Christian vs. Mormon: Was the Book of Mormon Demonically Inspired?

Hello and welcome to Capturing Christianity. Tonight I am hosting a debate uh with a Christian who or Catholic uh Ethan Muse and we've got an LDS apologist Luke Hansen. And tonight we are debating the exact proposition. I'm going to read it out for you guys. It is more likely that the Book of Mormon was inspired by demons than by God. This is probably the first time that you've seen a debate on this proposition or this topic, but I think it's going to make for a very interesting one. One thing to note about this proposition is that it doesn't entail or preclude other alternatives to the Book of Mormon. So you might prefer some natural theory, but this proposition is just saying that it's more likely that this hypothesis is more likely than this other hypothesis. So it doesn't rule out uh any other potential explanation that you want to offer. That's just a a sort of preliminary there. So as far as the format for tonight's debate, this is a formal debate. We've got 20-minute opening statements, 8minute rebuttals, 40 total minutes of cross- exam. We've got 10 minutes each, uh, two rounds, and then we've got five minute closings, and then after that, we'll do some Q&A with you guys. Um, more than likely, we'll we'll need to do uh, super chat questions only just because this is probably going to be a well attended event. So, we'll see what questions are coming in uh, throughout the debate and I'll make a decision at that point. Um, if you'd like to learn more about either of my guests, you can go to the description. I've got bios for both of these guys. You can go learn more about each of them. But with that, let's go ahead and jump into our opening statement. We're going to turn it over to Ethan for 20 minutes. And Ethan, whenever you begin, I will start the timer on the screen.

>> Cool. And you can hear me?

>> Yep.

>> Great. In an article published in Times and Seasons in 1842, Joseph Smith wrote, quote, "Nothing is a greater injury to the children of men than to be under the influence of a false spirit when they think they have the spirit of God. Thousands have felt the influence of its terrible power and baneful effects. The Turks, the Hindus, the Jews, the Christians, the Indians. In fact, all nations have been deceived, imposed upon, and injured through the mischievous effects of false spirits." End quote. If the devil has raised up thousands of false prophets that have successfully deceived all nations, then it is prudent to start out with an attitude of extreme skepticism towards anyone that claims to be a prophet. To escape the conclusion that Joseph Smith's revelations were more likely to be demonic than divine, there would need to be exceptionally good reasons to believe his putitive revelations are more credible than those of the thousands of false prophets that preceded him. Are there exceptionally good reasons to think Joseph's revelations are more credible than the thousands of counterfeit revelations that preceded them? Ironically, Joseph Smith himself denied that was possible. In the article I previously mentioned, he wrote, quote, "No man, nor set of men without the regular constituted authorities, the priesthood and discerning of spirits can tell true from false spirits. This power they possessed in the apostles day, but has departed from the world for ages." End quote. In other words, according to Joseph's own worldview, it is impossible for any objective signs to advance that Joseph's revelations were authentic without begging the question. One of the most common arguments made by LDS apologists is that the theological content of the Book of Mormon is too benign for it to have been inspired by a false spirit. However, Joseph Smith convincingly rebutted that line of reasoning. He taught that demons often inspire false revelations that are very close to the truth so that they can lend credence to their deceptions and so that they can bring the truth into disrepute. If my opponent spends a long time talking about all the good and true things in the Book of Mormon, remember that the foundational prophet of his religion, who is supposedly graced with extraordinary discernment of spirits, repudiated his line of reasoning as facious. In fact, Joseph's commentary on this matter is worth quoting at length. Quote, "Some will say, try the spirits by the word. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God." 1 John 4:2. One of the Irvingites once quoted this passage whilst under the influence of a spirit and then said,"I confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and yet these prophecies failed. Their Messiah did not come and the great things spoken of by them have fallen to the ground." What is the matter here? Did not the apostle speak the truth? Certainly he did. But he spoke to a people who were under the penalty of death the moment they embraced Christianity. And no one without a knowledge of the fact would confess it and expose themselves to death. And this was consequently given as a criterion to the church or churches to which John wrote. But the devil on a certain occasion cried out, "I know thee who thou art, Holy One of God." End quote. Nor can the espologist invoke signs and wonders to prove the authenticity of Joseph's revelations. Personally, I believe miracles can be used to authenticate revelations. However, that's only true when they are performed with vindicatory intent. Since Joseph Smith, as well as the prophets that succeeded him, denied that miracles were valid proofs of divinely appointed ministry, even if there was credible evidence of miracles connected with Joseph's ministry, that would prove nothing since Joseph explicitly clarified that miracles could not vindicate his claims. Finally, LDS apologists often cite our Lord's admonition to discern false prophets by looking to their fruits. They contend that Joseph Smith's revelations bore good fruit by appealing to anecdotes and statistics about contemporary Mormons. However, this argument rests on a failure to distinguish between the proximate and the remote effects of a prophetic ministry. It is essential to keep in mind that God draws good out of evil. In Genesis, it is written, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. The crucifixion of Christ was the worst injustice in history. Yet Christ that yet God used it to effectuate the salvation of all mankind. Nobody believes the perpetrators were righteous because their actions incidentally led to a good outcome down the line." When discerning whether Joseph Smith was a false prophet by investigating his moral and spiritual fruits, the relevant question is not whether the movement he founded eventually developed into a religious community with members that reap the rewards of their socially conservative values. If that standard were applied consistently, it would authenticate a bunch of contradictory revelations. The relevant question is whether Joseph's behavior throughout his life were the fruits of a good tree or a bad tree. That is a question I intend to explore in today's debate. The remainder of my opening statement will proceed in two stages. First, I will discuss the occult context to the Book of Mormon translation project. And second, I will discuss the rotten fruits of the LDS church under Joseph's leadership. Let's begin with the occult context of the discovery and translation of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was heavily involved in money digging, divination, sorcery, necromancy, and animal sacrifice between 1820 and 1827. Coincidentally, Joseph's histories claimed the first vision occurred in 1820. An angel showed Joseph the golden plates in 1823. He received instruction from that angel between 1824 and 1827, and he took custody of the plates in 1827. Joseph became involved in the occult around 1820 when he looked into his neighbor Sally Chase's sear stone. In 1822, after Joseph procured his own Searstone, he began to cultivate a reputation as a credible and sought-after diver. Joseph told listeners in South Banebridge, New York, that his Searstone was so powerful that it was effectively an all-seeing eye. William Stafford, one of Joseph's neighbors, recalled participating in a treasure dig that was directed by Joseph. Joseph claimed that he had peeped three kegs of silver near the Smith house, and that Stafford and Joseph's father were the only two men that could get the treasure. Joseph's father drew a circle around the spot that Joseph had directed them to and planted stakes in the ground to fend off evil spirits. Meanwhile, Joseph was in the house and claimed to be monitoring the evil spirit that was protecting the treasure. When Chase and Joseph's father asked Joseph why they failed to recover any treasure, Joseph claimed that he saw an evil spirit snatch it away. Historian Dan Vog Vogle writes, quote, "Another early dig that was reported by Stafford and supported by several other sources occurred on the farm of Clark Chase. In this instance, Joseph Senior and one of his sons approached Stafford and informed him that the seer had located some remarkable and very valuable treasure and requested the use of one of his black sheep for a blood sacrifice. According to Stafford, Joseph Jr. instructed them that a black sheep should be taken onto the ground where the treasures were concealed, that after cutting its throat, it should be led around a circle while bleeding. This being done, the wrath of the evil spirit would be appeased. The treasure could then be obtained. Having been promised a four-fold share in this venture, Stafford allowed the smith to take a large fat sheep. He later warned that the sheep was killed pursuant to commandment, but as there was some mistake in the process, it did not have the desired effect. In his 1833 statement, Stafford claimed that he let the Smith have the sheep to gratify my curiosity, but the more likely reason was that he believed in the scrier's gift." End quote. William Stafford's testimony is early, firsthand, independently corroborated, sworn testimony that satisfies the criterion of embarrassment. If Stafford were making up the story to defame Smith, why would he needlessly implicate himself in supplying a fat sheep for a blood sacrifice to a demon? Vogle points out that Stafford offered an implausible excuse for his involvement in the affair. If you're freely inventing a story that had no basis in reality, why not just say that Smith stole the sheep from him or that he witnessed Smith sacrifice a sheep that Smith had acquired in some other way? LDS apologists have tried to discredit Stafford's testimony by impeaching Dr. Fastis Herbut, the ex-Mormon that solicited the testimony. But that's a red herring. Thomas P. Baldwin, Judge of Wayne County Court, certified that William Stafford appeared before him and confirmed his testimony under penalty of perjury in 1833. Moreover, Stafford never challenged nor retracted the statement after it was published in 1834. In fact, Stafford told the sheep story on other occasions as well. Thus, William Stafford's testimony must be evaluated on its own merits rather than lumped in with the rest of the Herbit affidavit. Joseph went on a treasure quest on the night of September 21st, 1823. Martin Harris, a friend of Joseph's and a key Book of Mormon witness, told Palmyra minister John A. Clark that Joseph had acted as a seer for a treasure seeeking expedition that evening. The date was astrologically significant. The moon was full and it was the the autumn equinox. Folk magic practitioners believe that made it a promising night for treasure seeeking. Nonetheless, as usual, Joseph returned home empty-handed. Joseph would later claim that he had his first encounter with the angel Moroni later that night. However, it is manifestally evident that Joseph Joseph's later accounts of his first encounter with Moroni and his discovery of the golden plates are not historically credible in the slightest. Joseph's published accounts contradict each other, as well as the most credible testimony about how he characterized his discovery of the plates before he published the Book of Mormon. In 1831, writing in the Palmyra reflector, Abner Cole wrote, quote, "It is well known that Joe Smith never pretended to have any communion with angels until long after the pretended finding of his book." End quote. This was a statement published in a local newspaper, claiming that something was common knowledge in the area where the newspaper's readership lived. Meanwhile, Joseph suspiciously refrained from publishing his first written account until he had moved away to Kirtland, Ohio, where nobody could scrutinize it. Emma Smith's cousins, Joseph and Hale Lewis, later recalled that at the commencement of the translation of the Book of Mormon, quote, "There was not one word about visions of God or of angels or heavenly revelations. All his information was by that dream and that bleeding ghost. The heavenly visions and messages of angels, etc., contained in Mormon books were afterthoughts revised to order." End quote. In his 1833 affidavit, Willard Chase reported that in 1827, Joseph Senior had told him that Joseph had a vision of an ancient record engraved on gold plates hidden in a stone box. When Joseph first attempted to retrieve the plates, he was required to follow specific instructions, including dressing in black and riding a black horse. After finding the box, he was prevented from taking the plates by a treasure guardian who first appeared as a toad and then transformed into the spirit of a deceased prophet. The treasure guardian beat Joseph, like physically beat him because he failed to obey his instructions. The treasure guardian told Joseph to return one year later with his eldest brother, but Alvin Smith died before the appointed time, leading to further delays in obtaining the record. Multiple lines of evidence confirm that Chase's affidavit preserves an early account. First, a number of character witnesses attested that Willard Chase was known to be a man of truth and veracity. The same goes for William Stafford and other neighbors that gave damning testimony against Joseph. By contrast, dozens of witnesses attested that Joseph Smith and his family were known to be unscrupulous, dishonest, and that they had told contradictory stories about the discovery of the golden plates. testimonies from witnesses that impeach Joseph's character are far more numerous, credible, and detailed than the testimonies of the 11 Book of Mormon witnesses that are so often touted by LDS apologists. In fact, an early letter by a Mormon insider claims that many of the Book of Mormon witnesses were reluctant to even sign the statement prepared for them by Smith because the language was so misleading, but they caved due to Joseph's insistence. Second, the reference to Alvin was independently corroborated by by accounts given by Jonathan Lampam, Joseph Knight, Benjamin Saunders, and Lorenzo Saunders. It also explains why Joseph's father dug up Alvin's body in the presence of several neighbors and then put out an advertisement in a newspaper to quell rumors that his son had been removed from the place of his internment. The date of this exumation was exactly 3 days after Joseph and Alvin were supposed to have returned to meet the spirit. According to Chase, if members of the local community had heard that there was an appointment at that date, it makes perfect sense that rumors that the Smith family had tried to keep the appointment by digging up Alvin's body and bring it to the spirit had spread. It also makes perfect sense that the rumors were credible enough that the Smith family had to respond. Third, Chase says that when Joseph appeared without Alvin, he was instructed to return again with another man in a year. When Joseph asked who, the spirit said he would know him when he saw him. According to Chase, at first, Joseph thought that this man was Samuel Lawrence. However, in a later version of the story that Joseph's father told to Henry Harris between 1828 and 1830, Lawrence disappears from the story and is replaced with Emma Smith. According to this new version of the story, Joseph was told he quote could not get the plates until he was married, and that when he saw the woman that was to be his wife, he would know her and she would know him end quote. That's an undesigned coincidence that provides strong evidence about how the story evolved over time. Fourth, Chase mentions that the treasure guardian appeared as a toad and then transformed into a man. This detail, as well as others, is independently corroborated by Benjamin Saunders, who recalled hearing Joseph tell that version of the story to his mother and sister. This is striking because Jason Saunders accounts seem to be independent of each other in several other respects. Historian D. Michael Quinn pointed out that quote, "In the Anglo-American occult tradition, the toad has always been associated with Satanism, black magic, sorcery, and witchcraft." End quote. However, it's unlikely that Chase and Saunders embellished this detail to discredit Joseph because it is an awkward and indirect way to insinuate that the treasure guardian was evil. Moreover, why would Chase invent the detail that the guardian was the spirit of the prophet that wrote the record, giving it more of a religious context? Finally, why would Chase attribute the story to Joseph Senior rather than Joseph Jr. if he was just making it up? Joseph's later accounts of his discovery of the golden plates retain vestigages of the occult context of the original story. In fact, even the account in Joseph's 1838 official history is saturated with motifs of 19th century American money digging folklore. Specifically, his 1838 account involves ancient treasure of great value buried in a hill, a supernatural being revealing the location of that treasure to a privileged sear that it was reserved for, the being withholding the treasure because it found fault in the sear, and a series of failed follow-up attempts to recover the treasure. Is it really a coincidence that a money digger returned home from money digging and then had a paranormal experience with a narrative structure that precisely corresponds to that of innumerable money digging stories that were circulating in his local money digging community in 1825. Josiah Stole traveled more than a hundred miles to hire Joseph Smith to lead a treasure hunt. That confirms that Joseph must have been one of the most prominent figures in the money digging community of New York at that time. In 1826, Joseph was arrested on the charge of being a disorderly person. During a preliminary hearing, Joseph admitted that he had been actively engaged as a treasure seer during the past three years, but claimed that he decided to abandon the practice because it was straining his eyes. The witnesses that testified in Joseph's defense maintained that he really did possess magical abilities. For example, Josiah Stole testified that he was convinced that Joseph had magic powers because Joseph had used his sear stone to accurately describe visual features of farway locations in fine detail. Now that all that data is on the table, it's time to reflect on its implications for the resolution. First, Joseph Smith's involvement in the occult rendered him unfit for the prophetic mission that he claimed for himself. The Holy Bible in the Book of Mormon repeatedly and emphatically condemn divination, soothsaying, sorcery, necromancy, and obviously offering sacrifices to demons. Leviticus 20, Jeremiah 14, Micah 3, Mormon 1, and 3rd Nephi 21 associate these occult practices with evil spirits, false prophecy, and being disavowed by God. In Acts 16, Paul cast out a spirit of divination from a female slave. Before Paul cast out the spirit, the female slave was repeatedly proclaiming that Paul and Silas were servants of the most high God who are telling you the way to be saved. That proves evil spirits can disingenuously affirm the truth in furtherance of their efforts to discredit it. 1 Chronicles 10 clarifies that God killed Israel's first king, Saul, as punishment for consulting with the medium. It is inconceivable that God elected a prominent diver and necromancer to be a foundational prophet tasked with restoring the gospel. LDS apologists often respond by analogizing Joseph's occult practices to various practices in the Old Testament. However, Joseph didn't even claim divine authorization for the occult practices he engaged in. He engaged in them to pursue wealth. They involved direct contact with evil spirits that Joseph himself understood to be evil, and he even went as far as offering blood sacrifices to appease evil spirits, which is among the gravest sins that anyone can commit. Moreover, Mormons face a trauma. When Joseph claimed paranormal experiences and abilities in connection with his occult practices, either he was telling the truth, consciously perpetrating a fraud, or he was completely psychotic. No matter which option you go with, you can't escape the conclusion that his behavior was directly opposed to the credibility of the mission that he claimed for himself. Another common rejoinder is that prophets don't have to be morally perfect. That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. Moral qualifications are relevant to whether a man is eligible for a prophetic mission. This is explicitly affirmed in scripture in Matthew 7 and 1 Timothy 3. We are talking about a person habitually engaging in grave sins immediately before and immediately after receiving their call to be a foundational prophet and institutional leader. Not to mention that the very sins that he was guilty of are precisely the sins that are explicitly, specifically, and repeatedly connected with false prophets, demons, and disqualification from divinely appointed offices throughout sacred scripture. If Joseph was elected to be a prophet, then at the very least, we would expect him to be fully transparent about his past transgressions and publicly repent of them. Instead, his later accounts downplayed and whitewashed his involvement in occult practices throughout this period in a way that was outright deceptive. Second, the golden plates were supposedly the source text of the Book of Mormon. Historical evidence indicates that Joseph Smith's later accounts of the discovery of the plates were sanitized and embellished in furtherance of his religious ambitions. As we have seen, the original version of the story did not make reference to a prophetic calling nor to an angel. So, the religious content of the later accounts as anacronistic. The original version involved an encounter with the treasure guardian that claimed to be the spirit of a deceased prophet. There are overt indications within the original version that this treasure guardian was actually an evil spirit rather than an angel of God. Third, Joseph scribes and other witnesses confirm that Joseph did not rely on the golden plates at all when he was translating. Rather, he stuck his head into a hat and then peeped into the exact same sear stones that he had been using during his magic career. Apparently, God decided to have Joseph translate the Book of Mormon using exactly the same methods and materials that he had previously used to hunt for treasure and communicate with evil spirits. It is ludicrously silly to maintain that this mode of revelation was consistent with God's supreme wisdom given the circumstances. Of all the ways God could have gone about having the book translated, what are the odds that he would choose the maximally suspicious option? It's as if God went out of his way to make this seem like a demonic deception. Next, let's briefly consider the rotten fruits of the LDS church under Joseph's leadership. When our Lord came to establish the kingdom of God on earth, he cast out thousands of demons and inspired thousands of his followers, especially the men he appointed to be leaders to repent of their sins, amend their lives, and perform acts of heroic virtue. When the Pharisees accused our Lord of performing his exorcisms by the power of Satan, he replied, quote, "If Satan cast out Satan, he's divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?" End quote. When our Lord uttered these words, he was not making the specious argument that it's impossible for demons to fake an exorcism. Rather, he was invoking the broader context of his public ministry, which made it manifestally evident that he was putting the kingdom of darkness into retreat. By contrast, during Joseph's ministry, wherever the LDS church went, it seems that the kingdom of darkness advanced rather than retreated. Joseph characterized the earliest period of LDS church history as follows. Quote, "Soon after the gospel was established in Kirtland and during the absence of the authorities of the church, many false spirits were introduced. Many strange visions were seen and wild enthusiastic notions were entertained. Men run out of doors under the influence of the spirit, and some of them got upon the stumps of trees and shouted, and all kinds of extravagances were entered into by them calculated to bring disgrace upon the church of God." End quote. According to Joseph, the situation improved when the authorities of the church arrived in Kirtland. However, the historical record does not bear that out like many of his other assertions. In fact, during a general conference in Kirtland, when Joseph was instituting the authorities that were supposed to restrain these manifestations of evil spirits, there were actually especially conspicuous manifestations of diabolical power. Dan Vocal writes, quote, Smith then put his hands on Harvey Whitlock, a recent convert who lived near the Johnson family in Hyum and ordained him to the high priesthood instantly. According to Hancock and Booth, Whitlock experienced uncontrollable body contortions and was unable to speak, which was interpreted as a sign of demonic possession. Smith's brother Hyram, the Presbyterian minister, said, "Joseph, that is not of God." Joseph said, "Do not speak against this." Hyram responded, "I will not believe unless you inquire of God, and he owns it." Joseph bowed his head a short time and then walked over to Whitlock, laid his hands on his head, and commanded Satan to leave. The evil spirit left him, Hancock said, and as quick as lightning, Harvey Green fell bound and screamed like a panther. When Satan was cast out of him, he immediately entered another. This continued all day and for the greater part of the night. End quote. For context, Levi Hancock, who we're driving this story from, remained a loyal follower of Joseph. That wasn't the only time that authorities of the church were demonically possessed. Sydney Rigdon was the second highest ranking member of the church throughout the majority of Joseph's prophetic ministry. On July 5th, 1832, Rigdon preached that he had received a revelation from the Lord that the kingdom had been taken from the church and left with him. He came into a meeting and told a congregation that it was useless for them to pray or do anything since God had rejected them. This caused the men in the congregation to turn pale and the women to break down in tears. On July 8th, Joseph returned to Kirtland and put a stop to this. He denounced Rigdon's false doctrine. Joseph's mother recalled, quote, had the most astonishing encounters with the devil on the following night that a man ever had. End quote. Soon thereafter, Joseph reinstated Rigdon, comparing him to St. Peter after denying Christ. Nonetheless, Rigdon continued to be mentally unstable in subsequent years. Rigdon's false prophecy is a representative example of a recurring phenomenon of high-ranking members of the LDS church coming under the influence of demons. Key Book of Mormon witness and high-ranking member of the church Martin Harris became notorious for bizarre visions, erratic behavior, and false prophecies. At one point, Book of Mormon witness Hyram Page claimed to have received revelations using a Sears stone. Doctrine of Covenants 28, which my opponent regards as canonical, relates that PA's revelations were accepted by key Book of Mormon witness Oliver Cowry, the second highest ranking member of the church at that time, and the entire Whitmer family where like half the testimonies are taken from. However, Joseph condemned PA's revelations as demonic counterfeits and declared he was the only man authorized to receive revelations on behalf of the church because quote he receiveth them even as Moses end quote. The Hyram Page incident is especially noteworthy because Doctrine and Covenants 28 contradicts the earlier revelation Doctrine and Covenants 8 which promised robust revelatory gifts to Oliver Cowry. Moreover, if Cry was so easily deceived, it makes no sense to put any confidence in the spiritual discernment of lesser authorities. Crucially, Joseph Smith himself admitted to promulgating false revelations. For example, in 1830, Joseph reported to receive a revelation directing Cry, Page, Knight, and Stole to travel to Canada to sell the foreign rights to the Book of Mormon. That revelation has been discovered in manuscript form. Hyram Page reported that when the group arrived, they discovered that they had been sent to the wrong city and that they needed to go to Toronto instead. However, historians have determined they wouldn't have even been able to sell the copyright in Toronto either. David Whitmer reported that when Joseph was questioned about the mistaken premise of the revelation, he claimed another revelation through his stone. Quote, "Some revelations are of God, some revelations are of man, and some revelations are of the devil." When discussing how to recognize false prophets, Deuteronomy 18 says, quote, "A prophet who presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not commanded is to be put to death."

