Quinten Cowley: 0:02

God really does care about our questions. It's not wrong to have questions, it's totally healthy, it's totally okay. It's like it's the human state of being to want to know. I think that's something divine in us that no other organism really expresses, this ability to want to know things that are beyond our observational capacities, beyond our observational capacities.

Tyler K. Gordon: 0:27

Hello and welcome everyone to the From Grace to Grace podcast. We are excited to be doing this episode. To be honest, it's a new vibe today for me and Sam, because we have someone else in the room with us, which sounds ominous, I know, but it's not that ominous. We're doing a guest episode today and it's going to be a fun time. The title of the episode is Fiction or Nonfiction Picking your Sources Wisely, as you don't know yet, but we have Quentin here to talk with us about this episode. Quentin, why don't you introduce yourself? I'm super happy to be here, tyler, I'm Quinton. Why don't you introduce yourself?

Quinten Cowley: 1:05

I'm super happy to be here, tyler. I'm Quinton, by the way, for those who are listening. What's funny is I get asked to be on podcasts fairly often. I don't know what it is about me, but people are like you should come on a podcast with me. That'd be awesome. It's the voice. It has to be the voice You're probably already thinking like man, this guy must be, like this huge bodybuilder. No, that's what my voice sounds like. That is not what I look like no-transcript about on this show.

Quinten Cowley: 1:50

I served a mission both in Bogota, colombia, and in Phoenix, arizona, so I got that in the States and in a foreign country. I got both the experiences I thought was really cool. And yeah, I'm still going to church. I love it. I'd say I'm pretty active in the church. I go every week. Depends on my calling has me going to different churches sometimes, so I don't get to see Tyler or Sam every single week. We go all to the same ward. Most of the listeners probably are from the ward starting out, so you guys probably know us a little bit.

Quinten Cowley: 2:17

A little bit about me. So just my career wise. So I'm going to school, currently for biology at the University of Utah. What I do for that is I'm about to graduate, I'm about a semester out from graduation and I'm doing medical school preparation. We'll see what happens with that. It's not set in stone but what. I want to bring that up because all I do every day is just read first-source material. I just read straight just biology, physics, chemistry papers that are just released, and we do that every day, every class period.

Tyler K. Gordon: 2:50

So you must get some really good sleep, because that would put me to sleep like immediately it hurts your eyes after a little bit.

Quinten Cowley: 2:58

Honestly, like you're like you just get mentally tired, but then you're like you start dreaming about it. That's the problem. Like you think, like you would get good sleep, but then you're like you wake up and you're like what the heck was that I'm dreaming about? Like different kinds of fossil fuels, man.

Sam Binns: 3:13

Oh no.

Quinten Cowley: 3:14

Different kinds of soil compositions. What am I doing with my life? I don't know. I feel like that makes me a little bit more credible for this one and I'm excited to share some of that perspective with you guys at least my thoughts on it. But I'm also really excited just to be here. I'm part of the conversation.

Tyler K. Gordon: 3:27

It's going to be great. I don't know, Sam, as we've been kind of planning out episodes and talking about episodes. Any pre thoughts about this episode, Any thoughts about different sources? I think?

Sam Binns: 3:41

what I enjoy about this topic is we're going to get into some of the nitty gritty on how to deal with anti, and that's like one of my favorite things, just because at this point I'm at a spot where I just don't feel like any anti could ever phase me anymore, just because of some of the things that I've learned here, but then also just general topics of what I've learned as the doctrine, right, but this helps a ton with being able to weed out, okay, what's actually worth my time.

Tyler K. Gordon: 4:13

Yeah, it'll be an interesting conversation that we have. The first thing that we're going to dive into is tangentially related a little bit. We're going to talk about different learning styles. I think the reason why I put this into our outline is because, as people are researching things, they'll find that different learning styles tend to speak to them more. Different types of rhetoric or compelling arguments will speak to them more. Some people will be more interested in like statistics If this is statistically significant, then I'll believe it Whereas some people might be more compelled by by a really good story. So I don't know, have you ever found, do you? Do you personally know, Quentin? Um, like statistics, good story, what's going to? What's going to?

