Hello, everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today John Delin. It is August 28th

2023 and today we have Bible scholar Dan McClellan back to answer a really crucial important question

How do informed or thoughtful or educated fully aware

Mormons stay active in the Mormon Church and this is something that I love to do

I've done it with Patrick Mason in the past

Terrell and Fiona Givens Richard Bushman and and many others

Basically just to give a tiny bit of context one of the most important questions or most frequent questions

I get largely from ex Mormons is

How in the world can someone as intelligent and as thoughtful and as informed as

As as Dan McClellan or Richard Bushman or Jenner Reese or whoever still believe in the Mormon Church. It's crazy

And sometimes it veers into it's unethical like they must be lying. They must be hiding. They must be afraid

So part of my motivation for wanting to do this episode is just to

Answer that question as many times as is needed for those who just don't get it

And it's always weird because many of these people were believers before they weren't so you think they could just reflect back on how they believed

Before they didn't believe and that's how believe happens

A second motivation I have which is going to be controversial for some of my viewers and listeners is I believe

That religions often the reason why they've existed for so long is because they add value and even though religions do harm

It's very easy to make the argument that all organizations do harm all podcasts do harm everyone does harm and good

and

I'm not at a point in my life where I believe that humanity all the sudden gets better when all religions and churches disappear

I don't think secular society and humankind in general is figured out

Things like community and other types of things morality spirituality sufficiently

...