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And yet here you are, speaking for him, telling us what you see him really believing, even editing his quotes so they say something they don’t say in their original form. And that doesn’t remind you of anything? C’mon, Smac! You can see it when others do it. Wake up, please.

Why do Latter-day Saints need to publicly declare we are Christians? Because some segments of society go out of their way to speak for us, rather than let us speak for ourselves. That's not the case with Dan, who has every opportunity to speak for himself. In so speaking, he seems to be giving some (many?) people the impression that he is an atheist. I can go along with that. I'm not sure it applies here, where Dan has said things that a regular person can reasonably construe as being incongruent with accepting the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, this can happen. For some, though, Dan's behavior is open to interpretation (such that it does not "only mean certain things"). I allow the possibility that Dan "has actual faith." Much of what he says, though, seems to give the impression that he does not have faith. Hence his need to produce social media content to explain to his listeners that he is not an atheist. Also, I think Dan is doing a lot more than just "approaching scripture publicly with academic methodology." I also think Dan often uses pretensions about "the data" to smuggle in and bolster his personal opinions and presuppositions and ideological commitments. I still watch some of Dan's content, but his social media stuff is coming across more and more as self-aggrandizing, conclusory, stirring-the-pot, politicized, click-baity, berating and dunking on amateurs, etc., and less about thoughtfully distilling and presenting the nuances and complexities of biblical scholarship to a lay audience. That is sort of the risk you take when you make yourself a social media content creator. Clicks count. Edgy and provocative stuff gets clicks. Thanks, -Smac

I don’t need to reconcile it since I don’t remove context, his own words, that tells me he is not trying to persuade people to alter their faith positions, whether they believe or don’t believe. Ripping off Seeking’s effort to provide fuller context: I am not someone who feels we should be wearing our missionary tags 24/7 even if we need to be Saints every second we exists. That’s not the calling every Saint holds, imo. Our faith has multiple missions of caring for others. At times that means proselytizing. At times it means redemption of the dead. At times it means looking out for others’ physical and emotional welfare. At all times it should mean caring and compassion and valuing truth. Valuing truth in all the fields it exists in is part of perfecting the Saints imo. I believe Dan is doing this by sharing what he has learned through his academic studies. I think he has chosen to exclude public declaration of his personal faith in his public teaching so as to make this scholarship accessible to the most people and to try to avoid as much as possible his work being used to hurt and control others. Not possible to stop that from happening, even Jesus’ efforts have gotten weaponized to the extreme by many, justifying what is actually greed and arrogance by clothing it in piety, something he spoke directly against.

Maybe for the same thing I cheer about Dan, his efforts to try and teach what scripture actually meant to those who wrote it. Just because someone is a critic of the Church doesn’t mean they can’t love scholarship because they love learning. Not every critic or follower of Dehlin has an agenda where everything they do with religious study is for the purpose of destroying the Church or people’s acceptance of it. I don’t think that is even Dehlin’s purpose. I see his purpose as primarily fame and fortune, criticizing the Church is a vehicle he has chosen. I could be wrong, I am heavily biased in his case and not because he is a critic. I know what scripture means to me, I know quite a bit of what it means to people in the here and now. I don’t need more lessons on those, not from someone who doesn’t hold those beliefs…I don’t need a LDS telling me what Catholics or Protestants get out of the Bible, even if they are a scholar. Otoh, I need scholars desperately if I want to attempt to know what it meant back when the original of these words were shared in that ancient faith community. Scholars are more likely to approach those beliefs given their ability to better understand the original language and context. Hardly a perfect system, but better imo than believing we can get there by reading and interpreting with our own biases a modern translation. Dan makes that study very accessible. And he is good at pointing out where people are claiming to be doing that, but aren’t. Not the part of his work I am interested in, but I think it has great value in this political environment. We should be questioning why others are promoting their positions. We should be especially questioning why we promote our own and dumping false justifications. True agency requires awareness of why we make the choices we do. IMO, this is the primary lesson we are here in mortality to learn.

