe, a lot of it is uninhabitable. But you know, we're here and that's pretty odd. And our planet being able to sustain intelligent life and so forth is also very odd. Should we expect that if it's just an accident? [00:20:58] Speaker C: Right. One counter you might anticipate, and I'd like to get your thoughts on, is what would you say to someone who said, well, maybe there was just a million billion trillion big bangs that just happened over and over and over again until finally one happened to provide these parameters? [00:21:14] Speaker B: Parameters, sure. Yeah. And a lot of times it's like, oh, well, there's the multiverse. [00:21:18] Speaker C: Multiverse, right, yeah. [00:21:19] Speaker B: There's an infinite number of timelines. [00:21:23] Speaker D: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Doctor Strange talking about the multiverse. [00:21:26] Speaker B: Exactly. And so there's these infinite number of universes. And you know, to an extent you could be like, well, eventually you're just, you're going to get something that has the right parameters. Maybe. I mean, we can't really test the multiverse. There's some math that maybe might give it some validity, but it's not something we can like observe and test necessarily. So there's that aspect for one. But also even whatever universe or multiverse generator there is, however these things are happening, you know, the quantum vacuum or whatever that's all coming out of, like, it would still have to have all the right ingredients from the beginning to even create a universe that has the proper physical parameters. So why are all those ingredients there? Even if they were all mixed up and like all together don't work, but for you to eventually get the right kind of ingredients, they have to be there in the first place. Why are those there? Like, when should you if you're just going to say, well, it's just everything was in there, maybe. [00:22:22] Speaker D: Why? [00:22:23] Speaker B: Why was everything in there? Because you can imagine a bunch of different universes that are sterile, that have no life, and you can even think of it. I use this example in the book. But you could have different kinds of laws that don't necessarily match up with the type of material we have, the kind of matter and energy that we have. It'd be like trying to run a software on a toaster. You know, the software exists, the physicality exists, but they just don't match up properly. But we have our universe that does do that. And some have also pointed out something that's called the inverse gambler fallacy when it comes to this, where if the idea is that, let's say you walk, you're in Las Vegas, you go into a casino, someone's playing craps, you know, at the table, and. And they just roll, you know, double sixes and is exactly what they needed, you don't automatically then say, man, there must have been an infinite amount of rolls that eventually got that. Like, he's still got a, what, a 1 out of 36 chance of rolling that. Like, it doesn't change necessarily with the amount of rolls. Or if you walked in, you know, the famous thing is given enough time, a monkey could type out Shakespeare or whatever. Well, let's say you walked into a room and there's a monkey typing Shakespeare in English. You wouldn't say, oh, there must be an inf amount of monkeys elsewhere just typing nonsense and banging away on the thing. It doesn't explain why that monkey is still able to type that. It doesn't just necessarily change the question. It's just kind of saying, well, the probability and the statistics down the road. Yeah. To me, the multiverse is just fine tuning with extra steps. That's what it is to me. [00:24:02] Speaker A: Okay, so once we can kind of establish the universe and its rationality, it's morality, it's fine tuning. Where does, like, we as humans and intelligent life get into the picture here? [00:24:12] Speaker B: Sure. So that's. That brings up the idea of consciousness. And consciousness is the thing we're most familiar with. But it's probably the hardest thing to really talk about and explain because nobody really knows what it is. [00:24:24] Speaker A: No one can be outside of consciousness to observe it. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Right. Like. And honestly, when you say like, well, I know that things exist, know what you know is your conscious experience. And that's how anything comes about is through our conscious experience. So what is consciousness exactly? And the Thing is, we don't really have an answer. A lot of the times people will say, well, you know, it's the brain and it's just the brain. And the brain is like a computer. It's whatever. The thing is though, like, you can't cut. If I can't cut into Neil's head and get to his first person, what it's like, experience. This is what Nagel is getting at with what is it like to be a bat? And his whole point was that as even if you knew everything there is to know about the neurophysiology of a bat, you don't suddenly know what it's like to be a bat. [00:25:10] Speaker D: The subconscious objective or subjective first person [00:25:13] Speaker B: experience of being a bat. And he even says, the more you go into this third person scientific description of consciousness, you're actually moving further and further away from what consciousness actually is, which is the first person subjective experience. And that we just. We don't have an explanation for it. [00:25:32] Speaker D: This remind me of Ferguson that I was reading. It's in response to Nagel's kind of book. This was around like 10 years ago when he published this Mind and Cosmos where Nagel kind of repudiates. And he got ostracized from the scientific community for this. He just sort of repudiated the materialistic explanation for consciousness. And he didn't become like a full fledged Christian suddenly or whatever, but he was like, guys, the material explanation doesn't account for this. And so, as Andrew Ferguson, the reviewer, says, he was excommunicated from his fellow intellectuals. He said he sealed his ostracism from the intelligentsia by idly speculating why his fellow intellectuals would undertake such a feat. Right. So anyways, it's kind of interesting how one of the greatest thinkers of consciousness has come to realize this is a problem for us from a strictly scientific, materialistic perspective. [00:26:23] Speaker A: I think we can, like people have done myriad experiments to try to determine, like, well, what are the emotional ranges of animals in the animal kingdom. Like, what kind of rationality and logic do they possess. And so you can observe those things. And a lot of pet owners love those because, you know, they experience and observe themselves, like building relationships with their animals, their pets and things like that. And so they kind of project their own human sense of reality onto what they must experience. But the reality is there's no way to know what your dog actually feels like or what their existence is like. And we can't even do that with other humans. Like, I have no