Pints With Aquinas - Is the Book of Mormon Divinely Inspired? w/ Jacob Hansen & Trent Horn

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Jacob Hansen, of Thoughtful Faith, and Trent Horn, of The Counsel of Trent, debate the Book of Mormon. A wide ranging debate that touches archeology, witness accounts, the life of Joseph Smith, and more. You don't want to miss out! Stream Sponsors: Strive21: https://strive21.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Exodus90: https://exodus90.com/matt  

Any sinner is capable of being a great sinner. And we're live here with Jacob Hansen and Trent Horn. Welcome to this debate. Very excited for it. Thank you for coming in studio. Thank you for coming in studio. Thank you. Thank you. Something nice about having people around a table than doing these Skype interviews. Rather than doing lengthy introductions, you can check below to learn more about our debaters.

The topic for the debate is, is the Book of Mormon divinely inspired? We're going to have opening statements of 15 minutes each and then a rebuttal of seven minutes each, a second rebuttal of four minutes each. We'll then have a cross examination. Each debater will have 15 minutes followed by audience Q&A. If you want to have your if you want to direct a question to one of the debaters, feel free to put in a super chat, but please know that we may not be able to get to all of them. So don't get angry with me if and when that happens. I thought it would be helpful if I read a description of the Book of Mormon

so that we both know what we're talking about. And this is an excerpt that both Trent and Jacob have have agreed to. The Book of Mormon is a religious text considered scripture to Latter-day Saints. The book describes itself as a record of ancient American people who descended from a family that left Jerusalem around 600 BC. The book focuses on two main groups called Lamanites and Nephites. Did I get that right? That's correct. Good. Their prophets' teachings, their wars, and their interactions with Jesus Christ who appears

after his resurrection. The text emphasizes faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, and the importance of following God's commandments. It aims to complement the Bible and offer additional insights into God's dealings with his children. The Book of Mormon purports to have been written on gold plates and buried by the prophet Moroni in the early 5th century AD. In 1827 Joseph Smith reported being directed by Moroni's spirit to retrieve the plates. Smith claimed he translated the plates through the gift and power of God.

The translated text known as the Book of Mormon was central to the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and along with the Bible is considered scripture to its members. All right, so since Jacob is taking the affirmative of is the Book of Mormon divinely inspired, Jacob, whenever you want to begin, you have 15 minutes. All right. Thank you very much. Let me do this. Yeah, thanks for being here too. This is fun. All right. Okay, well, first of all, thank you to Matt and Trent for both of you guys for making this debate happen. It's an honor to be here Now for most people the Book of Mormon is kind of a joke. It's a laughable work of religious fiction

But isn't that what many people say about the Bible? Trent today will argue Or today I will argue that if you take the Book of Mormon as seriously as you take the Bible, a profound mystery emerges. Not only does the book have a demonstrable positive effect on people, it almost certainly did not come from Joseph Smith when you look at the evidence that most people are not even aware of. Things like, one, archaeological evidence, two, literary evidence, three, historical evidence, four, eyewitness testimony, and five, the positive effect that the book has on people. If Trent wants to say it's reasonable for a person to believe in the Bible,

I will say that this evidence makes it reasonable to believe in the divine inspiration behind the Book of Mormon. So let's start with archaeology. The Book of Mormon begins by describing Lehi's family's journey and claims that they come to a place in southwest Arabia that was called Nahom. There they buried Ishmael there and they said that the trail turned east and it just so happens that in the 1990s the German Archaeological Institute discovered a place called Nahom in southwest Arabia right where the ancient frankincense trail turns east. It also was a place of burials and astoundingly it even had a grave with the name Ishmael on it that dated to the sixth century century BC. A lucky guess? Well, maybe.

But it gets even crazier because the Book of Mormon says that due east of Nahom is a coastal land that Lehi called bountiful because of its green landscapes, fruit trees, running water, iron ore, wild honey, and in total more than a dozen specific features totally out of place for the deserts of Arabia. And guess what you find when you go to the coast directly east of Nahom. You find the strange Dhofar region of Oman. It's an unusual 20-mile stretch of lush coastline which contains every one of the dozen specific features described in the Book of Mormon. It's an astounding bullseye. Now I could go on and talk about the discovery of the Valley of Lemuel and other evidences from archaeology, but let's go on to number two, the literary evidence.

So Trent's theory is that a 23-year-old farm laborer with a third grade education was not only able to come up with real undiscovered locations in the Near East, but that he was also able to write a 500 page book in a little over two months in a single draft. How remarkable is this? Well, have you ever written an eight-page, single-spaced essay in a single draft? Try doing that every single day for the next three months. Studies show that genius authors like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King produce about 200 to 400 words a day.

Joseph was able to produce an astounding 4,000 words per day. And in a single draft, he produced one of the most influential religious texts of all time. This complex book includes multiple overlapping narratives, multiple writing styles, complex theology, Psalms, chiastic poetry, authentic ancient Hebrew legal forms, and much much more. Even non-Mormon Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Walker Howe said that what Joseph produced should quote rank among the greatest works of American literature and the atheist literary critic Harold Bloom after studying Smith called him a religious genius. So if Trent wants to say that Joseph was just some genius

storyteller that was making things up, he's also going to need to explain away the authentic historical aspects of the book. For instance, here's some funny sounding names in the Book of Mormon. Himnai, Luram, Mathonai, Acha, Amonaiha, Chemish, Hagoth, Molokai, Abish, Mathonaiha. Now pretty much everyone thought that those were just made up names, until during the past 80 years archaeologists have discovered every single one of them in various ancient Hebrew texts. Trent is going to need to explain how Joseph, during his stream of consciousness dictation process was able to make up over a dozen undiscovered ancient Hebrew names. Now moving on, the Catholic Answers website

says that chiasmus is an ancient Hebrew literary form that lists items in one order and then poetically repeats them back in reverse order. For example, he that finds his life shall lose it and he that loses his life shall find it is a simple two-item chiasm. Now, remarkably, in 1967, textual scholars discovered dozens of complex chiasms in the Book of Mormon, including one in Alma 36, spanning 30 verses with an astounding 17 items given in one order and then back again in reverse order interwoven into a poetic sermon on Christ's redemptive power. The scholar John Welch calls it one of the finest examples of chiastic composition anywhere in world literature. Also, Trent needs to explain why the Book

of Mormon makes so many authentic Hebrew word plays. For example, Jershon in the in Hebrew is associated with the idea of an inheritance and it just so happens that Jershon is the name given to the quote land of inheritance for the refugee people of Ammon. Also, it should be noted that the Book of Mormon contains 337 proper names, yet none of them have the letter Q, X, or W in them. Now that may seem like an odd pattern until you realize that ancient Hebrew did not have the letter Q, W, or X. Also, what are the chances that King Zedekiah had a son named Mulek, as the Book of Mormon predicts?

Well, he did, but we didn't know that until the 20th century. And I could go on and on. Let's go on to number four, eyewitness testimony. Did you know that we have over 150 statements from a total of 19 different eyewitnesses who despite facing extermination orders, mob violence, and two of them being murdered went to their deaths saying that they saw the gold plates. Can you imagine how excited Trent would be if we discovered over 150 accounts from 19 separate eyewitnesses of the resurrection? Here are just two of these accounts. Someone once claimed that Martin Harris, one of the witnesses,

has hallucinated and only saw the plates in a vision. Here was his response, quote, "'Gentlemen, do you see this hand? "'Are you sure that you see it? "'Are your eyes playing a trick or something? "'No. "'Well, as sure as you see my hand, "'so sure did I see the plates.'" Trent has also implied in his book on Mormonism

that they were liars and they were part of a 19-person conspiracy to join Smith for personal gain. But this conspiracy theory makes no sense when you learn that many of these eyewitnesses eventually left the church or were excommunicated, but still refused to deny their testimony despite immense pressure to do so. Look up the history over and over when these witnesses had everything to gain by denying their testimony, they would not do it. Another one of the witnesses to the gold plates was named Oliver Cowdery.

He said the following on his deathbed to his friend. He said, Jacob, I want you to remember what I say to you. I'm a dying man. And what would it profit me to tell you a lie? I know that where have I testified is true. It was no dream, no vain imagination of the mind. It was real. But how can you tell if this book was divinely inspired and not demonically inspired? Well, our Lord Jesus Christ answered this. He said that future prophets would come and quote,

by their fruits ye shall know them. So imagine there was a book out there that consistently caused people to become more giving, more loving, more faithful, and more Christ-like. Would it be crazy to think that such a book was in some way divinely inspired? Well that book exists and it's called the Book of Mormon. The published academic literature is remarkable. Latter-day Saints give an astonishing seven times more volunteer work to their community than your average American. Latter-day Saints financially give four to six times more to non-profits than your average American and that's more than any other major religious group in the country. Latter-day Saint temple marriages are three to five times less likely to end in divorce,

and those stable marriages produce more children than any other major religious group. Also, in 2010 Pew Research found that people from these Latter-day Saint families knew more about the Bible than any other Christian group that they studied. And just to top that off, Latter-day Saints live an astounding seven years longer and experience significantly better physical and mental health than your average American. So it should not surprise us that despite the continuous mockery of our beliefs, even by other Christians, studies on happiness find over and over that Latter-day Saints report the highest levels of life satisfaction. Now we are not a perfect people,

okay? We have our issues. But Trent is going to have to explain how an evil con man produced a book that leads people to be so consistently healthy, happy, and charitable. Keep in mind, Christ himself said that an evil tree does not bring forth good fruit. So why is it that Latter-day Saints are demonstrably such a benefit to the communities that they reside in? This is not a mystery for me. I have experienced the real power that comes from words like these in the Book of Mormon. Quote, and we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ,

we preach of Christ, and we prophesy of Christ that our children may know to what source they may look for remission of their sins. And now seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which is the light of Christ, I beseech you that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ. And if ye will lay hold upon every good thing

and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ." It's hard to believe that our friend here, Matt Fradd, has actually said that Catholics should burn those words because he believes that the Book of Mormon is demonic. But if you actually read the book, you will find the Book of Mormon explicitly puts Jesus Christ at its center, and that is why doing, and that is why along with the Bible it is the power to change people including me and that is why despite derision and mockery I am here to proclaim the book of mormon is another divinely inspired testament of Jesus Christ. So here's what I want Trent to do. I want him to stick his head in a hat and I want him to dictate eight single-spaced pages every day for the next two and a half months and create a poetic and theological work

with multiple narrators that predict specific undiscovered locations in the Near East and that correctly predicts dozens of elements specific to those locations. He will also need to come up with over a dozen undiscovered names in the ancient Near East and dictate over a dozen poetic chiasms, including one with on human redemption with 17 elements given in one order and then repeated back in reverse order, all with his face buried in a hat. Also, he'll need to create multiple authentic Hebrew word plays, predict the undiscovered name of an ancient Israelite prince and create 300 names with

plausible Hebrew origins without using the letters W, Q, or X. He must do this stream of consciousness dictation in the presence of multiple witnesses and he must do it in a single draft. And what he produces must be called genius by atheist literary critics 150 years from now. Then he must convince 19 people so powerfully that they saw gold plates that they don't deny their testimonies even on their deathbeds or even after he excommunicates them from his church. I posit that it is unreasonable to think that Trent could do all of these things and so it is unreasonable to think that Trent could do all of these things. And so it is unreasonable to think that Joseph could.

Now, Trent and I both agree it is reasonable to believe that the Bible is inspired. But despite the archaeological, literary, historical, eyewitness, and spiritual evidence, Trent will reject the inspiration behind the Book of Mormon, and this will clearly expose Trent's double standard. Trent will argue like an atheist today. Just watch. Essentially, all of the arguments that Trent makes against the Book of Mormon are the same arguments that atheists can make against the Bible or the Catholic Church. For example, he'll say that the Book of Mormon is not inspired because he thinks that there's not enough archaeological evidence.

But will Trent apply that same standard to the Book of Exodus or the many other biblical books that lack essentially any archaeological evidence for the events that they describe? He'll talk about anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, but he'll ignore biblical anachronisms like iron tools being made by two volcano a thousand or more years before the Iron Age. So watch carefully. Will Trent deal with the evidence that I've presented or will he argue like an atheist? without a human time? All right. Thanks very much, Trent You have 15 minutes whenever you start talking or click the timer Alrighty

This is fun All right. Well, thank you Matt. Thank you, Jacob In 1986 the Mormon president Ezra Taft Benson, said, just as the arch crumbles, if the keystone is removed, so does all the church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. So Jacob is the burden of showing the Book of Mormon is divinely inspired. He gave some reasons, and I'll address those in my rebuttal. And I'll show that I certainly don't argue with a double standard.

But for now, I want to give you four reasons, positive reasons, to show the Book of Mormon is merely a human document. So, number one, geographic mystery. Many Bibles contain maps that describe where biblical events took place. If you get Christian, Jewish, and atheistic scholars together in a room, they would agree on those maps, even though they disagree about what happened at those sites. But you can't do that for the Book of Mormon. In spite of all its geographical references, Mormons only know the events in the Book of Mormon took place somewhere in North and South America.