Which is most likely for you? For me, #1 seems most probable. In that model, our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother would themselves be the children of an earlier Heavenly Father and Mother, who in turn had divine Parents, and so forth – an infinite regression of Gods. [1] Daughter of an Exalted God and Goddess She was the spirit offspring of an earlier Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Born into a previous generation of divine parents, she eventually progressed through mortality and exaltation, becoming a Goddess and the eternal companion of the Heavenly Father of Earth. [2] Created by Her Future Husband Heavenly Mother was created or formed by the God who would later become her eternal husband. She was made in his image but was not his literal spirit offspring. Her existence therefore originated through divine creation rather than genealogical parentage. [3] Daughter of a God from an Earlier Creation Her father was an exalted God who presided over an earlier creation or inhabited world. She may have been associated with his divine household without being his literal spirit offspring. After entering into an eternal marriage with the Heavenly Father of Earth, she progressed through mortality and exaltation. In this scenario, she may or may not have shared the same divine parentage as her future husband. [4] An Eternal, Rather Than Genealogical, Origin Heavenly Mother has always existed as a divine being. She did not originate as the offspring or creation of another God, nor did she progress from mortality to godhood. Her divine status is therefore eternal rather than the result of genealogical descent or exaltation. One conceptual distinction I'd make is that #1 is genealogical, #2 is creative, #3 is genealogical or familial but not necessarily biological, and #4 is eternal. That gives you four genuinely different models rather than four variations of the same parentage theory.

Over the last couple of years. I have managed to catch up on the Star Trek movies, original cast/next generation/modern revamp. For myself, I still prefer the movies with the original cast.

Why do Latter-day Saints need to publicly declare we are Christians? Because people infer all sorts of things when others don’t follow the same rules they do. They often never question the assumptions they bring to the world, so others’ behaviour can only mean certain things to them. And in Dan’s case, this often means they refuse to allow the possibility he has actual faith while approaching scripture publicly with academic methodology.

Well stated, I agree.

This has been my impression as well. I can see him saying it’s wrong to use dogma to justify our choices in how we treat others…that’s a paraphrase, I doubt he would say it that way. And I don’t remember him actually saying that, it’s a vibe for me at this point. I should add it’s been probably a year or more since I watched his videos, but I used to watch him regularly. Don’t know why I stopped. Not hitting YouTube very often.

Why, if he "has never advocated against faith," did he need to publicly declare to his listeners that he is not an atheist? Also, how do you reconcile your "he never advocated against faith" thing with his statements about how he is providing "reasons for people to feel justified in not remaining faithful," and that this is - for him - the "sweet spot" and evidence that he is "probably doing something right?" And this: What do you think John Dehlin was referencing when he said that he and "so many of {his} listeners and friends" are "loving" what Dan is doing? If Dan is not "advocating against faith" in the Restored Gospel, then what, in your view, are Dehlin et al "cheering {Dan} on" in doing? And what are your thoughts about Dan's response to Dehlin's praise: "Well, thank you so much"? Thanks, -Smac