>> All right, that's time. So, Luke, we are turning now to your opening statement. And whenever you begin speaking, I will start the timer.

Sounds good. Well, thank you everybody for coming to the debate. Cameron for hosting, Ethan for participating, and then of course everybody in the audience, for being here and listening with your minds and with your hearts, and and I apologize beforehand. I'm getting off of a cough right now, so hopefully that won't be too distracting for us. You know, it's it's interesting because I find myself in the position of being the majority and representing the majority among informed people outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of course, Ethan's lost about twothirds of the audience by asserting a demonic influence, a supernatural influence. And anything that looks supernatural, automatically super Google, who Ethan has used for his sources, who he's cited repeatedly, uh, disagrees with Ethan. He says that the magic worldview was simply part of Joseph Smith's environment. Dan Vogle says Joseph Smith didn't even know that he had it. didn't even know that he had it. And then after the trial that Ethan mentions is when he becomes aware that this is something not approved by other people. Joseph is not going out seeking demons cuz that doesn't even register to him. His practices don't even register to him as anything other than Christian. Now, of course, the the theory would be, oh well, Joseph Smith simply uh mistakenly was influenced by demons. So now Ethan is asserting the Book of Mormon was accidentally demonically inspired, which of course lowers that burden of proof for him a little bit, which I'm sure he's happy about, which is also why he went and tried to twist Joseph Smith's words and pit Joseph Smith against Joseph Smith instead of actually holding him up to some objective standard that Ethan holds or that the Bible holds, which is what I'm going to do in the debate tonight. Uh, also speaking about his comment about the majority of people disagreeing with Joseph Smith, the majority of the testimonies being bad press. Of course, he just ignores the entire church. Anybody in the church automatically discredited, can't be trusted for the most part, unless it sounds demonic, then that's 100% true and was demons. But of course, of course, the majority is going to be uh negative towards Joseph Smith, Dr. Phil's hurl. as Ethan said, went out and specifically solicitated the bad press for Joseph Smith. In fact, we have records of people saying, "Yeah, he came to me and got testimony for me, but then he ended up not using it because it wasn't good enough." So, for Ethan to to use this, "Oh, the majority were negative." Duh. The majority were negative. Philosis was paid. He was paid to go out and get these negative testimonies, which disagree with each other, by the the Staffords that one of the people that he really emphasized really hard and that sheep story there's a little bit of of disagreement on the sheep story by the way there's somebody said the sheep was stolen then the son said h actually I don't recall the sheep ever being stolen but then it was actually given to him so that's the story that Ethan's gone with so he can get that criterion of embarrassment in there and make the story look 100% plausible uh the Staffords something else that they said was that the Smiths were lazy this was the the common theme through all the philoses hurlbutt affidavit. The the Smiths, they're lazy, they're indolent, they don't do anything. They gamble, they drink, all they try to do is get um treasure money so that they don't have to work again in their lives. Well, it turns out that the Smiths in a few short years went from a farm that was basically nothing to a farm valued higher than 9/10 of the people who testified against them, who unanimously said the Smiths were lazy. Their farm was valued 50% higher on land size. I mean sorry over 50% so top half on land size and value per acre of land putting them somewhere up in the top 80%. The Stafford specifically Joseph the Joseph Smith family farm was valued higher than all of them all of the family members that testified but of course we need to believe their testimony because it cooporates. So that's what Ethan's doing with the the data. And Ethan needs to do this because the standard he has on pints with Aquinus. He said God's going to make sure that people can tell a false prophet is a bad apple. That is Ethan's standard if he doesn't backtrack, which it seems like he kind of has. Ethan has to assert that history can only be read one way. But he strains the data and consequently he arrives at conclusions outside of even the non-Lelds consensus. For example, the Protestant Dr. Kyle Basher says, "At one point in my life, I would have said, how could Joseph Smith not be a fraud? But now he says, quote, I think Joseph was sincere in his desire for salvation, and his desire only grows over time." The independent trained historian Don Bradley went from thinking Joseph Smith was about quote money, sex, and power, that's Ethan's gig here, to thinking he was sincere through a 2yearong research project on Joseph Smith's polygamy of all things, and 5 years researching everything else about Joseph Smith's life, uh, much more than Ethan has done. Non-LDS biographer Robert Remny observed Joseph was quote a man absolutely convinced that his religious authority came directly from God. Joseph's most recent biographer, mainline Christian Dr. John Turner says, "I really resist words like Charlotte Turner fraud. I don't think they're adequate at all to understanding Joseph Smith." And elsewhere he writes, "Joseph is an enigma." But, you know, Ethan a couple days ago on Twitter says, "Joseph's obviously a con man, so guess he knows better than Joseph Smith's most recent nonLDDS biographer." So, not much agreement with my opponent among the nonLDDS historian crowd. Why? Well, my guess is that they didn't approach the data with a need to make it fit a predetermined conclusion. They examined the full man and approached the data humbly and charitably, which is why many of the stories Ethan gave don't make it into these biographies. And it's not only the biographer crowd that came comes to this conclusion. I originally proposed the debate with the famous Catholic Joe Heshmire on what primarily motivated Joseph Smith, money, sex, power, faith. But he was hesitant, he explained, because Joseph Smith is complicated. I can't quite figure him out. What's going on? Jesus in the Gospel says false prophets inwardly are ravening wolves. Not sincere, but misguided wolves. Ethan says God is supposed to make it clear to people that Joseph Smith is a bad apple. It's a key way to know the Book of Mormon is demonic. But atheists, Protestant the Protestants, theologians, and Catholic apologists who are the most knowledgeable on the topic disagree with Ethan. I thought God was supposed to make it clear. Now, was Joseph a perfect man? No. And I get a little tired of having to add that caveat when the Bible hasn't been like David who was was a polygamist. Oh. Oh, and he killed his wife. I mean, his friend to try and sleep with his friend's wife. But let's attack Joseph and then go watch a kids movie where David is the protagonist. And why exactly do popes get to play by different rules? Alexander V 6 sired multiple illegitimate children while pope. But according to Ethan, we can know Pope Alexander V 6th was the vicer of Christ despite his actions. While on the other hand, we can know Joseph Smith wrote a demon book because of his actions. because reasons. I guess we're supposed to compare Joseph Smith to Jesus Christ only. Can't compare him to anyone else in the Bible or in the Catholic Church. I guess we'll talk more about Joseph's life later. I'm sure that will happen. But at this point, you may have forgotten we are in a debate over whether the Book of Mormon is demonically inspired. So, to bring us back on topic, I have one simple question that we can ask over and over to test the Book of Mormon. What do demons do? or what would demons do? The Bible and common sense give us a few answers. Demons are opposed to God. Everything he wants, they don't want. God wants you to pray. Demons want you not to pray. God wants you to love each other. Demons want you to hate each other. God wants you to care for the poor. Demons want you to be selfish. God wants you to believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, to be saved. Demons hate even interacting with him. In fact, Mark 16:17 explains that devils are cast cast out in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, what would demons do if they were to write a book? What book would demons write? Would demons write a book obsessed with Jesus Christ? Because the Book of Mormon is obsessed with Jesus. The Book of Mormon references Christ 3,925 times, an average of once every 1.7 verses. It uses over 101 different names and titles of Christ, including redeemer of Israel, Messiah, and Lamb of God. Oh, and Jesus is called God over 700 times in the Book of Mormon. The first Book of Mormon prophet Nephi writes, "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." A few hundred years later, a king named Mosiah teaches, "If you are willing to enter into a covenant with our God, to do his will and be obedient to his commandments in all things that he shall command us, ye shall be called the children of Christ. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh." A few generations later, a prophet named Alma teaches, "And he, Christ, shall go forth suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind, and he will take upon him death that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people." And of course, the crowning event of the Book of Mormon is the personal ministry of Jesus Christ to a group of believers in the Americas, where he declares his atonement and divinity, heals their sick, blesses their children, teaches them to do communion and baptisms, and repeats moral teachings he gave while in mortality. Now, many of you will think that a group of Christians living in America and visited by Jesus after his resurrection is ridiculous, which is totally fine. The question we are discussing today is whether it was inspired by demons, not whether it's ridiculous. Would demons write a story about how God loves everyone so much that he spread Christianity across the world is obsessed with Jesus.

>> Can you uh can you back up just a little bit? You froze. I I paused the time.

>> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is everything good now?

>> Yes, it's good now.

>> Okay. Would demons want to write a story about how God loves everyone so much so that he spread Christianity across the world? That's ridiculous in my opinion. But I digress. The Book of Mormon is obsessed with Jesus. So much so that nonLDDS readers take issue with it. The Catholic theologian Steven H. Web believes the Book of Mormon is quote

>> Looks like he is frozen again. We will see if he comes back. But okay, you Yeah, you were you were frozen again. I've I've paused the time. You were about to give the quote.