Some Mormons say they took place in Central America, others say as far away as the Great Lakes or the American Heartland. That would be like Christians disagreeing on whether Jesus was crucified in Judea or England. And the silence in the archaeological record is deafening. For example, one of the largest cities in ancient America, Keokia, had about 20,000 people spread out over 100 earthwork settlements. But Zarahemla, a city in the Book of Mormon that had at least 100,000 people in it, has

never been found. We haven't even found a single example of Hebrew or Egyptian script that should be in the New World if the Book of Mormon were true, though we have found ancient examples of words like Israel and the Old World. Mormons can't even agree on which real rivers or mountains are described in the Book of Mormon. Fletcher B. Hammond wrote in the Geography of the Book of Mormon that God changed the world's topography after the fact so that faith would be required to believe in the

Book of Mormon. Very convenient. Plus, the Book of Mormon contains things we know did not exist in ancient America, and these anachronisms are nothing like what is alleged in Scripture. For example, it describes horses and chariots, even though there were no chariots and horses were introduced after Christopher Columbus. Some Mormons say the word horses refers to tapirs, and the chariots were litters carried

by other humans. But then why are the horses always mentioned with the chariots if they didn't pull them, and why would you want an overgrown pig with a royal litter? It's no wonder the National Geographic Society has said, Archaeologists and other scholars have long probed the hemisphere's past, and the society does not know of anything found so far that is substantiated in the Book of Mormon. And while not every biblical event has archaeological confirmation, scholars roughly agree on where they allegedly happened.

And this is far different than an entire ancient history like what is alleged in the Book of Mormon having no archaeological evidence for it, including alleged things found in the Old World like Nahom from letters that are just NHM and other words that are very similar to Hebrew words. Alright, number two. My second reason is that Joseph Smith was a false prophet. The book of Deuteronomy says a false prophet leads people away from the true God and he fails to predict the future.

Joseph Smith is guilty on both of these counts. So we should not believe God used a false prophet like him to transmit inspired revelation. In his history of the church, Smith prophesied that Jesus would return sometime in the 19th century, and that the government of the United States would be overthrown, both of which of course didn't happen. Mormons like to say Joseph Smith predicted the Civil War 30 years before it happened, but anyone at the time knew there were troubles between the North and South. Smith also predicted that, quote, War will be poured out upon all nations beginning at

this place, but no other nations fought in the American Civil War, which shows this was a false prophecy. And Smith definitely led people away to believe in false gods. At the funeral for Elder King Follett, Joseph Smith said, God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens. According to the Book of Abraham, which Smith also allegedly translated, God is a super-powered man who rules near a star or planet named Kolob. If Mormons are faithful enough, they too can become gods and rule over their own universes

alongside the spouses they married in this life. But this contradicts a central truth about God. The Creator is not and never has been a creature. The omnipotent God can become man or assume a human nature along with his divine nature, but man cannot become God. The fact that Smith taught the contrary means he is a false prophet. Speaking of the book of Abraham, Smith claimed he translated an ancient papyrus written in Abraham's own hand that talks about the gods creating the world, but even Mormon Egyptologists agree that the papyrus he allegedly translated from was simply a collection of 2nd century Egyptian funerary

texts that say nothing about Abraham and definitely were not written by him. Some Mormon apologists claim that Joseph Smith was just using the papyri to help him write down visions that he had. But in his own diary, Smith claims to have translated the document. He even wrote in Egyptian alphabet and grammar to help him translate, even though he wasn't actually doing that. But it's not only the Book of Abraham that reveals that Smith was a false prophet. This is a three quarter scale model of the gold, the alleged golden plates the Book of Mormon was translated from. Two-thirds of them were sealed and couldn't be opened. So that means

there were at most 40 plates, about six by eight inches with characters on them, all right? And on these 40 plates, there would have been enough characters to contain information in the 550 pages of the Book of Mormon. In order to contain that much information, every character on this plate, on any of these plates, would have to represent 50 to 80 words. But ancient hieroglyphics do not work like that. Joseph Smith thought they did until decades later in the 19th century. The language of the Egyptians was deciphered and we saw that that is not the case. Actual ancient metal plates, like the plates of Darius,

only contain about 200 words per page. What is in the Book of Mormon could not on any so-called reformed Egyptian or any real language have been contained on alleged golden plates like these. This shows Smith's claim about the reformed Egyptian was simply part of his own imagination. In 1828, Martin Harris offered to assist Joseph Smith on the translation of the plates, but Harris lost 116 pages of the translated manuscript that

Smith gave him. So Smith claimed in response that God was angry at the loss of the pages and God would only allow Smith to translate that story from another set of plates that were included. Those plates told the same story as the original manuscripts that were lost, but from a slightly different perspective. Now this all seems odd, doesn't it? Well, it doesn't seem odd if you think that

if Smith were just dictating a story from memory and not actually translating, it would have been nearly impossible for him to reproduce what he originally dictated to Martin Harris and prove he wasn't a prophet. Smith even describes in his book Doctrine and Covenants how his critics would have used the loss of the pages to try to prove he was not miraculously translating the golden plates and so he wasn't a prophet. Finally, Smith did what many false prophets have done throughout history. He used his status to acquire power, such as by becoming a town mayor, running for president of the United States and acquiring multiple wives for himself,

some as young as 14 years old, which was very large age difference. Even in the 19th century, where women on average married at the age of 20 or 21, Smith lied to his wife, Emma Emma about two of these marriages, to sisters Emily and Elisa Partridge. And one Mormon apologist even admits, it is certainly true that Joseph did not disclose all of his plural marriages precisely when they happened. Smith also ordered a printing press to be destroyed for publishing works that were critical of him. He was later arrested in connection to this act and died in a shootout using a gun smuggled

into the jail where he was being held. Joseph Smith was not a true prophet who died a martyr's death. He was a false prophet who met the ignoble end of so many other false prophets throughout history. Number three, the argument from plagiarism and mediocrity. I'm not Mormon for the same reason Jacob isn't Muslim. Many Muslims say the Quran must be divinely inspired because an illiterate shepherd could not have composed

something so beautiful and complex. Now Jacob might say, Muhammad, maybe he wasn't incapable of doing that, or maybe somebody else wrote the Quran, but he would say any human explanation is far more likely than God giving a public revelation that contradicts what he'd already revealed in Scripture, for example. And that's what I say about the Book of Mormon. Now I will say this, the Book of Mormon is good and original. However, the good parts aren't original to the Book of Mormon, and the

original parts aren't good. When it comes to the actual original parts of the Book of Mormon, they do lack a divine quality. While many non-Christians are familiar with eloquent biblical stories like the parable of the prodigal son or the Sermon on the Mount, non-Mormons are unaware of anything as eloquent in the Book of Mormon. Far from being divinely inspired, the book is barely inspired by human standards. For example, Mark Twain thought the Bible was false, but Twain also admitted the Bible had, quote, noble poetry in it and some clever fables. When it comes to the Book of Mormon, however, Mark Twain said the following, it is

chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle, keeping awake, that is. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladled in a few such scriptural phrases as, Exceeding sore, and it came to pass, which was his pet phrase. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet. Indeed, the entire book feels like a mediocre novel delivered by a sermon that's gone on far too long, as can be seen in over 1,500 uses of the phrase, and it came to pass, which

helped break up the narrative for someone who is orally presenting it. Smith's presentation was also aided by ripping off hundreds of New Testament themes and imagery that he repackaged for characters in his story. For example, if you look at Alma 19 in John 11, you can clearly tell the same vocabulary and languages used from the raising of Lazarus, including the unique word, he stinketh. In fact, one out of seven verses in the Book of Mormon, Smith simply copied from the King James Bible, which he was intimately familiar with, as he said in 1832, including its own grammatical errors that somehow show up in an ancient text.

Now the entire chapters of Isaiah that are copied in the Book of Mormon could be explained by ancient Americans regurgitating their alleged Israelite history, but that does not explain copies of the New Testament. They would not have known about being quoted in the Book of Mormon because they had already left the Holy Land and wouldn't have access to that. For example, Moroni chapter 10 directly copies 1 Corinthians 12's list of spiritual gifts, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, and discernment of spirits, all in that order.

But Moroni, allegedly living in the fourth century America, would have only known the Old Testament of his alleged ancestors. He could not have known about Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. That's why in his defense of the Book of Mormon, Robert Bennett says Smith inadvertently slipped into language with which he was familiar, which we'd expect from a good storyteller. And someone doesn't have to have formal schooling to be a good storyteller. Mark Twain himself had very little formal education. Smith's own mother, Lucy

Mac Smith, said the following about Joseph Smith in her autobiography. During our evening conversations, Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of traveling, and the animals upon which they rode, their cities, their buildings with every particular, their mode of warfare, and also their religious worship. This he could do with as much ease seemingly as if he had spent his whole life with them. Finally, there's a troubling fact that basic story of the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans were descendants of Jews who migrated to America in 600 BC, had been published a few years earlier in a book called View of the Hebrews,

written by Ethan Smith. Fawn Brody, the author of the first scholarly biography of Joseph Smith, says the striking parallelisms between the two books hardly leave a case for mere coincidence. Indeed, the idea that Native Americans were the descendants of ancient Jews who immigrated to the Americas was a common one in the 19th century, so it fits within the claim that a human author concocted the story. Especially since the science of genetics proves Native Americans are not descendants of Jewish migrants,

that disproves Smith's claim that quote, Smith said this, our Western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph, which was sold into Egypt. Now, oh, and now number four, the Catholic argument against the Book of Mormon. So the Second Vatican Council taught that the Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant will never pass away, and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mormons and Catholics agree that Jesus established a hierarchical, visible church led by successors of the apostles who possessed the priesthood.

We just disagree with the Mormon claim that this church left the earth for 1700 years until Joseph Smith allegedly restored it. After all, Jesus said the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. Moreover, this church gave us sure knowledge of the very canon of Scripture found in the King James Bible that Mormons rely on as their sacred text. But the Church that gave us the Bible authoritatively also teaches there has been no new public revelation since the time of the Apostles, which includes the Book of Mormon. So one could make this argument, if Catholicism is true, the Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired. And Catholicism is true, so the Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired. And Catholicism

is true, so the Book of Mormon is not divinely inspired. This is a valid argument, so if Jacob can't disprove Catholicism, that means Catholics should reject the Book of Mormon. But even if you are not Catholic, the fact that Mormons cannot agree on where the events in the Book of Mormon allegedly took place, Joseph Smith was in error when he tried to divinely translate or prophesy, and the Book of Mormon contains obvious plagiarisms of works its authors would not have known about, gives us good reason to believe the Book of Mormon was merely the product of human beings and is not a divinely inspired text. And the arguments I've given would apply to the Book of Mormon, but do not apply in any way to the Bible. Thank you. All right, thank you, Trent.

We now move into our first rebuttal. So Jacob, you have seven minutes whenever you'd like to start. Okay. All right, so, it's kind of funny how he says that none of these arguments apply to the Bible, like he's talking about the lack of archeology.

I've noticed he didn't bring up anything about archaeology in the book of Exodus. In fact, the archaeological evidence related to the book of Exodus is abysmal. And even Jimmy Aiken, a good friend of Trent, did an episode on it. You guys should watch it. It's pretty funny because he literally makes all the exact same arguments that you hear people make about the Book of Mormon when they're unsure about the archaeology. But there's a difference. We do know the location of where the Exodus took place. And so it's really odd to hear him have this double standard. The other thing is, is the Catholic argument. I mean, if I came to the this debate and I said Trent, or a Muslim, let let's say came to this debate and said, well, Islam is true. Therefore, anything that contradicts it must be false. That's that's the sort of

reasoning that we're going with here. Like that's that just seems really below Trent's kind of caliber of argument. Now to get into a few of the different things. First of all, I want to ask a question. What has more archaeological evidence? The book of 1st Nephi in the Book of Mormon or the Book of Exodus in the Bible? I have brought up not just that Nahom had three letters in it that are correct. It's not just a name. They found Nahom, it was at the eastern turn in the frankincense trail, just as the Book of Mormon describes. It's a burial grounds. They found a grave there from the sixth century with the name Ishmael. I'm not saying it's the Ishmael, but they did find one. And then directly east of there is a rare coastal oasis with a dozen specific features that align with it. To say that there's no archaeological

evidence whatsoever for the Book of Mormon is just absurd because can you imagine how excited Trent would be if we had that kind of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon is just absurd because can you imagine how excited Trent would be if we had that kind of archaeological evidence for the Book of Exodus or any of the first five books of the Bible for that matter, the entire Torah? Go look it up. It's funny Trent's friend Jimmy Akin said the quote, the absence of evidence for the Book of Exodus is not necessarily evidence of absence. So that's the standard Trent holds to with the book of Exodus, but he doesn't hold that for the Book of Mormon. So let's move on to, let's talk a little bit about the plagiarism argument. Again, Jimmy, Jimmy helped me out on this one because people say, well, there's biblical quotes in there, so

it must be a plagiarized book. Here's what Jimmy said about the out on this one. Because people say, well, there's biblical quotes in there, so it must be a plagiarized book. Here's what Jimmy said about the plagiarism argument. He said, quote, This isn't a good argument. Ancient texts would borrow from each other. So it's something that you would expect in the ancient world. The fact that there are passages in the Bible. In fact, there are passages in the Bible that do exactly this.

If you look at Isaiah chapter two, verses 2 through 4, it has exactly the same prophecy in the same words as Micah verses 1 through 3. And Micah doesn't give credit to Isaiah. Scholars have a name for this. They call it intertextuality. And we fivened it in the Bible so I wouldn't criticize the Book of Mormon for it. So again, it just shows that Trent will allow for intertextuality in the Bible, but he won't in the Book of Mormon. The other thing is that Trent has a whole video about how translations are done, and he talks about the difference between a literal equivalence translation and a dynamic equivalence translation.

