The Bible Verse People Use to End Every Argument

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things in your snazzy new hat, Dan?

Dan Beecher Ooh, yeah. I'm glad you noticed. Uh, this fine snapback hat with embroidered, uh, logo on it- Mm-hmm ... is available on the Data Over Dogma website if you go to dataoverdogmapod.com. Uh, there are other, uh, merch items- ... also available if anybody wants them. And we've got, we've got apparel as well. Appar- yeah, all sorts of cool stuff. Uh, you get the hoodies and T-shirts and stuff. I just decided I needed to get some, so I grabbed some. But I, uh- Yeah ... I, I, I'm, uh, actually very impressed by the quality of everything. Yeah. So I'm, I'm really happy with it. You'll have some Data Over Dogma Wayfarers before too long. Yeah, man. Uh, and, and, uh, everything's available in so many colors and so many different options, so I think, I think it's really, uh, a fun thing. So yeah, go get some merch if you want to. Uh, but anyway, we should, we should do a show is one of the things- Let's do it ... that, that you and I should do. Um- As a nice little change of pace, yeah. Yeah, yeah, something different. We, we like to break away from the norm every now and then. So today, we're gonna be doing a twisted scripture, and what we're gonna be talking about is some scriptures and the ways that they, uh, get used to stop a conversation. The way that, the ways that some scriptures get used to prove that I'm right and you're wrong, and you don't get to have anything to say about it. So let's dive in to Twisted Scripture. And for today's twisted scripture, uh, we're going to one that was sent in to us by one of our listeners. Um, but it's some- one that I've actually been seeing out in the wild deployed quite a bit.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Uh, and this is, uh, from Proverbs. Not from Proverbs. Yes, from Proverbs 3. Uh, s- verse five- Uh-huh ... and six. Um, and that's the one, you've probably heard it before. I, we, you know, we normally do the NRSVue, but I'm going to read from the King James Version because that's where I first, that's the language that I got used to, that I'd heard, which is, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths." And, uh, you know, the listener who wrote in to us with that wrote in to say, "Hey, uh, when I, you know, when I used to go to church at the, you know, as I was growing up, any time I had a question, any time something in the Bible didn't seem right or didn't work from how I was seeing the world- Mm-hmm ... my pastor would just whip this one out and say I don't get to, to have an opinion about it." Hmm. And I think that that's, uh, I think that's a f- a fair thing. You know, I saw, uh, on Threads just, just the other day, someone posted a thing about how, you know, they were an atheist because they read the Bible, uh, which, which has been known to happen from time to time. Yeah.

Dan McClellan And even, even Pew has said that, uh, atheists know the Bible better than, uh, virtually every other religious group.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In no small part because, uh, the atheism is frequently the, the outcome of, of seriously taking a look at things.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Um, anyway, uh, one of the responses, multiple people had sort of the similar response, which was just, "This happens when you lean on your own understanding, but I read the Bible with the Holy Spirit, so ha ha ha." Mm-hmm. So I, you know, I just wanted to talk about this idea of kind of stopping the conversation and, uh, and, and the idea that reading the, you know, the whole idea of just reading with the Holy Spirit versus- Right ... being an, a, a, a dirty, dirty scholar like you, Dan.

Dan McClellan Like, like moi, yeah. No, I, I, I, and I get that all the time. People will just, uh, they'll just comment that I cannot understand the Bible because you can only understand the Bible adequately if you have the Spirit with you.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which is, which is kind of funny. It, it, it strikes me as a kind of special pleading that, um- Oh ... that there's-

Dan Beecher It's the definition of special pleading.