Quinten Cowley: 5:02

compel you? Ooh, that's a good question. Well, personally I believe that, like everybody has all of the learning styles, like I feel like people have their strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, I feel like everybody has something that they're really tending towards Me. For example, I'm a visual guy and I'm a scientifically minded person, like if I can see it and like visualize it in space. I'm like, oh, that makes sense, like how something works, like how something's put together, like construction wise, and also like scientifically, like you said, statistics, or like relevant data, et cetera. But I feel like everybody is every kind of learner.

Quinten Cowley: 5:33

I think sometimes we often just like we take people outside of a box. It's like, oh, you're not a hands-on guy, you're more of a visual guy. Don't teach you hands-on stuff, but that still helps, because it's like neuroplasticity. What's that? It's your brain's ability to be able to adapt to any situation. That's essentially what it is. I'm giving you like the brief definition.

Quinten Cowley: 5:52

But your brain is so capable of learning new things in every way possible and then it can even learn newer things.

Quinten Cowley: 5:59

Like there was a study done where people put on drunk goggles where they kind of like the world is turned upside down. It's like a lens that turns everything upside down and they tried to paint something. I think this was done on a Good Mythical Morning. It was so funny I love that show but what they did was they painted a painting and they were terrible at it and then they wore them for 15 minutes and they painted again and they could paint better and then after an hour they can just paint just fine and they were totally accustomed to it. And when they took it off then they were stumbling to reality and so it's kind of it's cool how easy your brain can just get used to an idea and it can train out of that idea as well. So I like that. Learning styles Definitely people have strengths and weaknesses, like I have my strengths and my definite weaknesses, but I don't want to feel like discouraging to like you can learn truth in any way, sure.

Tyler K. Gordon: 6:44

And I think it's also important to recognize, especially in like a religious context learning truth in any way is an important thing and to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses, like for me personally and I think a lot of people find this true but you know, listening and hearing like music is really big for me in like a religious sense. I definitely can feel those emotions of the spirit when listening to music. Sam, do you have any specific type of like learning style that draws you? Are you a? If somebody were to come and pluck your heartstrings or give or give you just some hard statistics, do you want me to guess what, what your learning style would be?

Sam Binns: 7:28

or like your your go ahead and guess you would be a statistics guy.

Tyler K. Gordon: 7:34

You'd be a good story. You'd be like, yeah, that's cute, but like what are the statistics?

Quinten Cowley: 7:40

yeah, you seem like a hard facts kind of guy to me too. I'm not going to lie. What do you think? What about it, Sam?

Sam Binns: 7:44

Yeah, I think that's right. If something's not like a credible written like, if it's some random schmo off the side of the street, there's very little chance of me caring about their story.

Tyler K. Gordon: 7:58

You see, and I'm the exact opposite, and that's why you and I are doing this podcast is because somebody tells me a good story and I'll be like compelled. Like statistics, sure, I work in computer science and statistics are important, but ultimately, at the end of the day, I get bored by statistics. Unless they tell me the story about the statistics is sad, then I'll be like, oh, we gotta do something. Like so that's why. That's why we're doing this podcast, you and me, because we got to balance each other out, which we do sometimes.

Quinten Cowley: 8:29

Quite the dynamic duo.

Tyler K. Gordon: 8:32

Any other thoughts on learning styles or learning in general?

Quinten Cowley: 8:37

That's a good thing. I think this will probably branch into our next topic a little bit. I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves. I don't know what the schedule is around here. I'm new.

Tyler K. Gordon: 8:45

We're just going to go with the flow. If you feel like it's transitioning into something else, then you take that train and you go for it.

Quinten Cowley: 8:53

I will Thank you for the permission, the green light. So I was thinking, like, in preparation for this episode, I'm like, well, the first thing that I want to talk about and really establish for the listeners, especially in a scientific community, we have this problem. It's what's true, is truth even? Does it even exist? Like, where can we even go to find this? And it's really hard to sometimes wrap your head around that. It's like, oh man, what is reality? And I can, I kind of came up with this exercise. What if I told you all I ate for the next month and a half was Twinkies. I love Twinkies, right, and all I ate was Twinkies? And then I'd be more fit, super healthy lifestyle, super proud of myself, getting up early, super energetic. What would you say to that? This amazing lifestyle came, only Twinkies.

Tyler K. Gordon: 9:34

You've been eating Twinkies and you're doing so much better in life. Yeah, I am and say you're a liar.

Sam Binns: 9:41

Why.