In other words, the difference between translating idea for idea versus literal word for word. The Book of Mormon is clearly a dynamic translation of an ancient text into the King James English of the 19th century utilizing the vocabulary available to Joseph Smith. So when you have things like anachronisms, which do exist in the Bible, you come across things like anachronisms, which do exist in the Bible, you come across things like this. The Bible in English talks about candlesticks, but candlesticks didn't exist in the first century Palestine. So there's a very reasonable explanation for this that Trent would talk about.

It's called a translators anachronism. Sometimes when doing a translation, you have to use more modern words or concepts that are familiar to familiar to your audience in order to convey the intended meaning. Trent will allow this for the Bible, but for some reason he won't consider it as a possibility for the Book of Mormon. But I guess it's probably because his line of logic ultimately is the Catholic Church is true. Therefore, the Book of Mormon must be false and he's unwilling to even question that assumption. So there is a difference between an actual anachronism and an apparent anachronism.

What Trent didn't mention is that about 60 years ago, they made a big list of all these anachronisms and they found that over the past 60 years, 70% of those have been shown not to be anachronisms. For example, cement in the ancient Americas, that wasn't anachronism until it wasn't. Beekeeping in the ancient Americas was an anachronism until it wasn't.

Riding on plates itself wasn't anachronism until it wasn't. Barley was an anachronism, and Trent even had it in his book, but it actually isn't an anachronism. They found little Barley. So remember, just because something isn't an apparent anachronism and Trent even had it in his book, but it actually isn't an anachronism. They found little barley. So remember, just because something is an apparent anachronism doesn't mean it's an actual an anachronism. And so when you consider both translators and anachronisms and apparent anachronisms, you can account for these things that seem out of place in the Book of Mormon. Let's talk real quick about Joseph Smith. First

of all, it's funny, Trent says this about the Catholic Church. He says, if some members of the Church fail in the moral life, that does not change if the Church's teachings are true. So, he's going after Joseph Smith's character using kind of recycled gossip and things that, and assertions that aren't true. It'd be like me going to James White to find out about the history of the Catholic Church, right? He can dig into that rumor mill all he wants. Also, it's funny, he implies that Joseph Smith used his position in the church to get sex with more women, but for some reason he doesn't apply that same standard to Abraham or Jacob or the many other biblical prophets

that had more than one wife. Now, also, does Trent realize that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas said that plural marriage can be justified in some circumstances? Also, here's some things you guys don't know about Joseph Smith, okay? First of all, there is a difference between a sealing and a marriage. Joseph was sealed to? First of all, there is a difference between a ceiling and a marriage.

Joseph was sealed to a lot of women, but guess how many children he had with women other than his wife Emma, who he, by the way, got pregnant like 11 times. Zero. No other woman besides Emma ever conceived, and they tried to find people that they thought were tied to Joseph Smith,

and every time they find they were wrong. The reality is we don't know a lot about the nature of Joseph's ceilings to these other women, but it's easy to dig into the rumor mill to try and go after Joseph to avoid talking about the Book of Mormon. That's time. All right, Trent, whenever you're ready,

you have seven minutes. All righty. Okay. Look, even if Joseph Smith didn't write this book, that doesn't mean that God did it. The Book of Mormon is not so complex, it has to be divine. There's about 350 names in the Book of Mormon. One third of them are biblical names like Ishmael, and another third are variants like Nahom with an O instead of Nah-hum with a U in scripture. When it comes to alleged hebraisms in the text, that would make sense if it's trying to imitate the King James Bible, which is an English translation of originally Hebrew

documents. But the Book of Mormon is weird because it's a 19th century translation that makes ancient Jews sound like 17th century Christians, and the King James English was not what was spoken in Joseph Smith's time. It's more rather he wants to make the Book of Mormon sound like the King James English was not what was spoken in Joseph Smith's time. It's more rather he wants to make the Book of Mormon sound like the King James Bible. When it comes to the chiasms that Jacob brought up, those things come up in all kinds of literature, even Dr. Seuss. And his scholar Earl Wonderly has shown the most impressive chiasms like Alma 36.

They only exist if you cherry pick the text and ignore where it's not actually chiastic. And Smith didn't have to be literate. In fact, studies have shown that illiterate people have better memories. Think about all the phone numbers you used to know before you got a cell phone. Friends said that Joseph Smith's father had a tongue as smooth as oil. One witness said Joseph Smith could beat them all for tough stories. And Smith was acquainted with local Native Americans like Red Jacket or Handsome Lake that stirred his imagination for those people's connection to Christianity. We also keep in mind that Joseph Smith was a member of a juvenile debating society, and

schoolchildren in that time could memorize things like the entire Gospel of Matthew in a few weeks or give impromptu sermons that lasted for hours. And of course, 10% of the Book of Mormon are just copies of the Bible. Milman Perry has shown that Slavic oral storytellers can recite epic poems over 300,000 words in length, longer than the Book of Mormon, in just a few weeks. So the Book of Mormon being recited in a few months is not impossible by human standards. Smith recited 4,000 words per day to scribes who wrote at a speed of about 10 words per minute, and we speak at

about 150 words per minute. That's plenty of time to give a recitation, and the Book of Mormon is filled with stock phrases like behold or it came to pass, as well as recycled story structures to help an oral presenter recite it. Moreover, unlike Christ or the apostles, Joseph Smith and Mohammed, anyone else, they didn't perform any verifiable miracles to authenticate their status as prophets. All we have is a book that allegedly

no human being could create. And as I said, even if it wasn't Smith, maybe it could be someone else. We haven't been shown that only God could have been responsible for this book or the Quran or any similar kind of book coming into existence. And the argument, well, by their fruits, we know them. Well, that could also apply to the Quran. People say the Quran makes Muslims pray five times a day and they have wonderful communities and exhibit all these moral fruits. But you end the

same argument could go in against Catholicism. I could say, not against, but I could say, look, Catholicism must be true. Early Mormon teachers interpreted the Book of Mormon's references to the great and abominable church in the Book of Mormon. They referenced that to being the Catholic Church. But how could the Catholic Church be great and abominable or be false if it's produced so many great saints throughout history?

We can't compare fruit versus fruit. Mormons are very nice people. Jacob's the nicest person I've debated, especially recently, but we can't compare fruit versus fruit. We have to compare evidence versus evidence. So what about these alleged witnesses to the book of Mormon? All we have are eight people who allegedly saw golden plates under cloth, saw some kind of artifact, whether it was true or not.

And we have three witnesses who claimed to have seen an angel, though all we have is their handwriting over a state. We have signatures of their names written in Oliver Cowdery's writing, by the way, not their own signatures to these testimonies. But look at these witnesses. The three witnesses are David Whitmer, Martin Harris, and Oliver Cowdery. Let's start with David Whitmer. He later left the Mormon church, and he said in an address to all Christians, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens and told me to separate myself from among the Latter-day Saints. If I found out one of the

apostles left Jesus after his resurrection, I'd be very nervous to hear that, but none of them did that, so we see there's a difference between the Bible and Mormonism. Second, there's Oliver Cowdery. He was a cousin of Joseph Smith. He was involved beforehand. He knew Smith. He claimed to have seen visions before he met Smith, and he also claimed that dowsing rods could speak to him.

He also lived in the same city as Ethan Smith, the author of View of the Hebrews, that may have served as a source for the Book of Mormon. Finally, there's Martin Harris, one of the primary translators. Harris mortgaged his farm to fund the publishing of the Book of Mormon, which means he had a huge financial motivation to convince people of its truthfulness. Multiple sources say, though, he was incredibly superstitious. In 1842, John Clark said of Martin Harris, Harris was ready to be duped by anything, no matter where he went, he saw visions

and supernatural appearances. One time he said he met the Lord Jesus Christ, who walked by the side of him in the shape of a deer for two or three miles talking with him, as familiarly as one talks with another. Harris also admitted he only saw the plates with spiritual eyes, and some people left the church as a result of that. And Harris himself would say things that are contradictory, that he says, yes, I saw this like you see me, but he also said, I saw the golden plates just as distinctly as I see anything around me, though at the time they were covered over with a cloth.

Early Mormons were part of a magical worldview that believed in things like second sight. So seeing things with a spiritual eye or a natural eye was sometimes seen as being the same thing. And we also have the other witnesses talking about only having seen it in a vision. David Whitmer said that the angel was something he did not see. It was an impression that he felt. So going forward, there's no conclusive proof that any of them saw something supernatural. Rather, they were primed to see or feel an angel when Joseph Smith prophesied it while translating and moved them to do that. As for the plates, in 1843, brass plates were unearthed in Kinderhook, Illinois. Smith claimed that they referred to an Egyptian descendant of Ham, but a blacksmith made them.

They were in hoax. In 1845, James Strang, an early Mormon dissenter, claimed to have translated metal plates and non-Mormons confirmed they existed, which never happened for the Book of Mormon. Martin Harris, one of the original Book of Mormon witnesses, left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, left Joseph Smith's church, and became one of Strang's followers for a brief period. Jacob doesn't believe in James Strang's plates, he doesn't believe in the Kinderhook plates, and I don't believe in Joseph Smith's plates. And I'll address the other objections that Jacob raised in my next rebuttal. All right, thank you very much. We're now moving into second rebuttals of four minutes each.

Jacob, whenever you want to begin. Okay, I'll just read a couple of quotes about the character of these witnesses. Let's talk for a minute about Martin Harris. E.B. Grandin said that Martin Harris was among the early settlers of Palmyra. He is ever born the character of an honorable and upright man and obliging and benevolent neighbor had secured to himself and by honest integrity, a respectable fortune. He has left a large circle of acquaintances and friends to pity his delusion." In other words, what E.B. Grandin was saying is that he was a super awesome guy, so we're kind of in shock that he ended up following this. This is actually a hostile witness who's testifying to his character. The reality is that all of these quotes, if you actually look up

the sources on them, they're all from people who hated Joseph in the church, and so they were out being the ones saying this. But when you actually look at the people who knew these witnesses, I, you find a totally different story. I read, I highly recommend Richard Anderson's book on the witnesses. Um, the same thing can be said about Oliver Cowdery. Um, the, uh, Ohio house of representatives, uh, John Breslin, he said of him, Mr. Cowdery was a citizen that none could have been more esteemed. His honesty, integrity and industry were worthy

of the imitation of all. All of the sources you will hear from the other people, these are all antagonistic, hateful witnesses to the church. So, and also saying they only saw it under a cloth that just shows that Trent does not know what he's talking about. They very clearly talked about it in the statements themselves that are in the Book of Mormon. You can see that just shows that Trent does not know what he's talking about. They very clearly talked about it in the statements themselves that are in the Book of Mormon.

You can see that they say that they handled the plates, they looked at the characters like they were fully involved in it. But I am glad we're making progress here because Trent is recognizing that Joseph must have been some sort of a genius storyteller with an incredible imagination, but that's all just speculation.

His own mother also said, which he didn't bring this up, that Joseph was less inclined to read books than any of her other children. Okay, Joseph's own wife, these people knew him best. Said Joseph couldn't even write a well-worded letter. And if you go read the actual letters written by Joseph Smith, you very quickly learned that this was not a highly literate and educated man. Everyone thought that Joseph Smith was a doofus, even his mom and his, and at least in educational wise and the neighbors, like nobody disagreed. That's one of the reasons that people were so amazed by the Book of Mormon, especially those closest to him who knew him.

I am glad though that he did come up with the idea that he after hearing all the evidence that I presented that well, maybe Joseph didn't actually write this. Maybe someone else did. Well, then who trend needs to come up with a plausible theory for where this book came from. We have the book and the book is contrary to what he says. It's incredible. You have the thing is the people like who just read on kind of a surface level.

It sounds just like the atheist who read the Bible on a surface level. And they're like, this is a bunch of superstitious, weirdo nonsense from a Stone Age group of people. Okay, that's the kind of people that Trent is quoting here. Okay, but people who actually study it deeply, like Harold Bloom, who's an atheist, is like, this guy's a genius. We have Pulitzer Prize winners saying that this book

is among the greatest works of American literature. You can say a lot of things about the Book of Mormon, you can't say that it's simple or dumb. And it's hilarious, because Trent brought up and it came to pass as some problem. What he doesn't realize is and it came to pass is actually a Hebraism, because Hebrew didn't have punctuation.

And so what they would do is they would use phrases like and it came to pass in order to break up different things. Those are, you're right, they are in the Bible Bible and they usually are in historical narratives in the Bible and the Bible in the King James Version has a lot of those actually taken out because they became so redundant. So the redundancy of that phrase is actually evidence of its Hebrew origins. Also the fruits of Islam I'm sorry go and visit Muslim majority countries the fruits of Islam, I'm sorry, go and visit Muslim majority countries. The fruits of Islam are not comparable to the fruits of what Joseph has produced amongst

the Latter-day Saints. Also he brought up the lost 116 pages. Well, here's a problem. If Joseph had a manuscript somehow. Last time. Oh, last time? You can wrap up your sentence. Okay. Well, I'll just leave it at that. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. We are now going to take a very short break. And then when we come to a second, I am sorry. It's another one. You have four minutes. Whenever you're ready. All right.

All right. So remember that Jacob is the one who has the burden of showing the Book of Mormon is divinely inspired. I do not have the burden of proving who exactly wrote it or who didn't. He is the one who is trying to prove that God must have been involved in the creation of this book. And I am saying he has not met that level of proof at all. So the evidence that he's given us, he said, oh, you're only quoting people that hate the church.

