Dan McClellan: I am an active member of the Church

[Okrahomer]

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

[InCognitus]

33 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

He also posted that on YouTube and this other one too:

Apparently he's getting a lot of questions on this lately and he's addressing them.

[JustAnAustralian]

It's interesting that one of the topics he responded to was whether was an apologist for Mormonism, when most of the questions I've seen have been whether he was doing the opposite.

Edited June 9 by JustAnAustralian

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, Okrahomer said:

some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

This is the YouTube version in case anyone prefers that:

 

[Calm]

23 hours ago, InCognitus said:

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

This is the YouTube version in case anyone prefers that:

 

He has been consistently saying this for a long time and I don’t see much difference from when he hung out here or other places I interacted with him.

Edited June 10 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

I think a lot have misconceptions about what scholarship is intended to do.

Or maybe what the Church or Gospel requires?

Edited June 9 by Calm

[The Nehor]

A lot of Christians think he is a an apologist for Mormons because they don’t understand what the LDS Church (and a lot of other restorationist churches) teach. If they did they would know that a lot of what Dan says is disliked and derided by people of his own church. I have seen people on the web commenting that  the LDS church is pro-LGBT because Dan is. Also people claiming that LDS people in general are very skeptical of biblical historicity to a degree I rarely see in the Church because Dan seems to be that way.

Edited June 9 by The Nehor

[Stargazer]

17 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

Here

From the comments, some folks simply cannot get their minds around this.

Yeah, I found some of those comments to be very amusing. In a eye-rolling kind of way.

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, The Nehor said:

A lot of Christians think he is a an apologist for Mormons because they don’t understand what the LDS Church (and a lot of other restorationist churches) teach. If they did they would know that a lot of what Dan says is disliked and derided by people of his own church. I have seen people on the web commenting that  the LDS church is pro-LGBT because Dan is. Also people claiming that LDS people in general are very skeptical of biblical historicity to a degree I rarely see in the Church because Dan seems to be that way.

I can relate to what you say here, because I have intensely disliked some of what Dan has said/written. And unfortunately, I have a rather negative personal experience with him that I find it hard to shed.

On the other hand, I myself have found that some of what I have had to say about certain subjects seems to elicit dislike and derision from people in my own church, so maybe I need to be more understanding with him.

He actually makes sense, occasionally, so there's that.

[Okrahomer]

17 hours ago, InCognitus said:

I don't quite understand the problems, honestly.

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

Yes, we need to shed the conformity in thought image because this is actually a wide allowable range in most of the peripheral stuff.

It’s not surprising we are seen as ridiculously high conformists given how our missionaries look and our WoW standards and a certain look at least in the past with hair and clothing among women, the clean cut look for men (the BYU look, is that still a thing?), but it’s unfortunate (especially when members start believing it as well and thinking of good, solid, faithful members as apostate because they differ in politics or evolution, errancy in leaders and other views.

[Okrahomer]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

Yes, we need to shed the conformity in thought image because this is actually a wide allowable range in most of the peripheral stuff.

It’s not surprising we are seen as ridiculously high conformists given how our missionaries look and our WoW standards and a certain look at least in the past with hair and clothing among women, the clean cut look for men (the BYU look, is that still a thing?), but it’s unfortunate (especially when members start believing it as well and thinking of good, solid, faithful members as apostate because they differ in politics or evolution, errancy in leaders and other views.

Agreed. I do think there is probably still a “BYU look”; although maybe it is morphing a little right now. It would help if BYU would shed the no beards policy.

[InCognitus]

2 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

I don’t get it either. I noticed at least one genuinely puzzled commenter asking for non‑partisan information about the Church, specifically because he admires Dan’s scholarship so much that he wants to understand more about Dan’s religious beliefs. And given the sheer volume of incredulous reactions, I wouldn’t be surprised if others are now curious as well. That’s a good thing. Good for Dan.

The thing that puzzles me is how many people were surprised to find out he's LDS.  I don't watch every single video that Dan puts out, but there are numerous times in interviews and in the Data Over Dogma podcast where his membership in the church comes up, and he's constantly being bashed in the comments about being a member of the church.  In many of the interviews with him that I have watched (I think in a couple of them they were interviewing him about his book, The Bible Says So) he speaks fondly of his conversion to the church and how that led him to read the Bible for the first time prior to serving a mission, and how that got him started in Biblical scholarship.

He discusses the church to some degree in this Data Over Dogma episode, for example:

At about the 13:16 minute mark he discusses debates he had on his blog with James White about whether "Mormons" are Christians, and that comes up again around the 18:00 minute mark (where they are discussing the name of the church) and a little later he says, "you will find a lot of people who insist that I probably can't even call myself a Mormon anymore and shouldn't call myself a Mormon for multiple reasons. One of them being that you're not supposed to use that word."

There's a lot more from there.