Dan McClellan That they, they have some kind of special access to, uh, to an epistemological level that, um, you know, we just cannot achieve. They've leveled up because- Right ... 'cause they have, uh, yon Spirits with them. But, and, and what baffles me is, like, we, we, we study this kind of stuff, particularly within psychology of religion- Hmm ... cognitive science of religion-related fields. Uh, we, we study what's going on with this, and even within the Latter-day Saint tradition you get a lot of this. The, you know, the burning in the bosom kind of idea- Sure ... and, uh, you know, reading under the influence of the spirit. And it strikes me that, well, well, one, let's, let's take a look at Proverbs. You've got, um... Did you go through and read it? Uh- Yeah. Yes, you went through and read it. And the idea here, a lot of people think this means, you know, whatever the word of God says goes, and that's simply not true because we don't have any access to what God says or what Adonai or the Lord says independent of our own understanding. Right. Like, we have to understand- Whose understanding am I supposed to use then? Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not like, uh, you know, Big Hero 6 where you've got a chip and you can just take out my understanding and, and plug in- ... uh, God's understanding. Like, if, if by the understanding of the Lord you mean what's in the Bible- As we've talked about many times on this channel, it has no independent, inherent meaning of its own. Like, just the meaning itself is something that we create in negotiation with it, and we frequently overrule it. Like, as we've talked many times in the past, there are lots of parts of the Bible that are, uh, you know, non grata now. They-- We don't, uh, we don't like those things. We've, we have overruled them. We've come up with rationalizations and with interpretive lenses and hermeneutic maneuvers to decide that, uh, we're past it. Yeah. Slavery is the, is kind of the parade example, the easiest one to go to. Like, if, if we're supposed to lean on the, uh, the Lord and, and not onto our own understanding, slavery should be A-okay. Right. But, you know, and, and I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that countless times abolitionists were told to trust in the Lord and lean not on their own understanding when they were arguing, "This is-- What we're doing is bad. This is wrong."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "This is immoral. This is evil." Uh, beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were frequently told to trust in the Lord and lean not on their own understanding. And, uh- Yeah ... there's a, there's a-- It, it's kind of silly. There's a commentary, um, in the Hermeneia series that I, uh, that I really like, and there's a volume on, on Proverbs. But there's this paragraph that just says, "One should not interpret Proverbs 3:5 as a general disparagement of intellect and understanding. Rather, this verse has to do with a fundamental question. Is human insight the point of departure for sapiential reflection or does wisdom ultimately come from Adonai? Proverbs 3:5 is unequivocal here and thus resembles a line of thought that is fully expressed in the critical wisdom of the Book of Job and in the Book of Qoheleth," which would be Ecclesiastes, which we've talked about in the past. Which, which shows around the time that this dates to. This is probably Persian period, maybe even Hellenistic period. But, uh, yeah, I get, I get kind of, uh, frustrated with the notion that, uh, there's some, some special kind of access to, um, to God's understanding to which I do not have access because I'm, uh, you know, using my brain.

Dan Beecher Well, maybe that's the problem, Dan, is that you're using your brain and you're not... You know, there's Matthew 11 and Luke 10 that says if you have, uh, that, that, that extols the virtue of things that are hidden from the wise and the intelligent and have revea- been revealed to the infants. So what about that, Dan?

Dan McClellan Well, I think, I think here we're, we're talking about... And, and this is kind of similar to, to a lot of attempts to suggest that there is, that that kind of epistemological leveling up is something that only happens once you take, you know, step f- a foot in the dark or- Yeah ... um, or something like that. A- after the, the leap of faith, the trial of your faith, you will be, you'll be endowed with this, with this, uh, super secret special understanding that nobody else has access to or can measure or can test or scrutinize in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. And really, what people are just talking about is their intuitions.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They're just talking about their intuitions.

Dan Beecher Well, and the way that I demonstrate that, or try to, with people who's, who start to use this line of reasoning, is just to point out that, like, yes, you think you're reading using the Holy Spirit.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher That person over there thinks that they're reading using the Holy Spirit, and you've come to differing conclusions.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher So either one of you doesn't actually know how to read with the Spirit and is doing it wrong, which I know you're about to say that that's the other guy, but come on.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Or you're just using your own... You're, you're leaning unto your own understanding.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, that, that's exactly what you... You have no option but to do that. Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's, there's not really any other way to, uh, to engage in any kind of cognitive activity. We've, we've talked about how there's a spectrum from intuitive cognition to reflective cognition, and sometimes you can get something from your intuitive cognition where you're like, " Where did that come from?" And that is frequently held up as, "Oh, that's the Spirit."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "I was given this. This is a revelation from God." I- it's your intuitions. It's, it's the same thing that is responsible for optical illusions and for the way cartoons work. It is your brain doing its default settings, and, uh, that gets... And because so man- so many of our intuitions are rooted in our identity politics and the worldviews that, that we have become accustomed to and have been conditioned to, uh, that they confirm a lot of the features of our identity politics and our worldview is not God telling you it's true. It's just your intuitions doing intuition things.