On Jesus Christ: Dan: Dan: On the Book of Mormon: Dan: Dan: On religion (broadly): Dan: Dan: Dan: On his impact on the faith of other Latter-day Saints: Dan: Dan: One can believe that Dan is not attempting to subvert the faith of the Latter-day Saints. For my part, I find the contrary conclusion more congruent with his statements, particularly when he has now repeatedly bragged about how he is providing "reasons for people to feel justified in not remaining faithful," and that this is - for him - the "sweet spot" and evidence that he is "probably doing something right." John Dehlin, prior to the loss of his membership, spent years playing footsie, but I think plenty of people took him as trying - with some real success - to subvert the efforts of the Church. Jeremy Runnells was pretty clumsy with his "Hey, I'm just asking questions" schtick, so his subversive efforts were more obvious. Sam Young was very "in your face" with his subversive efforts. Kate Kelly was, in my view, more subversive in her conduct (I found her protesting on Temple Square to be particularly problematic). Denver Snuffer was, I think, fairly subversive in his published writings. I'm trying to remember how much Natasha Helfer traded on her membership and status as a Latter-day Saint to advance her opinions which were at odds with the truth claims and doctrines of the Church. Her performative antics at her membership council were pretty offputting. Dan, in my view, is sort of a conflation of John Dehlin (re: social media presence and self-promotion and being coy for years about what he was doing) and Denver Snuffer (re: advancing intellectual-sounding arguments to subvert the Church's efforts). I found this YouTube video, from about 6 months ago, interesting and illuminating: A Grok-generated transcript: This seems like a dodge. Dan is constantly reiterating his status as a "scholar." He begins many (most?) of his YouTube videos with something like "Hi, my name is Dan McClellan and I'm a scholar of the bible and religion." And he is speaking to a lay audience via social media platforms. And he is in that context speaking authoritatively about what "the data" do and do not show. And yet he expects his listeners to more or less intuit that his constant references to "the data" are broad and colloquial, and not scholarly/scientific? The Ward Radio guys' core objection—that “data” language carries a scientific connotation for a lay audience even when the underlying work is historical/textual—is not empty, and McClellan’s own response largely concedes the broader usage, but then he immediately dismisses the concern as "gatekeeping." In the transcript he defines “data” explicitly as “something that is known as a fact that can be used as a basis for reasoning or from which inferences can be drawn.” He acknowledges that this is broader and more colloquial than the empirical/scientific sense, that he sometimes uses the narrower sense, but that “overwhelmingly” he uses the broad one. He also notes that biblical studies rarely has anything approximating empirical proof and that the best one can usually do is a scholarly consensus about what is most likely. That is an accurate description of the methodological limits of historical reconstruction, but it undercuts the rhetorical force of repeatedly framing conclusions as what “the data” do or do not support. In my view, for many viewers the word still signals something closer to tested, measurable evidence than to the interpretive weighing of texts, archaeology, and probabilities that McClellan is actually doing. Dan, in his channel intros, routinely identifies him as “a scholar of the Bible and religion,” his podcast and merch are titled “Data Over Dogma,” and the motto is presented as an aspirational contrast to authority or tradition (hewing toward religious authority/tradition). For me, that framing invites the inference that his conclusions rest on a more objective, evidence-first footing than the alternatives. When the subject is something like the historicity of the resurrection—an event that is not empirically testable in the way a radiocarbon date or a controlled experiment is—the same language is applied. Historical arguments about it rest on the usual tools of the discipline (source criticism, contextual probability, absence or presence of certain kinds of corroboration), not on "data" in the harder scientific sense. Treating the resulting scholarly assessment as simply “what the data show” compresses those methodological distinctions. Listeners who are not specialists can easily hear it as a stronger claim than the underlying evidence warrants. McClellan’s reply in the video treats the objection as mainly linguistic pedantry. That response is, I think, incomplete, particularly from a self-declared "scholar" whose putative objective is to educate his social media audience, most of whom lack relevant scholarly training and credentials. If the goal is public communication and the term ("data") is chosen in part because it carries authority for a non-specialist audience, then the difference between “the data do not support X” and “the current scholarly consensus, based on historical and textual methods, does not support X” is not trivial. The former sounds more decisive and less provisional. On questions that by his own account lack anything close to empirical proof (such as the resurrection), that presentational choice positions Dan as the clearer-eyed, less dogmatic authority. Whether that is primarily a communication shortcut or something closer to equivocation depends on how consistently the limits are flagged; the video itself shows he is aware of the broader usage and of the scientific connotations it can carry. I don't think he has said "the data support atheism" explicitly. I think he leaves that as more or less the next step from "the data don't support" the resurrection of Christ, the Church's claimed provenance about the Book of Mormon, and so on. This has more or less been my assessment for a while. There is, I suppose, a rhetorical thread-the-needle explanation available. Dan could more clearly qualify his meaning and utilization of "data," but then that would drastically reduce the polemical potency that brings in social media views and clicks and popularity. He could stop speaking of not-empirically-testable matters of faith as being incongruent with "the data" (by his reckoning and usage, "something that is known as a fact that can be used as a basis for reasoning or from which inferences can be drawn"). Ontologically, whether Christ rose from the dead or not is a "fact," but accepting it or rejecting it as such will always be a matter of faith and perspective. This is, for me, one of the more serious concerns about Dan's equivocating usage of "the data." He could explain how he navigates matters of faith as to non-empirically-testable matters of faith, but he goes out of his way to not do that. He could stop bragging about how he is providing other Latter-day Saints "reasons ... to feel justified in not remaining faithful," and that this is - for him - the "sweet spot" and evidence that he is "probably doing something right." I don't see that happening, either. John Dehlin spent years carefully parsing his words so as to provide plausible deniability that he was subverting the efforts of the Church, that he was seeking to tear down the faith of the Saints, to persuade them to listen to him more than to prophets and apostles, to encourage them to abandon their covenants. But even then, it became pretty clear pretty quickly that he had subversive intent. Reasonable minds can disagree about whether Dan can be described in similar ways. For my part, I think he is subversive. Thanks, -Smac

Dude better stay away from anime then. One thing I love about a lot of anime is that it often roots its notions of good and bad in Buddhism, such that villains are often presented with backstories of trauma that explain why they became the way they are, and the heroes are often very sympathetic to that fact. In Demon Slayer, for example, the lead Tanjiro is often in tears after killing a demon while in despair over the pain and sorrow that resulted in a person becoming a demon. The world isn't black and white, and so some people need to stop whining when media is acknowledging that.

I wish I hadn't read the comments on the article when I saw it on Facebook. They were incredibly disappointing (but not unpredictable). I love and appreciate the Church's commitment to museums, and historical preservation. I am such a huge museum and historical site tour junky. This type of investment pays huge dividends not only providing access to interactive education, but museums are such a great resource for families/parents who are budget strapped and need an outing.

That is wonderful, and I am very happy for you! I can't explain such things either. Maybe that particular "isometric exercise" stage was over?