Tyler K. Gordon: 9:41

But, but. But, quentin, I do believe you're superhuman, but I would say you're a liar. Because because to me in my mind, the way that I at least think Twinkies exist in the real world is they would not be very healthy for you to eat 24, seven and occasional Twinkie here and there. It's good for you.

Quinten Cowley: 10:03

You got to enjoy Exactly, but like outside of that that's not how the body works, it's not how reality works, and so that's my. We know that there's truth, right? That's the truth. I can't eat Twinkies for a month and be okay. I can't be eating Twinkies and just have all of this energy and, like exercise, like craze going, I would be super lethargic and I'd be in bed. That's reality and it's like that exists. We can't, no matter how much I want to believe that Twinkies will help me, no matter how, like relatively, I think oh no, this is my perspective. That doesn't change reality. Does that make sense? The universe is built such a way that truth does exist and reality does exist, and so that's where we want to go is we want to find out what that is, and sometimes we have to just experience it for ourselves. Like I eat Twinkies for a month and I feel terrible. That's maybe a learning. Style is overeating, is this coming from experience.

Quinten Cowley: 10:55

No comment.

Tyler K. Gordon: 10:57

Learning style of experiencing life. Truth, right, how do we determine truth? Or what is truth? How, how would you say, we determine little t truth like right, like? When I say like capital t truth, I'm meaning god how do we know? Yeah, the the big t truth, so, but like little t truth. How do I know anything from left and right? Does that make sense? Is that like even a question that I'm allowed to ask?

Quinten Cowley: 11:26

No, that does make sense to me. I don't know if Sam has any thoughts on this, first of all, but I definitely like. The first thing that comes to mind for me is probably through experience. Everything that human beings learn is through our limited observational powers, whether that is like any of our senses, any of our feelings. If I push against a wall, it pushes back on me. That's how I know that wall is solid, right. If I pushed against it and it collapsed, I was oh man, that must not be made out of the same stuff other walls are made out of. Then I learned something new, and so it's observational. But not everything comes that way. But I think that's our little t truth.

Tyler K. Gordon: 12:01

A lot of the time comes from just seeing and experiencing for ourselves felt that and then and I think this is going to circle back to the topic I can tell you about that. Do you have to experience that in order for you to be able to consider that truth, or does my telling you of it constitute as little t truth?

Quinten Cowley: 12:36

Yeah, I would say so Because I trust you. I think that's just like the shortest version of that I can give you is I just trust you, Tyler. It's like oh, you're telling me this is a solid table, Okay.

Tyler K. Gordon: 12:46

You think I'm credible enough to push on a table and then be able to tell you that it's solid.

Quinten Cowley: 12:52

Good, now you're making me double think things.

Tyler K. Gordon: 12:54

I'm glad that I'm trustworthy enough.

Sam Binns: 12:56

No, I do trust you, Tyler no-transcript alive how he knew that God was there. And the man after a long time because this man's a lawyer as well as, I think, an atheist, so great combination. And he is trying to explain to him how he knows God is there. And he gets to the point where he asks this man okay, let's explain it this way. Do you know what salt tastes like? And the man says, okay, this is yes, I know what salt tastes like. And he says, okay, explain it to me. What does salt taste like? And he says, well, it's not sweet.

Sam Binns: 14:03

And so he gets into this explanation where he can't get to the point of saying exactly what it is. He can only explain what it's not. You can't, like, try and explain salt, it's just experience at that point, because, other than the word salt, we don't really have a way to go about that. So I think, in the terms of learning if God is there, if this is true or that is true, it has to be in the religious context, has to be your own personal experience, because unless you get that personal experience, you won't be able to. Nobody who hasn't tasted salt would understand.

Tyler K. Gordon: 14:43

The talk is the Quest for Spiritual Knowledge by President Boyd K Packer, and I agree with you, sam, that that capital T truth is going to be much more of an experiential thing. The atonement is something that we experience, but nevertheless we do go through this life with different studies going on. There are studies going on about Book of Mormon evidences or different truth claims about the church, about Joseph Smith and polygamy. There are articles being written and published by the church and other sources, and so, yeah, I think the big questions of like does God exist? Was Joseph Smith a prophet? I don't know that you can scientifically prove that, but no, you can't you can scientifically prove. Oh yeah, there were horses in America before Columbus. There are these scientific proofs that we can. So kind of circling full circle back is how do you determine something is truth? Or like, what are the steps that you would take, quentin, in order to be able to determine what is a good source?