idea what it is actually like to Experience like Stephen Smoot or Neil Rapley. And it's, it's kind of mind blowing. And I remember even thinking about like, how do we even know what it's like to be colorblind? Because colorblind people can't like really describe the colors that I see because I perceive those colors differently. Like it's kind of that mind bending [00:27:12] Speaker B: thing and it's, and it's funny. So philosopher Alvin Planka, who's you know, considered one of the greatest Christian philosophers of the 20th century, really just one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, he actually compared the idea of, of other minds to the notion of believing in God. Meaning that we don't actually have really, really firm arguments for believing in other minds. Like I don't really have a knockdown argument that Neil is conscious like I am. For all I know he's an automaton who just acts and behaves in a way that I'm an atc. You're an npc. A very good one. But like an npc. [00:27:46] Speaker A: I was sitting in the back of my parents car while my mom was like going to make a deposit at the bank in the drive through and having this distinct existential moment of realiz that my mom was not an npc, essentially. I didn't use that vocabulary, but that was the moment I'm like, wait. She also thinks. Yeah, feels and she has like her own protagonist like main character energy that is not just surrounding my world. And I remember being a young child and like that totally freaked me out when I like realized that other people had consciousness. [00:28:16] Speaker D: Have you also had that moment where you're like, you know, staring in the mirror, getting ready in the morning and you're like, that is me. You know what I mean? Like where you like kind of come to. It really sinks in that pure subjective kind of like for a moment you kind of briefly step out of your own subconscious or subjective experience. But like you're still trapped. It's very interesting. So I kind of get what you're saying there, Jeff. These kind of weird experiences. [00:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:39] Speaker B: Experience how weird it is. [00:28:41] Speaker C: I wanted. This is a little late for the conversation, but I just want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that like the children's show Bluey actually tackles the what is it like to be a bat? Question. They have a whole episode where Bluey is like trying. She wants to be in her dream where she's a bat and she's wanting to know what it's like. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Wow. [00:29:01] Speaker C: So. And that we are our three year old Watches that show, guys. [00:29:04] Speaker B: Way to go, Australia. [00:29:06] Speaker C: Yeah, but you, you actually bring up a completely different show, Star Trek, when you're talking about this. For a lot of us, for us millennials, Star Trek Next Generation was something we grew up on. Right. And you have data this. Well, not really. Do they call him a cyborg? [00:29:24] Speaker A: Android? [00:29:24] Speaker C: An Android, that's right, this Android. And there's like a whole, there's, honestly, through the whole show, there's these arcs about like, is he really human? [00:29:32] Speaker A: Is he a robot? [00:29:34] Speaker C: Does he, does he have rights? Yeah, but I actually think it's really interesting, like this is, this is less and less becoming a sci fi question in today's world with AI and data centers and all this stuff. And you've got like Richard Dawkins. [00:29:47] Speaker D: I was just gonna read Richard Dawkins. [00:29:48] Speaker C: Richard Dawkins, who's really funny. [00:29:50] Speaker D: The king of the materialists. [00:29:51] Speaker C: That is it the Claude. He concluded it's conscious. Right. And so these are like, what is consciousness? Is a, like, my point is it's a very real and practical question in the 2026 world that we live in. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Right. And the thing is, you know, we kind of talked hit on this already a little bit, but the idea of if consciousness is literally just the machinery in your head, like your, your brain is a computer, you're a meat computer. Like, that's what it is. And many will go in that direction because they're like, well, I don't. What else could it be? Yeah, because I have this physicalist view of the world. Then the possibility, it's possible that we all could have ended up as what's called zombies in the philosophy. Not that you're not walking dead zombies, but ones that have no subjective experience, but behave and act and whatever, the same way that we already do as subjective beings. But there's just no light on upstairs at all. You're just, there's, there's no subjective experience or even you could make it. Well, maybe it was just white noise up there and that's it. No, like intentionality, no lining up with your intentions and your bodily movements and behaviors, any of that type of stuff. It could have just been like an automaton, like just a robot with no thoughts, whatever. But that's not the case. You have a subjective experience and that's just really, that's just really weird. And another great thought experiment was like, okay, let's think through this machinery making consciousness emerge. You know, emergence is a big thing that people talk about. They use this example of, you know, China has Billions of people, let's say that we gave them all they had to throw switches at a certain time and they have a cell phone that they can send signals or whatever. Anyway, they are able to operate in a way that like neurons operate in a brain and it's plugged up to a robot. And then the robot begins to act like a human being because of all these switches that they're doing. Is that robot consciousness? Has the country of China suddenly developed a consciousness, a collective consciousness, a hive mind, you know? You know what I mean? And it's kind of like, I mean, some may say, well yeah, sure, but I think most are like, well no, like he doesn't have it as subjective experiences, just switches. I agree. And if that's what you think is going on in your head, then you know why. That doesn't explain why we're conscious, but we are. And so for me, I say that once you kind of go through these things, it seems to be that consciousness is one of those fundamentals of reality. It's at that foundation of everything. It's part of the necessary, self existent, independent foundation. And this is something that a lot of philosophers have actually started to move towards. People like Philip Gough, who was an agnostic until recently, you know, panpsychism, all that type of stuff. But that mind is eternal and it's always been around. [00:32:38] Speaker D: Hey, that sounds familiar. [00:32:39] Speaker C: We have a word in Revelations that it's not mind, it's intelligence. [00:32:45] Speaker D: Intelligence, which actually Joseph sometimes does say the mind of man or whatever. Right? [00:32:50] Speaker C: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:32:51] Speaker