Dan Beecher And that's not to say that intuition is bad. Like, our- No ... intuition is vital to how we live our lives. We m- Yeah ... we have to operate on some level using our intuitions.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Um, it's not the only thing we should be using.

Dan McClellan Right. The, obviously, we, we need to bring our reflective cognition into play frequently, and, and when there's conflict, the, frequently the reflective cognition overrules- Yeah ... uh, the, the intuitive cognition, and that helps us to better understand ourselves, the world around us, and our place within it. Our, our intuitions are really there to help us survive long enough to mate. Um- Yeah ... and, and y- people will... I, I see this a lot where particularly, uh, among creationists and people who are arguing against evolution, they'll be like, "Well, the, the, you know, materialism, if you're a materialist, if you believe in evolution, then you believe that our brain is unreliable."

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan And d- should-- don't you want something that's reliable? It's like, well, we can't step outside of our unreliable brain and somehow still access knowledge. Like, our brain is the only way we can get to anything, and yes, it is absolutely unreliable.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Anyone who would not- And who has observed their brain for-- in any honest way-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... re- will recognize there have been moments of unreliability-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... from every brain.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and th- and this is, uh, going back to the optical illusions. Like, we can, we can demonstrate beyond the... Like, demonstrably, this is very clearly not the image that your brain is telling you you're looking at.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it's because your brain is unreliable. And we've been able to figure out many of the different ways that, uh, our minds are, uh, set up and, and the, the way they assume the world around them is functioning, and is not isometric with the actual world around us. But it is good enough for us to do the things that we need to do s- to survive. Human language is the same way. This is why people misunderstand each other all the time, is because human language is not intended to, uh, most accurately communicate, transfer information form, from one mind to another. Human language is primarily intended to... The foundation of human language is the forming and the nurturing and the curating of social bonds.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so we can do that adequately, and, uh, and then, you know, there are a lot of ways that human language is, is not, uh, perfect, not isometric with whatever is going on in our head.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so I, I'm, I'm baffled by the notion that something that is only accessible to us through our human cognition is somehow transcending human cognition. Uh-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... it doesn't, it doesn't work like that. Uh-

Dan Beecher Yeah, even, even if the Spirit told me something, I would still have to lean unto my own understanding to know what the heck it means.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, th- like you h- you still at some point have to get your own understanding of the thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you... I- it's all contingent on our ability to understand. If something transcends our human understanding, we're not understanding it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. You can't understand that.

Dan McClellan It's, it's... Yeah, yeah. And, and I think a lot of people will confuse... They'll, they'll try to retreat to the notion of qualia. Have you heard that word before?

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Qualia is a way to refer to experiential things that you can't really transfer.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Like, uh, uh, you know, tr- teaching a, a person who was born blind what the color red is like.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's a qualia. You can't really transfer that understanding. You don't know what a symphony sounds like until you have heard one in, in some way or another.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan There are a lot of ways that, um, that these experiences can be talked about, but you can't really have the experience. You know, the Good Will Hunting, uh, you know, the, the famous scene where, where Robin Williams finally gets his, where he's like, "Ah, you're just a kid."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, you know, you, you don't know what it's like to look up at the Sistine Chapel, and you don't know all this stuff. And, uh, you can, you can read it in a book, but you don't-- you haven't had those experiences. So a lot of times people appeal to qualia as if that is what's going on with spiritual experiences, that, that there is something there that is not accessible unless you actually commit, uh, and are sincerely devoted to, uh, the, the particular ideology. And I-

Dan Beecher Yeah, uh, that's-

Dan McClellan ... and I think that is special pleading as well.