Quote, "The Book of Mormon is dull precisely because it is all about Jesus. Nobody stands out but him." Would demons inspire this kind of book? A book so focused on Jesus that a Catholic theologian says, "Hey, Joseph, you might want to pump the brakes here on all this Jesus stuff. I thought demons were supposed to hate any association with Jesus." Well, what about prayer? Would demons write a book that teaches people to pray? The Book of Mormon says, "For if you would hearken unto the Spirit, which teacheth a man to pray, ye would know that ye must pray. For the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray. But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always unto the Father in the name of Christ." Do demons want you to know that demons don't want you to pray always and in the name of Jesus? To me, that question sounds like asking, "Does Satan fight against Satan?" Would demons write about giving to the poor? The Book of Mormon says, "If God, who hath created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives, and for all that ye have and are, does grant unto you whatever you ask that is right, oh then, how you ought to impart your substance one to another." And it says, "When you're in the service of your fellow beings, you are only in the service of your God." I personally think Pope Leo would be much more likely to write something like that than a demon would. So, the Book of Mormon loves Jesus. So, it it's obviously not something a demon would inspire, right? Or is it? There is an out that can make this narrative work. In the scriptures, Satan sometimes hides lies under truth. In the temptation of Jesus, Satan uses scripture against our Lord. And as mentioned already, Jesus taught false prophets often come in disguise. At first they look like sheep when in reality they are sheep killers. I handle this objection by returning to the same question I posed before. What would demons do? This is all you need to ask. What would make it worth it for a demon to write and then spread throughout the whole earth? A book hellbent on turning people to Christ and his teachings. Demons are smart. If they're going to invest that much into starting a new religion, which is what the Book of Mormon did, they need a large return on that investment. And it should be obvious what they're after and proportional to the amount of effort they put in. And that's not just my standard. That's Ethan's on Pines. He said, "You don't need to use this logic that the demons are playing 13D chess because they're super smart." The demon's goal needs to be clear. This is me again. worth the effort and worth the massive trade-off in creating something as Christian as the Book of Mormon and then spreading it throughout the worlds. Affidavit about occult practices and the writing of the Book of Mormon don't explain the demon's goals. Nor does Joseph Smith's polygamy explain why demons would need to write a book like the Book of Mormon. If the goal was polygamy, you could teach that from the Bible. In fact, the Book of Mormon is even clearer than the Bible. That polygamy is the exception and not the rule. And the non-LDDS biographer John Turner points out that there were many easier methods than polygamy for obtaining elicit sex. So what was the demon's plan? Ethan hasn't explained this at all to us, and he's the one that wanted this debate topic. So hopefully he can do that for us later. If no narrative fits, you must acquit the Book of Mormon of the charge of demonic inspiration. We can double check our work by using another test our Lord gives to us. Jesus taught, "Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit." If the Book of Mormon is demonic, it would still be exerting its demonic influence today. Luckily for us, we can see a noticeable difference between those who study the Book of Mormon and try to live by its teachings and those who do not. But those fruits are good. Pew research has found that US Latter-day Saints are attend worship services more frequently than nearly any other major Christian tradition and have the largest families of any major US religious group. A 2021 analysis of national survey data found that 9% of self identified Latter-day Saints report being divorced compared with 15% of Catholics and 17% of evangelicals. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently described Latter-day Saints as quote model citizens because of their exceptional levels of service, generosity, and civic engagement. You can't separate the Book of Mormon from these fruits, and any attempt to do so is laughable to Latter-day Saints. We are encouraged to study the Book of Mormon more than any other scripture. Our missionaries study it daily and are instructed to use it as the primary tool for conversion. It is referenced an average of 100 times each general conference. Plenty of other churches teach conservative values like Ethan was trying to attribute the Book of Mormon to how come we're outperforming them so well. Ask almost any member of the church and they will tell you how studying the Book of Mormon has brought them closer to Christ and made them a better person. I am one of them. We are a Book of Mormon people. The Catholic theologian Steven Hb again made this connection. Today, not back then. Mormonism is obsessed with Christ, he says. And everything it teaches is meant to awaken, encourage, and expand faith in him. I came to this conclusion when I read through the Book of Mormon for the first time. The Book of the Book of Mormon is good. We can't get around that. So, the Book of Mormon can't must be good. And what don't demons do? They don't make good things. So remember, by the standard of scripture and the standards he has set for himself, Ethan has failed to make his case. We can go down whatever rabbit hole Ethan wants, but none of them will change the simple fact that the Book of Mormon is a deeply moral.

and Christian book that positively impacts the lives of millions who follow its teachings today. When we ask the question, "Would a demon write that?" The answer is easy. No. And with that, I yield my time.

All right, we are moving now to rebuttals. I'm just going to edit my timer. We've got 8 minutes for rebuttals. Ethan, whenever you are ready, I will start your time. And you are still muted.

>> Sorry, just figuring out the timer on my phone. Um,

>> Okay.

>> It is shown on the screen for me.

>> Oh, yeah, if you can see the screen.

>> I have my own.

>> I had my own timer, but then I was like, "Oh, hey, the green one's nice. Cool. Okay. Ready?

>> Yep.

>> Oh, wait. Oh, cool. Okay. So, first, my opponent spent an oddly large amount of time in his opening talking about the opinion of non-LDS atheist materialists about whether it was inspired by demons, as if that had any relevance to the resolution because they're not expressing an opinion about whether it's more likely demons than God. They don't believe in God. They don't believe in demons. I I'd bet money that if we asked Dan Vogel, he'd think demons are more likely than God, given all the things he thinks about Joseph Smith. And John Turner, you know what did he say? He said, "I wouldn't trust Joseph Smith with my wife, my daughter, or my money." That's the conclusion of his biography, his famous quip. So, I get that he's trying to weaponize all these scholars. The guys I tried to weaponize were the foundational prophet of his entire religion, who supposedly has superpowers that let him tell whether people are possessed by demons. Who says that the vast majority, when people claim to be a prophet, the vast majority of the time they are possessed by demons, that Satan is a super skillful imitator, that every single nation and religion in the world has been duped by evil spirits because they're so clever and crafty at deceiving everybody. Does it sound like what my opponent said during his opening was at all consistent with what his prophet teaches? But if we buy into the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon and we buy into all these prophetic claims that Joseph Smith made on behalf of himself, clearly his opinion is more credible than Luke's regarding this matter. So either it's not of God, or we play by my rules, the ones that Joseph Smith laid out in the beginning of my speech and which positively excluded the primary argument that he made throughout the debate, which is he says, "Oh, look at how good and true all this stuff in the Book of Mormon sounds." It's exactly what I anticipated and it's exactly what Joseph Smith spent three paragraphs refuting and telling his followers was a silly, fallacious argument that he says that demons like to say things that are very close to the truth precisely so that they can one, establish credibility for their mission and then they later go off the rails and say things like the King Follett discourse, which, what's the motive within my worldview? Well, how about all your baptisms are invalid? That's not very good. And so you guys went completely off the rails. But the Book of Mormon is the way you establish a foothold and gain credibility. What else? Well, all this Mormon stuff, like for instance, Joseph Smith laying hands on a guy, his high priest, and then that guy literally instantly becoming demon-possessed in front of witnesses. It's the most insane, disqualifying thing I could even possibly imagine. It makes Christianity look ridiculous. And so, the fact that he's associated himself so closely with Christianity is precisely how he's going to discredit it, which is exactly the same way Joseph Smith names specific people that have false prophecy that have false spirits that nonetheless purported to be Christian and said all the things that he said, like wanting to pray and all this stuff. The only people who said prayer was bad was Sydney Rigdon, the second in command of the whole church, who got demon-possessed and then told everybody that it was bad. That's an actual undisputed historical fact in this debate. So then we keep going further. Okay, he he starts talking about the Herber affidavit and raising questions about the Stafford testimony that I cited. Well, first, he's just mistaken about the discrepancies between the accounts of the sheep story. He's just misrec. And second, I presented a whole bunch of reasons why Stafford's testimony is very credible. The the Stafford testimony where he's describing the blood sacrifice to a demon, which Vogel himself believes did in fact occur. And it's going to be really hard to argue that appeasing evil spirits to get buried treasure is a Christian practice. Yeah, I don't believe that. I don't even believe Joseph Smith was that dumb that he thought that was a Christian practice to sacrifice to slit the throat of a sheep and walk it around in a circle in order to appease basically an evil spirit so he could get access to buried treasure. Well, he is the most prominent guy in the world for doing divination, which is condemned and associated with false prophecy and evil spirits in a million places throughout the Bible. And Stafford's testimony, as noted by Vogel, is independently corroborated by other sources. Stafford supported by a bunch of character testimony. There's no way he could be wrong. Stafford could have said that the sheep were stolen. That's what he could have said. He didn't say that. Instead, he offered this implausible excuse where he even indulges the detail that he had a financial interest in the success of the demon sacrifice. He had a four-fold interest in the success of the demon sacrifice. And he felt ripped off because of how expensive his sheep was. And his sheep gets taken away. Then he says, "Okay, well, of course that's the majority, but what about all these later people that joined Joseph's cult later in his life and had no idea about his upbringing?" Yeah, what I'm talking about is everybody who actually knew the Smith family and was around to actually hear what they were saying at the times when these revelations supposedly took place. There was no religious content to them at the time, and all of them knew that these guys were goobers who were super disingenuous and unscrupulous and who were constantly involved in high jinks and telling tall tales. I literally have 54 witnesses that are calling these guys liars, saying that they're glad to be divorced of their company. I've got character witnesses for tons of these guys. And so, and what what was the credibility indicators that were positive for Joseph? He lied about his involvement in the occult in the past. And he recruited his mother to do that, too. His mother literally included like a frank admission of some of the sorcery and necromancy they were in, and it was removed. It was in a draft of one of her autobiography, her autobiography, and it was removed, right? Because obviously they knew it wasn't going to play well with this new audience where they were sort of the whole thing here was they were reinventing themselves constantly to gain appeal, and that's what they had to do because if everyone knew the real Joseph Smith, obviously everybody would realize that he's like one of the most obvious false prophets in history, where the initial claim that he made based on the like I gave you like a laundry list of independent corroborations for this super credible Willard Chase testimony and for to say that it's an invention, it's just not going to cut it. So then he brings up, okay, what does he bring up? He brings up the moral fruits argument. Already talked about it. The the moral fruits test that our Lord gives us where he ties it to the moral qualifications of the man. Clearly, what happens like eight generations down the line through a butterfly effect has very little to do with the moral character of Joseph Smith. The thing that has way more to do with the moral character of Joseph Smith is everybody who met the guy, all his early followers, all the leaders in his church were all getting demon-possessed. As I substantiated in detail, all there's huge outbreaks of all these false spirits that he's saying are rising up to oppose his church and they're getting all sorts of false revelations that are fooling every member of his early church. The fact that he brings up King David's polygamy randomly, okay, you want to talk about polygamy, let's talk about polygamy. The first thing that's a problem here is that he doesn't tell you that in the Book of Mormon in Jacob 2, it says that King David practicing polygamy was an abomination. It says that that was an abomination unto the Lord that King David practiced polygamy. Then when Joseph Smith tried to authorize it, what did he say? He said King David didn't sin in anything that he did with the poor wives except when he didn't have a wife and he cheated on with Uriah's wife. That was that was literally the thing that King David did that was supposed to be problematic according to the DC 132 revelation. So he literally gave two flatly contradictory revelations to authorize him to engage in spiritual wifery where he was literally committing sex crimes that were felony capital offenses in secret where the only pretense for why he's allowed to do this is apparently an angel with a drawn sword is appearing to Joseph Smith and threatening to kill him unless he goes and sleeps with a bunch of women and produces no children. Even though the only exception that's provided for in Jacob 2 as to why you could ever authorize polygamy is to raise up seed, which Joseph Smith never does. And he does it behind his wife's back. He lies to her. The Partridge Sisters testimony tells us that he got consent from Emma to do marriage. He had already married the Partridge Sisters, but he didn't want to tell her. And then Emma Smith said, "Oh, how about you marry the Partridge Sisters?" And so then the Partridge Sisters, they do a wedding ceremony in front of Emma after this happened, a sham wedding ceremony to perpetuate his cover-up. He had a 14-year-old girlfriend for a wife named Helen, Mark Kimball, and she said that she felt like she was possessed by Satan, and that that was what led her to believe that it was God warning her about what the consequences would be. She There's another woman, Lucy Walker, another one of his like 17-year-old, I think, wives, who's literally being told what she, oh, go pray for light and you'll get light and you'll realize that this was all good. And then what happened? Oh, she actually felt this overwhelming sensation of darkness when she tried to pray for the light that Joseph Smith told her she would receive.

>> All right, that is time. And Luke, for your uh rebuttal, we'll also give you a couple seconds after if you need it. Uh, sorry, you are muted. There we go. When I put it in a new window, the mute button goes away. Okay. So, good to start. Good to go. All right. So, uh, just to remind everyone, Ethan was supposed to come here topic he proposed to explain to us how the Book of Mormon was inspired by demons. How the Book of Mormon is demonic. Here's another passage just to refresh our minds about what's in this book. It's from when Jesus visits the Book of Mormon people in the Americas. He says, "Behold, I am Jesus Christ whom the prophets testified shall come into the world. And behold, I am the light and life of the world. I have drunk out of that bitter, bitter cup which the Father hath given me. I have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning. Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prince of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world. And it came to pass that the multitude went forth and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prince of the nails in his hands and his feet. And this they did do, going forth one by one, until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes, and did feel with their hands, and did know of assurity, and bear record, that it was he of whom the was written by the prophets that should come. And when they had gone forth and witnessed for themselves, they did cry out with one accord, saying, 'Hosanna, blessed be the name of the most high God.' And they did fall down at the feet of Jesus and worship him."

Uh, one scholar, Maxine Hanks, observed after she'd been excommunicated from the LDS church that the Book of Mormon sparks spiritual experiences in those who read it. Spiritual experiences, she believes, only come out of a book if spiritual experience went into the book from its author or authors, suggesting that the Book of Mormon's spiritual power arises from the genuine spirituality with which it was created. Demons don't tap into this kind of stuff. And and I get that you can you can just dismiss it and and say that it's not true. The problem is this is why this argument is just going to fall flat with Latter-day Saints that you try to present it to because unlike Ethan, we've actually interacted with the Book of Mormon on on a serious level, not on a PMIC level. And so to be tried to be told that, oh, it's a butterfly effect. It's it's an eighth-order effect. It it's not related to your life at all. There's something else, something else that all these churches haven't tapped into. Despite the fact that they preach almost the same values, despite the fact that the Catholic Church says you cannot get divorced, and yet the divorce rate is over two times higher there, whereas Latter-day Saints have a more open view on that and our divorce rates lower. So the the conservative social teachings of the church just demonstrably are at best, I mean at best a worse reason for the better outcomes in the Latter-day Saint church than the Book of Mormon. Ethan's Ethan's basically just been asserting that. He hasn't really given us any reason to suspect the Book of Mormon is not responsible for this other than to say, "Oh, it was it was it was this many hundred years later." Less than 200, by the way. Not multiple hundred like he said. Oh, it's later. So So I can just dismiss it. He's not confronting what I explained with the book of the missionaries have a chapter on the Book of Mormon. They are instructed to primarily use the Book of Mormon for conversion. Every convert coming into the church. So when they move from that category of these not as great moral fruits to better moral fruits, what's facilitating that change? One of the primary things is the Book of Mormon. And plenty of other groups have these conservative social teachings, and they're not getting the numbers that the LDS church has. And again, the Latter-day Saint church would say that those other groups that are getting numbers close to ours in terms of the fruits that we can see demonstrably in the data, we would say, well, then of course they're not demonically inspired. We'd be happy to admit that. And so Ethan trying to hold on to this desperately is is kind of funny. And and and the fact that he has to go to Joseph Smith's standard. I found one article that Joseph Smith published in the Times and Seasons in the 1840s. And because that one article says this about other religions, now I have the key that disproves the whole thing. People in people from Ethan's side listening to this who haven't read that article for the first time might be surprised that they didn't have a good argument about the Book of Mormon before today. So I guess you learn something new every day. He also tries to dismiss these people that I quote that are seeing what the historical record says about Joseph Smith, like John Turner, Dan Vogel, all those other people. He dismisses him with like this material atheist type of thing. No, that was just Dan Vogel. The other people I I cited, Dr. Remny, John Turner, etc., they're Christians. They're Christians. Dr. Kyle Basher, they're Christians. I guess Ethan doesn't know this because he has a limited Sorry, I I'll be a little nicer, but I think he has a more limited uh reading of the scholarship. He seems to primarily be a Dan Vogel kind of guy rather than actually reading the Book of Mormon, being familiar with what other people have said and and written about Book of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Let's see what else here. Ah, yes, we have we have a John Turner. It remains unclear whether Smith had sex with women who were already married to other men or with very young wives. But Ethan just wants to throw those facts out there to make it look really bad when the scholars who have looked at this said that there's a lot of ambiguity. I'm not saying the marriages didn't happen. Let's be very clear about that. But he said there's a lot of ambiguity about what exactly happened. So Ethan's just trying to make it look bad and and just say, "Oh, they he married these people and then you're supposed to fill in the gaps of what happened there, even though the historical record does not fill in those gaps for us." Uh also this occult stuff, it it it started off a cult. So, even though I can't really explain what the reason was for producing the Book of Mormon other than to assume my position about valid baptisms is correct, which Ethan hasn't provided us any reasons to believe his baptisms are correct, and I'm not granting the Catholic position in this debate. So, that fails from Ethan. I know he's surprised about that, but just simply asserting that my theology is right, that's why the Book of Mormon is wrong. That doesn't work. And and this idea and and once again Dan Vogel Ethan says, "Oh, I'm trying to use Dan Vogel against him." Well, yes, because he's trying to say all these stories proved demonic. And Dan Vogel, his primary source, is saying, "Oh, no. I'm just saying they were oblivious to it." He says it's invisible to them, this magic worldview. So, how could Joseph Smith be invoking demons when that concept is completely unknown to him? I don't know. Also as Dr. Jonathan Stokl Stokl sorry points out, divination was a fact of life in Levantine royal courts. A king relied on this conduit of divine inspiration, inside information, as being of divine importance to make decisions. Despite the implicit protestations of the priestly and deuteronomic authors, Israelite and Judaite kings were no different in this regard than their ancient Near Eastern counterparts. Divination is a thing both in the New Testament and later. And so to merely point at parallels between the two and then assert a conclusion from that, you can use that same rubric and impeach Old Testament um uses of the EOD. Example, another example right before we close here, Orson Hyde, he was somebody who left the church, testified against Joseph Smith, said Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet. Then he returns to the church and admits he lied. He says, "I also say that many reports and statements against brother Joseph and the church with which I circulated were false and highly colored." And so people do lie about Joseph Smith, not saying that we have to believe everybody that likes him and disbelieve that everybody that doesn't like him, but to do the opposite is equally fallacious. And I'll end there. Thanks for the couple extra seconds.