Quinten Cowley: 15:53

Oh, that's a great question. Let me put this in terms of like a scientific article. Then I'll bring it back to spiritual. In a scientific article, when I'm doing something for a project and I'm looking at something and it says some study, it's like oh, we found this new miracle fungus that helps you lose like tons and tons of weight if you just eat one little pill Immediately, right off the bat, you're like, well, this doesn't seem quite right, that doesn't seem like it.

Sam Binns: 16:15

Why are you losing so much weight so fast?

Quinten Cowley: 16:16

Yeah, why are you losing so much weight so fast? Is this healthy for you? I guess that's step one. Take that with a little bit of salt, kind of going back to what Sam said. Take it with a little bit of salt, like you don't immediately believe what that article claims to be true is true. And sometimes they'll kind of explain further. They're like, oh, this makes you lose weight because of X, y and Z like biological process, and you're like, oh, I've never heard about that, what's that from? And then you look at where the authors are. It's like what are their credibility?

Quinten Cowley: 16:43

And sometimes these studies that are like a little bit on the more suspicious side will have like one or two authors and it's not something called peer reviewed. Peer review is when another scientist says, oh, I looked at this, I repeated the experiment and yeah, this actually works out. Or they'll say this is peer-reviewed but it's not really healthy for human beings. Or they'll say like, oh, this is scientific evidence for this. But when this molecule is only applied in this way I've seen this a lot with diet bars and like healthcare supplements it's like this works miracles, but it's only been tested in one specific aspect for your health and it does help with diet and exercise and you see all these caveats to the truth, so you can't really take anything at face value.

Quinten Cowley: 17:22

Getting back to that, to the spiritual side, when I hear things like articles coming out for example, the previous was like, how did Nephi know what snow even looked like? Like, how did he describe that in the Book of Mormon I'm like snow is a common thing. Just because he lived in Israel doesn't mean he's never heard of snow or never read poetry or never actually like spread the Bible, which mentions snow inside of it, and so you have to take it back. At first it's like, oh, wait a minute, he lives in Israel. Like, how could he have possibly know what snow looks like? But then you look at it and he's like, oh, he looks like. But then you look at it and he's like, oh, he probably was a spice trader. This is just stuff I'm quoting. But then you like and then you take things into perspective and then it's like maybe I don't know, but does it really matter that much?

Tyler K. Gordon: 18:04

So let me ask you this Obviously, with translation of the Book of Mormon, there's a ton of things that we could talk about there. But BYU is publishing articles. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is publishing articles about different things, and maybe I'll ask you this, sam, wouldn't you say that they'd probably are truth? They present things that even might not look the best at all times, so I think they have great integrity, but people would come back and say, well, of course, of course they're going to say X, y and Z is true, because they want it to be right. So I don't know, sam, what are your thoughts?

Sam Binns: 18:51

So when the church publishes articles don't know, sam, what are your thoughts? So when the church publishes articles, I believe that they're trying their best to stay away from bias, the best they can, but obviously they're not going to be able to fully. And I think what it is is which source are you going to for the source of your desire to believe? So if you're going to the church's articles, you're going there with the intent of okay, I want to believe. What's some more anecdotal evidence that I can use for that?

Tyler K. Gordon: 19:22

Where is your foundation?

Sam Binns: 19:23

Yeah. So it's more of a question of you can get the same facts from. Here's a good example Fawn Brody as well as Richard Bushman both of their biographies on Joseph Smith, for example. They can pull from the exact same source and come to a completely different conclusion. And so if you're looking for things to support your faith, you probably go to BYU, you probably go to church. Articles on the website and things like that, right? If you're looking for ways to say I don't want to believe or I don't think this is true, and you're looking for ways to support that, you'll probably go to outside sources like that. So I think that if you're looking for pure sources, you're going to be needing to read original texts, original documents or presentations of that, so, for example, joseph Smith Papers. That place is a place where you're literally just finding collections of original documents and that's a place where you can read it without the bias of anybody.

