I've just learned about the podcast "Data Over Dogma" with Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher. Seems it's new, having just started in April of 2023, so I'm going through them from episode one and loving it so far!
For anyone else interested in several intelligent conversations between an atheist and a theologian who is a practicing Mormon. It's actually far more interesting than it sounds. The topics are questions I've always wondered about the bible, and the discussions are very thought-provoking.
Search for it where ever you usually get your podcasts, or if you like watching videos, they also have a YouTube channel.
Mormon theologian I can think of no better example of an oxymoron
?why?
I've actually been enjoying his explanations and interesting questions he brings up and/or answers. I may not have described his credentials correctly. In any case, he's very respectful toward believers and non-believers and simply has the goal of educating those who are interested about the texts in the bible and combat the misinformation and misunderstanding of those texts. It may not be for everyone, but I'm enjoying the discussions and banter between the two and any of the guests they have with them.
@skado
Theology literally means the the study and science of god.
Mormon "Theology" is mainly based around the idea that God lives on a planet at the centre of the Universe called Kolob, where god his wife and his two sons Jesus and Satan, had a falling out over how to run their planet "Earth" so that the people who live there in order for be possessed by spirit children could eventually become gods of their own worlds and start the whole business over again.
In order to accomplish this God, found a convicted teenage con man in 19th century New York and told him to make sure everyone do plagiarised Freemasonry rituals in very expensive temples, give him ten percent of all their earnings and marry as many women as humanly possible, so that people could have the magic pass words to get in to one of the three Mormon heavens (so long as they were not black, because someone has to be the slaves in heaven).
@skado, @Julie808
Okay just done a bit of research, they are both Mormons, one still works at BYU the other is Satirist and stand up comedian, the show is little more than a Mormon missionary tool pretending to be a theological debate show.
They are not alone in this the Mormon PR department is infamous for such shenanigans, they have a motto that "Lying for the Lord" is laudable and not a sin.
@LenHazell53 Well, I'm pretty sure that Dan Beecher is an atheist, and Dan McClellan is a Morman, and both are very respectful to each other and to all listeners of various faiths.
Maybe I misspoke about the one Dan being a theolgian, maybe I should have said biblical scholar. But in any case, I find the discussions interesting and enlightening about some of the things I may have been misunderstanding about the biblical stories.
I'm not a fan of the bible, I yawned all the way through it while reading it aloud to help my ex-husband pass a class in he was forced to take to get his masters degree from a Christian college, decades ago. He slept through my reading of the bible to him, yet still passed the class. We were both atheists at the time. I remained atheist, and he is now a practicing Mormon. Go figure!
@Julie808
Well as you probably know then The Babble has very little to do with Mormonism, it is very low down the list of standard works (Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants all outrank it for divine reliability and up until the early 1990s the journal of discourses also was considered more scriptural than the KJV. That got so embarrassing that suddenly it was "NEVER" a standard work, even though we all knew it was. Recently the Book of Abraham that makes up half of the Pearl if great price has gone the same way and now was never a translation of the Egyptian Papyri, and suddenly it had "ALWAYS" been just a inspired piece of writing by the prophet.) Or at least since the actual scrolls were discovered and actually translated by people who could ACTUALLY read them, and found they had barely a word in common with Holy Jo Smith's twaddle.
The Mormon church hierarchy, are just a bunch of lying, money grabbing lying old crooks, and that is a face that has not changed since 1820.
So forgive me if I would not trust the "Two Dans" (Ironically named after Brigham Youngs private secret police force the Danites) if they told me today was Friday.
Rule one Mormons LIE.