That's not true. When David Whitmer said that he left the Mormon faith and he had wanted to have nothing to do with it, and God told him that that's Whitmer's own words that I'm quoting. Or when I'm quoting Martin Harris, I'm quoting a test, a interview Harris gave in 1859. I'm quoting the actual people's words. And yes, people did say Harris and Cowdery were honest or good people, but you can be honest and be incredibly superstitious. And my point about Harris was that he was a visionary fanatic, is what people described of him. Someone who saw spooks and the supernatural around every

corner that he turned and was primed to see things that weren't there. So we have not been given good evidence that only God could have inspired this based on the witnesses that are involved, rather than Joseph Smith himself or any other storyteller. Now when it comes to Smith's ability to create a book, no, he wasn't good necessarily at writing, but you don't have to be a good writer to be a good storyteller. You can dictate things. For example, read History of the Church, dictated by Joseph Smith. It's a good history of his church, and he dictated it to scribes. We don't see a bumbling illiterate person there. Why couldn't he dictate other things as well? When I brought up

the plural marriages, I didn't just bring up the first stuff. I didn't bring up sex, by the way. Jacob did. I just brought up the fact that he got multiple wives, which many false prophets have done throughout history. But what I did bring up was that it really makes us question his honesty. And the people I brought up, I wasn't quoting lurid anti-Mormons. I quoted FAIR,

a well-known Mormon apologetics organization, admitting that, yes, Joseph wasn't entirely honest with his wife, that he had already been sealed to other women and then resealed to them but didn't tell his wife. This imputes his honesty. Oliver Cowdery himself, in a letter to his own brother, described Joseph's sealing with Fanny Alger, a 16-year-old housekeeper, as a dirty, nasty affair. That wasn't an enemy, that's Cowdery.

Though Cowdery was excommunicated, all the witnesses were excommunicated. He came back to the church for just a few months though before he ended up dying. One of the greatest works of American literature. Have you read it? Do most professors, you know, they read, do you know any, if you're a non-Mormon, do you know any stories from the Book of Mormon? If you're a non-Christian, do you know stories from the Bible? I bet you do. That should make you really question if it's one of the greatest works of American literature. When it comes to the argument from plagiarism, my point wasn't that merely there's plagiarism. My point was that the ancient authors who lived in fourth century America were quoting from things like Paul's letter to the Corinthians that they would not have had access to because

they're descendants of people who left the old world in 600 BC. It's not play. It's not just plagiarism. It's that they were plagiarizing from things they could not have possibly known about like first Corinthians or Alma 32s plagiarism of the letter to the Hebrews. And they couldn't have known about that. But Joseph Smith could have because he's responsible for coming up with the entire story or whatever the art, whatever the argument may be. So the arguments weren't refuted.

The zero archeological evidence notice so far, Jacob has not disputed my point about the new world. This isn't like a few thousand people fleeing Egypt with disposable goods that might disappear in the desert. We're talking about over a thousand years, hundreds of thousands of people building huge settlements, engaging in warfare with chariots and iron, all sorts of things in the new world. And Jacob has not disputed my point that there is zero archaeological evidence for that, which should give us good thinking that it didn't happen. Finally, as for the Catholic argument, it is not below my caliber. Both Jacob

and I can confidently say the Quran is wrong about Jesus not being crucified because Christianity is true and because Catholicism is true, Mormonism is false. All right. So now, now we're going to have a quick break and come back for a cross examination, 15 minutes each and then Q and a do us a favor. If you're enjoying this debate, if you think it's substantive and fair, like the video, share the video, subscribe if you dare and feel free to put in super chats for the Q I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the

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When we're back, okay. Oh, we're back. Okay, good. All right. So we are going into a time of cross examination. You tell me what y'all think. Here's what I like to think when we cross examine like, so you're going to take the first 15 minutes.

That means you are free to ask him're going to take the first 15 minutes. That means you are free to ask him questions, to direct the conversation wherever you want it to go, to even interrupt him if he's filibusting or being boring. Um, and that's not being rude. That's just part of the cross-examination. Right. And then the same thing will happen for you. You're welcome to interrupt him to interject, to lead the conversation. Does that sound good? Sounds great. That's good. Um. I know these are usually the most exciting parts of the debates, but I think it's really great that both of you had some time to lay out your main arguments. So

whenever you want, Jacob, you have 15 minutes. Okay, let's get started. So Trent, why does the Book of Mormon published in 1830 correctly predict that King Zedekiah had a son named Mulek if we didn't know that until the 20th century. What people have discovered is that he had a son, his name was Mulek-hayu, it's not exactly Mulek. So there's a lot of things happen there where the Book of Mormon will create names, usually portmanteaus, like combinations of ancient names,

for example, and they tend to line up with that. I'm sure you probably do something. Do you know the shortened version of that name is Mulek? Possible, yeah. Okay, so next, why does the Book of Mormon have over a dozen authentic Hebrew names that were not discovered until long after Joseph Smith's death? Well, Joseph Smith did have access to things

like Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews. There was also- What's your source on that? That's what scholars, scholars recognize. That was something that had already been translated that he was that access to. Do you have any evidence that Joseph actually had that book?

I don't need to have access, I don't need to have evidence that he possessed it, but if it's something that he could access within his own New York library, or for example, things like the book of Enoch, were all in 1825 in New York. Okay, that's a separate subject. No, but it's extra biblical.

That wasn't the question I asked. It's pseudographical Jewish literature that has names in it that was available in the time and place. And you have no evidence that Joseph had any of that, right? He lived in a context where it's available. Okay, all right.

And if you throw a thousand dark- Do you concede the existence of chiasmus literary form in the Book of Mormon? The chiasm is something that appears in all kinds of literature. Really, 17 item chiasms, you know, regularly appear? You were talking about the chiasm in Alma 36. Alma 36, yeah.

Alma 36. And as I quoted, I quoted other scholars like Earl Wonderly who are skeptical that it is a chiasmic structure, that you only get that by cherry picking the data. It kind of sounds, do you think you might have cherry picking the data. And looking at certain things. Do you think you might have a bias against Mormonism? No, I wouldn't say so. I think it's actually published in Dialogue,

the Journal of Mormon Thought. Why does the Book of Mormon correctly predict over a dozen specific characteristics of a 20 mile stretch of coastline in the Dauphar region of Oman? Because I, even if I couldn't answer that question, that wouldn't prove that the book is divinely inspired, but just predicting things like roads go east or west or that they'll have certain things that are similar to other elements in the desert or in the Old Testament. OK, that's not very impressive. Do you do you believe that the devil is pleased when people read the Book of Mormon? Do I believe the devil is pleased when they read it? I don't know if someone reads it and comes to see

that it's meandering, that it's false. Like I'm not afraid of people choosing to. Let me quote a verse from it. Would you like me to finish my answer? Well, I think it's kind of filibustering. I'm just gonna read a verse from the Book of Mormon. It was about eight seconds, but all right. That which is, this is from the Moroni Seventh.

It says, that which is evil cometh of the devil, for the devil is an enemy unto God, and inviteth and entitheth to sin, and to do that which is evil cometh of the devil for the devil is an enemy unto God and invite us and entice this and enticeth to sin and to do that which is evil but behold everything which inviteth and enticeth to do good and to love God and to serve him is inspired of God wherefore I show unto you the way to judge for everything which persuadeth to believe in Christ is sent forth by the gift and power and of Christ does leading people towards Christ in order to serve God sound like the kind of thing

that the devil wants people to do? I could say the same thing about the Whitmerites, the Shakers, all other kinds of 19th century restorationist cults that make very similar claims to Mormons, but Mormons reject, that also try to lead people to Christ. So if it works for the Whitmerites and the Shakers, it doesn't work for the Book of Mormon.

Is the devil the one that's causing Latter-day Saint temple marriages to be three to five times less likely to end in divorce? No, it could just be basic elements of natural law that if you have very strong core values, your marriages tend to last long. Many arranged marriages and non-Christian. Do Latter-day Saints help?

Can I finish my thought, please? Do they get their values from the Book of Mormon? Do they get their, I'm sure that some of them do, but as I said, in non-Christian areas, in non-Christian parts of the world, arranged marriages last very long. That doesn't prove those Buddhist or Hindu cultures are true in their religious beliefs. Okay. Is it the devil that's causing Latter-day Saints to give seven times more volunteer service than your average American?

No, it's just a wonderful robust tithing program. So I am envious of that. Which Bible itself doesn't command tithing though. Okay. Is it the devil that's causing Latter-day Saints to know their Bibles better than almost any other, well, better than every other major Christian group in the United States? I'm sure they know it well. I know Jehovah's Witnesses also know the Bible backwards and forward. But as St. Jerome said, it's not the letter of scripture that matters, but its meaning. That's where Mormons fall flat. Got it. Why is it reasonable to believe that the book of Exodus is inspired of God? Because Jesus thought that it was, and his church says that it

is. Okay, so what is the, you have said that the most important evidence for the resurrection would be the claims that Jesus appeared in bodily form to groups of his disciples. So that the most important evidence for the resurrection would be the claims that Jesus appeared in bodily form to groups of his disciples. So the most important evidence for the resurrection, and therefore Christianity in the Catholic Church, is the witness testimony of Jesus Christ's resurrection. Is that correct? Correct, not all witness testimony is equal though.

Okay. How many specific eyewitnesses left extant written accounts of the resurrection? Well, we would say, you mean first person accounts of it? Yeah, it's eyewitnesses who left extant written firsthand accounts of the resurrection. Well, of the moment of the resurrection or the post-resurrection appearances?

The moment of the resurrection. The moment of the resurrection happened in the tomb and nobody was around, but that's inferred by seeing Christ the post-resurrection appearances? The moment of the resurrection. The moment of the resurrection happened in the tomb and nobody was around, but that's inferred by seeing Christ post-resurrection. Let's include the post-resurrection. Okay. How many written extant accounts do we have? From an eyewitness?

Yes. Well, if you believe that it was John the apostle, that would be one. Otherwise- Do the majority of scholars conclude the gospel of John was written by John? Scholars don't, no. But the most important ones we have,

we have Paul's letter to the Corinthians that records the appearances, and Paul had firsthand contact with those who had those appearances. In a vision, correct? No, he doesn't call it a vision. Oh, so it isn't a visionary experience. He said he wasn't sure if he was in the body or out of the body.

He's talking about his appearance in the heavens, and he specifically says there, I do not know if he was in the body or out of the body, but he uses a Greek word or aro that just means appeared to see. And he says in first Corinthians, have I not seen the Lord? He speaks about it in a normal way, which is very different from the Book of Mormon witnesses that repeatedly say they saw it in a vision or a trance and say, so how many total people left firsthand eyewitness accounts of the resurrection? Can you give me a number? I saw a number. Of that they saw the resurrected Jesus.

Is it more than three? I wouldn't say that. It's probably not more than three, but I would rather have reliable second-hand accounts in the New Testament than the unreliable ones for the Book of Mormon. So you have three maybe accounts, but how many people left first-hand accounts of the gold plates? Give me a number. Left first-hand accounts?

Yeah, how many people left first-hand accounts that they had seen the gold plates? All I, that they, oh, that they had seen the plates? Yes. I think, I don't oh, that they had seen the plates? Yes. I think, I don't know, there could be about a dozen people who said they saw something like this, but that doesn't mean that it's a divinely inspired artifact.

Okay. Now when it comes to the witnesses, the three witnesses and the eight witnesses, technically we only have signatures to statements, all of which were written by Oliver Cowdery. Okay, so- None of them actually signed it themselves. But here's the thing, that's actually were written by Oliver Cowdery. None of the men actually signed it themselves. But here's the thing, that was just Cowdery, they all testified later in their life that they had seen the gold plates outside of what Cowdery wrote. Cowdery was just providing the printer's manuscript to actually publish it.

So that's just a bad argument. The other thing, but here's the thing though, you have, have why here's a firsthand eyewitness statement from David Whitmer shortly before his death in 1887. He said, quote, I wish now standing as it were in the very sunset of life and in the fear of God for once and all to make this public statement that I have never in any time denied my testimony or any part thereof, which is so long been published in the Book of Mormon. I also testify to the world that neither Oliver Cowdery nor Martin Harris at ever time denied their testimony. They both died reaffirming the truth

of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Oliver's last words to me were quote, "'Brother David, be true to your testimony of the Book of Mormon.'" Okay, now do you have any extant, first-hand, signed statements like this for the resurrection? Yes or no? No, we don't have that. Okay. Why would David Whitmer make a statement like that after leaving the church and believing

that Joseph Smith was a false prophet? He made that statement because he had given a previous interview where he said, as I quoted, where he said that the angel, he did not see the appearance or shape of the angel, he felt an impression. And then when that caused an outcry, he clarified that. But what's interesting, what's the source of that quote that you just gave? He was giving an interview with, here I can bring it up here if you like. Let's see. But I do know he also said in his own word, in his own address to all Christians,

he said that God spoke to me again by his own voice and told me to separate myself from the Latter-day Saints. So it's true that David Whitmer did have a falling out with Joseph Smith over the financial failure that happened and he felt that Joseph should have known better, but he never denied his testimony. It was an interview with John Murphy, dated in 1880 when Whitmer said that.

And then later he clarified it. John, did you know that the statement I just read was in response to what Murphy had claimed that he had said? He said that David Whitmer actually came out and said, Murphy is lying. I didn't say that. No, he said that he never denied. He said that he never- You're just unfamiliar with it.