>> Yeah, no problem. And so now we are moving to our cross-exam portion. I didn't mention this earlier, but this will be a sort of standard cross-examination period where the examiner is asking questions and they are able to interrupt and reclaim their time as they see fit. It is not considered rude to interrupt and reclaim time. I just wanted to note that for the audience. And Ethan is up first. So whenever you begin with your first question, I will start the first timer. Oh, uh, one one last reminder. So there's four total sections, each 10 minutes long. So Ethan, then Luke, Ethan, then Luke, then we'll move to closing statements and Q&A after that. And Ethan, just make sure to unmute. There you go.

>> Yep. Uh, ready to go when you are.

>> Cool. Okay. Um, if Joseph Smith sacrificed a sheep to a demon right before he claimed the revelation of the golden plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon, would that disqualify him as a prophet in your eyes?

>> I don't know. Okay. What if he did it multiple times? What if he did it before and after?

>> I'm curious where we're getting this demon thing from. So, so that's what's hanging up on giving me the hangup.

>> Oh, well. So, Stafford says that it was to appease the evil spirit is why he's sacrificing the sheep.

>> So, evil spirit, I'm using that as

>> Stafford did say a number of things. He he said the Smith family was lazy and indolent. Several other family members joined in on that. Turns out their property was

>> So that hey, just reclaim my time, but that that wasn't the question. So the question was a hypothetical. So if it's true, if the testimony of Stafford, you know, hypothetically true, do I win?

>> No. So yes, hypothetically, if the testimony of a guy we know that lied about other stuff and even though it's corroborated, still means lie.

>> Sorry. Okay. Wait. Reclaimed time. So what's the evidence that Stafford knew Smith wasn't lazy?

>> That he knew he wasn't lazy.

>> Yeah. So if he's seeing a guy and the guy is going around and his primary, according to Joseph Smith in an interview later in Joseph Smith, yeah. I No, I I understand the question now. So

>> Okay. Yeah, I was I was going to say don't uh don't interrupt him.

>> Sorry. Sorry. I I just I thought I had the question then and so I didn't want to take up too much of his time having him explain.

>> Yeah. No, it was it was my mistake. I didn't realize.

>> Yeah. So um the Staffords, they live near the Smiths. They were interacting with the the Smiths often. The Smiths had been there for several years and their farm had gone from undeveloped to developed. So they cleared about 6,000 trees. It was about 60 acres. They had about 1,000 to 1,200 maple trees. Okay, looks like we're frozen again. We'll wait for him to come back. There we go.

>> Okay.

>> You are back.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah, I have a problem with other programs.

>> I do want to clarify the question because I don't think you're addressing it. So you could show me that maybe the Smith family were in fact hard workers, but their neighbor, when the times when he interacted with them, it was Joseph Senior coming over to his house and being like, "Hey, want to go dig for buried treasure with us?" Don't you see how later he could be like, "Oh yeah, it seemed to me that they were more interested in treasure than working without lying."

>> Um, but that would that would involve these people who live outside all the time. you know, they're not on the computers, they're not in their office working, interacting with their neighbors constantly, that somehow he was not aware of the amount of development that was happening on the Smiths' farm. And so, at the very least, at the very least, you have to say that he had a motivation to portray the Smiths.

>> And I think personally, I think it's silly that he would be unaware of this.

>> Reclaiming the time. So, the land value of the Smith property going up means that he has to be lying about his subjective impression that the Smiths are lazy because Joseph Smith later tells us in an interview that his main source of employment where he would make $14 a day during this period was as a money digger. Correct.

>> During that specific time, however, Stafford was speaking to the Smiths in general, and they lived in that area for multiple years. Okay. If I can find a similar misstatement of fact by Joseph Smith where he got a detail like somebody being lazy wrong, can we throw out all his testimony?

>> Well, well, the thing is, um, here, as you read, he starts off, one of the first things he says about the Smith family at the beginning of Mormonism Unveiled, the first thing that he wants people to understand is that the Smiths were just a lazy, idle, basically useless.

>> That's not an answer. That's not an answer to the question. The question, the question, but you're trying to dismiss this like, oh, it's okay he got that wrong.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So no, there's a question asked to the principal. So you say Stafford is of the subjective impression that the guy who was sacrificing his sheep, right, his big fat expensive sheep to demons and then was explaining, oh, I botched the sacrifice, so then I guess I didn't get the treasure. That guy, he had a negative subjective impression of him. He must be lying about that. But fine, I'll move on. So here I want and to clarify, I didn't say he must be lying.

>> I'm sorry.

>> Okay.

>> I'm sorry. I I want to I want to ask this question, which is

>> What is the most credible testimony that Joseph Smith told anybody in the world before the year 1827 that he had had a prophetic calling or spoken to an angel?

>> The the most credible one.

>> What's the most credible testimony that he told somebody before 1827? I I would say his family because none of them disagreed with him when he gave me

>> His family. And so you're contrasting that, let's be clear, with a local newspaper saying it is common knowledge about everybody who lives here that he never mentioned this until way later. So the newspaper is in his family's house listening to all their conversations that they're having, or the funny thing is, anybody else in the world they told. So there are a bunch of people that say the Smiths told them a story, right? There are a ton of people that say the Smiths told them a story about how the golden plates were discovered. I gave a detailed presentation of why Willard Chase, by far, is the most credible where he received it from an evil spirit. He didn't receive it from an angel. That was the original story. I want to know, other than the self-interested testimony of Joseph Smith and his relatives who recall, there are dozens of testimonies saying they're liars, sworn testimonies from everybody that knew him. What besides that is there any reason to think Joseph Smith had ever mentioned this angel before the year 1827?

>> And again, the number of testimonies was cultivated by Philo Dibble, but paid to go out there and collect them and reject testimonies that his narrative. So when you're appealing to the numbers, just understand that that's what you're appealing to.

>> Yeah. So it is accurate. I

>> Wait, no. Are you not

>> I can find the quote if you want of the guy who says that the testimony testimony and get his question out. All right. My apologies.

>> Yeah. Are you not aware that Mormon missionary Elder John S. Carter and Henry Pratt went and visited Palmyra and Manchester and they confirmed that the general impression of all the neighbors was overwhelmingly negative towards Smith. These were active Mormons. Yeah, I and I don't doubt that people of a different religious persuasion were negative to the Smiths after they joined the religion, as William Smith testified, which I I just don't know why we're throwing out the entire family's testimony. But he later later testified that nobody had any problem with us until Joseph Smith started talking about the gold plates and then all of a sudden our lives were a huge issue.

>> I got it. So now, next question. Why did um Joseph Smith Sr. decide to dig up his son Alvin Smith's body in 1824?

>> Actually, as John Turner says in Joseph Smith's biography, is that looking on dead relatives was a practice at the time. It it was kind of

>> Why did he in the newspaper to tell everybody, hey, everybody is saying that we have dug up our kid and dissected him, so here's the proof that we didn't dissect our kid. Why in the world did that rumor get started?

>> Oh, no. As I'm explaining this, I do believe that the Smiths went and did dig up and view Alvin's body because that was a practice at the time. It was a way that people felt connected for why they did it, which is there was a rumor that had started that the Smiths had gone and dug up Alvin Smith that and they said, "We're going to respond to the rumor. I'm saying that they hadn't done that."

>> Sorry. That they hadn't dug him up or that they hadn't dug up and dissected him?

>> That they hadn't dug him up. So there was a rumor that was going around that they had previously dug him up and dissected him, and they wanted to refute it. So he took out an ad in the newspaper and dug him up in front of neighbors. Now, so why did that rumor start? And as I pointed out, this digging up event is literally exactly the question or a statement.

>> Is that a question or a statement? You can only ask questions here.

>> That's the question.

>> Okay. So, so say the question.

>> Why exactly on the anniversary of the 1823 experience did Hyrum, did Joseph dig up Alvin's body to refute rumors that they had previously dug up his body?

>> Why did they dig up his body to refute rumors that they had previously dug up his body?

>> They would be able to show that they hadn't dissected him.

>> Exactly. And that Okay, fine. So, the Melissa Lott uh, let's ask about that. So, why did God want Joseph Smith to sleep with Melissa Lott and produce no children?

>> I don't know that God wanted them to produce no children. But I do believe that Joseph Smith was commanded to practice polygamy.

>> Well, no, but why? So, he went and he slept with Melissa Lott. And God decides when children are born, when children aren't born, according to all our holy books. So, I I want to know why if the purpose of polygamy is to raise up seed, and he's sleeping with Melissa Lott behind his wife's back, why did God want him to do that? So the so the question, just to be clear, has changed from why didn't he want children to now just why did he want him to sleep with her. So why did God want Joseph Smith to sleep with a woman that wasn't his wife who he reared no children with?

>> Okay. I I can't speak specifically to if God wanted him to sleep with her. We we don't have like the specific details on that. But I I do believe that God commanded Joseph Smith to practice polygamy.

>> He didn't have to sleep with her and he just decided to of his own volition.

>> No, I'm saying I don't know because I'm basing this off the historical record. So unless you have a source

>> Well, I'm saying it seems like there are two options here. So either he's not a reluctant polygamist, right? Because he's wanting to sleep with these women. He's not reluctant. Or he is a reluctant polygamist, in which case God's asking him to do it.

>> And it seems like you're in trouble either way.

>> Yeah. I'm That was kind of a statement. Um, yeah. And my simply my position is looking at the historical record, I couldn't tell you the exact reason for that specific instance because it's not there.

>> All right. Let's now switch all the history.

>> Let's now switch to Luke's cross-examining Ethan for 10 minutes. When you begin, I'll start the timer.

>> All right. Uh, I see the timer is at zero still. All right. Cool. Good to go.

>> Yeah.

>> Good to go. Uh, do demons do demons encourage people to pray to God?

>> They can.

>> Okay. Do demons try to convince people Jesus rose from the dead? They actually did in the Bible.

>> Okay. Uh, verse 16.

>> Yeah. Acts 16. The demon proclaims, "These are men of God, saying of Paul and Silas who are proclaiming the resurrection, these are men of God, telling you the way to be saved." That's Paul exercises the demon. Joseph Smith also said the Irvingites did that. So they had a false prophet. I mean, they had a false spirit. They were possessed by it, and they also proclaimed that Jesus had come in the flesh.

>> Okay. But the question was, do demons try to convince people that Jesus rose from the dead? Do they actively try to

>> Again, a demon can disingenuously affirm a thing with a bigger agenda in mind. So Joseph Smith tells us the reasons why demons do this. So two two reasons. One is if the entire wolf context

>> I'm going to cut you off. I'm going to cut you off just cuz just because that's a later question.

>> Uh, do demons preach that only Christ can save?

>> Again, same answer as before. It's the principle is they can they can say anything disingenuously.

>> Okay. Do demons teach giving to the poor?

>> Again, can say anything, especially if it sounds good to everybody in the local context.

>> Do demons preach? Do demons preach against pride and displays of wealth?

>> Again, demons can say like de So, Joseph Smith says, and he's the biggest expert on demons in the world because he has superpowers to tell what demons.

>> I'm curious about like your standard or a biblical standard. Not not what Joseph Smith said, what you say.

>> Well, no. I'm saying if so either either I'm right, in which case it is demons, or Joseph Smith's right, in which case your argument doesn't work. So either way, it doesn't work, right?

>> So either Joseph's right or I'm right, either way you don't you don't succeed.

>> So demons can teach people to do all these all these good things. Do demons preach against lying?

>> Okay. I exactly the same principle as all the other answers, which is

>> Uh, have you read the Book of Mormon cover to cover?

>> Lying is wrong.

>> No, no, I understand that. I I understand it's not sorry, it's not time for you to make a statement. Uh, I I gave you enough time to explain it on your first one, so I'm just checking to make sure your other answers are the same. Um, so my next question is, have you read the Book of Mormon all the way through?

>> I've probably read like 30% of it.

>> Okay. What's the longest book in the Book of Mormon?

>> I don't know.

>> Okay. So, some familiarity, but not enough to know that. Uh, from what you've read, from what you've read of it, do you agree the Book of Mormon teaches these things I've been asking about?

>> Uh, yeah. It's largely plagiarized from the King James version of the Bible, which teaches all those things.

>> Okay.

>> So, what is demonic about the text of the Book of Mormon itself?

>> Uh, well, the text, I mean, it teaches modalism, which is pretty demonic, but like the text itself, this is just meant to establish credibility for Joseph. So the whole point of the Book of Mormon is he's going to do all

>> Your position is modalism is demonic.

>> Your position is modalism is demonic. It's a

>> Heresy. Yeah.

>> Interesting. Um, okay. What what percentage of the Book of Mormon would you say was Sorry, did you have anything else besides modalism? Well, again, so there are various little errors in the Book of Mormon, but none of them are that serious because the main point of the Book of Mormon was to be something innocuous to establish Joseph as credible in this Christian context. So then later on he goes off the rails with things like the King Follett discourse, where he teaches that God.

>> Would you describe the Bible? Would you describe the Bible as innocuous?

>> Um, yeah. I mean, well,

>> Or benign, another word you've used.

>> What?

>> Yeah, it's not harmful. But is that the word you would use?

>> Benign. Well, yeah. Just if I if all I was trying to emphasize is it's not containing anything like super offensive, right?

>> So So if Okay. But for the Book of Mormon, would you would you be comfortable saying it's a little more in its teachings at least a little more than simply innocuous, maybe even Christian?

>> Well, I mean, there's a big part of it that's literally just taking the book of Isaiah and just like reproducing it verbatim. So like, yeah, I thought that that's a great part. I really love that part.

>> You'd see that's pretty darn Christian then.