[Pyreaux]

There seems to be many very active LDS apologists, former atheists and/or textual critics, like youtuber Travis Anderson, who seem to embrace Dan McClellan. Travis seems to have a less spiritually driven testimony, but a more practical secular draw to the church that is not concerned if many claims in texts are correct. Saints that prioritize academic data, textual criticism, and philosophical choice over tradition or emotion or even a spiritual testimony.

McClellan routinely states that there is zero empirical data for the supernatural, for neither the resurrection nor the historicity of the Book of Mormon, while simultaneously remaining an active, practicing member of the Church. 

For atheistic leaning thinkers, like Travis Anderson, this approach to the church is very liberating. It removes the exhausting burden of trying to "prove" the impossible to prove. Instead, it allows them to look at the data objectively and treat faith not as something proven, but as an explicit, existential choice you make.

The Bible and Book of Mormon don't need to be a literal or accurate records to hold value, it can still serve as a vehicle for a community and its rituals. The Church remains a highly effective, practical social and spiritual way for reducing suffering, fostering community, and navigating mortality until our end is revealed.

For individuals who have never experienced the dramatic spiritual conversion that removes all doubt as others do, this approach offers a way to stay in the pews without intellectual dishonesty. You just admit history is messy, and the supernatural cannot be proven, but I choose this framework because it works for my life and my family. No need for the religion to be "objectively true" in a scientific sense to hold a pragmatic, almost cultural allegiance to the system.

Edited June 10 by Pyreaux

[the narrator]

3 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

The Bible and Book of Mormon don't need to be a literal or accurate records to hold value, it can still serve as a vehicle for a community and its rituals.

Unfortunately many high-profile apologists (and leaders) loudly claim the opposite and reinforce the belief that the BofM must be an accurate historical representation if it is to have religious value. For example, Stephen Smoot writes, "To abandon faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to effectively abandon — whether intentionally or not — faith in Joseph Smith’s sanity, honesty, and divine ordination."--a claim I entirely reject. As I have long argued, religious apologetics that attempt to tie religious truth claims to secular epistemology not only completely misunderstand what it means for something to be a religious truth but do more in the long term to harm faith--especiallly as the gap (aka "How could have Joseph known?!?!") apologetics increasingly fall by the wayside as more secular knowledge emerges. (We can see a very similar thing happening as the arguments utilized by Christian creation apologetics have been almost entirely and conclusively eliminated in the past few decades.)

[Stargazer]

5 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

McClellan routinely states that there is zero empirical data for the supernatural, for neither the resurrection nor the historicity of the Book of Mormon, while simultaneously remaining an active, practicing member of the Church. 

I can at least partly agree with Dan that there is zero empirical data for those things. 

What is "empirical evidence"? It is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. 

Now, I have sense experience of both Jesus's resurrection and the divinity of the Book of Mormon. Meaning, the Spirit of God has testified to me that they are both true. So I do have personal empirical data for them. But I cannot demonstrate either of them via an experiment that can demonstrate to anyone else. They have to experiment upon the word for themselves.

I don't agree that there is zero empirical data for the historicity of the Book of Mormon. There is some empirical data for the Lehites' journey down the Arabian peninsula: things Joseph Smith could not have known about, but are found in 1st Nephi. That one valley that Lehi named "Laman" after his son is described as a desert dweller might describe it, and there are valleys similar to that in that place; the city of Nahom, whose ruins and name were discovered in reasonably close proximity to where the text suggests it is; and the place Bountiful, whose description and characteristics comes close to a couple of actual locations along the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula, and in the right direction of travel from Nahom. It's not enough to prove anything; but its not zero empirical data.

 

[Pyreaux]

On 6/10/2026 at 11:51 AM, the narrator said:

Unfortunately many high-profile apologists (and leaders) loudly claim the opposite and reinforce the belief that the BofM must be an accurate historical representation if it is to have religious value. For example, Stephen Smoot writes, "To abandon faith in the historicity of the Book of Mormon is to effectively abandon — whether intentionally or not — faith in Joseph Smith’s sanity, honesty, and divine ordination."--a claim I entirely reject. As I have long argued, religious apologetics that attempt to tie religious truth claims to secular epistemology not only completely misunderstand what it means for something to be a religious truth but do more in the long term to harm faith--especiallly as the gap (aka "How could have Joseph known?!?!") apologetics increasingly fall by the wayside as more secular knowledge emerges. (We can see a very similar thing happening as the arguments utilized by Christian creation apologetics have been almost entirely and conclusively eliminated in the past few decades.)

Stephen Smoot often appears alongside Travis Anderson, I'm sure they have a bridge between these two views. I think he and Travis lean on the Accommodation Theory, that prophets didn't get a science textbook or a flawless historical archive from the sky when called upon. Instead, God "accommodates" human limitations, speaking to people within their own frameworks. Shifting the definitions of "inspired" texts away from "inerrant" texts.