No, he said that he never denied his testimony, but his testimony is that he felt an impression of the angel, not that he beheld it. He never denied that part. He just said, I never denied my testimony. Here's a quote from- But Mormon testimonies conflate the natural and spiritual eye. So David Whitmer said this, someone accused him of being hallucinating. He said, no, sir, I was not under any hallucination nor was I deceived.

I saw with these eyes, I heard with these ears, I know of which I speak. Everything was as natural to us as it is at any time. In other words, the it's it's simply you're relying on sources. I want everyone to know this. He's relying on sources that are enemies of the church that wanted to try and make it seem like they had contradicted their testimony. Now, to go on, do you think it's plausible

that Joseph Smith did indeed have plates of some kind, some sort of a metal object? Yeah, similar to how the Kinderhook plates existed. So you think it's plausible. Can I finish? Similar to how the Kinderhook plates existed and those were a hoax or James String had the Vory plates. He could have had plates like that. That. Okay. So first of all, Joseph, all of those things are hearsay accounts of what people said that Joseph said. Okay. You

have no statement from Joseph Smith saying that he had confirmed that any of those things were ever legitimate. It was his own scribe who said that he invests. William Clayton, it was his own scribe who said that he saw that. Someone said that he said confirmed that any of those things were legitimate. It was his own scribe who said that he invested William Clayton. It was his own scribe who said that he saw that someone said that he said, these are secondhand accounts. Now, now you said that you think it's plausible that he did. My question is, why is it more likely than not? That's what plausible means. Why is it more likely than not that Joseph?

Let me be clear, those plates existed. You're referencing whether Joseph Smith attempted to translate the kind of plates. Your original question was, do I think that there were plates? There certainly could have been just like there were the kinder hook plates. No, I'm asking if it's plausible. Do you think it's plausible? More likely than not that Joseph had metal plates of some kind. I think it's plausible he had some kind of an object. People often testify there was there with people said they saw an object.

So the witnesses you think that there's you think that the witnesses are reliable to say that it is reliable that he had something. You just deny that what he had actually contained the plates. No, I deny that what he I deny that what he had were 550 pages worth of information transcribed onto 40 golden plates in a language called reformed Egyptian that never existed in the history of the world. So you don't you don't have the there were never any statements of exactly how many plates that there were. And also, if you're going to say that he forged metal plates, where's do you have any evidence that he forged metal plates? Is there anything in the historical record showing that

he actually had the ability to do that? The resources, any of it? No, but that's not my job to prove whether he did or didn't do that. The fact is there are many different hypotheses. And so if we have one hypothesis that God preserved plates that actually have information that couldn't have been contained on them in a language that didn't exist, or there were artifacts similar to other fake metal artifacts that did exist at the time, that seems more likely. Okay, so why did Oliver Cowdery say the following on his deathbed?

It was no dream, no vain imagination of the mind. It was real. Because the Mormon, the early Mormons at that time, you could read Michael Quinn's book, Mormonism and the Magical Worldview. What they say is whether something is real is something where the natural eye and the spiritual eye come together. So, for example, in the testimony of the three witnesses, it says that they saw the plates by the power of God, which is weird because I can see, let me finish. I can see these without the power of God. That makes me seem like it's something a bit more. Did the eight witnesses say that they saw it by the

power of God? I'd have to go back to their, their testimony of it. Okay, John Whitmer was one of the eight witnesses and before his death he was asked the following question about the rumor that they had only seen it under a cloth or in a vision. A newspaper article asked John Whitmer directly, he said, quote, he asked him, did you see it under the plates? And John said, quote, no, Joseph handed them uncovered into our hands and we turned the leaves sufficient to satisfy us Why should we believe you over the actual witnesses You're you wouldn't have to just believe me there could be plates like kinder hook of Ori that you turn and you look at But they're not actually ancient plates, but you have no evidence of Joseph committing metallurgical fraud

No, I don't need that because there were other people committing metallurgical fraud and just But you have no evidence of Joseph committing metallurgical fraud. No, I don't need that because there were other people committing metallurgical fraud. And just like you have no evidence that they contain a reformed Egyptian writing or had any any of these documents on them. It could have been someone else or he could have done that through someone else. Just be I don't have to provide a complete alternative account. All I have to say is that this miraculous account is severely lacking in evidence and contradicting evidence. Did they risk their lives to keep those testimonies,

to say those things? Who, Joseph Smith? Those witnesses. Well, I know that Joseph Smith was certainly risking his life because the Illinois authorities were certainly- What about the extermination order on Mormons in Missouri? Can I finish please? Well, many religious, here's the issue, many religious people risk their lives living out

their faith. So we're talking about the original witnesses here and whether someone risks their life shows evidence of their sincerity or at least their commitment. And I will say that Joseph Smith was certainly committed to try to keep this going, hopefully at least to maybe, you know, till his presidential election was over. So that's time and so Trent, you can begin with 15 minutes whenever you're ready. All right.

Take your time. Okay, let me see here. Alrighty. Okay. So let's talk about a few areas that I brought up. I want to talk about Book of Mormon geography. Do scholars, secular and religious, agree that the events in the Gospels took place within the area we now call modern-day Israel and Palestine? Yes. Okay. Do Mormon scholars agree on an area of similar size being the location of where the events of the Book of Mormon took place in the New World? Yes, I would say that most of the reputable scholars in the Latter-day Saint community

lean towards it happening in the Mesoamerica area. So you believe a Mormon scholar that defends the heartland model and says it took place around the Great Lakes is not a reputable scholar? Not in my opinion. Well, I don't find their arguments compelling. Are they reputable scholars? Depends my opinion. Well, I don't find their arguments compelling. Are they reputable scholars? Hmm, depends on the scholar. Could there be some?

Possibly, but there's reputable scholars that believe kind of things that are really weird and out there. Alrighty. While artifacts like the name of Israel being found on the Merneptah Stell have been discovered in the old world, have any artifacts with Mormon names

ever been discovered in the new world? In the new world? In the new world, the Americas. No, but that's kind of a bad example. Cause first of all, when you're searching for things in Egypt, we know the exact location where all those things happened. And so it's easier to find out.

Also the archeology- Do we not know the exact location where the Book of Mormon events took place? We don't know the exact location. I think that there are very plausible models for Mesoamerica, but here's the issue. So I would quote the non-Mormon scholar, Edwin Barnhart, who says that less than 1% of Mesoamerica

has been professionally surveyed and studied, especially in the jungle areas. So it's like saying, well, your son looked in the closet in your house for your keys, he didn't find them. Therefore they're not in the house. Would you agree that the vast majority of the old world contains sites that haven't been investigated yet? For example, we only found the Dead Sea Scrolls about 70 years ago. So there's lots of areas of the old world that haven't been explored yet. Correct? Sure. But you're talking about five. You're talking about when you're talking about Egypt,

it's the most archaeologically studied area on planet Earth. I'm talking about other, the Levant region, Saudi Arabia. Yeah, those are, and they also climate wise, totally different. Let's go forward. You're talking about a jungle versus a desert. Here's my next question. Has any artifact with Hebrew or Egyptian text

been discovered in the New World? There have been some that people claim have been. I'm not familiar enough with those if they're authentic or not exactly, but there have been claims. There have been some that people claim have been. I'm not familiar enough with those if they're authentic or not exactly, but there have been claims that there have been. And also the language in the Book of Mormon specifically, it talks about the fact that the language that they brought over was corrupted.

And so the eventual language that was used by the Book of Mormon people was not like, they weren't speaking Reformed Egyptian in Mesoamerica. Okay, they were speaking some other kind of language? Yeah, they probably adopted the language of the peoples that were here. Peoples that were here? Let's talk about that, actually. Yeah, sure. All right, was Joseph Smith wrong when he said,

our Western tribes of Indians are descendants from that Joseph which was sold into Egypt, even though 99.5% of Native American DNA comes from Asia, not the Middle East. Yeah, he may have been mistaken in that statement because Joseph Smith didn't ever claim that he knew exactly where the Book of Mormon happened. He himself, which I think is evidence of his authenticity, he was trying to figure out, well, where exactly did these things happen?

And Joseph had expressed both the possibility of it happening in the heartland of America, but he also expressed that it might have happened in other places like Central America. Did Smith ever refer to Native Americans or corpses or skeletons of Native Americans as Lamanites? Yeah, they had thought that it might be, but none of those were like revealed statements. I don't claim infallibility of Joseph Smith.

And not only that, if you're going to hold that standard, well, an atheist could turn to a Christian and be like, well, do you agree with the statement of so-and-so past Pope who said things that obviously were false? Like, I think that there's a difference there. And not everything that Joseph said was claimed to be some prophetic infallible statement. So you're saying that, would you agree that it was a traditional view

among Mormons that Native Americans in the New World, that they were primarily the descendants of the Lamanites. Yeah. But the Book of Mormon text itself, it's interesting. So in Jacob 1 14, it says, but I, Jacob shall not hereafter distinguish between these names, meaning the names of different groups that he encountered, but I shall call them Lamanites, those who seek to destroy the people of Nephi and and those who are friendly to Nephi I will call Nephites. So what he was doing was setting up a very common thing in the ancient world was to call every one of one group, like the Greeks, they said we're the Greeks, everyone else is barbarians. The Jews said well we are Jews, everyone is Gentiles. Jacob was doing that same thing.

So does it refer to other groups, specific groups who inhabited the Americas before the arrival of Jared, Lehi, and Malik? While it does not, that's not surprising in ethnocentric ancient histories, which often would simply lump everyone just as Jacob did into an entire other group, like Jews calling everyone else Gentiles, and Jacob calling everyone either Nephite

or the outsiders the Lamanites also Iran Iran and a is it understandable someone reading the Book of Mormon would reach the conclusion that the population of the Americas were only descendants of people that had come from the old world through Jared, Lehi, and Molech. A careful study of, and it wasn't Molech, I think. I said Molech, sorry. Molech. It's hard, it's very easy to come up with new names from the older words.

All right, well, so someone who reads it carefully, that you do not have to draw that conclusion from the text at all. So it sounds like what you're saying though is that there is no specific archaeological evidence of distinctly Mormon names in the New World. We don't know almost any of the names. We don't know the names that these cities that they're discovering. If you're familiar with the LIDAR studies they're doing, they literally

earlier this year found an entire 650 mile area that was under the jungle that the jungle has consumed. We don't know what those cities were named. Okay, but we have found the names of some settlements like we found Keokya and we know that that's the name of that So you don't know is the name of the that settlement anciently? Okay in in 2000 Aaron Aaron or in 500 BC Okay, so using a skeptical argument there No, I'm using the same argument that the the absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence Which is the exact same argument that Jimmy Akin and you guys make about the book of Exodus. But you seem very confident about that one old world site that we do know that's what

they called it back then. Yeah, because we have records that we found the actual temple altars that had the name on it that date to that period. Let's go ahead. Let's talk about the golden plates. Okay. All right. So however many plates that were here, let's say maybe there's like what, 60, 80?

There's certainly more than 500 here. All right. Well, I would say we don't know what the thickness of the plates were exactly. From the descriptions that the eyewitnesses left, which are- They said it was like tin. They said it was like was like it was like thick paper is what they described it as. Okay. So they were very thin plates. First of all,

second of all, those witnesses, it's funny now you're believing what they were saying. Yeah, I want to it seems implausible to me. So it's so you're agreeing they had plates. Okay. So are you familiar with I referenced the plates, the metal plates of Darius? Yeah. Okay. How many how many were English words are contained on the plates the metal plates of Darius? Yeah, okay How many how many were English words are contained on one of the metal plates of Darius? I'm not familiar with the details How many there are are you familiar that the plate each plate contains about 200 English words on it? I don't know. I oh fine. I'm not gonna disagree with that. Okay, so if that were the case

In order let's say there were, you know, 60, 80 plates here, you'd have to have thousands of words on each of these plates. So each of these characters would have to represent what 50 or 80 words in order to fit on these plates, correct? Um, I don't know exactly. I can't make that prediction because I don't know anything about this language that it's coming from. I also don't know if it's a dynamic translation, which you talk about, which is where you take a text that might be smaller and then you expound upon it.

When Joseph looked in the hat, Cowdery said that he saw words that appeared and he read them off and the new words are appear. Well well I guess what did Smith see in the hat when he was trained now you're right he wasn't looking at the plates right he was he was looking in the hat yeah and what did he see in the hat well according to according to the witnesses of the translation process okay so what did he see in the hat we don't know okay we have people who said that they think that they might have known and they gave accounts of what they thought was going on, but exactly what was going on in that hat. We don't know. Okay. So if there's 50 pages here or whatever that might be, and you're going to have 270,000

English words just fit on this in characters, each of these characters would have to contain 50 or 80 words, like several paragraphs of meaning for each character, if it's translated. Is there any hieroglyphic text that is like that, that we know of where the hieroglyph represents, let's say 50 words of information? We don't know what the original language was or how it worked, or if it was an expansion given through revelation from God to expand ideas that were already in there. So what Smith saw in the hat may have had nothing to do with this. That's not saying it had nothing to do with it. Absolutely not. What I'm saying is, is

that, for instance, I would reference you to the scholar Blake Ostler and his expansion theory, the idea that some of these texts could have been expanded to give the account while the, while the basic story outline is there in some way, it could be expanded. So I don't have a problem with that. And that's a dynamic translation that you talk about in your videos. Yeah. When I make a dynamic translation of scripture, I'm not adding 40 words or 50 words to one Greek word in the New Testament. That's where you get things that are not even translation at all. They're just dictations. All right. Well, the text, the text was reformed Egyptian, correct? Whatever that means. That's what they called it.