Dan Beecher That, that... Uh, no, it's just quoting c- 1 Corinthians 2- ... where it says, "Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are-" "... foolishness to them." So there you go. Uh-

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, you, you gotta read the rest of it

Dan Beecher ... I'm, I'm, I'm just not spiritual enough to, uh-

Dan McClellan Yeah, you gotta-

Dan Beecher ... to, to know

Dan McClellan ... you gotta read the rest of it: "They are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." Yeah, whi- which is, you know, going back to the, the Latter-day Saint burning-in-the-bosom thing-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... or... And, and we-- I, I mentioned it to you earlier, this, uh, mathematician, John Lennox, um, who, uh, a very folksy, uh, British scholar, was on the, uh, Diary of a CEO podcast. And, and he was talking to Steven Bartlett, who asked about how he, as a non-believer, could approach, um, you know, trying to develop belief in, in, uh, Christianity and Jesus. And Lennox gave this, uh, this analogy. He was like, "Imagine I tell you there's a red Ferrari parked outside, and it's just for you. You just have to go get in it. We can sit on the couch and argue about it all night long, and you will not know whether or not it's out there. You just have to get up and go look." And the, the idea is once you actually sincerely commit to trying to find out, you're going to find out that it's true. But this, but this is a-- this is an acquisition of knowledge that is only accessible if you actually sincerely try to believe. And, and when I heard this, it reminded me of this thing from Carl Sagan's, I think it's from his Demon-Haunted World.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Talks about the, the dragon in my garage, and the dragon in my garage is another analogy. He says, "Imagine I tell you I've got a dragon in my garage. You wanna see it?" "Sure." "Okay, we get into the garage." "I don't see a dragon." "Well, that's 'cause it's invisible." "Well, I don't, I don't feel it anywhere. I can feel all the space in the garage. There's no dragon." "Well, it's also immaterial." "Okay, does it, does it make any noise?" "Uh, no, it doesn't make any noise." And, and the point is, when it comes to ideas about God and things like that- It's always unverifiable, unfalsifiable.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's, uh, every, every question is sidestepped. We're not providing evidence, we're telling you why you don't get to have any evidence. And, and, you know, the biggest problem is this is unverifiable, unfalsifiable. And in my opinion, what Lennox is talking about is the exact same thing. And fundamentally, the claim is you don't get to know it's true until you choose to believe.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because we have all kinds of people out there who have left tradition, faith traditions, and even the very same faith traditions that, that Lennox or other apologists might identify with, and they would say, "Oh, I've, I've gone outside. There's no-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... Ferrari out there."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and what, what's the response gonna be every single time? It's gonna be-

Dan Beecher You didn't really do it

Dan McClellan ... you weren't sincere.

Dan Beecher You didn't really look for the Ferrari. Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you did, you would've found it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and what's that doing? It's doing the exact same thing. "Oh, the dragon's invisible."

Dan Beecher Yeah. Absolutely.

Dan McClellan And, and I've, I, I have had people tell me, "Oh, you don't know Lennox would say that. He would... If you, if you said you sincerely looked and it wasn't there, he would acknowledge that." And I was like, "That would make him one of the worst apologists I have ever heard of" because-

Dan Beecher He can't acknowledge that-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... because otherwise his whole thing doesn't work.

Dan McClellan It falls to the ground. It falls to pieces, and he's a smarter man than that. However, it does mean that he's doing the same thing. "I got a dragon in my garage"-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... "and you don't get to believe it's true. You don't get the evidence until you choose to believe it's true." And that's when we get back to the intuitions, and that's when we get back to, "I feel it's true because I'm getting this collective effervescence of truthiness that is really just my intuitions being tickled-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... by my, my membership in this community, and now I have this new thing that is good, this worldview that makes me feel good about myself, makes me feel good about the future, makes me feel good about questions I have not had answers to." And that striking the tuning fork in y- the loins of your dogmatism or your identity politics is precisely what Lennox is imagining is this magical evidence that only manifests itself once you have chosen to believe.

Dan Beecher Well, and it's so weird to me because I, every time I hear someone make an argument like that, I, you have to point out that people have that same experience entering into Bel- Muslim belief-

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah

Dan Beecher ... or em- entering into, uh, Buddhist belief. They have the same, you know, exactly that same experience of like, "Oh, I feel like I've been g- you know, the veil has been lifted from my eyes."

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher "I see. I..." Like, it, I had a spiritual understanding of the truth of this thing, and then it's just like, "Oh, well, that didn't count."