>> Yeah. Copy-pasting the King James version of the Bible with its copying errors, even though we're supposedly receiving a dynamic translation from God in the seer stone.

>> Okay. Okay.

>> Yeah, that was so impressive.

>> All right. Demons. So, demons like copying the Bible. They like spreading the Bible out to people is is what I'm getting here.

>> So, the King James Bible is like the most read, most published, circulated book in the world. I don't think the demons minded like printing additional copy of it in this like American Indian origins fanfiction that is the Book of Mormon.

>> Okay. So, demons So, just to be clear, demons don't mind teaching people about Jesus Christ, trying to spread the sermon, the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to them because it's so widespread already.

>> So, I I agree with Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sydney Rigdon, and all the early Mormon readers who taught that demons can and do do that. And in fact, they name specific people in their immediate context who were possessed by demons. So we're doing exactly that.

>> Okay. What common denomin Oh, sorry. Do you agree with the studies? It sounds like you do from Pew, Pew, Harvard, etc. that say that people who believe in the Book of Mormon give more to charity, perform more service, live longer, get married sooner, divorce less, have more children, and report higher happiness levels on average than those who do not. Do you agree with those studies?

>> I mean, a lot of it is a selection effect. So, if you looked for a causal role, so I've looked at studies that have done that and like these effects largely vanish. I mean, there's things that are good for any religious community that you pick, basically any like if you look at Gloria, you know, which is like this like New Zealand like polygamy cult or whatever, you know, I guess they're maybe they're not polygamists, but the Gloria Veil, you look at them, they have great stats, too. And it's because basically anybody who does this whole model like there's going to be similar stats that are better than average that they get. Though once you actually start controlling for selection effects and like attrition of all the people that can't keep up with the code of conduct or can't fit in with the social norms and then you use active membership as a criteria and you look at the demographics and like who these people are compared to all the other demographics for all the other religions, like it's not super impressive, but no, the stats are fine, you know, it's not how you judge the moral character of a prophet because it's not his fruits, it's like the fruits of the fruits of the fruits of the fruits of the fruits.

>> Yeah. So, so talking Yeah. So, what common denominator produces these good fruits if not the Book of Mormon?

>> Um, like a group of religious people who like, you know, don't drink alcohol and who like gather together and like, you know, be friendly with each other and support each other in business endeavors and stuff. Like you could swap out the text of the Book of Mormon with like almost any other like innocuous religious text in the world, you know, and like you could have socially conservative people who are like, "Let's not do abortion and let's not do porn and let's not do all this other stuff that destroys communities and let's have a lot of kids and like it's going to work, you know."

>> Yeah. And and the Catholics do do that, which I commend them for. Yet the Latter-day Saints have produced higher numbers. And well, actually, you haven't even pointed to a specific cause. Like, uh, if if you're going to reject the Book of Mormon being the cause, I need you to give me something better. So, what what is that something? And and back it up, please. Don't just say the Book of Mormon is too far removed.

>> Actually, so you're the one making an argument, so I don't need to prove what the cause is. If I can just say you haven't proved that there are good fruits, then that's fine. But I Oh, it's Doctrine and Covenants 88. Because if they believe the book, it must be responsible for everything they do. Oh, wait a second. No, it's the Pearl of Great Price. It's the Book of Abraham, not the Book of Mormon. See how ridiculous this reasoning is? Uh, no. And but maybe it's just because you're not like as familiar with how the Latter-day Saints use the Book of Mormon, which is fine. Um, okay. We don't really have a common denominator. Uh, have have substantive changes been made to the Book of Mormon since Joseph Smith's lifetime? Um, I mean, what we have the 1830 like original and like there were lots of revisions that were made since then, but since his lifetime, it's this text has largely not changed that much.

>> Okay. And the Latter-day Saints have a strong culture of Book of Mormon reading and adherence today. Correct.

>> Uh, yeah, I mean, they read the Book of Mormon. Do they attempt to adhere to it? Well, I don't think so because it teaches classical theism, and they are like this like crazy heresy about like an infinite regress of gods and a god who lives on the planet Kolob and stuff, and it's not taught in the Book of Mormon.

>> Okay. But I'm talking about the teachings, the the day-to-day life teachings, teaching that there is an eternal, unchangeable God with no shadow or var, you know, no shadow of variation or changing in him.

>> I'm I'm asking about practice, Ethan. Do they do they try to follow giving to the poor, loving your neighbor?

>> So if if if you're just saying do they follow the code of ethics that they've plagiarized from the KJV, like I guess somewhat. They're fallen man, so obviously none of us live up to it perfectly. You know, statistically they do an okay job, but they're also selected to be like a group of people that would be good for that. You know.

>> Wait, statistically they do an okay job, or statistically they do a better job? You should be able to just admit the statistics if you're comfortable saying they're not part of the Book of Mormon.

>> Yeah. If you demographically match like Catholics to Mormons, like it's about the same. Like you can't really tell the difference. But if you just take it and you're like, "Okay, let's take this group of white people with these communities and these geographic effects." Yeah. It doesn't have anything to do with the book. It just they have a cool, you know, historical situation.

>> All right. Now, let's switch back to Ethan cross-examining Luke. Another 10 minutes, and then we'll switch back to Luke, and then closings and Q&A.

>> Okay. You agree that if Joseph Smith, in the name of God, promulgated one prophecy that wasn't from God, then he's disqualified to be a prophet.

>> I don't agree with that. So, what about Deuteronomy 18 where it says that anybody who presumes to speak anything in the name of God that I haven't commanded is to be put to death in the immediate context of how we're going to know when the false when basically when the greater prophet than Moses is to come. So, how we're supposed to recognize a false prophet.

>> Yeah, I I would actually agree with Michael Jones's inspiring philosophy if if people in the audience are familiar with him, where prophecy is understood at the time to be conditional prophecy. And so you have I believe

>> No, saying if the guy with King Nebuchadnezzar

>> It's what I'm asking about is a specific hypothetical conditional. So I'm saying if he gave a false prophecy

>> Then he's to be put to death, is what Deuteronomy 18 says. I'm just asking, so you agree that if he gave one prophecy that the Lord didn't speak, then he should have been put to death and he was ineligible to be a prophet.

>> I wouldn't I wouldn't say he should be put to death based on Deuteronomy.

>> That's what Deuteronomy says.

>> Yeah. Yeah. In the in the Old Testament, and that and that's fine with me. What I'm saying is that the understanding in that context, as Michael Jones points out. I'm not coming up with anything new. I'm not looking to LDS apologetics for this. I'm talking about Michael Jones for

example with the finish because I'm trying to give >> thing but it's not really relevant to the question. But so here's the thing I want to ask.

Okay, next question, which is why why did God command >> Joseph Smith to send a bunch of guys to a city where he couldn't possibly sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon um in order to try to sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon? Why did God command that?

>> Uh, it it could be number one, it could be that God didn't command them, which is kind of what you pointed out earlier. Well, that's what.

And number two could be >> Yeah. Number two could be as as a teaching experience for them. So to to kind of be an act of faith, a test of obedience. There's a variety of options. And so I can't just stick to one when I don't have an opinion on it.

>> Okay. When Joseph Smith was trying to ordain priests in order to restrain the giant outbreak of demons that was associated with the introduction of Mormonism to Kirtland in 1830 in 1831 when he was trying to ordain a high priest. Why was the high priest instantly possessed by a demon when Joseph Smith laid his hands on him?

>> Yeah, this this one's actually interesting to me and I like the way that John Turner explains it is Kirtland. Joseph's coming from New York. He's going over to Kirtland and the Christian cultural context kind of like how we were talking about Joseph Smith's cultural context of the magic that looks weird to us now. Kirtland kind of had the same thing and they had more of this culture of this charismatic this being influenced and overcome by spirits. And Joseph Smith coming into the saints was actually the catalyst that kind of got him to shape up to act more normal to stop doing all these.

The question is specifically about why did the demons possess the high priest at the moment that Joseph Smith laid hands on him to ordain him as a priest.

I >> I would say similar to Joseph Smith's story of Satan trying to stop him from praying during the first vision experience that a moment of a spiritual high is the time for Satan to attack. Like Jesus right at the start of his ministry is when Satan comes to him and it says like he's taking him to these different places and trying to tempt him right before his ministry. So I think we see this pattern of the ideal time for Satan to attack is right before a a spiritually opening or expanding uh event. So that is when I would expect a demonic attack to happen if it did happen.

Before before this event occurred, Joseph Smith had claimed to have unlimited power to control demons and to perform all miracles. So there there's reports we have reports that both um Rigdon and Joseph Smith at various times claim that. So if he was given that level of power, obviously it makes no sense that the moment he's conferring priestly ordination onto somebody, they're taken over by Satan and then he's reluctant to cast out the demon, but he basically has to be shamed into doing it. And then the demon is taking turns possessing everybody in the room all night.

>> Sorry, what's the question?

>> Can you please explain to me how to reconcile those two facts? So the fact that one he's claiming like almost arbitrary control over demons and then second is that demons are pos taking turns possessing everybody in the room right after they instantly possess somebody when he did a priestly ordination.

>> Well, yeah. So, I do agree with you that Joseph Smith was casting the demons out of these people and that's why they're going to somebody else. So, I do agree with you there. Your interpretation of it, I'm a little confused how this gets us to the Book of Mormon, but but I I will stick to your question and not veer there. Um, like we see with Paul for example and Peter, they had some interactions where there was correction going on there. So I of a misunderstanding or a growing into a prof an an issue and especially with a.

>> I personally am not making that connection and and hopefully.

>> Sorry, you uh you froze a little bit.

>> Yeah, you keep freezing.

>> Yeah, just let's Yeah, we'll just wait a second for him. I have to say, of all the freeze frames that I've seen on uh this program, Luke is actually not doing too bad. Look at this one. He's even smiling. Yeah, we'll wait for him to come back in. Luke, if you can hear us, you might need to refresh your browser. Okay. Yeah, he's just left. He'll be back uh shortly, I think. There he is.

>> I should be back.

>> Are we good?

>> Okay.

>> You are indeed back.

>> Okay. I I do apologize on Zoom and Streamyard. This has never happened before. So.

>> No, no problem.

>> Yeah.

>> Camera. Yeah.

>> It's got to be demons.

>> Yeah. Okay, cool. So, here's my.

>> Yeah, here's my question. So, let's tie it back to the core topic because you asked the relevance. So here, so first question, do you agree with Joseph Smith that it is far far more common for false prophets to be inspired by demons than by God? Do you agree or disagree with Joseph Smith?

>> Um, I I'm personally kind of neutral on the topic. I take more of a Trent Horn approach of analyzing something on a case-byase basis rather than.

>> Okay. So, do you believe that Joseph Smith, as he claimed, had supernatural knowledge of when demons were possessing people?

>> Uh, to an extent, I do believe that. Yes.

>> And so, don't you think he's kind of in a better epistemic position than you to know how frequent demon possession and false spirits are?

>> I do believe he's in a better epistemic position than I am. That's a far cry from infallibility, though.

>> Well, no, no, but I'm just saying he's more reliable than you, so therefore his opinion is more probable than yours. That's what we're talking about. Probability.

>> Oh, I'm I'm fine with probability.

>> Yeah. Okay, good. So, second, do you agree with Joseph Smith that none of the things that you're talking about, like for instance, saying Jesus Christ is a nice guy, teaching good morals, etc., can be used to reliably distinguish between true and false spirits?

>> Uh, no, I I don't agree with that.

>> Okay. How was Joseph Smith wrong about that when he specifically named groups like the Irvingites that did all the things that you're saying? So they taught biblical morals and they proclaimed that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. Like they quoted verbatim first John.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And I do believe that people can use the scriptures to an extent. I'm fine with that. The the problem is when you're coming to the Book of Mor, but I would say that that part of what they're saying is not demonic. They're not being influenced by demons to say true things. So the thing with the Book of Mormon is is that aside from some claims about classical theism and modalism which you have not substantiated and which you've disagreed to by a number of different people. I have some stuff from Mosiah if you're interested. Hold on.

>> I would like to finish. I would like to finish the thought if you're interested in.

>> You suggested the rules for the crossex by the way.

>> Yeah. No, I proposed giving people time to answer and you said no. So, but the.

>> Oh, that's fine.

>> Here.

>> So, here's the question that I have for you now as a followup.

>> So, I I want to know that the Book of Mormon, let's say that the Book of Mormon just copies the KJV text verbatim. You're saying that's absolutely inconsistent with demonic inspiration. So if they basically I would say.

>> But the way that he does it is through using a sear stone. In fact, let me just make.

>> I would say that demons.

>> Yeah, let me let me withdraw the question.

>> Sorry. I thought you'd finish the question.

>> Yeah. You know, just let me with let me withdraw the question. I want to ask this one. So why in the world did God have Joseph Smith use literally exactly the same sear stones that he used to either defraud people or to be deluded or to communicate with demons to translate the Book of Mormon? Why did he do that?

>> Well, I would say that I reject the premise. I don't agree that Joseph communicated with demons with that. There's the opinion of some people that are antagonistic towards Joseph Smith. Actually, if I remember correctly, you just were the one that said it was demons, not even them necessarily. So, I would reject that.

>> Three options. So, I said, "Here are options." So, he could be lying, right? Which is a people say he confessed to lying about being able to see stuff. So, that's plausible. The second one is that he could be really deluded, right? And given the nature of the experiences that he's claiming, like for instance, it's literally hurting his eyes because it's so bright, the illumination from the sear stone, he'd have to be pretty crazy. Or basically it's actual real magic and it's demons based off of all the texts and scripture that I cited. Those are the three options. Why did God have him use literally exactly the same stones that he had done to do unauthorized searching for buried treasure to translate this book?

>> Yeah. And well actually your other option is benign spiritual influence. But be that as it may, the the objects itself like you you've been going very hard off of superstitious practices practices. I don't like practices that are weird to me, that seem demonic to me. When in in reality, people think that about almost every other culture. Being superstitious of an object is a superstition in and of itself. And so, I don't hold this superstition.

>> Sorry, that's.

>> But I don't. Okay.

>> Oh, no. I was going to I was going to let you finish your uh your your thought there.

>> I was just going to say I don't presuppose a superstition of the object itself. I agree with the Bible's definition that turning to God is how you get divining power from God using objects like the ephod and then turning away from God is how you get divine um interference from spirits. It's not a superstitious belief about this object is the wrong object to be doing this with. That's the problem.

>> All right. All right. Let's switch to our last cross-examine portion. And Luke, you've got 10 minutes. Uh trying to use your own standard for the Book of Mormon and and not just for Joseph Smith rather than this. People are probably surprised they had to believe Joseph Smith to agree with you in this debate. I I'm just curious. You have said and it's believed by a number of other groups that a person through due use of natural means will be able to tell if something's demonic or not. So what will give a person the indication through due use of natural means that the Book of Mormon is demonic?

>> So the way it was produced.

>> Okay. And so that's kind of anacronistic. Not most of people in history had access to the information that you've been sharing with here. So for example, missionaries arrive in 1840 to Ireland for the first time, 1870 to Mexico for the first time. This is the vast majority of people that have interacted with the Book of Mormon have been in that way. How did they tell to do so that it's demonically inspired?

>> All all I've ever claimed is that if you thoroughly investigated the evidence regarding the circumstances, then evidence signs of deception will come out. Obviously, every deception ever, if you hear about it thirdand from somebody who doesn't give you enough evidence one way or the other, obviously you just haven't done a sufficient investigation to be able to tell one way or the other. That's not my criteria. My criteria is if you thoroughly investigate it, you'll be able to discover the signs of deception.

>> Okay. So, so is it your position then that the vast majority of people who are who have encountered the Book of Mormon lacked the ability to even tell if it was demonic or not?

>> No, because I mean there are a million other ways they could figure it out too. Like, but the first thing is they don't need to always be able to tell it's demonic. They just need to have so the criteria that I actually articulate is they need to have insufficient evidence to be morally certain that it's divine. So that's what I say there can't be an invincible deception. Now there can be people who have misleading evidence that makes something false seem probable. Right? We know that happens all the time. All of us constantly form opinions based on misleading evidence. Right? But what I'm saying specifically that God will not let occur is an invincible deception where the person couldn't through a diligent investigation applying their rational faculties ascertain that it was false or that they would just be entitled rationally entitled to be certain where there's no reasonable doubt that they could entertain in their mind that the thing wasn't from God. That's the thing that's precluded. So it doesn't require that every single person always be able to figure out whether it's fraud, whether it's demonic, etc.