Tyler K. Gordon: 20:30

I think it's important to go to the original source material, but I also think, for me personally, I'm not going to end up doing that. I think the layman is not going to be going in and reading these documents, and so I think it comes back to kind of as Quentin introduced himself, of trying to figure out credibility. Who is credible to talk on this? And obviously a lot of people in the church who believe Joseph Smith's truth claims would be a credible source because they've gone through that source material. Now the problem is, you get into this mixture of you've read all the source material but also you have this fundamental belief that Joseph Smith is a prophet, or you have a fundamental belief that Joseph Smith is in no way a prophet, and so you're going to be swayed either way on that as well, and so you have to.

Tyler K. Gordon: 21:22

I think, when not reading the source material and reading a second party's take on it, I think we need to recognize that everybody, no matter who they are, is always going to have a bias. They just are. We're all human, we all have opinions. So I don't know, do you have any thoughts, quentin?

Quinten Cowley: 21:40

Yeah, something in science we call it a null hypothesis. So you test this statistically when something is below a certain number, that's like oh, these two things are statistically significant. This denies the null hypothesis and so, or this rejects the null hypothesis is what they call it, and this is like statistical data. What this is trying to do is it says okay, there was bias. Okay, there, these things might be related, like in a way that we can't tell our paper is going to be real, but we acknowledge that there's bias, but we still feel like our evidence is strong enough to overcome that bias. I don't think we can ever escape bias, especially in a religious setting. People's faith and people's beliefs are very strong and I think that's a beautiful thing, but that also tends for people to be very passionate about religious material. So you can't escape bias, no matter how much you'd want to try both ways, right?

Quinten Cowley: 22:33

On either side On either side you can't escape. There's probably positive or negative feelings there, but you can't escape it. But I feel like that null hypothesis thing is the evidence? Is what they're trying to present strong enough to overcome that bias? Is this strong enough to say, okay, maybe this person has some really positive feelings for the church, byu, the church itself, but what they're presenting that's more important than this. Maybe bias that comes from that, does that make sense?

Tyler K. Gordon: 23:08

Yeah, essentially, you have to find if they're interpreting something to you, and if that's the case, then you have to CRAAP or CRAAP, and there's one part of this acronym that I want to focus on, but I'll tell you the whole acronym. So C stands for currency, r relevance, a authority, a accuracy and P purpose, and the one that I want to focus on here is purpose. What is the purpose of this article? What is the purpose of what we're reading?

Tyler K. Gordon: 23:42

And again, I think Sam touched on this earlier in the episode of if the purpose is to commune with the divine, there's no article on earth that is going to do that for you. There's no article on earth that's going to say, yep, god is real and he is just over there, right, like that's just not how that works, and so I think we need to have a good understanding of what science is used for and what religion is used for, and I always say science is used for the how things work, how things come to be. I drop a rock and it falls to the earth, whereas religion teaches us the why. Why are we here? Why are we doing what we're doing? Why should I follow the commandments? Why should I All of those kinds of things?

Sam Binns: 24:29

It's a system of philosophy is essentially what you're trying to create a dichotomy between is science and philosophy.

Tyler K. Gordon: 24:36

For sure, but what I'm saying also is like they're not mutually exclusive right. Like we can explain how and have a why, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the how and the why can't be together. In fact, I would argue that it's a lot more beautiful to have a how and a why together.

Sam Binns: 24:56

That reminds me of President Nelson's quote I think he said whether learned in a scientific laboratory or from direct revelation from him. That, I think, identifies the point of we want both. We want both.

Tyler K. Gordon: 25:09

Joseph Smith is always quoted as saying and I'm not going to quote him directly Joseph Smith is always quoted as saying and I'm not going to quote him directly, but generally saying we search for truth wherever it may be, whatever source it may come from, we search for truth, and so if the Methodists have it, we'll find it there, right. If the Lutherans have it, if the Catholics have it, it doesn't matter where the truth is is. We'll respect truth, no matter where it comes from from the scientific community, from our own prophet revelation. What our search for is truth, and everybody in my mind has this little piece of truth out there, and the way that we create a Zion community is by taking all of those little shards of truth and putting them together into a beautiful mosaic of capital T truth.