D: I sometimes wonder, and this is very deep water, which you don't have a [00:32:54] Speaker B: lot of answers to from the footnotes as well. [00:32:57] Speaker D: But I do appreciate, Walker, you bringing up these points in your book because I think a lot of Joseph Smith's metaphysics jives with this and he doesn't use precise language all the time because. Cut the guy some slack. He's a 19th century uneducated guy living in the frontier of America. But yeah, he uses mind or intelligence, things like that, even light, these kind of soul or spirit sometimes existed eternally in some kind of capacity. So really, really interesting stuff there. [00:33:24] Speaker A: So how do we get from consciousness exists to. Therefore there has to be a God or divinity supernatural. [00:33:31] Speaker B: So these first three chapters, you've got the strangeness of reality, you've got the intelligibility of reality and the fine tuning of the universe. And then you've got the hard problem of consciousness. And so now you have a intelligible fine tuned mind like reality. Well, that's very different from a meaningless reality. There's a purposiveness to all of this. There's an aboutness to how all this works. And to me, that starts to then open up the questions of, like, okay, well, if mind has always been around, what kinds of minds, what kind of mind? And you experience this in your own life. Like, you have. There's human beings, but there's other kinds. You brought up pets or whatever. There's. There's people have their dogs or whatever. If you've ever looked into like an octopus or whatever, its consciousness is incredibly weird. But you have these different kinds of intelligent beings, but on a hierarchy, you know, And I remember. [00:34:28] Speaker C: Wait a second. Intelligences on a hierarchy? Yeah, I think I've heard that before. [00:34:33] Speaker D: Kind of like they were organized in a way. And yeah, some are closer to God and Abraham. Chapter three. [00:34:39] Speaker B: Everybody, like, literally, like, that's what I used to set up. And it's funny because I remember the late behavioral economist Herbert Gentis had a review of the physicist Lawrence Krauss's book where he was kind of like, yeah, the physics are great, the metaphysics are kind of whacked. And he brought up this point of like, we don't know what the realms of creators or creator is like, but we know we. We think it exists because in our own experience, we see different kinds of basically intelligence. It's like there's German shepherds, chimpanzees, human beings, amoebas, you know, or whatever. It's like just in our own realm of existence, it's completely arbitrary to think that there's nothing beyond human beings. And you start to ask that, and it's like, okay, well, what kind of minds are there? Well, then you get to what do people experience? Well, they experience other kinds of minds that are, you know, outside or above our own. [00:35:35] Speaker C: Above the natural or supernatural, as you might say. [00:35:40] Speaker B: Exactly. And then that's when I started to dive into a lot of different survey data and going back to the miracles, discussions of divine healings, of revelations, of exorcisms, like exorcisms are lower than normal miracles, like divine healings, but it's still, you know, reportedly happening. [00:35:58] Speaker D: A lot of people. [00:35:59] Speaker C: A lot of people kind of terrifying. [00:36:02] Speaker B: It's incredibly terrifying. But also that that shows that, well, some, if you're able to exercise a spirit out of someone, if that's actually happening, well, that means that there's a power above that spirit. [00:36:13] Speaker D: Right. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Which goes into the idea of a hierarchy. So not all of these minds are benevolent, but apparently There are some that are. And some that answer prayers and some that heal you and some that. And I think those types of things, you know, you have direct experience with a God and it's a lot of people and well, to me that makes more sense in a mind like purpose of reality than a meaningless one. And it's like, okay, well, maybe we should take that seriously. [00:36:42] Speaker D: I concur and I want to read once more Andrew Ferguson. In this review of Nagel. Materialism can only be taken seriously as a philosophy through a heroic feat of cognitive dissonance, pretending in our abstract intellectual life, the values like truth and goodness have no objective content. Even as in our private life, we try to learn what's really true and behave in a way that we know to be good. [00:37:08] Speaker B: Yep. [00:37:08] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:37:09] Speaker B: And the thing is, a lot, I can maybe imagine some people, and I try to deal with this a little bit in the footnotes because I don't want to derail the main flow of the narrative, but I know some might be kind of like, well, aren't Mormons materialists? Like, because we have a very materialist metaphysics. We have a physical God, very tangible, corporeal. Right. You know, spirit is not immaterial and all that stuff. Though the way that spirit is used isn't consistent. You know, the way that Joseph used it earlier versus later and so forth. And to me, I'm kind of like, look, we may be more materialist than, you know, your average theist or whatever. [00:37:41] Speaker D: Protestant. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Right? But I don't think anyone, if you were to say, well, what is goodness, what is truth, what is beauty? You know, any of those types of things, those are still transcendental values. When you talk about eternal progression, progressing into what like, you know, there's still a kind of form or telos that is not necessarily like a thing you can put under a microscope. It's still something that's not quite physical. [00:38:06] Speaker C: There are things that exist that are not material. [00:38:08] Speaker B: Right. I still think that works very well within an LDS theology, and I don't think we should dismiss that. [00:38:15] Speaker A: So how do we then get from supernatural there's a God, how does that progress to building a faith in Jesus Christ, building faith in the Restoration? What does that look like? [00:38:24] Speaker B: Well, then the question becomes, okay, you have a bunch of miracle claims, a bunch of revelation claims, but none of you know, you have an experience with God that may not tell you a particular religion. You were divinely healed. Okay, cool. Depending on the context, you're not really. It doesn't give the veracity of Any particular religious worldview except just there's an act of God, there's a God, that there's a revealing God, not a deist one, not a, you know, clockwork. [00:38:48] Speaker D: Yeah, clockwork, right. [00:38:50] Speaker B: You know, absent Daddy, God or anything like that. And so then it becomes, well, is there a decisive revelation, a decisive miracle that can maybe point us in a correct religious worldview? And Christians have long claimed that Jesus Christ's resurrection