>> Okay. So, just to be clear, most people just would not have been able to tell that the Book of Mormon was demonically inspired.

>> Well, they would have been able to tell that it wasn't from God just cuz I mean, first is it contradicts scripture and second is it contradicts the authority claim. You know, there's a million things that we could say.

>> Oh, hold on. Is it benign? Is it benign and copied the Bible?

>> Is it benign and copied the Bible or is it contradicting scripture? So the vast majority of the substance of the book is plagiarized but there are cases where it deviates. So for instance Elmo 11 is a case where it deviates right Jacob 2 is another actually case where it deviates and so there are plain contradictions between those loi within the Book of.

>> Mormon. You called it you called it benign before. So it's benign for a book to have these deceptions in it that you claim are there? Well, I mean, obviously I've clarified earlier that I think the fact that it teaches modalism is very bad, right? I say it's most I I've said that it's even if it were benign, that would be fine. And it's mostly benign because it's mostly plagiarized from the Bible.

>> Well, I know, but I know. But but before like even in your opening statement, your written out opening statement, you say just because the book's not that bad, it's you know, we it doesn't mean that it's not demonically inspired. So now I'm I'm trying to ask you to confirm.

>> It's called an even if statement. So even if you conclude X.

>> So you're just not taking a position on if it's benign or not.

>> Well, the most of the book is completely benign. There are a few sections where it teaches outrageous heresy.

>> Uh, no. I'm I'm trying to ask like is the Book of Mor I I feel like you should if you're going to be in a debate about the Book of Mormon and demons, you should have a position on the the Book of Mormon itself. And it's a very simple question. Is the Book of Mormon.

>> I just gave it to you in specific detail.

>> Okay. So the question is the Book of Mormon benign does not have a yes or no answer according to you. It's not as simple.

>> It just depends on what you mean. So if you mean there's nothing bad in it, then the answer is no. If you mean that for the most part it's not that bad, then yes. Okay, that's cool. Um, okay. Does the Bible say sear stones are always demonic stones used for dividing things? What? It's not. No, the problem is not sear stones. So, the problem is divination, which is specifically it's unauthorized. So, it's not covenantal. It's done for a self-seeking end like seeking money for yourself, right? It's often accompanied by a whole bunch of superstitious practices including societs.

>> What?

>> But we're talking about the Book of Mormon.

>> I'm talking about the sear stones. What makes them demonic? What Joseph Smith did.

>> Okay. Okay. So, they're not always demonic because that was the question. Are they always demonic? And so, your answer is no. There are specific.

>> Used the way Joseph Smith used them.

>> For the Book of Mormon.

>> The way that he used them. Well, so in this case.

>> Because before that he used them one way, now they can never be used another way ever again.

>> Yeah. God is not going to commission someone to translate a text, a divine text that he's going to promulgate to the entire world by using stones that have been used to communicate with demons that he himself.

>> And are you getting that from the Bible? Are you.

>> Are you getting from the Bible the idea that something used for bad in the past, which I'm not admitting to, by the way? I'm just taking your own frame of mind to critique it. Now, it can't be used the other way. That that's a biblical standard you're explaining or the Bible.

>> So, one is when the person receives revelation, there's a huge obsession with purity and oftentimes literally with creating new objects that are specifically dedicated to the purpose at hand. There's a ton and basically if they're defiled, there's all these rituals that have to be gone through specifically in order to remove the sort of spiritual stain that attaches to them. Because they have been defiled for this purpose. The Bible prescribes that when things have been used for pagan idol worship, they're to be destroyed.

>> Okay. So purifying stuff. So that means that they are not always.

>> If you so like if you use something for pagan idol worship. So at various points there were even things that were created initially for a good end but then got co-opted to basically worship demons and then the remedy was their destruction.

>> Oh yeah. This this tails into another thing I wanted to talk about. Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints demonic today?

>> What does that even mean?

>> Answer however you want.

>> Quick.

>> Just as a as a body influenced by demons.

>> I don't I don't understand what that.

>> Mean. A demonic influence on the world overall. Well, so there's a demonic agenda, right? Which is to take a whole bunch of people away from a saving faith in Jesus Christ that your church does serve. Okay. So, so the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today does um serve demonic purposes, but you're not going to say that it's demonic.

>> Well, I I mean, I don't know what that means necessarily if it just means that it does something demonic like that. Basically, there's an agenda.

>> I mean, you were you were the one that came with the topic of the Book of Mormon as demonic. So.

>> I guess I was working off the assumption that you have knowledge of what defined proposition.

>> Okay.

>> So, inspired means that you're mentally stimulated to do something. So, the supernatural agent is demons. I presented a whole bunch of arguments in scripture for why it couldn't be from God. I've shown proximate influences from demons before, after, during its composition. I showed that his original story of what happened is that he received the golden plates from which he translated it from demons directly and then he used an instrument that he had used to communicate with demons to translate the book and he never publicly repented of it but in fact lied about his occult background and then everybody who came into contact with it was getting demonp possessed. He ordains people they get demonp possessed. Sydney Rigdon's demonp possessed. Oliver Cowry is getting deceived by demons despite revelations from Smith that claim he can't be deceived by demons. And then he's going around and sleeping with a bunch of women and he's telling young girls that basically pray for light and then they're getting darkness.

>> Okay. You told me that Oh, sorry. Do you believe the demons gave Joseph Smith writing speed and composition skills beyond his natural talents? Is that part of what they did?

>> Yeah. Yeah. And and did you do you believe that demons inspired Joseph Smith to get some not the majority or all but some details in the Book of Mormon correct that he would not have known through natural means?

>> Yeah, I mean that's certainly possible.

>> But do you believe that? Like if you had to say one way or another, what's more likely?

>> Yeah, I mean if he's getting his information from demons like I imagine they gave him some true information, some false information, right? That that he wouldn't have been able to know about himself to kind of make it look like he'd done something really impressive.

>> Yeah. Clearly they could have given him something that he didn't read about or something.

>> Okay. And do you believe that last question, do you believe demons helped Joseph Smith produce encounters with the plates that could not have been produced through his natural abilities? I'm talking about the three witnesses and the eight witnesses.

>> Oh, no. I think those accounts are totally bogus. Okay. All right. Let's turn now to our closing statements, which are five minutes. And I am adjusting the timer now. That's not correct. Five. There we go. All right. Five minutes. Ethan, you're going first. So, I'll start whenever you begin.

>> Cool. Okay. So, in today's debate, I've shown based off of a person that my opponent should consider to be in a way better epistemic position than himself regarding the prevalence of false prophets. And it's not just that you have to believe in Joseph Smith, because I also believe this. It's straightforward that obviously there are way more false prophets that rise up and that receive assistance from Satan than there are true prophets, which is a much rarer group of people. So, if the base rate for false prophets is much higher, and according to my opponent's own worldview, at least if he were being consistent, which apparently he's not being, it is extremely much, much higher that it's demons. And according to my opponent's own demon discerning expert, there's no way to use any of these criteria that he's using. There's no way to go on these questions like, "Oh, it sounds so good and true." He says, "No, they prophesy very close to the truth to gain credibility and to bring the truth into disrepute." That's Joseph Smith's position. He thinks Luke's position is facious in this debate. He brings up to apply a fruits test from our Lord that is specifically about the moral character of the person in question without making substantial arguments to rebut the overwhelming evidence that Joseph Smith was a uniquely bad person. Rather than actually engaging with that, even though a bad tree can't bring forth good fruit, he's now reinterpreting the fruits test to be like, if a tree produces fruit that produces a tree that produces fruit that produces a tree that produces fruit, then ignore the fact that everybody that came into contact with this guy was getting in possessed by demons and that there was like a demon rampage in the immediate context where he had previously been worshiping demons. But all of that is sort of besides the point because he hasn't engaged with the very substantial historical evidence that I present that there was no even pretention that he had received a pro a prophetic calling or that he had spoken to angels. We had literally a local newspaper saying it was common knowledge in the area where Smith lived that it was way after his pretended finding of these books in a treasure guardian context that he invented this religious narrative. Which makes perfect sense given that the even the official narrative that he tells has a million similarities and correspondences with all these treasure digging stories and basically none with stories of prophetic election in the Bible. So why is it that this money digger on the night that he came home from money digging comes and spins a yarn that sounds exactly like all the money digging stories that all his friends are talking about? Is it that God really wanted to seem like it was a basically a money-digging fiction that he was inventing or even a money-digging real experience that he had, which is even more sinister? And we I've shown that the earliest version based on the most historically credible testimony we can get from a person who actually unlike Joseph Smith has character witnesses supporting his credibility whose testimony is independently corroborated by undesigned coincidences with a bunch of other people's testimony who helps explain historical facts that otherwise don't make sense and who has a bunch of reasons why he wouldn't embellish the testimony shows that Joseph Smith himself claimed to have received the golden plates in the first place from something where there are overt indications that it was demonic and that there are a ton of elements of the narrative that makes no sense if it wasn't. He also was just manifestly unqualified. If we are to know prophets by their fruits, if that was the manner in which we were to recognize them, there are moral qualifications. As well as I've shown in first Timothy that God says you have to use moral qualifications to decide whether someone is fit to be a leader and deciding whether to elevate someone to be a leader. Are you going to take the guy who is one of the most prominent money diggers and necromancers, who's frequently communicating with false spirits, who's offering animal sacrifices, who's either delusional or lying, it seems very unlikely that God wanted to help him with his self-s serving agenda to go get a bunch of money for himself in doing these practices that are plainly condemned in all these loai in the Bible. All that seems extremely unlikely. So, we go to that and then we look into it. Additionally, makes no sense that then rather than having this guy repent, the guy lies about it. He completely whitewashes his history, we can show even based on his own admissions in the 1826 trial and compare them against later characterizations that he gave of his past money digging background, he wasn't honest about it. He wasn't even like David in publicly repenting of it. Then we see what happens after in the context of all this demonic stuff where he did all the same demonic stuff that he had previously done and received it from the evil spirit. What then happened subsequently? What happens subsequently is there's a huge outbreak of demons. Okay. All the leaders of his church are becoming demonically possessed. Oh, weird. And that's the that's the actual effects that this is having on people in the immediate context. His wife felt betrayed and humiliated by him because of all of the polygamy that he was doing. Well, and in addition to this adulterous affair that he had with Fanny Algar that's reported by Oliver Cowry, one of the key Book of Mormon witnesses. In addition to that, she felt betrayed and humiliated and said that she felt because of Joseph's actions towards her like sa Satan was trying to destroy her. So that's the person who interacts with this guy the most, who's feeling his fruits the most approximately rather than the super indirect argument that he's making. The this guy was a super crazy psychopath evil person who was a literal demon worshipper who has no credibility at all whatsoever and who himself taught principles that imply that it's impossible for him to prove that he's authentic and that the prior probability that he's inauthentic is extremely high.

>> All right, that's time. Luke, whenever you're ready and begin, I will start your timer. All right. Well, thank you everybody for participating in the the debate tonight, especially those of you listening. I've I hope we provided you, the audience, with information and perspectives you can explore at length more on your own because the fact is uh these claims about Joseph Mitches being crazy and out there and evil and everybody's being possessed by demons and Emma hates him. These are these are getting to cartoon Joseph Smith villain level. And so I do encourage you and this is why uh unlike Ethan who drew from very antagonistic sources, the historians known for putting the most negative tilt on Joseph Smith, I've tried to go to people from the other side to bring out and to make my case, to not simply confirm my biases, but to go out and try to represent people from across the aisle. And uh Ethan unfortunately didn't do that here and and he didn't even stick to his own standards. He tried to grab one article from Joseph Smith to make his case. Uh in this debate, I've shown how the Book of Mormon is not demonic by Ethan's own standard. A standard held by most cath most Catholics and supported by scripture. If the Book of Mormon is demonic, a person will not be deceived. Yet the Book of Mormon maybe is okay, maybe isn't okay. The question's confusing, apparently. But this is why my question is a better one. It's simply would a demon write this? We're not talking about Joseph Smith in his whole life. We're talking about one specific thing he produced and if that was demonically inspired. That's why I've taken us to the text of the Book of Mormon itself. Something Ethan didn't do apart from my cross-examination of him where he just made a couple of claims that you can go and find information on to see how well they hold hold up. So the question is this what a demon would produce and why? Uh Ethan has not answered these questions. He tried to move to other topics and then implicate the Book of Mormon through those. And that's why he's lost tonight's debate. Uh allow me to share the testimony of someone who spent years making content against my faith and then what happened to him when he changed his approach. He said, "When I started reading the Book of Mormon sincerely, not just trying to disprove it, not trying to argue, but actually read it with an open heart, something changed inside of me. If I was just going to turn around and immediately bash the church again, what what would be the point? That brought anger, confusion, and negativity. But this journey, this journey brought me peace. It brought discipline. It brought purpose. It brought me closer to knowing my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I truly love the Book of Mormon. He's about to get baptized, by the way. That's what the Book of Mormon can do for you. That's what it's done for me. That's what it's done for members in the audience watching today. Uh simply declaring that it's too far away from when it was written for the effects of it to be attributed to it even though we're reading the same exact book, the same exact content that came up before and having our lives changed to that. And we know that. Apparently, we're wrong. Apparently, we're confused. Maybe it's the demons. Uh, at the very least, as my friend's quote about his interaction with the Book of Mormon shows, uh, at least getting away from constantly blasting a religion or online, whether true or not, can do wonders for you. Seriously, if you're actually concerned about the influence of bad spirits, you should be much more worried about vicious online interactions, regardless of your right or not, than about the Book of Mormon. Uh to close, I I just want you to know that I know Jesus Christ lives, that he died for my sins, that he died for yours, wherever you are, that following his teachings inside or outside of my faith is the only way to find peace and happiness in this life and the next. For me personally, the Book of Mormon has been a bridge and not a barrier to that belief for me. And maybe it can do the same for you, too. So, thank you, and I'll yield the rest of my time. All right, let's now move to some Q&A with the audience. So, we've allotted about 30 minutes. We won't probably won't be able to get to all of the questions. Let's just go ahead and dig right in. So, Isaac Charming Ch >> and we're doing a minute. A minute. A minute. Correct Cameron? >> Yes. Thanks for uh for reminding me. Yes. So, we have one minute. One minute. One minute from uh the debaters. So, whoever it's addressed to gets the first minute, then the response a minute, and then another response one minute. So, this one is for Ethan. Ethan, is this about Joseph or the Book of Mormon? Well, it's about whether the Book of Mormon was demonically inspired. So, inspiration pertains to how the book was written. So, how it was composed and what led him to write the book and to translate the book, right? So the whole question of the debate is not actually about like literary criticism of the Book of Mormon. The question is about how was the Book of Mormon made, right? And so therefore, who is this man? Is he in contact with demons? Is he a demon worshipper? Did he use the same technology that he used to worship demons to produce this exact book? And then it causes a demon outbreak. And then we look at our Lord Jesus Christ telling us how we're supposed to tell whether a prophet, so someone who's coming and promulgating a revelation as if it's from God and claiming these supernatural experiences. If we look at that and he says the way we're supposed to do it is by looking to the fruits, then it's very relevant to the Book of Mormon whether Joseph Smith is actually someone who was in basically communion with demons. Especially if I prove that the original version of his story has him receiving the plates from which the book is translated from demons, which has gone substantially unrefuted.

>> All right. Oh, one one quick thing. I'm not take take uh keeping like super strict times uh time limits on on these answers. I'm just kind of looking at the clock and I I will intervene if it's going a little bit long. But um anyways, Luke, your response? Uh, I do agree this is about the Book of Mormon, which is related to Joseph Smith of course, but there have been a number of people, David Whitmer being one of them, who still firmly believed in the Book of Mormon and disagreed with Joseph Smith's later actions. So, it's a bit of a stretch to try to completely weld them together. And so, that's why the Book of Mormon is the best place to look to. It's a firsthand source and not simply Joseph Smith alone.

>> That was my response.

>> H That's fine. Let's just do the next one.