Joseph was not an expert in languages. And so he didn't- Oh, that's true. He didn't know that, which is great, which is wild, because someone who wasn't an expert in languages was able to come up with a dozen authentic names. So has any copy of the text on the alleged golden plates, have any copies of the characters survived to this day so that we can examine?

So there is a disputed one, that scholars dispute called the characters survive to this day so that we can examine. So there is a disputed one that scholars to piece dispute called the characters document, which is something that again, it is a is the character's document based on writing on the golden plates that was shown to a classicist named Charles and on. We don't know if that document is a document that was used. Okay. But do people say that it's based on anthon? Did Martin Harris present copies of the characters according to anthon? Yes, so.

No, let me fit though. I you you had a lot of fun interrupting. I'm going to do mine. Okay. Did anthon saying after he met Harris describe from anthon did he firsthand account call the letters mere trash? So here is what Anton did. Martin Harris was very skeptical of Joseph Smith.

So he took the characters to Anton. And then when he came back from Anton, Martin Harris was more convinced than ever that Joseph- No, I'm asking you, what did Anton say? What did Anton- Anton later in life, in the late 1830s, Mormonism starts to kick off and people go, and fun Martin saying that you verified this. And he goes, no, I didn't. No, I said it was trash

because at that time Mormonism was already going. But if you actually go back, you have to wonder, why would Martin Harris take this to a scholar? Why would Joseph take it to a scholar? So you're saying, and thongs just lying about what happened. Yeah. Okay. Is it possible that Harris lied because he was financially stressed about mortgaging his own farm and that if the Book of Mormon failed, he would be in financial ruin? He is it possible? No, no, no. It's not possible. Here's what I'm saying, Trent. He went to a scholar before he mortgaged the farm. It's after the scholar said what he said to him that he went and mortgaged the farm that he was worried he was going to be duped. You are misreading Martin Harris if you think

that he was some dupe. He was trying, he did multiple things to test Joseph, including putting a different stone in his hat, because they said he was translating from a stone and Joseph looked at him and said, I can't translate this. Is it possible that Smith realized it was a different stone? It's possible. Possibility is such a ridiculous standard. It's possible that there are unicorns on Mars. It's possible.

I'm familiar with this trick, that Harris thinks he's clever, he switches the seer stone, and then Smith says, oh, I can't translate translate anymore is it possible Smith saw the stone was different and recognized he was being tested is it possible it's possible what it shows it shows a skepticism in Martin Harris he was not a dupe he was very skeptical and it was after or is it more is it possible Harris was trying to please his wife and other family members who were the skeptical ones giving him pressure.

Is that possible? It's possible, but regardless, he went to Anthon and came back more convinced than ever. Okay. Let's see here. Martin Harris gave an 1859 interview in Tiffany's Magazine, and he recounted when Joseph Smith and his company went money digging once.

And he said that one of the men told him that there was, when they went money digging, all kinds of strange things would happen, that like a large man who appeared to be eight or nine feet tall came and sat on the ridge of a barn and told them to leave. Who are you talking about who gave this quote? Harris gave that.

He gave that in an interview related to what one of the men who was with Smith when they were money, was Smith involved in money digging, treasure hunting? It was, so Joseph was from an indigent poor family and they were offered basically like work to help someone named, I think it was Josiah Stoll, to go and look for a treasure that he had heard about.

And so Joseph Smith was involved in that venture. Joseph was a teenager at the time. I mean, I've done some dumb things as a teenager, I think you guys have too, and he later said that he kind of regretted it and he felt dumb about it. Okay, and I'm saying in the 1859 interview in Tiffany's that Martin Harris gave,

he said the men encountered a nine foot tall being that told them to leave when they were out treasure hunting. Do you think that happened? I'm not familiar with that source. I would recommend you look into it. It makes me feel like Martin Harris is a bit gullible inllible. It's a good thing though that we're not just relying on Martin Harris. We have plenty of other witnesses as well. Okay, but were all of the witnesses were excommunicated and one of them, Cowdery, returned to the church? No, Martin Harris also

did. And also, did Martin Harris join? How many? He went and followed the Brighamites out to Utah. He died in Utah. How many religions did Martin Harris belong to in his life? Quite a few, but he never denied his testimony in the Book of Mormon. That the reality is, is that these guys had falling out with Joseph Smith, which is all the more reason to believe them because they had every incentive to deny it. David Whitmer said, God spoke to me by his own voice from the heavens and told me to separate myself from among the Latter-day Saints." Do you think God told David Whitmer that? Do you want to answer that and then we'll go? Yeah, absolutely. So David Whitmer was at that time very, very

upset with Joseph. He was, and he had believed that Joseph was a fallen prophet. And so he was angry and he made that statement, but he never denied his testimony in the Book of Mormon. So you don't believe God, God didn't tell Whitmer to leave. No. Okay, so you don't believe Whitmer when he said that, you believe Whitmer on other things. Yeah, is that time? I think that is time, yeah.

All right, thanks guys, that was really great, very vigorous, awesome. Okay, we're gonna move into a time of Q&A from the audience. It's gonna be 30 minutes overall. The way I'd like to try to do this is to direct a question to each of you respectively. The person who's directed the question will have about two minutes to respond.

And then the other person will only have one minute to respond to his response. This is really tough to do because I know that there's a lot you want to say. I mean, if it does divulge into the two of you going back and forth, devolve I should say, then maybe we want to not, not to Q and a and just do a conversation that that's up to you. So I'm going to click start and we're going to go back and forth from local

supporters to, uh, to YouTube questions. Uh, Connor Michael Brewster says, and this is directed to you, Jacob, if Mormons still have divine revelation, how do they justify the repeated back and forth on blacks in the clergy? Well first of all I'm not sure what that question has to do with the Book of Mormon it's more of a general question about Mormon. Can we read one more time? Sure. Let me I'll restart the timer here. Let's, I'll stop it. So you have plenty of time to respond.

If Mormons still have divine revelation, how do they justify the repeated back and forth on blacks in the clergy? Well, the blacks in the priesthood issue was only, it never was given by divine revelation ever as any sort of official canonized thing. So I think he's just misunderstanding what exactly that was. Ultimately, you know, it's something that I personally, and there's different opinions about why this all happened in that. My personal take on it is that it was a mistake. It was an error in policy because we believe our leaders are fallible. I think Catholics probably believe that as well, that things can be mistaken. You know, if the Franciscans could own slaves in Brazil, then we'll, I think the Catholics can maybe pardon

if a mistake was ever made with us. Well, I'm glad that Jacob says that, but I believe there are deeper issues about that it wasn't an arbitrary decision of prohibiting blacks from entering the priesthood. It comes from very concerning issues I'd recommend people look into about the nature of the Nephites and the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon

and the traditional view that Mormons held that the Native Americans were descendants of the Lamanites, the cursing of dark skin. It's something I would just encourage you to look into. All right, okay, we have a question here for Trent from Marty Stafnik. What makes the Catholic faith less outlandish than the LDS, especially when it comes to things like Marian apparitions or all the supernatural things with Padre Pio?

We know where it happened. We have direct archaeological evidence like we have, for example, the the pilot stone that has Pontius Pilate's name on it. We have ancient manuscripts going back thousands of years to attest to these events. We're not proposing things happened in Israel that couldn't possibly have happened

or the existence of civilizations for which there's no evidence for. So Catholicism is quite different in that we are actually, we are not proposing nearly as much as Mormonism does and doesn't have evidence to support it. We have far more ancient groundings for the belief. We're not just taking somebody's word in 1830 talking about something that happened thousands of years later. We have manuscripts going back to the second century and we have churches that were founded from the beginning of the time of the apostles

attesting to the basic beliefs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we have the initial event witnessing Christ's resurrection is not a mere visionary experience. We have tactile encounters, people who were not expecting it because you didn't expect the Messiah to die and rise again. And of course, we have an empty tomb where if you really thought your rabbi had come back from the dead, you can go and check out and see, no, this is an actual bodily resurrection. We have an abundance of more evidence for Christianity and far fewer really no problems compared to what Mormonism faces. So I believe the two are vastly different.

So it's funny because the eyewitnesses that he's talking about, he doesn't have actual eyewitness accounts. He has later documents that are found that were written anonymously decades and decades after the event and the nearest manuscripts of those are like a hundred years old. And that's just for the New Testament stuff when it comes to the witnesses. We have more witnesses, we have better witnesses as far as the numbers. And then in addition to that, he says like, oh, well, there isn't any archaeological evidence. Well, Trent believes in the divine inspiration of the book of Exodus, despite the fact that we know where it happened. And we don't find armies at the bottom of the Red Sea.

Okay. Question for Jacob. Do you think the early church fathers and apostles got Jesus's teachings wrong? If so, why? Um, I think he's referring to the great apostasy. So yeah, again, I'm not sure what this has to do with the Book of Mormon. It has more to do with the subject of the great apostasy. Um, but as far as, uh, the early church fathers, I believe that they had a whole bunch of things right. The great apostasy, there's a big misnomer

that people have about it. We don't believe that all truth was suddenly like sucked from the earth and the Holy Spirit was not operative or anything like that. We believe that the apostasy, when you actually define what we mean by it, it means that the authority held by the original apostles, the 12,

they had the authority to give new public revelation, right? That is something that Catholics and us agree on. Catholics also agree that that authority did not continue after that, that the public revelation had ceased with those apostles. What we believe is that that was what the apostasy is. It's the loss of this connection for God's direct revelation to man through those who hold apostolic keys in order to give that authority. So I believe that a lot of the teachings that they went

on with were good and right and true. I also believe some were corrupted. There was great controversy in the church, but the apostasy as it stands is a commentary on the authority of the apostles ceasing. And I have to admit the Catholics would have to admit that at least in the area of the authority to give public revelation, new public revelation that that did indeed cease and I think there's a point of agreement there. Yeah, there's an agreement that public revelation ended in the apostolic age, but Mormons believe it's far more than that. Not just that the authority to give public revelation ended, but the authority to bind

believers and to teach them that that cease and not just that, but that the church of Jesus Christ, the church Christ established no longer existed after the time of the apostles and was replaced with a great and abominable church. And that this church Christ established that the council, I'm sure Jacob would say the council of Nicaea did not have authority to bind Christians to trinitarian doctrine. But we believe that because we leave the church of Jesus Christ never left the face of the earth that the successors of the apostles, they could not give new revelation, but they were capable of binding believers to a greater understanding of the original revelation that was be given. And my the argument I gave was still not answer that if

Catholicism is true if you do believe that then naturally Mormonism would be false Bit of a straw man there Question for you Trent from TA from YouTube He says I would love to hear what horn believes are the criteria necessary to prove a thing is divinely inspired? Sure. I think I would go back. So why do I believe this is important in my journey, actually, as a Christian, that I came to believe that God existed and from historical evidence that Christ rose from the dead. And I did that without believing the Bible is divinely inspired. I just believe that these are ancient documents that come, it's not just from second-hand or non-eye witnesses or anonymous sources. We know Paul wrote his letters. We

know Paul knew the apostles and Paul testifies to Jesus's post-resurrection appearances. We know Luke was a companion of Paul and Luke describes the post-resurrection appearances. No reason to make up a Luke. You can make up somebody why some anonymous guy like Luke. So historically I can demonstrate that a miracle occurred and began the Christian faith and the Christian church. So, from there, though, the reason I believe that the Bible, that the 73 books of the Bible are divinely inspired is because the church Jesus Christ established authoritatively taught that, first at local regional councils and then at an ecumenical council in the 16th century.

And as I noted earlier in the debate, this canon problem also exists for Mormons as well, because they would say the 1611 King James Bible is inspired as far as it's correctly translated. But why would one believe that when it was believed when Joseph Smith believed that before he ever received a revelation from an angel, while the Bible came from the church that Christ established. And that's why I believe it's divinely inspired. And the church says the book of Mormon is not.

Okay. So it is funny. Trent did just admit the, at the base of his worldview, when you dig down, why do you believe in all of this stuff? The book of Exodus to be inspired, despite its lack of archeological evidence, he says, because of witnesses to the resurrection. And I said, what witnesses? Um, well, we got maybe three and it's from late accounts and they're anonymous. And one of them was just a visionary account with Paul and, um, okay, I got three and then we don't even have like the actual things. But on the other hand, I'm presenting

19 eyewitness accounts with hundreds of accounts. And then all he can do to rebut that is to bring up sort of obvious sort of anti people that are against them who are trying to catch them in their words. But he hasn't looked at the in you could just go read Richard Anderson's book on eye on the witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Their testimonies are solid and they never denied them. They were sincere, and those are the same criteria that he uses to believe the apostles. So it's a clear and obvious double standard. Luke 24 Connor Michael Brewster asks you, Jacob, if the church was corrupted and it took until Joseph Smith to restore it,

why is the King James version of the Bible to be trusted from 1601, which is well before Smith? Jacob Bollingham Again, this is based on a misconception. We do believe that I'm a big fan of the Catholic Church. I went to Catholic schools, I'm sending my kids to Catholic schools. I believe that the Christian movement and denominations and all of that, that they did my kids to Catholic schools. I believe that the Christian movement and denominations and all of that, that they did continue to preach the truth, to share on the words of the people who held apostolic

and prophetic authority in the past. And so of course we're gonna adopt that. And our belief is, is that these good Christian churches, like you guys, see the difference is you guys look at me and you go, Jacob Hansen is gonna be tortured forever, eternally by God in hell because he doesn't join the Catholic Church because he's Mormon I look at you guys and I say you guys are wonderful Christians and your Christian Church has taken you so far that you actually Will go to a heaven probably very similar to what you imagine

But what we have brought is something to add on to what you guys have. And so I believe that the Bible and all of this, it is wonderful. It's true. It's good. It takes people towards Jesus Christ. I'm just saying don't stop there. There's more that God has revealed and will reveal to the world and come join with us so that you can have something bigger than you even have now, which is great. What you have now. I really don't know how Jacob could say the church has taken us so far when the church teaches so many things directly contrary to Mormonism that the church teaches us. There is only one God. He exists as three co-equal and co-eternal persons. Whereas Mormonism teaches God and man are just of the same species and men can become gods. And I guess maybe I'm gonna get my own consolation prize,

heaven and Jacob will get his own universe to run. So I guess I get to miss out on that. But how could he say that the Catholic church brought us so far when it teaches directly contrary against the Mormon view of who God is, the Mormon view of who Jesus is, the fact that Jesus and the devil are eternal intelligences or they were both begotten of the father. So technically Jesus and the devil are eternal intelligences or they were both begotten of the Father, so technically Jesus and the devil are brothers because they both

have the same Heavenly Father who begot them. If you go down this way, I don't see how he could say anything that he should just say no, like previous Mormons did in the past, not saying it's official Mormon teaching, but previous Mormons who said that when the Book of Mormon refers to the great and abominable church, it's referring to the Catholic church. Okay. Question for Trent from the Kolob society. Uh, some say that's from far away.