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, 'cause, you know, you, you have a lot of folks who will say, "Well, well, Mormons are doing it wrong."

Dan Beecher Right, right.

Dan McClellan Uh, so they're, they're like, "No, I felt the, I felt the burning in my bosom. I, I know what's going on there." They're like, "Eh, that's actually, that's actually the, the devil."

Dan Beecher Yeah, right.

Dan McClellan "You're being, you're being possessed by Satan"-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... um, even though it's exactly what I said you should be looking out for. It's a different, it's a different, um, tradition.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, you, you know the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light. I mean, come on.

Dan Beecher Which is like-

Dan McClellan Everybody knows this

Dan Beecher ... which is hilarious because, you know, at what point... What do you, what can you offer me then that is the distinguishing factor?

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah. And-

Dan Beecher What can you give me? Because unless, because if the only way th- and the, unfortunately, the distinguishing factor, the way that they will say, the way that you know for sure whether you're being led correctly or falsely, is if you land on my-

Dan McClellan Right

Dan Beecher ... exact conclusions.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And then I, then we can verify that, yes, you were actually led by the Spirit.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and what's funny is on the, uh, in this interview, I th- I think it was before he brought up the red Ferrari analogy, but, uh, Bartlett actually challenged him on that, was like, "You, you talk about evidence and, and you take, um, you know, happiness, and you take a sense of fulfillment, and you take a, a s- all these different qualia that, that people report when they become Christian." And he's like, "And we've got research that shows that the exact same thing happens with other traditions all around the world. Um, and so what's special?" And, and that's where, um, again, Lennox got into, "Well, the, the dragon's invisible. Can't you see?" "It's not... You can't actually see it," and, and had to just dodge.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it, it was, it was so ironic because he, he begin, he began the, uh, the interview by saying that, that he expects evidence, that Christians who are, who are out there doing apologetics need to be able to provide evidence, and he's a skeptic and he demands evidence, and then he spent the rest of the interview dodging questions about evidence-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... and explaining why you don't get any evidence, again, until you choose to believe. Not pursue an understanding, but actually choose to believe, uh, which, which I found, uh, remarkably sophomoric for someone who's supposed to be, uh, the number one expert on Christianity-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... I think is how the-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... how the interview was, was titled, uh, on YouTube.

Dan Beecher The big, the big intellectual about it.

Dan McClellan Yes, yes.

Dan Beecher And, and yet, and yet there's this conversation-ending, uh, cliche that just- Yeah,

Dan McClellan thought cl- thought-stopping cliche-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... which i- which is what it is when people pull that out as a trump card. It's just a thought-stopping cliche. It's, "I'm not having this discussion."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, um-

Dan Beecher And it's also, "I'm right and you're wrong"-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... "the end."

Dan McClellan Yeah. If, if... And, and what I find i- so funny is, is I also get this all the time. "I don't need no scholar to understand the Bible." You would not understand a single letter of the Bible if it were not scholars who went before you- Right ... and did all this work, used their brains, used critical thinking to help you understand what's going on in the Bible. Just translating it- Yeah ... is something that requires scholarship and, uh, requires critical thought.

Dan Beecher How's your ancient Hebrew?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher 'Cause otherwise, you, you got nothing. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So I, yeah, I, I agree with you. When, when people try to pull that out as a thought-stopping cliché, ooh, boy, that gets my hackles up because, uh,

Dan Beecher I'm just gonna remind everyone, Dan's the believer. I'm the non-believer. I think they might have-

Dan McClellan In case it was unclear.

Dan Beecher They might have gotten it confused, uh, during this segment because, yeah.

Dan McClellan And, and I, I get this a lot too, but what... People are like, "You, you criticize people for beliefs." No, I criticize people for harmful beliefs.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I don't care what you believe on your own. If you wanna go into your house or into a place of worship and believe things that make you feel good, blast off, man. I am not gonna stop you because you know what? I do the same.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But once you get on social media, once you start getting into legislatures, once you start affecting how other people are living their lives, once you start spreading misinformation- Yeah ... or these claims publicly, you're in my house. And, and as much as I am a person of faith privately, when it comes to what's going on publicly, I have very, very different feelings about things and about what is in bounds and what is out of bounds. So that, that's the biggest distinction. That's... When people, when people imagine that I am putting every last thing that I believe onto social media, nein. Uh, that, that's, that's not accurate. Uh, but yeah, I think, I think we can, we can be adults about this. We can talk about this like adults using critical thinking, using proper methodologies, using the evidence that is available to us, and, and we can be adults about this. Uh-

Dan Beecher Well, and I think that, I think that your, your point is well taken, that the, uh... That y- you can still have what you interpret to be a spiritual understanding of an idea, of a concept, or whatever, but the second you try to export that to another person or to, you know, to everybody, this- Impose

Dan McClellan it on... Yeah ...