Quinten Cowley: 25:57

I love that when you take all those little capital T's and then it leads to the big T, like if you look at the origin of every truth, and everywhere it always leads to God, which I absolutely love about learning in science, because I'm a big believer that God works through science and you can always just trace it back to. There's a divine creator, there is a heavenly father that loves you and he's the one who designed this whole universe for you and for you to exist in it and to have the experiences you're having right now. I think that has a lot to do with the big P, the big purpose, and that's where, like, all of the truth that we're trying to learn eventually goes back there. So if you're struggling with that, the bigger stuff, you need to first go to that and see that God is real and God does love you, and then all this other stuff just kind of just clicks and it just kind of gets into focus.

Tyler K. Gordon: 26:44

Yeah, I think having your focus set correctly my focus is on God first and then whatever I find out on the side is great. That's how I've I've done it in my personal life. I've had lots of questions. I still have lots of questions that I don't have answers to, and that's okay, because I know Jesus is the Christ, christ's church is on the earth, it was restored through Joseph Smith. Those things right. And the rest, yeah, maybe I'll get an answer, maybe I won't.

Tyler K. Gordon: 27:09

Sam and I recorded the last episode this morning and even talking about creation, I don't understand some things about it. There are things out there that just don't make sense to me. But that's okay, because I know the primary questions, I know the answers to those questions and everything else is a secondary question. We're going to continue the conversation along talking about rhetoric and the way that we present information. So this I just threw in last minute because I was like you know what? This is probably something good to talk about, because when we are presenting information or someone is presenting information to us, I think it's important to recognize what is happening. Even the meta of how they're presenting the information can give you a clue on their credibility or potentially what they're trying to do with this information itself. And I'll start by talking about this first bullet point and then we'll get over to you, sam.

Tyler K. Gordon: 28:05

This first bullet point is near and dear to my heart because this is the reason why I left the church was doubt bombing.

Tyler K. Gordon: 28:19

The church was doubt bombing. I left the church because someone had presented me with pages upon pages of questions that I couldn't answer. I was so caught off guard that all of a sudden I was like I have all of these questions and I find that for every question that you can ask, it takes maybe twice as long to find an adequate answer, and I think that's maybe true for everything. It's easier to ask questions than it is to find answers, because to find answers you have to do a lot of work. Anyway, all of that to say doubt bombing is this idea of presenting a bunch of arguments all at once so that the recipient of all of those questions one freaks out because they're not able to answer all those questions in the moment, and then two is so caught off guard that all of a sudden all of the questions have credibility and you can hide maybe a little bit less than credible questions in that laundry list of questions.

Sam Binns: 29:12

So I just wanted to thank you for putting this in here, because this is I, like this.

Tyler K. Gordon: 29:16

Yeah, why do you like it?

Sam Binns: 29:18

I like it because we talk about sources first off and then now we're going to talk about how to understand the way others are understanding it, and so it's kind of getting into who has preconceived ideas, who has these notions in their head already that we need to also work through. So, trying to help someone understand a difficult piece of church history, for example, if they have the negative view of polygamy already or like some kind of preconceived notion about it, you have to work through that first, as well as present them with like if they have misinformation, you have to also present them with correct information. So it's a dual process of getting through both of those.

Quinten Cowley: 30:12

I really love what you were saying there, sam. I actually had a thought about doubt bombing, though, when you were talking Tyler. I remembered this experience I had when I was really little. We went to a fireman house I guess a fire station was the actual name of it with my brothers and it was for a young men's activity, and my brother was really, really young, but my dad was the scout leader, so he went along anyway, even though he was younger than all the other guys there. But when the fireman was presenting, my brother just kept asking him questions, like over and over again. It was adorable, but it was so.

Quinten Cowley: 30:43

The fireman's like oh, when the CO2 alarm goes off in your house, you got to like make sure that everything is okay, there's nothing leaking, and then get out. And he's like my brother's like why, why, why do we have to leave the house? And he's like, well, there's probably a fire. And he's like, how do you know there's a fire? And it's like, well, there's CO2 going off. And he's like, what does that do? And he's like, and then they just kept going and it's just got to take it back and just relax and like you don't need to know all the whys.

Tyler K. Gordon: 31:21

Yeah, and I think with fallacies, I think it's important to recognize as well I participate in fallacies. It's not a oh, everybody out there who isn't me is just trying to trick me with a fallacy. It's like, no, unknowingly, I will participate in logical fallacies. It just happens as part of being human.

Sam Binns: 31:42

We trick ourselves all the time.

