But the more you just insult like, oh, these people lived in the desert and they lived in tribes.

And then you're like, but they wrote wisdom that even many nonbelievers find thought-provoking and moving.

They've endured the last few millennia much better than, say, the god delusion has endured the last decade and a half.

The more you denigrate the intelligence of, you know, their age or their tribe or their author,

the more you point to it being plausible that these books are of divine origin.

So I think that this like kind of the scoffing, indignant response, not only is unhelpful,

it actively helps the Muslim or Mormon or Christian case because, yeah, an idiot couldn't

have written the Gospels. Welcome back to Shams Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And today I want to

address a popular argument I've heard both Muslim and Mormon apologists make for why we should

believe the book of Mormon or the Quran is inspired scripture. And the argument goes

something like this, don't you know, the founders Joseph Smith and Muhammad were not smart enough,

educated enough, brilliant enough to have come up with these incredible works on their own.

You look at something like the Quran, you look at something like the Book of Mormon, and then

you hear that, you know, someone who is either illiterate or poorly educated came up with it.

And you think, yeah, that seems to defy our expectations of what someone with that level of school could accomplish.

And I think Christians mishandled this argument really badly on the whole.

So I want to explore both the Mormon version and the Muslim version of it and then why I don't think it's convincing. Now,

I'll address at the outset that I don't think answering this disproves Islam or Mormonism,

but hopefully it at least shows why this isn't a good argument, even to

Mormons or Muslims who may be watching.

So first, what about Mormons? Those members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

you will often hear the argument. Joseph Smith had very little school, and so when he is, you know,

...