Dan Beecher this has to apply to you as well as me- Mm-hmm ... then, then you're gonna get into some problems, and that's when... Yeah, I d- I think any time you say, "It is definitely X because the Spirit told me it was X," you're in trouble because someone else is gonna have a spiritual experience that points them in the opposite direction. Yeah, right. And now you're just denying their spirit, spiritual experience in favor of your own, and that-

Dan McClellan I, I think one of the, one of the funniest ways this happens within the LDS community- Mm ... which, which is also part of the, the patriarchal, the fundamentally patriarchal nature of the LDS community is, is when guys say the Spirit told them they were supposed to marry some girl.

Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh, it's- ... that is one of the most cringey parts of-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah ...

Dan Beecher of the LDS, uh, thing. I don't-

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I hope it doesn't happen as often as it used to.

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher Uh, but yeah. Uh- BYU is just overrun with guys thinking that they can, that they can just skip courtship by saying-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, got- ...

Dan Beecher "The Lord told me that we're supposed to be married," or whatever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and I know that it happens outside of the Latter-day Saint tradition as well.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan I've, I've seen on, on social media examples of, of... You know, the wording is different. The concept is dressed up a little differently, but, but fundamentally, the idea is the same. Somebody's trying to leverage the notion of, of their spiritual authority or insight or acumen to, uh, to control someone else.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which, yeah. And, and I think it's the same with the, the appeals to Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. It's, it's just an attempt to, to draw the scriptures out as a trump card because you don't wanna talk about it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You don't wanna communicate about it. You don't wanna use that language that we developed in order to curate personal relationships. You would just rather get the other person to shut up. And, uh, yeah, unfortunately, it's, it is profoundly misguided. Yeah. And where the... You, you came up with Matthew and Luke, couple verses there, 1 Corinthians 2:14. You had, uh, you had Proverbs 3.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Did you, d- did you have any other thought-stopping passages that, uh- Uh- ... uh, that you came up with?

Dan Beecher You know, there's, there's 1 John 2 that says, "You do not need anyone to teach you," uh, which is like- ... "Okay."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "I guess not." Um, it, it's nice to be taught some things, though. Uh, I'd, I'd hope-

Dan McClellan Yeah, revelation is how you, is how you learn how combustion engines work. Um, yeah. Right, right. Exactly. It's g- Plumbing is fine. Yeah.

Dan Beecher You can just sorta... The, the, the, the Spirit will teach you-

Dan McClellan I mean- ...

Dan Beecher how, how to connect pipes.

Dan McClellan I've seen, I've seen Fenomenon. Uh, even he had to get a book on Portuguese in order to learn the Portuguese language on the way over to the place. Yeah, see? Um, like you, you, you gotta, you gotta have the data. Gotta have the data. Gotta get... The data's gotta be there somehow. You can't just say, "No, no data. We're, we're only dogma here. That's, uh-" "... we're, we're full up on data, so," um, as, as the hat, uh, should have already made clear- Yes, indeed. Uh, for- ... uh, the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast is Data Over Dogma.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that's right. Uh, and by the way, if you're listening at home and not watching this on the YouTube, I'm wearing a Data Over Dogma hat- Yeah ... which you can get on, uh, dataoverdogmapod.com, so go do that. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to become a patron of this fine program and keep it going, we would sure appreciate it if you did that. Head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up there. You can choose the level at which you give. Some levels have perks, including an early and ad-free version of every episode and/or the, uh, the after party, which is bonus content that we do every week. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing. Thanks to Sam for being our right-hand man, and thanks to all of you for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time. Bye, everybody.