>> Okay. Uh no problem. All right. Uh this one I'm assuming that this one is for Luke. Why should I believe Joseph's visions over Fatima? I I mean you should look into them for yourself and you know take it from both sides. Uh I I do really enjoy John Turner's biography. I recommend that to everybody and yeah just compare them. Use a methodology that you think works that you know isn't special pleading for one side or the other and come to your own conclusion.

>> Yeah. So.

>> Basically we look at the Fatimus. We see three extraordinarily holy young children who have no sex scandals, no financial scandals, no history of demon worship at all whatsoever. They're willing to suffer martyrdom rather than lie. They report credible apparitions. They have coherent testimony. It's repeated pre-announced schedule. We have contemporaneous documentation. They predict a colossal miracle. It happens literally. The thing directly confirms the truth of the Catholic faith in these private revelations. And then we're comparing that to all the evidence signs of deception and all of this filth that is Joseph Smith's life. And then we're looking at it and what witnesses are they bringing to bear. Well, probably I would say the Book of Mormon witnesses is the least credible group of people that I could possibly put together. So, of the eight witnesses that saw the plates, five of them are related to David Whitmer and three of them are related to Joseph Smith. We have credible evidence, as I pointed out in my opening, that they didn't even want to sign the statement because it was so misleading because they didn't actually physically see the plates. They didn't even want to, but they were cajolled into it. And then we're looking at that and we have Oliver Cry, who literally purges himself in defense of Joseph in 1830. Martin Harris, who's a borderline schizophrenic, and.

>> Oh, there.

>> Yeah. And.

>> I will briefly respond.

>> Yeah, it's overheated, hasn't it? Yeah, my camera overheated because uh my my AC is not working right now, so it's a bit hot in my office.

>> I I will respond to that briefly just because I didn't get the chance. Uh this idea that the witnesses didn't agree with the statement because somebody said it is is pretty silly. They had years and years and in fact, we have Joseph's brother saying that I stand by my statement. I have put my life on the line for before and I'm going to do it again. Of course, that brother was Hyram Smith who voluntarily went to Joseph Smith with Joseph Smith to Carthage jail reading from the Book of Mormon right before he went with the knowledge that he was probably going to get killed and then did get killed voluntarily. He didn't have to be there next to his brother Joseph Smith. We have strong evidence that the witnesses and basically everybody agrees with this including Dan Vogle that the witnesses actually did believe they had an authentic experience with the plates. All right, let's move to a question for Ethan. For Ethan, why did you use Mormonism uh un unveiled literal anti- Mormon propaganda as your main source for your arguments when the affidavit of it are at best secondhand and antagonistic?

>> Well, so for context for everybody, Mormonism Unveiled is like an 1834 book that's published that contains within it a bunch of affidavits. So sworn testimony that were sworn to by Joseph's neighbors in front of judges and like justices of the peace. And so it's one of the most and lots and lots of people even Mormon friendly historians agree that there's a lot of historical value in understanding the Palmyra and Manchester periods of Joseph Smith's life in these testimonies. They're definitely not at best secondhand. So for instance, William Stafford is describing directly his participation in this event. So he's firsthand to the event and all the testimony that he's giving in the 1833. But I also explained in detail at length in my opening a million credibility indicators within the testimony. And meanwhile, if you're just saying, "Oh, why treat it because it's antagonistic?" Well, all your sources are super biased, too. That's what's an issue. And my sources on all the actual things that you would tell a jury in a court to look at for credibility, my guys check all the list for what who you would go with if we just gave jury instructions to a jury. Yeah. And and I would say that first of all, a very beautiful person, very handsome person that gave the super chat. It's my friend, by the way. I don't throw out random compliments. But this I agree with Ethan that they're not just completely unusable. They're completely uh fake and false. The problem I have is that they have been depended on and then extrapolated from that. The accounts themselves, demons are not like attributed specifically by everybody. Ethan's giving these things in history happen, therefore, it has to be demons. I disagree with that connection right there strongly. I disagree with several of the points within those stories, but then I what I really take issue with is then he's basically throwing out Joseph Smith's family. Like, oh, this story was completely made up later. Never mind the fact that all of Joseph's family who are putting sacrifice into this being estranged from their neighbors because of it are going along with this story and never once in all the years they had available to them say wait a second Joseph didn't actually come and tell us these stories in fact that the naturalistic explanation guys one of the key pillars in their arguments is Lucy Mack's testimony that Joseph Smith was a great storyteller that comes from her history of his encounter with the angel so these naturalist istic explanation, guys, for the Book of Mormon grab on to the source and say, "Yes, this is the gospel truth about Joseph Smith." And then Ethan's over here saying, "No, we're disregarding that entirely. Joseph Smith obviously lied." So, two people that disagree with the Book of Mormon, wildly different takes on the same source. And I think that points to bias in how we look at the sources. Sorry if that was over a minute.

>> Yeah.

>> It was. I'm gonna I'm gonna boot you. Yeah.

>> Okay. See you guys. Thanks for doing this. No, but um yeah, so my my reply to that would be first, I think that we can show that Joseph's family are not reliable narrators, but I'm not disregarding Joseph's family's testimony. I'm giving you the earliest accounts of what their testimony was. So, I'm showing you what the most credible testimony is as to what they were saying earlier, and then you can compare that to what they say decades later, like in Lucy Mack's case, right? We can compare those two things and then see, oh, are they changing their narrative to suit their rhetorical goals? And we can even see that if you just put Joseph's 1832 and 1838 account side by side, his histories, you can see how he's literally reimagining his own history in real time. Now, meanwhile, we're comparing that against a newspaper publishing in the local context in a local area, saying, "Everybody who reads this newspaper knows that this guy had never brought this up until way after he supposedly found these plates in a treasure digging context." And we have a ton of independent testimony with undesigned coincidences between each other that are all indicators of credibility. And we have a whole bunch of testimony, not just against Smith, but against his whole family, that they're all liars and they're all in on it. All right, moving to a question for Luke. For Luke, why did God command Joseph Smith to take multiple wives, especially since this issue required him to lie, divide the church, and was later abregated?

>> Yeah. So, I do believe that God commanded Joseph Smith to take multiple wives and then I believe that Joseph Smith was left to implement that on his own. God gives us this wiggle room. I believe we're not just robots. Especially even the prophets aren't just robots. And so I think the assumption is because Joseph was commanded to practice polygamy, therefore every single thing that he did related to polygamy was the direct command of God. And that just doesn't follow. And so that's the part that I take issue with. I don't have a problem with the polygamy itself. I imagine if Joseph Smith was able to have a redo, he would have done a couple things differently in the implementation of it. And that's just the way that God works with his prophets.

>> Yeah.

>> Ethan, feel free to.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, I mean, it's just wildly implausible that Joseph Smith actually would receive such a command from God. And like the thing that he just said where it's like, oh, I don't have to defend every aspect of it because I'm not saying that God commanded every aspect of what Joseph Smith did. Well, that makes no sense first of all because Joseph Smith was getting like detailed specific instructions about like the dimensions of buildings and how to allocate tiny portions of his finances that he was reporting instructions to go sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in Canada. And you're saying over a several year period he's engaging in massive deception about his polyandry and like doing sham weddings with his wife and he's talking with God every day and God forgets to mention like oh hey this thing that you're doing is going to destroy your credibility and divide the church and is going to humiliate your wife. Like hey chill out like it's also just something where even if it wasn't from God it just shows the moral rot of this guy's soul that he decided to do all this stuff because no normal like moral person would do the things that he did. But also, he's claiming revelations like in Doctrine in Covenants 132 where it's a flat contradiction. Was it a sin for David to have poor wives or wasn't it? Doctrine in Covenants 132, which is pretext that he's claiming is from God, says that it wasn't. And Jacob 2 says that it was. I I think we're having a little bit of trouble with the history here. It doesn't logically follow that because Joseph Smith gets the dimensions for a temple that he has been commanded when to have sex with his wife. I mean, every single time it happens that that just doesn't logically follow. And I think Ethan's abbreviated um runthrough of Joseph Smith's life has left him with some gaps in knowledge. The times of high prophetic and divine involvement with like a lot of direct counsel from God and revelation from God that was more in the Kirtland period and then that relaxes during the Nauvoo period and Joseph Smith is left not to his own devices but now that he's had some training now that his hand has kind of been held now he's doing things more um on his own.

initiative using more generalized instructions, and polygamy fits into that category. And so, Ethan seems to be just kind of lumping history all into a single point and treating it that way, when that's not what you're supposed to do.

All right, moving to a question for Ethan. For Ethan, why did you use Mormonism Unveiled?

Oh, I think that was the same one.

Yep, that was the same one. I thought I saw another one from, uh, from him. Sorry about this. Yeah, I'm trying to find one for Ethan because most of these are for Luke. Let's see. And if, if it's going to be too much trouble, I can answer questions. Yeah, I'm just looking through them now to Ethan. Here we go. All right.

To Ethan: If you completely separate Joseph Smith from the Book of Mormon and take the book on its own, is modalism the only argument you have that it's demonic? What else?

Well, I mean, if you just take a book by itself, right? My argument is not that, oh, it has the signature of demons in it where demons are like, "Hey, it's us demons writing this book," right? That's not how demons work. Like, what Joseph Smith explains is that the whole point of demons deceiving people is they're trying to write a book that's going to make it seem like it's from God. That's like what demons are trying to do. And like, demons are smarter than the smartest guy. Like, both Mormons and Catholics agree that demons are really, really smart. And so demons are not idiots. And so the idea that the demons are going to compose a book that's going to make it obvious to anyone that reads it that it's not from God just seems to me like laughable. No, the entire point, as Joseph Smith himself explains, of demons is they're getting their foot in the door to establish credibility and then they're going to use that once they've got people hooked in to discredit the truth and bring it into disrepute. And that's why people like Alex Ocasio-Cortez use Mormonism as their prime example when they're trying to tear down Christianity. The Mormons are the biggest allies of the atheists in attacking Christianity. And that's exactly what the demons wanted, to bring the truth into disrepute. Yeah. So, I would say that the, the demons are very smart, which is why they wouldn't make a miscalculation like producing the Book of Mormon. So, yeah, you get Joseph Smith to, to do some things people don't like nowadays. Marry some people. We don't like that. Um, and then the Book of Mormon's influence on the world for all the rest of human history is to bring people closer to Christ, to encourage them to have more children, to get them out to church more, to make them more knowledgeable in the Bible, something I didn't bring up earlier, than Catholics, for example. That comes from Pew. And so I, I agree with Ethan that demons are very smart, which is why it is silly to me that they would make such a massive miscalculation with the Book of Mormon.

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't think they made a miscalculation at all with the Book of Mormon. So, it's Luke is sort of forgetting something. So, when you're, when I'm alleging, here's a bunch of evidence that it's demons, and then he's saying, "What would the demon's motive be?" And I'm saying, within my worldview, here's a motive that makes perfect sense. He's saying, "You're presupposing your worldview." No, I'm proving my worldview by showing that my worldview makes perfect sense of all the data. So, that's it's not presupposing your worldview to say, hypothetically, assume my worldview is true. Would this data be expected? Yes, it would be. If Catholicism were true, it actually makes perfect sense that demons would do a good deception to try to lead people away from a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Now, if Mormonism is true, does it make sense that God took a money digger, demon worshipper, chose to make him a foundational prophet who favorably compared himself to Moses and Jesus, and decided that this guy was going to receive golden plates in an experience that he's going to relate to others as being from evil spirits and then use exactly those same means to translate the book? Does that make sense in a Mormon worldview? No, it doesn't. So, then we take those two things. My worldview makes perfect sense why demons would make such a book because they're leading people away from a true saving faith in Jesus Christ and being part of his body, which is the church. Within Luke's worldview, God's motives make no sense because God is, is supposed to be an infinitely wise being, and he's behaving in ways that are completely nonsensical and irrational. And if he didn't have a dogmatic commitment to it, he would recognize this as everyone else will.

All right, question for Ethan. Why did the witnesses of the plates have to go into the woods and pray to see them? Why couldn't Smith just show them if he had possession of them?

Yeah, I mean, this is what becomes clear. So, this is something that...

This one is for Luke.

Oh, you think it's Luke? Okay. Okay. So, I'm assuming he's talking about the three witnesses because the eight witnesses appear to be in a room where they were shown to them. And so, uh, the woods actually were seen as more of a spiritual place, you know, nature out there. Moses going up to the mountain. So, that's one explanation. And another one is that the three witnesses were the only ones designated to see this kind of, you know, Jesus taking Peter, James, and John away for the transfiguration. And so, you, you go off into a private place to have that experience. And I'm, I'm not sure like, I feel like he's trying to make some sort of a point here, and I'm not seeing what Joseph just showing it to them as opposed to just showing it to them in the woods would do. So, apologies if I'm missing the point you're trying to make there.

Yeah, so, I don't believe that the witnesses ever saw the plates. I agree with Dan Vogel that they didn't. I believe that they handled the plates, right? And the dimensions of the plates that are reported by all the witnesses, if you actually try to do it to where it's like gold or any plausible gold alloy as they're reporting, the weights don't match. But the weights are actually more consistent with tin plates, as Dan Vogel has demonstrated. So, the real actual core issue is, did they see the plates? And that's where we actually have insider Mormon testimony that they're hearing people admit that these people saw them with their spiritual eyes. And there's later clarifications where this is a sort of imaginary vision. But obviously, the plates can't pass visual inspection. So, if God's willing to appear in a resurrected body in front of 500 witnesses, which he did with Jesus Christ, obviously, there's no reason why. Why is he not willing to show Emma Smith the plates? Why do they have to be hidden the entire time? He's willing to show up in a resurrected body to 500 people. They're concealed from a million people except these eight witnesses who give us very vague, weird testimony that it seems like actually when we go look, this is imaginary vision, as Dan Vogel convincingly argues. Uh, I'm, I guess Ethan's not aware of, uh, the Interpreter Foundation, Josh Coats' recent analysis of the golden plates and their weight, a combinatorial approach to modeling all possible golden plates. And he actually computer models this. He takes all the different accounts, all the different possibilities of alloy combinations, the reported weights of the plates, the reported dimensions of the plates, properties of the plates described by people like Emma Smith, like the rustling of the pages, um, analysis of, uh, plate thicknesses done by Jerry Grover, and puts all of these factors together, individually models out these, I think it's eight or so variables that he puts into it, millions of different combinations, and then narrows it down to the band allowed by the testimony. And it turns out that not only can the plates be gold in appearance, um, and then be the proper dimension, height, width, length, and weight reported by the various accounts of the witnesses, but it actually could also fit the text of the Book of Mormon on it. So, Dan Vogel has not gone into that much detail. The Interpreter Foundation of Josh Coats has. So, I recommend looking at that.

All right, our next question for Ethan. Do you believe everything negative that has been said about Charlie and Erica Kirk by their neighbors and millions online? What establishes credibility?

Yeah. Well, so here's things that can establish credibility. So, first is, I don't start presupposing Mormonism. I don't start presupposing non-Mormonism when I'm doing a debate. The question is more likely. So, we start out, we all start out with a sort of default presumption of truthfulness in human testimony, which obviously we don't think human testimony is infallible, but a sort of default presumption of truthfulness, especially when you're getting independent attestation by people. So, already when you're seeing large, large numbers of people all arriving at very similar conclusions independently of each other in a bunch of different areas about this group of people, and you're not finding impressive testimony from people that actually knew them during the relevant period that descends from this in any meaningful way. And then when we go and dig in and we see lots of the testimony passes things like the criteria of embarrassment. We have lots of character witnesses for the negative testimony that these are known to be good, reputable people. We can see accounts and embellishments. We can demonstrate an evolution in the testimony of the other guys. We can show that their accounts changed over time in ways that are totally consistent with what these witnesses are reporting. So, we go back and we apply all the standards of historical reasoning that we do. And if you don't start out with a presupposition that the Book of Mormon friendly witnesses are the ones that are more reliable, if you use any objective standard, you'll arrive at the conclusion Joseph Smith and his family were disreputable, unscrupulous, dishonest people who lied about the plates and that they actually originally reported it in a money digging context, the vestiges of which are retained in even their accounts.