Ask Smoot if he believes there is evidence of a Flat Earth, I bet he'd say no. If he says no, did he just abandon his faith in the historicity of the Old Testament where the cosmos is consistently described that way? No. Arguing Isaiah, Moses and Paul didn't understand modern science or saying there is no evidence for Lehi in America is not the same as arguing that Adam or Lehi are purely fictional characters.

Dan and Travis could always point to seeing the principles work secularly before they simply choose to believe, which is an approach embedded in Alma 32. You plant a "seed" of a principle or a belief. You nurture it and observe its effects. If it expands your mind, enlightens your understanding, and improves your life, the seed is "good."

You don't need flawless archaeological records to prove to yourself that a weekly ritual of self-reflection made your life stabler and more meaningful. You experience the utility of the system in the real world, and then you make the conscious existential leap to choose faith in the divine source behind it. For those reasons, they refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater, not leave the church.

From Stephen Smoot’s perspective, I'd think he is drawing a line with saying the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction or a purely spiritual revelation with absolutely no potential for discoverable evidence, as an intellectual cop-out. He argues that you cannot strip away all historicity without completely destroying credibility. I've not heard Dan say something ipso facto like Joseph wasn't handling real, physical, artifact, golden plates. That would be weird to hold to as an active member.

Of the little I've seen of Dan, I'd guess he is, to an uncomfortable degree, trying to admit the state of current archaeology and realizes that defending absolute historicity is a losing battle if people are demanding total academic honesty from him at all times.

Edited June 11 by Pyreaux

[Stargazer]

FWIW, here's a recent review of a debate on the Trinity between Dan McClellan and Joshua Sijuwade. The reviewer is Metaphysics Mike, an opponent of the Trinity. So you get some of Mike's thoughts as well. This video is close to 3 hours long, so...

 

[Kevin Christensen]

Regarding "zero empirical data", it helps to understand  that Empiricism is an ideology that itself defines what counts as data based on assumptions that are not empirically based.

Quote

Positivism [aka Empiricism] began its intellectual decline when the main criterion of logical positivists (any proposition that is neither analytical—that is, true by definition—nor based on empirical observations is non-sense) was shown to be self-refuting. This claim itself is not based on empirical inputs. Yet those innocent of philosophy still adhere to this simplistic way of sorting what is valid proof from invalid evidence. The entire positivistic program began to collapse once this primary support was undermined. ... It has also become clear over the past thirty years’ critique of empiricism that empirical data are also theory laden, never free of interpretation but bound up in conceptual, historical, and cultural ideas.

If facts are always theory laden, this poses a serious barrier for the historian who believes that historical facts are somehow free of concepts, ideologies, or ideas, because then all facts “contain metaphysical elements, [and] it becomes impossible to justify simple objective tests for theories because one is testing against theories, not against the facts. Further, if two theories differ radically in their fundamental metaphysical assumptions, it will become impossible rationally to compare them without using unwarranted standards.”  See Interpreter, Alan Goff, page 150 here: https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-inevitability-of-epistemology-in-historiography-theory-history-and-zombie-mormon-history 

Or as Ian Barbour put it, in one of my favorite books, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study of Science and Religion:

Quote

During the 1930’s and 1940’s the positivists had taken science as the norm for all meaningful discourse. Religious language was considered neither true nor false, but meaningless. The positivists had declared the famous Verification Principle, which states that, apart from tautologies and definitions, statements are meaningful only if they can be verified by sense data. Accepting an oversimplified view of science as the prototype for all genuine knowledge, they dismissed religion as “purely emotive.”

During the 1950’s positivism came under increasing attack, but many of its assumptions were perpetuated in the empiricism which came to replace it as the dominant interpretation of science. Among the empiricist claims were the following. (1) Science starts from publicly observable data which can be described in a pure observation-language independent of any theoretical assumptions. (2) Theories can be verified or falsified by comparison with this fixed experimental data. (3) The choice between theories is rational, objective and in accordance with specifiable criteria. Philosophers under the sway of such empiricism continued to say that religion can legitimately make no cognitive claims.

...

These ideas came under increasing attack in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and three counter-claims were advanced. (1) All data are theory-laden; there is no neutral observation-language. (2) Theories are not verified or falsified; when data conflict with an accepted theory, they are usually set to one side as anomalies, or else auxiliary assumptions are modified. (3) There are no criteria for choice between rival theories of great generality, for the criteria are themselves theory-dependent.

The attack on empiricism was carried a step further in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn held that the thought and action of a scientific community are dominated by its paradigms, defined as ‘standard examples of scientific work which embody a set of conceptual, methodological and metaphysical assumptions’. He maintained that observational data and criteria for assessing theories are paradigm-dependent.  See Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 98. The chapter is conveniently online here:  http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2238&C=207

I've long thought it compelling that Kuhn's most important criteria for paradigm choice [what actually gives a meaningful structure to scientific revolutions], that is, puzzle definition and testability, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence, fruitfulness, simplicity and aesthetics, and future promise are equivalent to what Alma offers in Alma 32.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Tooele, UT