From what I recall from one of his videos in the past regarding prophesy and miracles, he essentially said that while examining things from an academic standpoint, to give credence to the prophesies and miraculous events of the Bible means that you by default have to allow that same latitude to all holy writ and supernatural claims. If it's possible that Jesus was resurrected, then it's possible that the resurrection motifs of Inanna, Dionysus, Attis, Odin, Ganesha, etc. are also true and also need to be weighed the similarly, using like approaches. Essentially, if you are wearing only your fancy academic hat, and are using academic tools to analyze texts and historical events, you can't swap out your tool-bag for a different one, just because it's something that your own tradition (or the predominate cultural tradition) presupposes. Academic tools, and tools of faith can be rascally to wield simultaneously with consistency and fairness.

The museum will house a dedicated genealogy center powered by FamilySearch. Tracing black slave genealogy in North America is historically difficult. FamilySearch has spent years digitizing millions of historic records including the Freedmen’s Bureau records, to help African American families discover their ancestral lines. Partnering with the museum it is hoped to expand that research effort.

My guess is he means follow the data when it comes to data-driven fields like history or science. Faith isn't data driven, and Dan has never advocated against faith.

So I've seen a lot of Dan's videos over the years. I can't mind read, but my mental model of him is thus: (for the very little that it's worth) Dan views religion as a faith based affair. It's a personal interaction and negotiation with God and with scripture and with our fellow humans. Leveraging personal religious beliefs to control others is bad. Claiming that the "data" prove "my" religious belief system is right and "yours" is wrong is bad. Leveraging religious beliefs to marginalize the weak and afflicted is exceptionally bad. Showing how critical mainstream biblical scholarship views the bible is the theme of his social media work. Just as the "data" don't prove Krishna created the universe, critical biblical scholarship shows they don't prove Adonai (Dan's term for the god of the old testament) doing so either. We shouldn't privilege our personal religious beliefs to show how much better we are than anyone else. We are stumbling through the dark just like everyone else. Every single harsh take Dan makes on social media is against someone leveraging their personal religious beliefs to go after or look down on someone else.

It depends on when you use the second one. If people use it to say what is present in the bible then yes, one should follow the data. If people use it as part of their beliefs (like resurrection) then it may make sense to follow the dogma. We would have to know in what context Dan was using it.

I saw someone say Dan has said the data does not support the resurrection or other supernatural teachings, and then that Dan has also said people should follow the data and not dogma. That's circumstantial evidence but if accurate I don't know how Dan could be described as a believing member when he's saying the data supports atheism and members should follow the data. (but I again acknowledge my information, which is second hand, could be very flawed and it is very possible Dan never said that)

Not sure.

It's not satisfying because it only works that way for some people, but it doesn't fit Nemo's situation or a lot of people. Generally it only fits people who feel they have done something wrong and need or want a clean slate to come back to and feel excommunication is part of that process. A reboot is only a reboot when it starts something over again. A reboot is not a reboot if the problems stay the same or get worse.

Thank you - ————- I don’t care about the case so much as I care about the fact that men took advantage, AGAIN, of an opportunity to ***get off. *** I’m glad people are angry about it. It makes me feel comforted in a way. Im not personally comforted at all by anyone who defends the men by suggesting that the men are potential victims of the woman. I recognize there are those who are unbothered by the absence of comfort. That’s fine too. But I’m here to point it out- this is a social media site, we are social beings interacting here and having a relationship, and I want you to know the impact you have on our relationship. I am not one to just be quiet about my thoughts. Take it or leave it, as I will with yours.

Trying to stay on topic, but Dan was the guest on Joe Rogan's podcast the other day. He did mention he doesn't publicly speak about where he is exactly religious wise. But he's a believer in God/Jesus I believe he said. Now I need to listen again.

Contacting the Physics dept at BYU might work. They have an email address on their site. It’s physics_office@byu.edu Here’s the info according to a news article chat found: Thursday, October 7, 2010 Location: The Royden G. Derrick Planetarium (located in the Eyring Science Center at BYU) Sponsorship: The lecture is an annual series sponsored by entrepreneur Briant Summerhays in honor of his father, Hyrum, to promote harmony and dialogue between science and religion. [1, 2, 3, 4] https://news.byu.edu/news/david-derrick-present-annual-summerhays-lecture-oct-7 looks like Derrick is not a physicist, but is an astronomy hobbyist and supporter. ”Derrick is an industry leader in personal remote monitoring and is a College Volunteer Leadership Council member in BYU’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He also serves on BYU’s President’s Leadership Council. An astronomy enthusiast, Derrick has made many contributions to astrophysics research through generous donations. The International Astronomical Union and Smithsonian Institute have named an asteroid after him to honor his efforts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and an MBA from the University of Utah.”