Tyler K. Gordon: 31:44

Exactly. And just because I use a logical fallacy, it doesn't mean my argument is null and void. That's why the last bullet point here is the fallacy fallacy, which is like saying if somebody is presenting information and uses a logical fallacy, it doesn't mean the information is not true. It just means that maybe they're presenting it in a way that might be trying to convince you even more so that it's true or that you should do something about it. And so just because fallacies exist and they're used doesn't mean you can automatically be like nope, can't trust you anymore because you did this thing. So anyway.

Sam Binns: 32:25

If you were to do that, you'd probably rule out just about almost everyone on the planet.

Tyler K. Gordon: 32:31

Any other thoughts about fallacies or anything there?

Quinten Cowley: 32:34

When I'm thinking about fallacies, I think that, like a lot about what you're saying, that, like human beings, we're just very imperfect and we have to take that into everything that we like we read, that we hear about from other people, that we're all very imperfect people just trying to do our best. I hear a lot of that with like, especially like, with criticism towards the prophet, and that's just like oh, I can't believe he did X, y, z, it doesn't matter, but he's a very mortal being who's almost a century years old. And sometimes you, just as much as we want to be, we are far from perfect. And those are those. Fallacies come in, especially with credibility sources. For example, something we may have said on this podcast may have offended somebody, and that would be terrible. That's definitely not our intention here. I would hate that and just I'd like to apologize to those people, but we just we do our best. You know, I think that's just, at the very end of the day, that's anybody on both sides is what they're trying to do.

Tyler K. Gordon: 33:28

And recognizing I'm coming from a place that I'm just trying to do my best. I have experiences and I have my own perspective and from that that's why I formulate the opinions that I have. And that's true for the person who absolutely disagrees with every single one of my perspectives. They have their own experiences and perspectives that have led them to believe what they believe. And so I think if we can all come from a space of understanding that everybody's trying to do their best, I think it's a lot easier to have conversations. I think also it's important to recognize, especially as members of the church, we're all in a fallen state. None of us are perfect. We're all going to mess up. Sometimes we're going to say things we don't mean, and that's true for other people as well.

Quinten Cowley: 34:15

So I don't know, and it's so good to acknowledge that, I think like I recall back to a time when I was in institute class, I had a discussion with a guy in the institute class. We're both return missionaries, we both very much love the church, but we kind of argued back and forth about some topics, on the gospel-related topics that the church doesn't have an official stance on, and it's because of my backgrounds I chose one thing and his another thing. It doesn't really matter what the topic was, but I really loved that experience because it wasn't an argumentative thing, it was very respectful. Both of us were like oh I can see where you're thinking that from, but this is my opinion on this, and it kind of went back and forth like that.

Quinten Cowley: 34:51

I think there's a lot of value in having a very civilized discussion and that's okay. It's okay to disagree, it's okay to be respectful to people when they do bring up maybe contentious topics. But if somebody is looking just to be contentious, that's not really worth your time to go there. But I think there's a lot of value in learning the perspective of someone else, but if it's done at the right time and the right place.

Tyler K. Gordon: 35:14

Let's talk about this, one of these last bullet points. Let's talk about finding legitimate anti-Mormon material. When I say legitimate, what I'm meaning is they're a credible source and the stuff that they're presenting is true. One of the examples that I bring up all the time is Joseph Smith had a wife who we would consider is underage, had a handful of wives who we would consider underage, and it's true. So what do you do in that situation where you have a hard piece of evidence, a difficult piece of evidence to internalize and I'm going to ask this of both of you is how do you deal with that? What do you do with that?

Sam Binns: 35:53

I'd say for me, I just continue digging. There's always more information surrounding something, so I try and get as much as I possibly can and then make my own conclusions.

Tyler K. Gordon: 36:05

I guess maybe what you're saying is there's always going to be some sort of satisfiable answer if you keep digging. Is that what you're saying? Is there's always going to be some sort of satisfiable answer if you keep digging? Is that what you're saying?

Sam Binns: 36:15

Yeah, Okay, All right. Well, at least at least space for belief.

Tyler K. Gordon: 36:18

I don't know. I don't know if I believe that or if I agree with that. Sorry, you said belief and then I said believe. I don't know if I agree with that fully, because I've spent time digging around different issues and there are some things that I'm like I'm not satisfied with this answer, but maybe I haven't dug deep enough, right?