fulfills that role. And so it becomes, well, should we take that seriously? And now some, to be fair, will start with that and say, well, I just think it's a knockdown argument that historically, well, of course this is the only plausible thing to have happened. I think that's too strong. But within, when you take it within the context of this mind, like reality, where miracles are happening, or at least they're reported, then that makes it far stronger to say, like, okay, well, maybe we should take Paul seriously on the road to Damascus and the fact that he was an enemy and then turned into a Christian missionary. Maybe the fact that the Gospels are considered to be Greco Roman biographies, that doesn't mean that you can't dispute some of the history, but that's at least trying to tell you historical information of some sort, or at least what they thought was historical information. [00:39:55] Speaker C: They believed what they were writing wasn't fiction or whatever, or myth or alpha myth. [00:39:59] Speaker B: Exactly. They had theological biases and all that. And that's fine, you know, and you can, you should be cautious as you approach texts in that way. But they at least thought they were real events and that it was, it was something that had happened. And the way that these early disciples went about their life of, you know, preaching a resurrected messiah, which. No, a crucified messiah and a resurrected one, both of which nobody was expecting. So you have a theological innovation in the middle of the first century and they're being persecuted for it. People don't like it, they think they're ridiculous, some die for it, you know, and so on is just like, that's weird. Like, why are they, why would they make that up? What did they have to gain? [00:40:37] Speaker D: Seems against your self interest to be committed to a fraud like that. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Right? Like, I just don't see what you're really going to get out of it. And eventually it just kind of comes down to, well, they seem to genuinely believe that they had experienced the risen Jesus. So then you have to ask why did they genuinely believe that they had experienced the risen Jesus? You can come up with a number of different things, but I think what Best explains it particularly the context of the reality that we inhabit is that maybe they did. [00:41:06] Speaker C: Now, the grand counter argument in every debate ever between a Christian and an atheist on this is, what about the witnesses to the gold plates? [00:41:16] Speaker D: What about them, Walker? [00:41:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, and it's funny. [00:41:19] Speaker A: The witnesses believe they saw gold plates. [00:41:21] Speaker C: They really prove that they saw those gold plates. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Prove Jesus resurrected. [00:41:25] Speaker B: Right, Exactly. And I bring this up at the beginning of the chapter on the gold plate. You know, a number of debates that skeptics and Christians have had. And almost every single time the skeptic will bring up like, okay, well, you're bringing up eyewitnesses for the resurrection. Well, what about the 11 witnesses to the gold plates? You know, we all believe those were [00:41:45] Speaker D: fake, but there's eyewitnesses. [00:41:48] Speaker B: Right. And he's like, you know, you don't take them seriously. And to the skeptics point, like, the Christian apologists often are kind of squirming or they'll make elementary mistakes about where it's like, well, Joseph was the only one that saw it. [00:42:00] Speaker D: It was obviously a fraud, or they were just obviously lying. That's what I hear from Waylay and Craig. And I was disappointed. Like, dude, you're smarter than that. [00:42:06] Speaker B: Right. Like, he's done great work on the resurrection. It really is just a thing of where I'm kind of like, I really don't think, you know, the documentary evidence here or. And sometimes you don't want to know because then that puts you in a real. That puts you between a rock and a hard place. So do you undermine will for ignorance? [00:42:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:23] Speaker B: Do you undermine your own argument for the resurrection by saying, well, we can't take those arguments seriously, or do you now have to take these witnesses seriously and, you know, and deal with them? Yeah. And for me, I'm like, I think you should. I think we have stronger evidence even for. Than for the resurrection. Much stronger. [00:42:40] Speaker D: Shout out to our episode with Josh Gailey. Yeah, you can throw up right here where we talked about it. [00:42:44] Speaker B: I quote Josh in the book. [00:42:45] Speaker D: I will maintain that on. Despite what Trent Horn may say to the contrary, that on purely historical grounds, the forgetting supernatural or theological bias or miracle claims, whatever, on purely historical grounds, the case for Joseph Smith had a physical object that resembled gold plates that he showed people is way stronger than the claim that Jesus rose from the dead and showed himself to his disciples. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Absolutely right. [00:43:13] Speaker D: Like, just as a matter of sheer documented history, the quality of the sources, the quantity of the sources, the proximity of the sources to the event. Right. And all those categories, the evidence for the existence of a gold plate shaped object that Joseph Smith showed people way stronger than for the resurrection. And I think that most Christian apologists and scholars just frankly don't want to deal with it. And so they beclown themselves, like William Lane Craig by saying they were obviously just lying, it's obviously just fake. Or Trent Horne, most recently with Alex o' Connor and things like that. [00:43:46] Speaker B: Absolutely. And honestly, the claim of the angelic visitation with the three, like, I mean, that's even stronger than what you often find with the New Testament. [00:43:57] Speaker C: We've talked about it before on our Josh Gailey episode, if you want to go check it out. But we literally have in the pen of Oliver Cowdery autographs from these guys, statement, a copy of the statement in his pen. Now he's the one who signs all three names. And some people make a big deal about that. But it's the printer's manuscript. But it was written months, within months of the event. Right. And then we also have the letter Oliver Cowdery wrote within months of the event to some newspaper guy in New York or whatever. But we have really early firsthand sources that you just. Like even. Even with the New Testament, like Paul. Our earliest source from Paul is where he actually talks about his own experience. Is that in Galatians or First Corinthians? [00:44:43] Speaker B: Yeah. In some of the undisputed letters with Paul. [00:44:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:46] Speaker B: You're talking about the 5th. [00:44:47] Speaker C: Yeah, the 50s. Right. [00:44:48] Speaker B: He's quoting