And this is what I anticipated an, um, Ethan doing, and it's just absolutely remarkable to me that he says, "Oh, don't worry. Once you actually look at it, once you don't have a presupposition, then you'll come to my conclusion." Which, by the way, is a conclusion not arrived to by the majority of non-LDS scholars. That is why Ethan's data primarily came from the Mormonism Unveiled, Philo Dibble's affidavit. It came mostly from Dan Vogel, known as the most critical of the scholars. Dan Vogel's ex-Mormon, by the way, when we're talking about like the... It doesn't make him wrong. I'm just pointing out some presuppositions happening. And so, I'm, I have Dr. Kyle, Kyle Basher, and like, not a lot of people have done an extensive study on Joseph Smith, and they are simply not coming to the conclusions that Ethan has about Joseph Smith or his family. So, you can believe Ethan if you want when he tells you, "Don't worry, when you look at this, you're going to come to my conclusion," or you could go look at what those scholars say and, and say, and which have read more than him, by the way, and see why they came to a different conclusion. Okay, maybe some of these guys should have shown up to the debate because we've kept hearing what they say without actually engaging with any of the arguments that are being made in the debate. We're pointing to a bunch of people who don't weigh in on this opinion. So, if people believed in demons, and then they saw this set of facts, I bet they would agree. Even if they didn't think it was probable it was demons, the facts were more consistent with demons than with God. I think that's a thing that reasonable people would agree on. You don't have evidence that reasonable people would disagree with that. So, I don't know why we keep bringing up that point. But yes, when you actually look at the evidence and you evaluate it, I gave a detailed explanation in my opening going through. I wasn't just presupposing that these witnesses were telling the truth. In addition to just pointing out the bare credibility indicators and the weight of all the testimony, even just taken at face value, I went through and I showed there are undesigned coincidences between the accounts that make, don't make any sense if they, these are actually invented. There's details in the accounts that don't make any sense for the people to have invented if they weren't actually real. Even if we took Joseph's account, we can see that it has a narrative structure that's far more consistent with an actual evolved version of the original account that's being given by people like Willard Chase. So, I'm giving arguments that go even way deeper. None of them are being engaged with. We're getting vague gestures to scholars who obviously don't accept either of our worldviews, so who cares?

All right, next one for Luke. What public vindicatory miracles can be pointed to by Luke on the level of the various Marian apparitions such as Fatima, Lourdes, Knock, and Guadalupe?

Knock my socks off. Yeah. So, I, I will point out that it took the Catholic Church how many years, across how many members, to have a Fatima? And so, you're, you're basically comparing apples and oranges. When we look through the various experiences that I can find across these tens of millions of people across hundreds and thousands of years, then you need to produce from, I don't know if they're saying from just Joseph Smith or from the church itself, then you need to produce something equal to it with a sample size on the order of three, four, maybe even five orders of magnitude smaller than that. So, the, the framing is, I would disagree with it. However, uh, we do have instances that I will agree are smaller than, than something like Fatima. There was an instance of Joseph Smith healing somebody's hand. They couldn't use it to work. They had rheumatism. And, and this is from John Turner again. Multiple people, not part of the church, didn't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, attested to the fact that her hand was healed. And there's a couple others like that, but I'll, I'll just submit that as one possibility. They, they are out there if you look for them. Yeah.

So, sample size shouldn't be an issue, given that supposedly these guys believe in God and that God actually is a really powerful and really smart guy who apparently likes Mormonism better than every other religion. So, if God wants to do epic, colossal miracles, you realize Christianity started out as just a few guys. But how did God make it spread? Oh yeah, through colossal public miracles of the kind that Mormons never have and that Catholics do, right? So, the miracles that are actually... And you go through my blog, you go through all the video discussions that I've done, look at the evidence for Catholic miracles, and then compare it against the measly scraps that are supposedly the fullness of truth in the LDS gospel. And you ask, God, and the Bible says it. The Bible says that God uses miracles to prove who's right. And then we're looking at that, and we have way, way, way more impressive miracles than they do, to the point where all their guys are saying, "Okay, miracles don't prove anything. They're invalid proofs. You know, demons can do arbitrary, arbitrary miracles." That's their stance. Joseph Smith would have said that all our stuff is demonic. That's what he would have said. But they're apparently, I mean, modern Mormons are a little trigger-shy about going with what their actual super-discerners of demons said.

Yeah, I mean, you can, you can put that standard for God. That, that's fine with me, and then decide that Mormonism doesn't meet that standard. I'm fine with that. Um, I don't think that many Christians that have converted to Christianity have done so because they've heard about miracles that happened. I believe that conversion to Jesus Christ comes through personal experience with him. And that's something that's going to be more lasting, and it's going to be something that's more personal. And so interacting with it on that personal level is going to be what allows you to have that discernment rather than trying to become a historian and analyzing all these different things on like an academic level, which like, the standards of history that we use today are only a couple hundred years old. What they were using back in the ancient times was a lot different tools. So, it's interesting that God would use like that method to convert himself when we have a lot of people that are not in Ethan's position. Ethan's a very intelligent guy. He has access to a lot of information. I believe that God speaks to people and makes himself known to people, um, in all various circumstances and times in history.

All right. And unfortunately, uh, this will have to be our last question because of our time constraints, but it comes from Thoughtful Faith. And it's for, uh, obviously for Ethan. Why would a demon write a book to millions of people telling them to give their lives to Jesus and to love God and their fellow man, just to make them not Catholic? Doesn't loving Christ and man make you more Catholic?

Okay. Well, just to be clear, if you think that my answer to this question is silly, then it's not just me you have an issue with. It's Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, everybody. All the highest authorities in your church who had supernatural insights into how demons work, they claim to have those, right? They're the ones who are telling me that demons prophesy very close to the truth in order to first trick people. And guess who all the people who are being tricked to join the Mormon cult are? They're all Protestants, right? So, they already accept Christianity. So, what does he do? The initial revelations are very sympathetic. They're just a little bit different than what Christians normally accept. But really, the main purpose is to accredit Joseph Smith. And then what happens immediately later? Oh yeah, we start finding out about Kolob and God was a man and heavenly mother and, you know, Jesus is the brother of Satan. And then that's what all these people wind up believing. And we find out about the racial priesthood and we find out about, you know, okay, black people, mark of Cain. We find out about all this stuff later on, right, after the demons get their foot in the door, right? And that's exactly what they do. That's what all your smartest guys, your top guys who know the most, who talk to God all the time, that's what they say demons do. So, you can't act incredulous that I'm making this argument. I'm reasoning exactly like Joseph Smith.

And of course, then Ethan would push back and say, when Jesus started his ministry and and was preaching and healing and was just mostly doing nice things for people, giving the Sermon on the Mount, and then slowly revealed himself to be God over time, or even the, the way that God works, I forget the technical word you guys have for it, but throughout the whole Old Testament, God is slowly bringing people into the full knowledge of himself. Well, that's how God works. But then if Joseph Smith employs some sort of a "milk before meat" approach, well, then that's evidence of the demon's deception and how they're trying to slide you in the door. And so, I, I see it as a pretty double standard. I obviously agree with my friend Jacob Hansen that God, as Jesus exemplified in his life, is really concerned about you being like Jesus. And while your beliefs are important, what really motivates you and be creates a disciple of Christ within you is that practice. And that's what the Book of Mormon is obsessed with. And that's why the restoration started with that rather than these more esoteric doctrines that were introduced later.

Okay. And I think this just gets us to a theme throughout this debate, which is these guys, it seems like implicitly they realize that Joseph Smith didn't talk to God, because they don't seem to care what he thinks or how he reasons or what he says about what demons can or cannot do and how they operate. He just seems totally unfazed by that and is just going with his personal intuitions over, like, the guy who is literally claiming supernatural prerogatives to know how demons work and what he's specifically saying about how demons work. But regardless, yeah, it makes perfect sense. There are going to be superficial similarities between what demons do and what God does. Why? Because they're deceivers. They're trying to imitate God. That's their entire goal. They're smart guys trying to imitate God. Now, God is more powerful than them. So, what God does is he makes sure that there always are clear signs when the demons are working. But he lets them imitate. He makes sure there are clear signs. So, like slicing the throat of lambs, you know, and then having them be led around in a circle to go to evil spirits, and then the entire town getting demon-possessed, and then people instantly convulsing with demons the second you try to get ordained to the priesthood, and then having a harem of secret wives, and then having a giant banking failure and being, you know, indicted for banking fraud. All these sorts of things don't remind me of what Jesus seemed like when he was introducing the gospel to the world for the first time. It seems like what would happen if you took like a really evil guy and had him try to imitate Jesus and then through his own fallibility, look at the result.

All right, that is going to end our official time of the debate. Now, we do still have 13 super chats. So, I want to ask, uh, both of you guys, do, do we have any more time or do we need to have a hard cutoff here? Cuz if so, it's, it's no big deal.

I feel like...

I would be fine to do a lightning round and it, like, suggest...

And only the person asked the question answered. I, I would be fine with that.

All right.

All right. If another religion produced members who were just as charitable, faithful to their spouses, devoted to their children, and committed to their communities as Mormons, would that prove its teachings were true?

I'm, I'm assuming this is to me.

That's what it seems like.

Okay. I, it would prove that the teachings that produced that weren't demonic, which would be the topic of our debate tonight.

All right. Next one. "Ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men." So, that one is not a question, but I did want to put it up because they sent in a super chat. Luke, do you believe in a heavenly mother, mothers, like President Oaks does? If so, what is her role in creation?

Yeah, I do believe that. And I don't know what her role is because very little's been revealed.

Ethan cannot engage with the Book of Mormon text. Wonder why. I'm assuming that's for Ethan.

I mean, I was happy to answer any questions about the Book of Mormon text that I was asked. My argument wasn't mainly based off of literary criticism of the Book of Mormon, right? If that were my argument, I would talk about the Book of Mormon text more. I wanted to talk about how the Book of Mormon was made. So, that's what I focused on, all the historical evidence about how it was made. And then what we heard about was like a bunch of vague references to John Turner.

All right. What is Luke's exact criteria for assessing witnesses as credible or not credible?

My exact criteria? I don't know if I have an exact criteria, which is in part why I rely on historians and don't try and come up with my own theories and analyses of people's character. Um, but the general historical criteria, uh, embarrassment, multiple attestation, early, that kind of stuff.

All right. Luke. What Old Testament prophet was Joseph Smith holier than?

Which Old Testament prophet? I would say a good amount of them. Part of the problem with this Joseph Smith thing is if you can't spend time with him, if it's just kind of like a bam, bam, bam, Gish gallop collecting, seems like Ethan had about seven or so points that he really hit on over about 24 years of Joseph Smith's life. You can paint a lot of different pictures using that amount of data. So, I just say go into the, the data more itself and see what other people have said about him as well.

Joseph taught a key in discerning evil spirits is prayer. In your opinion, does God abandon the millions of Latter-day Saints who have prayed and gained a testimony to deception of evil spirits?

Uh...

I assume that's for Ethan.

Yeah. Well, so Joseph Smith didn't teach that a key in discerning evil spirits was prayer for private individuals who weren't the regular constituted authorities and didn't have the priesthood, which is what he says in the "Test the Spirits" article that I was quoting, right? What he actually says is that there's literally no way for people besides the regular constituted authorities because the problem he was having is a whole bunch of false prophets were rising up and challenging him, and obviously all of them claimed to pray. So, what he was saying was, "No, no, no, guys, you got to run it through my centralized authority, or otherwise you won't be able to tell." And it makes sense that he felt that way because, as I pointed out earlier in the debate, within Doctrine and Covenants, we have a revelation that one of the Book of Mormon witnesses used a seer stone to get demonic revelations. And then the number two guy in the church at the time, Oliver Cowdery, who was given like revelatory superpowers, was deceived about it. And he prayed, and even he couldn't tell. So, who are you, Joe Mo? Why do you think you're better than Oliver Cowdery, you know, at the peak of his powers for telling the difference by praying? So, within a Mormon worldview, you can't tell the difference by praying. So, if that's your criteria, it's self-defeating.

All right, let's, uh, let's see if we can keep the answers a little bit shorter. Ethan, I think you're the main one having this problem.

Sorry, I'm a little loquacious.

Uh, all right. If the Book of Mormon leads to a religion that teaches God as a composite, contingent being, and therefore a creature, how could that not be demonically inspired for, for you, Luke?

I, I would just reject the premise that that is the, the truth. And I'd wonder why it took a couple hundred years to get to that conclusion if it, if it was taught by God in the Bible.

All right, Ethan. Why do you think it's likely demons enhanced Joseph Smith's ability to write? As someone who has read it, it doesn't seem to require any non-human ability.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just willing to assume arguendo that the text has features that are like impossible for human composition. And like, if you actually go look and you look, you reconstruct from all the witness testimony, like it's an impressive literary feat, you know, if it exceeds the capacity of like human working memory or not, you know, I'll leave better qualified people than me to debate that question, right? That doesn't matter either way for my thesis. So, I'm going to assume it for the sake of argument in this debate and then just show how the demons are a better fit for the facts than basically the God hypothesis.

Luke, is there any witness that can verify the content of the plates besides Joseph Smith?

Yeah. So, the three witnesses in their testimony that they never denied, that was contemporary, that met the criterion of embarrassment because they left the church and still held to that testimony. In that they said that the angel told them that the writings on the plates were a translation that showed up in the Book of Mormon. So, that would be the verification of the content of the plates outside of finding Hebraisms and all this literary stuff we're not addressing in this debate.

Question for Ethan. Would you be willing to debate a non-LDS historian who disagrees with you on the character of Joseph Smith? That seems to be the main point of your argument.

Well, yeah. I mean, I mean, if there's a non-LDS historian who wants to talk with me about the character of Joseph Smith, I'd love to talk with them.

Follow up for Ethan: By saying the demons deliberately inspired the Book of Mormon to be aligned with biblical Christianity to deceive, are you admitting the book aligns with the word of God on its own?

Well, again, what I... So, large parts of it literally are just like verbatim from the Bible, and there are like other parts of it that are like just like very loosely adjusted, you know, like there's like editorial smoothing and then it's embedded in a new context, but they're basically just putting the Bible in this like Indian origins fanfic context. Now, so if you call that aligning with the word of God, I mean, how many like outrageous Trinitarian heresies do you have to teach before you don't align? You know, I think one. And so, I, I do allege that it teaches at least that. And I mean, it has like Christological errors and there are like inconsistencies in the text, you know, but that's not what I care about too much in this debate. Just the whole point is, the whole point here is just, can you tell just on the basis of how nice and good something sounds whether it's demonic? I agree with the Bible in Acts 16 and Joseph Smith. No. And but Luke and Jacob Hansen and all these guys, they have their own opinion. They haven't really cited any authorities to support it.

All right, last one. Why did you lie, Luke? Which, by the way, is a conclusion not arrived to by the majority of non-LDS scholars. The historical scholarly consensus is that the Book of Mormon is just an untrustworthy, uh, I guess book with little evidence.

Yeah. So, maybe you misheard me. I'm not saying scholars agree the Book of Mormon is true. I was speaking about the character of Joseph Smith. Ethan has very strongly stated multiple times that Smith and his whole, whole family are liars, deceivers, completely untrustworthy, summoning demons. And I'm pointing out that, and the problem is, refuting something takes a lot longer. And it wasn't even the topic of this debate, which is why I didn't go into it a lot because, and so really the only thing I can do is point out, look, almost nobody agrees with Ethan. And I didn't use anybody from my own side to say that. And so, you, you can go look at them and, and see why they came to that conclusion if you're interested in looking more into it.

All right, that is going to do it for us. And, um, I really apologize about the, uh, camera issues that I've had tonight, and I guess for, for Luke's as well. Um, I don't know.

Mine were probably worse. So, I, apps were involved.

Hey, tonight, go nice, normal, off-the-shelf, everyday technology for Ethan. Like, it, it just works. Sometimes this fancier stuff is a little... finicky. All right. I appreciate you guys joining, uh, and, and obviously everyone here watching live and everyone watching in the future. So, uh, thanks to, to both of you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Like I said, you can find out more about both of these debaters. Uh, the, uh, I've got bios for them in the description if you'd like to learn more about either of them. And with that, we will see you guys in the next Capturing Christianity video. See you guys later.