Latter-day Saint on Joe Rogan

Stephen C

•

About a year and a half ago I wrote a post speculating about different possibilities for Latter-day Saints going on Joe Rogan. Well, yesterday we finally got one, Dan McLellan of Data over Dogma fame. Dan used to work for the Church in their translation department, and while he very occasionally defends our Latter-day Saint theological eccentricities  against attacks by Evangelical types, he is also on the record as not believing in LDS truth claims.

In terms of the interview, I used the “Ask Gemini” function to tell me the timestamps where he talks about Mormonism: “Dan McClellan discusses joining the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at the age of 20 (0:46:01). He shares how his decision to serve a two-year mission in Uruguay sparked his passion for studying the Bible, its history, and ancient languages, which eventually led him to pursue a career as a biblical scholar (0:46:04 – 0:46:37)” (and yes, I confirmed those timestamps).

So it doesn’t look like the Church really came up much. I listened to the first bit while doing dishes last night, and I haven’t finished it, but you could tell Rogan was going in his typical direction of “isn’t is so weird that these civilization were so advanced, wink wink” and Dan pushed back.

On one hand I totally called it, but on the other hand I noted in my prognostication last year that Dan is left-wing enough he might very well might not appear on Rogan out of principle, so I got that wrong. So welcome to the manosphere Dan!

Comments

3 responses to “Latter-day Saint on Joe Rogan”

  1. Not a Cougar

    Stephen, first, thank you for highlighting the interview. I listened to it in its entirety, and Dan was his usual thoughtful and thought-provoking self. I also agree that he gently but firmly pushed back on Joe’s instinctual desire to veer toward “extreme minority” (i.e., weird, unprovable, and extremely unlikely) explanations for ancient history.

    That said, I’d push back on your statement that “[Dan] is also on the record as not believing in LDS truth claims.” He’s certainly on record as stating that his scholarship does not support the Church’s truth claims (a quick search pulled a quote that has him saying his scholarship “almost unilaterally conflicts with and undermines LDS dogmas”), but that’s a fundamentally different statement from whether or not he is on record as personally not believing them. In fact, he’s been very clear about the fact that he does not speak about his personal beliefs in public fora, and he reiterated that position towards the end of this interview when Joe asked him about how his scholarship impacts his personal beliefs. If you have a public quote from Dan on his personal lack of belief in LDS truth claims, I’ll be happy to withdraw my objection to your statement above.

  2. Stephen C

    Sure, I guess? But if you say “the data contradicts LDS truth claims” I’m fine taking that meaning that he doesn’t believe the truth claims. I don’t think that’s much of a stretch. I take his reticence to be mostly about what he *does* believe, but it’s not that hard to parse out what he *does not* believe on his channel on LDS and other religious topics.

  3. Not a Cougar

    Stephen, if that’s the case, then I’d urge you to be a little clearer that you have made a conclusion regarding his beliefs based on his public scholarship rather than giving the incorrect impression that Dan has publicly stated he is a nonbeliever. If belief is a choice, as Elder Neil L. Andersen taught in his talk “Faith Is Not by Chance, but by Choice,” from the October 2015 General Conference, then, for all we know, Dan chooses to believe in spite of his and other’s scholarship . Isn’t that exactly what we’re asked to do when we’re told by multiple General Authorities to doubt our doubts? I’d be hesitant to make conclusions about someone else’s personal beliefs, especially when they are on record multiple times saying that they don’t talk about their personal beliefs in public. Also, thanks again for highlighting the interview.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.