earlier material, but I mean, [00:44:52] Speaker C: as far as like. And Paul is like the only eyewitness that we have like a firsthand thing from. Right. [00:44:58] Speaker D: And by the way, Paul says he sees a vision of the risen Christ. Paul doesn't describe handing him, touching him, things like that. And to be clear, we're not knocking down belief in the resurrection, clearly. Right. [00:45:08] Speaker B: We believe all that. [00:45:09] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:09] Speaker C: But we're showing comparatively, you don't have any firsthand sources. Certainly not an autograph that you can say this was written within months of the event. [00:45:18] Speaker D: Trent Horn would give his right arm to have an autograph from people. [00:45:21] Speaker A: I would too. [00:45:23] Speaker B: So would I. Yeah. No, it'd be great. And the language they use too, it's very. Even with the three, with the angelic visitation. It's very matter of fact. I know people make big deal out of like spiritual eyes and eye of faith, which you guys have written on a lot and tackled that. And I'm so. I don't. [00:45:40] Speaker C: We'll do it. I'm sure we'll do an episode on spiritual eyes. Yeah. [00:45:43] Speaker B: So I won't belabor the point there. But. But even that, like, even in Martin Harris, who's the only one to really say that when he's saying like, well, you see my hand. Well, I saw the angel. You see the sun shining. Like, it's very matter of fact language of kind of like this. They're not dressing it up. It's not poetic. It's not romantic. [00:46:01] Speaker D: It's not mystical. [00:46:02] Speaker B: It's not mystical. [00:46:03] Speaker D: It's like, yeah, right. [00:46:05] Speaker B: It was just like the angel appeared and showed us plates and we heard God. Whoa. Like, that's how all of their stuff [00:46:11] Speaker C: on an open, beautiful, clear day, as Oliver puts it. [00:46:14] Speaker B: Right. And they on their deathbeds are saying this type of thing. [00:46:17] Speaker D: So they're persecuted for it, right? Yeah. [00:46:19] Speaker A: So Joseph Smith really had a gold plate shaped object that people witnessed to. What are the implications for the rest of the restoration? All these branches. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Well, to me, that makes roots. [00:46:29] Speaker A: All these roots. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So it becomes one of those things where it's like, okay, we should take these witnesses seriously. At least I think you should. And that means that like, well, what's. What's the content of the Book of Mormon? You know, and then you think about the translation of the Book of Mormon. How odd that is. Like, I often like to say, like, if you're. If you were to give me a profile of someone who could or would write a book like the Book of Mormon, what does that person look like? Like, in your heart of hearts, does it look like Joseph Smith? Like, really, does it. Or does it look like someone like Tolkien? You know, and how would you. [00:47:05] Speaker C: It's funny because people will often compare it to Tolkien. [00:47:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, oh, Tolkien made a world. [00:47:10] Speaker C: He could do. He could build complex worlds. [00:47:14] Speaker B: You're right. [00:47:15] Speaker D: After being a professor of bold English for 20 years at Oxford. [00:47:19] Speaker B: And that's what I mean is I'm kind of like, okay, are you expecting a CS Lewis or a JRR Tolkien or someone like that? I would too. But that's not Joseph Smith. And how would it be written? How long would it take? Does your profile fit some uneducated farmhand with magic rocks and his head and a hat in a matter of couple of months? Like, no, like, it doesn't fit mine. Maybe it fits yours, but you have a very different way of thinking about how books are written. [00:47:45] Speaker D: Like, but. [00:47:46] Speaker B: And it's just kind of like, that's just very strange. And then the fact that this book that comes out of a hat and magic rocks also happens to have Some coherence with the ancient world. You shouldn't expect that at all. At all. And you can dispute some evidences here and there. I don't think the disputes are very, you know, strong, but. But like, you've done nay homework. It's just kinda like, what? That's a throwaway line. It's a throwaway. It's just. You just blow past it. [00:48:15] Speaker C: He didn't spend months researching at the. [00:48:18] Speaker B: At Dartmouth. [00:48:19] Speaker D: At Dartmouth, or despite some claims to [00:48:21] Speaker C: the contrary, Algheny College library or whatever, just to be able to like throw this one line in. [00:48:26] Speaker B: It's a throwaway line and it's just kinda like, wow, that match. I did not expect that at all. Like, John Clark makes this point, you know, who's an archaeologist of Mesoamerican history. He is. Makes the point that you shouldn't expect like 1%. You maybe get 1% based on chance alone. We've got far more than 1%. Matt Roper's new work on anachronisms where it's like the vast majority of this has either been confirmed or partially confirmed. That's crazy. That no one shouldn't be happening. This book has no business having the track record it does. And that's odd. That unexpectedness should at least make you go, huh? If it doesn't, I think you're not really taking in the full implication of it. And so to your point of like, what does this get us to? Well, now you've got this idea of the restoration, the idea of Joseph's prophethood and whether or not this kind of movement of the restoration is actually real. And if this book is real, is it an actual ancient record? Which means it's not just a book for the sake of the book. It's testifying of the very resurrection that we were talking about before. Like, that's its point. It's pointing towards Jesus. It's not just there to. Oh well, because Joseph and gold plates, Yay. It's the content of the book. So the witnesses themselves are not just the long game of. It is not so much the witnesses of the gold plates. They're additional witnesses, in essence, by proxy of the resurrection. [00:49:49] Speaker D: Right. Neil and I some time ago recently were able to do an interfaith dialogue with some evangelical Christian students coming to visit Provo and Orem and BYU and so forth. And we had a little Q and A with them and we told them we're kind of Book of Mormon guys. We'd like to address stuff related to the Book of Mormon. And you know, questions about that. And so mostly was related to Book of Mormon questions. And, and but one student did ask and they said, well, you know, what do you think about arguments for the resurrection? And one of the first things Neil and I said was, well, guys, you should know, we Latter Day Saints, we believe the resurrection so much that we believe that he resurrected and came to America and showed himself to people there. And that's cause the Book of Mormon. Right. So he tied it back in that way. So yeah. This is to say the book is pointing us back towards