Some say Joseph Smith's faults mean he was not a prophet. Do the faults of the Catholic church leaders invalidate the authority of the Catholic church? Why or why not? My argument was not that his faults prove he is not a prophet. When you look at the prophets in scripture, many of them are flawed. Look at Jonah, for example.

My argument was if we are assessing Joseph Smith's testimony, we have to assess the man's character. We have to assess, is this person an honest individual? And so one of the examples that I gave showing that he was not honest was that he purposefully hid that if these plural marriages were such a good thing, he certainly seemed to go intensively to hide them from his wife Emma when he went to seal himself

with with other people like Emily and Elisa Partridge, for example, or you have people like Oliver Cowdery calling. So this is not just anti-Mormons. I'm citing Cowdery and I'm citing others who know Joseph himself like Fair, the Mormon apologist saying, yeah, you're right. He wasn't really honest about this. It makes us question, well, are there other things he wasn't entirely honest about? Yeah. So first of all, most of the things that Trent is talking about, even the stuff from the church or Fair Mormon and stuff, they're talking about the allegations against him. The reality is, is that we know very little about what actually happened and there's all

these allegations. So they're talking about, yeah, there were allegations that potentially that Joseph might have lied to his wife, but that doesn't mean that he actually did. Unless Trent can provide the specific time and place and exactly what was said, then we don't know what Joseph actually said to his wife. We do know that Joseph was involved in ceilings at the very least to multiple women. But again, just relying on these allegations without providing the very specific things that he did and when again, it's just the rumor mill that's been going on for forever. And and ultimately, I don't think that that's that's super compelling. OK. Where are we?

OK, this is for Jacob from H.R.J.B. from locals. He says, how can you be sure, Jacob Joseph Smith was a true prophet? By the way, I'm aware that we're getting away from the Book of Mormon. Is that OK? I don't expect you to be, you know, Mormon answer man and be able to take question 360. I want to let everybody know, I'm not a subject expert in all areas here. I wouldn't even necessarily consider myself

a deep subject expert on every aspect of the Book of Mormon, but I mean, I can answer questions. Yeah, well, just like if this was a debate on the assumption of Mary with a Protestant, and someone was asking questions about something unrelated, I wouldn't expect you to have to defend everything. So feel free, if you're like, you know what, let's stick to the topic topic That's fine. But here's the question

How can you be sure Joseph Smith was a true prophet when latter later prophets who held his same position as prophet? Can outright teach heresy for example Brigham Young's Adam God revelation? So I could I mean you'd fire right back and be like how can you guys believe in the Catholic Church when they burn people at the stake and and how can you guys believe in the Catholic Church when they burn people at the stake and expelled all the Jews from Spain and other places? I mean, the same thing can be leveled against the Catholic Church. The reality is we don't have any standard of infallibility like Catholics do. We believe that prophets are men. We believe that they are, as the Bible or as the Catechism

teaches, like when talking about Scripture, like true authors. We believe that they are, as the Bible or as the catechism teaches, like when talking about scripture, like true authors, we believe that these are human beings who are inspired by God to lead us, but that they can make mistakes. Now, the nature of those mistakes and any one of those, you have to get into the specifics, but ultimately, I would caution Catholics about using the argument, hey, your leaders did things that seemed bad, therefore your church must be false. That's a bad line of reasoning. And I don't do that with Catholicism. I actually have a lot of respect for Catholicism,

despite the very checkered past of Catholic leaders, including things like, you know, if we're talking about sex, fathering illegitimate children, like popes fathered illegitimate children. They fathered incestuous illegitimate children with daughters and with sisters. I mean, it gets ugly. And so I kind of don't want to go down that route.

And I think like, hey, like, let's not throw mud and just assume just because a leader did something that was wrong that that's, you know, means you just gotta throw the religion out the window. Do you wanna hear that question again, Trent? No, I see where he's coming from, so I have a few points. I'll work backwards in the response to the question. One, I think it's a little interesting that

Jacob seems to be a lot more open to allegations of impropriety among Catholic clerics than allegations that are made against Joseph Smith and others, unless they can be backed up with a surveillance camera, seeing exactly what happened, don't seem to be taken as seriously. Number two, I do think this comes, the Adam God doctrine, that was, I agree, actually, I'm going to help Jacob here a little bit. Not everything that the Mormon church, not only the Catholic church has taught rises the level of an infallible teaching or an enduring teaching. There are things that Brigham Young taught

that may have been speculation that don't form official Mormon doctrine. Like the idea that the God of this world was Adam, for example, there's a speculation, but it's not an official teaching. So they shouldn't be held to that. You need to compare official teachings to official teachings.

However, I am concerned about a fallibility problem in Mormonism. You say, well, about blacks and the priesthood or the change about the teaching in polygamy or this or that. If Jacob says, well, we don't have infallibility, then that says, well, could anything change? Could the teaching, could two men get married

in the Mormon church? If you say, no, they could not, it seems like you're appealing to some kind of an infallibility you wish was there. TA says, Trent, did you, did your study consist of simply using Google? No, I also read books, but Google allows me to access things like one thing I really appreciate about Mormonism is that they're wonderful record keepers. So in researching and looking at arguments, I went to who are the Mormon apologists out there?

So I use Google to see, well, what's Jacob been saying? What do other Mormon apologists say? It's flattering. Yeah, I read what I wanna say, okay, what are the good arguments, what are the bad arguments? And I say, here's what I think is a good argument. How would Jacob, how would Fair Mormon, how would Blake Osler, how would they respond?

So I use Google to find those people. And then when there's an allegation made in anti-Mormon work, I don't just take that at face value. I go and I track down the original source. So I use Google to go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints original site. And there, you guys are great at this, by the way, tons of archives, like the many of the quotes that I gave here from Harris and Cowdery and others, you can find the original handwritten document

where they say these things. So I only include it in my case when even if I, a Mormon critic, I find it, I'm not gonna take the Mormon critics word at it. I wanna find the original primary source, say, okay, here's that original letter. They did say it. And yeah, I don't just rely on Google,

but I use any tools to find the best cases for and against and sift the evidence. Okay. Yeah. So first of all, I appreciate you recognize our transparency. We have the Joseph Smith papers, which is literally you can go and look at the original documents and a fraudulent organization. They generally aren't big on making their history super transparent. If there's something to hide, I actually believe that when people actually dig in and look at the fully transparent sources, then you actually come away because we actually think that when you look at the truth and we don't hide it, it comes out. Okay. The Catholic church hit the Bible for a while from people or didn't want them printing

it without their authorization. And they, so that that's a little different thing. Now, the other reason this person asks that question, I know why they asked it because what Trent brought up, brought up a lot of stuff today and it's impossible for respond to every single thing that Trent said, but these are all things we've heard before. None of it is stuff that we haven't heard before and we've responded to it over and over. And so what he's saying is, is if you're just Googling all the typical anti Mormon tropes, you can go out and you can find all of the responses to those tropes and you can find the answers to everything that Trent has sent today. Nothing has been overly threatening.

Okay, Weave88 says, Jacob, how can the LDS believe that the church fell into apostasy after the death of the last apostle if they believe that the apostle John still lives according to Doctrine and Covenants 7. Okay, so again on the apostasy stuff. So we don't believe, well, we believe that John was translated, just like Moses was translated. Like this is a similar type thing. You guys might have a smaller list of people that have been translated,

but we believe that John is one of those people. But a translated being doesn't have the authority on earth to continue to do the ministry of the church. The other thing is, is that Trent has totally mischaracterized when he says that we believe the church was gone. People don't understand what you mean by the church. When we as Latter-day Saints talk about the church,

what is the essence of the church according to a Latter-day Saint perspective? It is what we call apostolic keys. It's the same authority held by Peter, James, John, and the other apostles. And what we believe is that those keys included the authority to public revelation. So when you say the church was lost, people get the impression that what we're saying is like, it's all gone. Every bit of it. It's nothing but the great whore of all the earth, which by the way, Trent didn't mention this is the sort of selective stuff that it's below you Trent.

The church, you know this, you know that the church officially repudiated Bruce R. McConkie who made that statement. And they have officially said that the Catholic church is not what's referred to that. And when he printed that, they came out against it. So it's, this is the kind of stuff that's disingenuous. What is the great and abominable church?

It's any institution in the entire earth that the way that it's put together is that there's two, there's only two churches. This is actually from the Book of Mormon. It says there are saved but two churches in the world, the church of the lamb and the church of the devil. Okay. So it's a broad metaphor about good and evil. Okay. And there's good and there's evil in the world. But the reality is, is that it Okay. So it's a broad metaphor about good and evil. Okay. And there's good and there's evil in the world. But the reality is, is that it doesn't mean it's not talking about like an official 501 C three organization that's been incorporated that has a hierarchical body. That's not what it's talking about. It's talking about that there's

good and evil in the world and the great and abominable church is what is called the work of the devil. Right now, Bruce R McConkie said, and that was the Catholic Church. Now I would say that there, oh, sorry. That's okay. Yeah, you, as always, feel free to wrap up the talk. Just real quick, the thought is, and Bruce R. McConkie was saying that he thought that the Catholic Church was part of that,

and I don't know, I will say, if you look back in church history, I think that at times the Catholic Church have done things that were satanic and wrong. Were the bishops teaching at the Council of Nicaea part of the Church of the Lamb or the Church of the Devil? I would say aspects of it were part of the Church of the Lamb, but aspects of it were part of the Church of the Devil, depending on what they were teaching. Okay. All right, you have a minute to respond if you want to. I don't know, we had, we had, we back and forth

enough. All right, this, this is fun. This is a, okay, so here, okay, I wanna give you this opportunity to maybe kind of like help Catholics understand, right, what Mormons actually teach about inheriting their own planet and things like that. Because, you know, as Catholics, you know, we know what it's like to have our beliefs- Universe. Sorry, universe.

Our beliefs mocked and misinterpreted, right? And I don't appreciate that. And so here's the comment, and this guy's trying to be snarky, but I want to give you the opportunity. That's totally fine. Let's see. Where was it? Oh, yeah.

We'll see who's laughing once I inherit a planet full of blonde alien babes to create my own Mormon Star Wars Imperial Army checkmate Trent. So could you help us Catholics understand what the Mormon Church does teach about? Having your own- So this is one of those things. I think there was a quote by C.S. Lewis about playing harps forever in heaven and how people don't wanna do that.

The reality is when we're talking about the afterlife in sort of metaphorical language, we're talking about us becoming co-participants with God in the divine God, like life that God has, right? That's what eternal life is, to become as he is and to participate in the great creation process that goes on into eternity. We believe that we are not, we believe that we are children of God and a child grows up to be like his father, like a puppy. What does a puppy grow up to be? It grows up to be a dog. A kitten grows up to be a cat, right?

We believe that we are children of God as the Bible teaches. And we don't believe that's some metaphor. We believe we were literally created in the image of God and we are not different in kind from him. And what we will use is certain sorts of kind of metaphorical language to talk about what that may be and people will, there's been a lot of speculation about, well, God created this earth.

That means we're going to create one. And what that's kind of been is it's been spun into a sort of caricature of a idea of what eternity might be like. Now and I kind of laugh and Trent, we kind of laughed about it too. And you're talking, it's the idea of like, oh, Mormons each get their own plan. And I kind of laugh, it's like, no, my own universe, like whatever God is able to do, that is something that a human being has the capacity to do

in an eternal progression to become as God is. And the early church fathers talked about that divinization, theosis, the only difference is, is that we actually take it ontologically where you guys only say that you can share in the attributes of God, where we say, no, we actually are connected to God as his literal spirit children. Thank you. Well, I'd like to respond a little bit to that.

So I think that this really does reveal how Mormonism is a different religion than Christianity. Christians have believed in theosis or divinization. We will become like God. We will be holy as God is, for example. But Christians will not become, when we go to heaven, we will not become omnipotent. We will not become omniscient. We will not be eternal like God is eternal because we're creatures. So the Mormon church a few years ago

put out a statement becoming like God and it put it this way, while few Latter-day Saints who identify with characters of having their own planet, most would agree that the awe inspired by creation hints at our creative potential in the eternities. And so we're not going to be creating other fallible creatures, creatures that could fall.

We will spend eternity in heaven worshiping the one true God who is infinite in glory and majesty. And our hearts will be full because they'll be filled by the only thing that can fill them for all eternity, is the infinite unending majestic God. T.A. says, Trent, in which verses of the Book of Mormon do you see horses being ridden rather than used for food, as scholars suggest? What's this T.A.P. IRS? A taper. Thank you. Tapers would therefore make more sense in that context.

Yes, this goes back to what Jacob said before, like, oh, well, these anachronisms, we've solved all of them. Well, if you go and look at the explanations, they're incredibly rickety. And I would say they're only solved if you don't press upon them. So the Book of Mormon is very clear. It talks about horses and chariots, and it groups them together as if the horses have something to do with the chariots. And I could, so yeah, it doesn't describe them being ridden,

but in the vast majority of cases in the Bible, horses aren't described as being ridden, only in a few cases, I think, in like Exodus. But the fact of the matter is it's just, it's a weird thing to take from it. Oh, they don't, you know, whoever the original writer was, he couldn't just refer to this thing as a pig, for example. That's what a taper resembles more like than a horse, nobody you think of a horse you think is something that can

be written. What's a chariot? It's something that pulled. And Mormon scholars, Mormon apologists I should say, yeah they say oh well the horses were food so we keep horses around and what kind of if it's a dynamic translation Jake's oh it's a dynamic translation. Well I get the really wrong idea that the horses were meant to be something you eat, because I don't eat my horse unless it's a real emergency out on the range. And the chariots, oh, well, that's actually a litter that human beings would carry, because obviously in Mesoamerica, there are no roads for chariots to ride on. The terrain's too steep.

When you go through a lot of the alleged anachronisms, it just doesn't work. They're saying, oh, we found iron in Mesoamerica. Yeah, you found fragments from meteorites and things like that. All when you go through a lot of the alleged anachronisms, it doesn't it just doesn't work. I saying oh we found iron in Mesoamerica Yeah, you found fragments of meteorites and things like that But I didn't want to rely on the case too much But I would say that anachronisms of the Bible they're just not the same like camels in the time of Abraham could be Bactrian rather Than dromedary. That's a lot different than confusing a taper with a horse So it's funny trim. I think we just made this up.

But what he doesn't realize is that he doesn't know what the Mayans called the horses that the Spaniards were riding when they arrived. He doesn't realize that they were actually called they called them lightning tapirs. That's what the actual people in the ancient Americas called the horses that arrived with the, with the Spaniards. So it wasn't just some made up thing. Now, the reality is, is that when you're doing a dynamic translation, you're trying to convey a particular idea. And, and it's not implausible to do that. For instance, a hippopotamus is known as a water horse in some languages. So again, this is called loan shifting.

This is already something that happens. And when he talks about any of the kind of the archeological stuff, there's a problem because deserts preserve things. Jungles do not. Jungles literally consume things. And people thought there was nothing in these jungles. Now we started to do LIDAR and we have found

that there was a massive civilization down there that no one knows or that's still kind of not understood. All right. So I thought for the final question, I would ask you, Jacob, to I'll give you both two minutes each. You give me your best argument against the Book of Mormon being divinely inspired. I'm obviously asking you to take a position that isn't yours. against the Book of Mormon being divinely inspired. I'm obviously asking you to take a position that isn't yours, and then you give me, try to actually make it as if you believe it. Give me an argument for why the Book of Mormon is divinely inspired. Is that okay?

All right, so we'll start with you. I think the best argument against the Book of Mormon is the atheist sort of argument that's against all of this. The idea is we're talking about miracles happening in the 1800s. It's very easy to think about miracles happening a long time ago But when they get closer to home, we start to get like I don't think this could happen today you know back in the day armies were swallowed by by by by the sea in the Reed Sea and and the atheist presents a

Consistent position where they say look all of this is hocus pocus. And I think that that is a position that I think remains consistent and actually makes the case against the Book of Mormon. So, but when you're not an atheist and suddenly these things are in the realm of possibility, then suddenly they become possible. But I would say that the strongest arguments

against the Book of Mormon come from an atheist worldview that sort of presupposes that all of this is hocus pocus anyway. They struggle to deal with the evidences that I've presented today. All right, Trent, we're gonna clip this out and make you a Mormon on YouTube one day. Give us the best argument for the Book of Mormon

being divinely inspired. You gotta give me a little bit of hair dye and some blue eye contacts to really sell it then. Yeah, I would say that Jacob gave a very, probably one of the higher level defenses of the Book of Mormon. So I think that it's, I think it probably gets maybe the silver medal

of trying to say, well, if you, the argument would go, if you believe in Christianity and we have better evidence for Mormonism, then you should believe in Mormonism would essentially be the argument would go, if you believe in Christianity, and we have better evidence for Mormonism, then you should believe in Mormonism, would essentially be the argument, I think, one is making. I think though, probably the strongest argument that I think many feel like, strong in the sense that it's very difficult to overcome,

would be an argument for personal testimony. And I think the vast majority of Mormons would say that they are Mormon because they trust the witness of the Holy Spirit, they have a personal testimony, even if they can't explain everything in the faith and they can't overcome these objections. I know in my heart I've had an encounter with God and I know that this is true. And I think that that's that can be very difficult for someone to present into to overcome with evidence because especially if you are reliant on these sort of inner testimonies.

And what I get really concerned about is if that inner testimony starts to fray and fracture, Jacob and I were talking about this last night, many Mormons go straight from Mormonism to secularism or atheism without taking more of an evidential approach like Jacob has. All right. Thank you, fellas. This has been terrific. We are going to close now with five minute closing statements each, unless I'm forgetting something. No, that's correct.

All right. So Jacob, whenever you want to begin your, since you started, okay, try and get the last word. So whenever you want to begin. All right. Well, first of all, thank you guys both for this. This has actually been a real pleasure. I've very much enjoyed it. But for every Christian, the central claim is that around 2000 years ago, a real historical person named Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. So every Christian must ask themself why it's reasonable to believe this.

Trent answered this in a recent video and here today when he said that it is the eye witnesses that are the primary reason and they're the grounds for Trent's belief, not only in the Bible, but in Christianity, Catholicism and the whole thing, they reduce down to that ultimately. Just think about it, if the resurrection didn't happen,

is it reasonable to be a Christian? The Bible provides us with at most two eyewitness accounts of the resurrection and one account from Paul who claimed to see Jesus in a vision. And with that as his central basis, Trent concludes it's reasonable to believe that the Bible is inspired.

And frankly, I actually agree with Trent. I believe that it is reasonable to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. But let's compare that with the Book of Mormon. There are well over a hundred accounts from 19 separate eyewitnesses to the Book of Mormon plates who all went to their deathbeds testifying that they saw the plates despite facing a literal extermination order in Missouri and rampant mob violence. Even when some of them were excommunicated by Joseph,

they refused to deny what they had seen and experienced. And what Trent has presented today is essentially the secondhand gossip around it. On top of this evidence, we have the archeological evidence, historical evidence, literary evidence, and the demonstrable spiritual or positive spiritual effect that this book has on its readers. So if someone wants to say that it's reasonable to

believe in the Bible because of its eyewitness accounts, to be consistent they're going to have to explain away not only all of the eyewitnesses to the Book of Mormon but also all of the other evidence and Trent has failed to do that today. What we have seen instead is a clear double standard because essentially every argument Trent has made against the Book of Mormon is an argument that can also be made against the Bible. So if you're going to believe in a book with talking donkeys, global floods and Egyptian armies being swallowed up by the sea, I would be careful about asserting that a belief in the Book of Mormon is somehow out of bounds for a reasonable person. My goal today has simply been this to show people that they're laughing off the Book of Mormon

as a joke is no different than atheists who laugh off the Bible. Laughing off a book that has produced a people like the Latter-day Saints seems strange to me. In today's messed up world, when you find a group of people who through their professed faith in Jesus Christ are so consistently producing

stable loving families, high levels of service and charity, and have high levels of life satisfaction, perhaps it's time to at the very least take them seriously. Stephen Webb, the Catholic theologian and philosopher said, quote, Mormonism is obsessed with Christ 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. So why not be curious about us? We don't bite.

Why not get to know us? I've been, I've heard that we're nice people. Why not read this book in a serious way before you mock it? There are millions of people whose lives have been made better by this book, including mine. And for those of you feeling spiritually unsatisfied and looking for hope in today's darkening world, please consider where the Book of Mormon says that you can find it. Behold, ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection and this because of your faith Wherefore whoso believeth in God might with a surety hope for a better world

Yea, even a place at the right hand of God which hope cometh of faith maketh an anchor to the souls of men Which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." It is my personal witness to you that these words are inspired of God and that if you open your heart, God will reveal that to you as well. Thank you. Thank you, Jacob. Trent, whenever you want to begin, take your time. Okay. All right. Well, let's draw together the threads of the debate. All right. So the burden was on Jacob to show that the Book of Mormon is a divinely inspired document. And he presented various arguments to show that it's to purport a divinely inspired document. And he presented various arguments

to show that it's, to purportedly show it's inspired. And he tried to answer some of my arguments that show that it is a human document. And he was not able to do that. He did not meet the burden of showing God must have written this book rather than some other human author, be it Joseph Smith or someone else. And we've heard a lot today about comparing Christianity and Mormonism.

And when you do make those comparisons, you see they simply don't add up. Were any of the apostles excommunicated from the church after Christ's resurrection? No. Were the founding witnesses excommunicated? Yes. Were the apostles able to examine Christ's empty tomb to be able to see that this was a bodily resurrection and not a mere vision? Yes, they're able to do that.

Could people still examine the golden plates later? They've gone back to heaven. Did Paul say that what he saw was a vision or an impression that he felt? No, in 1 Corinthians 9.1, Paul says, have I not seen the Lord, just as he speaks of seeing other things. Did the apostles fight back against their persecutors, like Joseph Smith fought back

in that shootout in the Carthage jail? No, they did not. Were what the apostles taught and said, was that been confirmed by archaeology? Absolutely. Things like the pilot stone that I mentioned earlier in our discussion. Has what Joseph Smith described as happening in the New World been confirmed by archaeology? No, Jacob went on at length about a purported archaeological find in the Old World, but notice he certainly did that in the new world

and just expressed a kind of skepticism that we can't really know anything. And maybe hoping against hope, there will be some kind of evidence that might be unearthed in the future. Which once again, to make the comparison, did the apostles say that an entire civilization, warring with tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of people over a thousand year period existed in a particular place, especially of Mesoamerica just within a few hundred miles, that has never been confirmed at all? No, they didn't say that. We see that the witnesses, I would rather have, I would rather have two extremely solid witnesses such as Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians and Saint Luke's bodily description of the resurrection, solid witnesses to the resurrection, than 19 incredibly sketchy witnesses of an angel they prayed really hard to see or plates that they saw but not seeing the inside or wondering what it is. So, recall I presented four arguments

of the Book of Mormon not being inspired. It's nothing like the Bible. We know where these biblical events happened. But for something to report to be an actual history, Jacob will admit that the church does not say where this happened. And there are reputable Mormon scholars that place it thousands of miles away. No one knows exactly where that is. We talked about things like plagiarism, for example. Yeah, I would encourage you, go ahead and read the Book of Mormon, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Especially when you start reading,

especially even in the beginning in the books of Nephi, you'll say, wait, this sounds a lot like this character's just repeating a theme I heard in the New Testament. That's because Joseph Smith might not have formal education, but he did nightly Bible recitations and recitals and speaking with his own parents and was very well adept at that. And you'll see in the Book of Mormon when you read it.

And finally, we talked about the truth of Catholicism, disproving the Book of Mormon, being the foundation for having the canon of Scripture itself as a part of the Mormon faith. And that argument was never rejected. So if you're Catholic, I will admit that I think a lot of Mormon arguments have a problem with Protestantism. They can have a hard time answering this. But with Catholicism, we have something sure.

We have something sure. So I'd like to end with an appeal to Mormons who might be watching. Deep down, you might think what matters most is your internal testimony. But I would say I wanna affirm that many of your personal convictions are correct. God instituted one church with a hierarchy of elders. He did not want untold numbers of

denominations with pastors that run Bible studies. And the church is not pastors following the manmade doctrine of sola scriptura. It's those who hold the priesthood, who have continued the Church of Christ to gather people together to salvation. So I would encourage you to know that this one Church of Christ, that it safeguarded public revelation that was given and continue to exist to teach and bind believers with teaching authority, with infallible teaching authority,

to know that teachings on marriage and life are things that can never be gainsaid by heretics in the future, to lead us to Christ, not to a Christ who is a mere creature like us, who is exalted, but the Christ who is the creator of all, the one infinite God who infinitely loves us and desires for us to have a relationship with him and to enter into the one holy Catholic

and apostolic church he founded 2,000 years ago that has never disappeared from the face of the earth. Thank you Trent. Thank you very much Jacob. Jacob, where can people learn more about you and what you do? So my channel is called Thoughtful Faith and I cover everything from theology to philosophy to current events from a Latter-day Saint perspective. So check me out on YouTube there. All right, Trent? You can check me out at the Council of Trent So just search Trent horn on YouTube iTunes Google Play A lot of my articles are also available at Catholic comm and this is pints with Aquinas And if you're watching right now, please consider subscribing and coming back

We do long-form interviews debates and things you might find interesting. God bless. Thanks very much