this other reality that you talked about, this other root of the resurrection atonement of Jesus. [00:50:42] Speaker B: Exactly. Because the thing is, is that, oh, well, the gold plates are real. It's an actual ancient history. That means Third Nephi happened. [00:50:50] Speaker D: That means resurrection happened. [00:50:51] Speaker B: That means the resurrection happened. That means there's a God and Jesus is. Christians heal him. [00:50:55] Speaker D: They feel the wound. It's, you know, everything. It's not a mystical, transcendental thing. It's a tangible thing. [00:51:01] Speaker B: And it's like. And that means, you know, God's plan is, is real and he has a plan for you. Like that. That's huge. Like, you should be. If you are a Christian, you should be excited about that. It was like, we have additional. Josh Gailey said the same thing of the resurrection. It's. It's fantastic. And the thing is the way, the way that you can. This is why in the book this way is that after I've kind of gone all through that is to a lot of the times people, you know, we often say, do Moroni's promise, you know, read and pray about the Book of Mormon. Well, I mean, if you don't think [00:51:31] Speaker A: there's even a God emotional experience, can I really depend on that for determining truth? [00:51:36] Speaker D: Right. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Like, and if you don't believe in a God, like, why am I gonna pray? Like, this is insane. Of course I'm not gonna do that. And so the hope is to maybe get you past that, to be able to be like, well, should I take it seriously? Maybe I. Is it worth a try? And then the ultimate thing is you can have a spiritual experience about this, but it's not just a generic spiritual experience. [00:51:58] Speaker C: It's not Rainn Wilson at a rock concert. He talks about feeling God in his book Soul Bloom through that kind of experience. [00:52:06] Speaker D: Or Pam from the office, I feel God at this Chili's tonight. [00:52:10] Speaker C: Right. [00:52:10] Speaker B: You know, and hey, maybe she did, but that doesn't tell her where to go. Maybe it might at the very most say she should go To Chili's More, and that's about it. But it doesn't tell her what religion to join or how to think any worship. But the thing is, is that Moroni's promise is connected specifically to the record. And the way that he sets it up is this idea of, you know, once you've read these things, you've pondered these things, you've reflected on these things. And in some sense this is my own. While he's talking about the record itself and perhaps other records, this is my own contribution to like pondering it a bit. Ponder on these things. What is God? Is there a God? What has he done? Did the resurrection happen? So forth and then pray about this specifically. It's a targeted kind of spiritual experience. And if you have an experience confirming the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, well, that anchors you in a particular religious tradition. Now you have a direction as to like, oh, the restoration happened and you should join the church and dedicate your life to this. But the thing is, to your point about, well, that's just an emotional experience or whatnot. Well, okay, but sure, emotions are involved in it perhaps. But to me, I say, should you and can you take spiritual experiences seriously or is it just this kind of like self delusion? The thing is, should we take any ordinary experience that we have seriously? How do you determine something like we're not in the matrix or I'm not in a dream within a dream, you know, or false memories like Blade Runner or whatever, you know, all that type of stuff. It's like, how do you know that? Well, because this seems pretty real. I mean, maybe I'm in a thing of goo and robots are harvesting me or whatever. [00:53:54] Speaker C: But then where did that come from? [00:53:56] Speaker B: But the idea is that you don't think that because this seems pretty real and my sensory observable, I can observe it, I feel it. I experience my way to this belief. I don't reason my way to the belief that this is a real room. I experience my way to it. [00:54:10] Speaker D: I've found that similar in my kind of epistemology for why I believe. Mormonism, right? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its claims. People ask me, why do you believe all this? And it kind of comes down to, guys, I have a book in front of me that was published in 1830 and books don't just poof into existence from the ether. Like it's real. Somebody has to have written this book. Who wrote it? And what's the best explanation for who wrote it? And I accept Joseph Smith's account for that because I think it's the most defensible. I think it's the strongest hot take here, guys. Right. I really do think that. I really do think that gold plates and angels is the best way to explain how he got this book. And so because of that, I have this tangible thing in front of me. So it works epistemologically. And until that can be shown otherwise, that's what I gotta go with. [00:54:54] Speaker B: And that's the big thing. It's like, that doesn't mean that there can't be reasons to doubt. Like people can hallucinate, you know. That doesn't mean though that you suddenly stop trusting vision. Just because you have an optical illusion doesn't mean that, oh, my eyes don't work anymore. [00:55:08] Speaker D: Everything is an illusion. [00:55:09] Speaker B: Everything is an illusion. Like, that's not how this works. And so you can have an emotional experience, you can self delude, but if you have a spiritual experience with the Book of Mormon, after praying about its truthfulness, until you have a really good reason to doubt that God talked to you or the Spirit confirmed this to you, you're perfectly rational in saying, like, nope, this is it. I think I'm gonna roll with this. [00:55:32] Speaker D: Which, by the way, no less than Alex o' Connor himself has basically said as much. Not with the Book of Mormon, but with belief in God. People have asked him, like, what would get you to believe in God? And, and he said, at the end of the day, if I had a supernatural experience where God revealed himself to me, then I would kind of believe it. Like, no amount of logical argumentation. And he's a smart guy. I actually am a fan of Alex, right. I think he does interesting stuff. But yeah, he has said like, yeah, if God revealed himself to me, that would be my new sort of epistemological starting place. Then from there I could evaluate the world around me and these arguments I'm encountering. But the arguments themselves aren't going to bring you to that belief. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Right? And a lot of philosophers have talked about this. Alvin Planica famously says belief in God can be what he calls a properly basic belief. A basic belief is pretty much the foundation of beliefs because at some point the buck has to stop somewhere, right? Like you don't, you can't reason your way to every belief. At some point you're kind of like, well, I think the room around me is real, so I'm going to start with that or whatever just from experience. And the properly basic belief is it's like, well, that's, yeah, you shouldn't reason your way to that. And for some people, belief in God because of their experience with the world, it seems like it was created. There seems to be a purpose. Purpose. Or perhaps you read and pray about a particular religious text that it's like, well, this is. I had that experience, and now this is a foundational belief, and it's the lens through which I make sense of everything else. And that's perfectly rational. [00:56:54] Speaker A: I think it's really interesting that when people go through periods of doubt, they tend to first doubt those spiritual experiences a lot of times, and they'll. They'll be like, oh, well, I mean, I know I've experienced this where it's just like, well, I was, like, 15 years old when I felt like I felt the spirit and I was immature. I probably didn't really know what I was thinking when I'm going through a period of doubt or frustration. And then I'd, like, go back to my journal and, like, read my account of what I felt in that moment. And I. I remember at one point in my life, like, weeping, reading that, really realizing that, like, this was a real experience to me and I should not downplay just because my memory has gotten faulty. Plug for journal keeping. [00:57:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And it's. And it's one of those things for me, if you are starting to doubt those kinds of experiences, which, you know, it happens. I've done it. I think we've probably all done it to some experience, and someone might have a different experience reading their journal and saying, like, I was stupid. I was dumb and stupid. This is really sappy. Like, it's like, don't want to be that person anymore, you know, or whatever. And, you know, I get plenty of those entries too. Like, and so, like, maybe selective journal keeping. No, Anyway, but if you are experiencing that, that's kind of, in some essence, what the book's about is kind of like, okay, now you're starting to wonder, like, well, should I take that seriously? And you're kind of having almost an epistemological crisis to some meaning. Like, how do I know what's true? And that's why I'm like, well, okay, if you're already unsettled, well, then let's unsettle a little bit more and go back to, like, this to your point of, like, if you're gonna have a faith crisis, have an existential one to where you are unsettled, to where it's like, wait, what does anything mean? And then it's like. And then you can Maybe start at these basics and work your way back up. And then. And maybe, maybe by the time you get to the end, it's like, okay, those spiritual experiences aren't as stupid or sappy as I thought. Those are actually real, legitimate experiences that I should take seriously and continue to take seriously for the rest of my life, because they were real. [00:58:47] Speaker C: That kind of reminds me of Bruce Hafen's Simplicity on the other side of complexity, Right. Sometimes we get unsettled, right? We get into that complexity space and we're really unsettled and we wish we could just go back to the naive simplicity that we had before. But you kind of have to just push through. And if you can push through and get regrounded, nourish those roots, as your book says, you can actually find a simplicity that is beyond the complexity. As a visual, I like to think of like a mosaic image where that's made up of a bunch of tiny little images. Maybe you initially, like, you thought it was just one solid picture, and then you zoomed in and you realized that actually there was a ton of different things going on in that picture. But you can zoom out again. And now you see the complexity there better. But it's still. The big picture is still what it was before, right? [00:59:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So the late Roger Scruton, who's a philosopher, actually quote him, I think. Actually, I think it's in the first chapter going back to this, like, existence thing where he was like, well, there's something called nothing Buttery where people start to say, oh, this is just nothing but this. And he uses examples like the Mona Lisa is nothing but pigments on a canvas. Or, you know, Beethoven is nothing but, you know, a bunch of, you know, different musical or whatever. I mean, technically, yeah, you're not wrong. Like, those are things. And I guess that's complexity. But then. And you can zoom in and kind of understand how those things work, and that's fine. But zooming back out to where it's like, oh, this is how everything actually fits together. Like, truth is not just a fact, like facts are facts, but knowing the meaning of those facts and how those things fit together and the purpose of those facts and what's the actual implication and meaning of those things. That's what truth really is. It's the whole picture. It's not just a bunch of rando factual. [01:00:45] Speaker A: And this is a really logical discussion for Faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But this is also a very personal journey for you since you went through a period of atheism so what did your personal faith journey of D and reconstructing that faith look like? [01:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah, so I opened the book with a story about my sister. So I am one of five children and I am the only boy. So I had all sisters. But my sister Nicole was born with a very a heart condition that developed into a rare form of heart disease. And she wasn't really expected to live past an early age, but she did and lived a relatively normal and healthy life. And she graduated from high school, she went to BYU for a summer semester. But as she was walking the campus back In August of 1997, her heart gave out. She basically had a heart attack and she collapsed and she died there on campus. And she was only 18 and I was 11. And being an 11 year old, when that happens, when growing up, you're as part of family and personal prayer, you're told to say, well, say bless Nicole's heart. Like it was just kind of a staple. It was a thing that you said. And in a kind of naive, childish way, you're like, oh, this is working. I'm keeping Nicole alive by praying well, then suddenly she dies. It's kind of like, well, that's not working anymore. And I compare it to CS Lewis in his autobiography, which is arrogant to even compare myself to Lewis, but he makes this claim about, like, at the time when he wasn't a believer, he was like, I was living in a world of contradictions. I didn't believe that God existed, but I was very angry with God for not existing. And that's kind of how I felt throughout my teenage years. You know, it wasn't just pure atheism all the way through, but, you know, peaks and valleys. But a lot of like, oh, no, he's there. No, he's definitely not there. He's there, but he sucks, you know, and just a lot of that kind of anger and you mix it with teenage angst and puberty, all those things, and it's just even worse. And you know, at some point I remained active. Like, there's no way I was gonna be inactive. I would have lost privileges, you know, type thing. So you play the game but, you know, you go along with it. But in my back of my was like, I'm not saving for admission, I'm saving to move out, you know, or whatnot. [01:03:06] Speaker A: Chemo, as they say. Yeah. Mentally out. [01:03:09] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, that's kind of how I felt. And. But then, you know, I had some experiences, one of which was a girl at efy, which is the most I Realize is the most Mormon thing on the planet. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I'm glad I didn't write that in my journal anyway. But instead you published it. I know, Right now I'm 40. I've worked through. It's fine, but. But nonetheless, like. And it wasn't so much like a, oh, everything's true. It was more like, she's very happy and she seems to have, like, a testimony. I don't know if she still does, but, like, at the time, she seemed very strong in her testimony and committed. And I was like, there was something I wanted in that. You know, I thought she was cute too. But, like, it was. But it was like. But I was kind of envious of what she had. And I had just kind of this sense of like, I should be. Should I should go on a mission. I don't really know why, but I feel that's where I'm supposed to be. And it was all in the mtc, finally, that an instructor was teaching us the plan of salvation, kind of giving us a model of what that could look like. And he asked us, you know, have you ever lost anyone close to you? And I was like, well, yeah, I had a sister that died. And he keeps talking, and I'm just start zoning him out, and I just start thinking about all of that. And all of those feelings came out, and I just, like, broke down in the middle of the. Of this room, which I feel bad for, because he was just, like, panicking. [01:04:28] Speaker A: What did I do? [01:04:28] Speaker C: I broke him. [01:04:29] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [01:04:29] Speaker B: Like, what's happening anyway? I'm like, you know, slobbering all over myself. Anyway, finally I get a hold of myself, and he just kind of keeps going, and he just makes this simple testimony of, like, you know, I know that you'll see your sister again, which, nothing profound. I'd heard this a jillion times. Like, we all have. We all seen the thing written on the board, like, ooh, premortal. And like, you had that and all that. But it was just in that moment that I was like, oh, this is real. And I felt like I got like a. You know, I say a bird's eye view or a God's eye view of, like, our purpose here on earth. I was like, this is the plan of salvation. This is what it means. I couldn't have even articulated that to you, but it was an experience of just like, oh, this is real. This is what I'm going to teach, and this is why it matters. Like, I get to see my sister again. Like, Death isn't the end. Like, there's a purpose to my life. Family connections are like forever. Like all those things. I was just like, oh, this is what we're doing. Okay. And so that really was kind of the jumping off point. But then into my mission, I get introduced to people and I dedicate the book to Truman Matson, because I got introduced to his Joseph Smith the Prophet lectures, which many missionaries have. But for me, he made Joseph Smith become a very real person. He fleshed him out. He wasn't this mystical creature from 200 years ago that started a church. He was, was a real dude on the frontier of the United States who had these experiences. And because he was a real dude, his experiences became more real to me. And I was like, oh. Learning more about church history and learning more and thinking through these things is actually very faith promoting. It wasn't scary to me anymore. I always kind of compare a lot of faith crises to. It's kind of like watching a horror film. For me, the scariest horror films are the ones that don't show you the monster or the ghost or whatever because your imagination just runs wild. A lot of that when you're avoiding church history, avoiding these hard topics, you fill it in with the worst things possible. But anytime you see the monster on screen, it may be grotesque. [01:06:33] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:06:34] Speaker B: After about five minutes, you're like, I could take it, you know, or whatever. Like, you know, I'd get a bat, [01:06:40] Speaker D: you know, you'd go, you'd go full [01:06:42] Speaker B: blown, like Stranger Things with the bat on the thing, you know, that's that you're like, that would be me totally, you know, or whatever. You're not scared of it anymore. And that's kind of how I felt. But. And so that's, you know, I start going through my mission kind of drawing on that type of thing and having like, I want to study more and started studying more. But then I got home in the midst of the new atheism, like the God delusion just come out the year before. Like spoilers. This was like 20 years ago. But, but. And I was kind of like, oh, well, how would I argue for God because of these questions of like, our God isn't the same type of thing. Like, it doesn't apply the same way. But what are, what would be good arguments if I didn't want to just start with, well, you know, the gold plates or whatever. And so I started reading more and trying to think through that. Was there any connection between these classic arguments and LDS theology and so forth? And I just spent a lot of time in these, like, basic questions and kind of existential questions of like, well, what are the implications if there's no God? What if there is no meaning? Like, does that even make sense to me? And so it was just a long period of me working through some of these questions, and I realized that a lot of the times when people were leaving, they hadn't. And I was like, they hadn't tackled these questions. And I was like, well, you should. You should start at the beginning. And then I realized that it just didn't exist in LDS literature. And that's why finally I was like, well, well, fine, I guess I'll write it. [01:08:05] Speaker D: The end of it came. [01:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, so that was my kind of journey through it. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Well, I feel like I've had a much deeper understanding of my own epistemological foundation for my own faith. And if you or a loved one is questioning or struggling with their faith, I do feel like this is going to become a new standard in the genre of, like, faith crisis books. So you can. You can read. [01:08:24] Speaker C: I would. I would say, even if you're not struggling with your faith, read this book. [01:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, you can read Nourishing the Roots, Seeking the Foundations of Latter Day Saint Testimony. It's published by fair. We'll put a link in the description below. Remember, you can study deeply, believe boldly, and we'll see you next time.