Sam Binns: 36:36

So are we talking satisfaction or actually belief? Because no, there can be, definitely there can be places where you're not satisfied with an answer. But I'm talking more in the sense of I can still believe, even though I'm not satisfied about a certain thing. I just try and find as much as I possibly can and then if there's no satisfactory answer that I can find at that time, I just don't worry about it.

Tyler K. Gordon: 36:59

Okay, and that makes sense to me. You dig until you can find a point where you can still believe. I mean, you believe inherently, but you dig until you can hopefully find a satisfying answer, and if you can't, then leave that hole there and maybe come back to it at a later date. Is that kind of what you're saying? Okay, cool, I can jive with that. I agree with that, quentin. Any thoughts?

Quinten Cowley: 37:22

First, especially with this particular subject, I had some thoughts about it, but the first thing that comes to mind is does this really undo my testimony? Because, for example, like if something horrible happened and one of the apostles decided to leave the church and something just horrible, right, we would all be very sad. But does that make Jesus Christ in my relationship any different from what it is right now? If it does, that's really sad. I need to work on that. But for me personally, no, it's like I know that me and Jesus Christ have a very solid relationship and I know who he is. I believe he exists. I know he exists and that's because I've done the spiritual work to get to know my heavenly father and my savior and I feel like that, for me, is the most important.

Quinten Cowley: 38:03

Going back to this, like the hard information of, like learning about Joseph Smith, polygamy, like underage, that's hard. Personally, I had a lot of struggles with this before my mission. I did a lot of research. I didn't find a lot of satisfying results, but I still believe right, like exactly what Sam was saying. I dug more but I also found that with this particular example, I think Joseph Smith correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not looking at any source material right now never actually was with these women that were underage. They were just sealed to him for eternity, and that's where you need to learn about what the different sealings are, of the kind of like the details, not just the headline, right, not just this bad headline, but it still can be upsetting. What it really boils down to for me is does this really change my relationship with Jesus Christ? And if it does, bring up some questions like, take them to the Lord.

Sam Binns: 38:52

He has the answers, he has the comfort and the peace that you need in your life to get through these and to continue believing, like Sam was saying, Basically, you've got to get to a point where there's no more information left which is the case with a ton of church history and things like that where you just you can't find an answer. There's not an opportunity to have an answer or find the particular stuff that you need to get that answer and move on.

Tyler K. Gordon: 39:24

I think the other important thing to remember, going along with what you're saying there, sam, is that at some point, you may come to a point where it's like okay, I've dug all that I can and I don't have an answer and I'm going to move on. The beautiful thing about our religion, though, is we believe that there are things yet to be revealed. There can be so many things that we just don't know yet, and it's just a hang on for a little bit longer, and it'll be revealed At one point in the future. Everything will be revealed, and it'll make sense, and we'll be able to piece things together, and I don't know if that means that we're all singing Kumbaya and we're like, oh yeah, no, that all makes sense and I'm okay with this now, but at least we'll have all of the information.

Tyler K. Gordon: 40:08

Right now, in our mortal state, I imagine that we're trying to dig around an infinitely long rock when it comes to this hard information, and you can dig to a point where you feel satisfied with the answer, but you're not going to have all of the information yet because you weren't physically there Like, specifically, with this Joseph Smith example. You weren't physically there, you don't know the context, you don't know everything that happened, and that's true for both sides, right? That's true for people who don't believe he was a prophet or he was wrong in polygamy, and that's true for people who believe in his revelation about polygamy. So, anyway, all I'm saying is there is still stuff that is going to be revealed, and I'm excited for that day because I have a lot of questions.

Sam Binns: 40:55

So you might also just need to change your questions. Sometimes we're asking the wrong questions.

Quinten Cowley: 41:00

Sure, sure, that's very true. I honestly, like I just want to acknowledge real quick that God really does care about our questions. It's not wrong to have questions, it's totally healthy, it's totally okay. It's not wrong to have questions, it's totally healthy, it's totally okay. It's like it's the human state of being to want to know. I think that's something divine in us that no other organism really expresses, this ability to want to know things that are beyond our observational capacities, which I think is just beautiful. I think that's like something in humanity that really exemplifies Heavenly Father. But I just want to say that God really cares about our smallest questions, the unanswered questions, the things that might bother us just a little bit, but they're not important to our salvation air quotes there but they're important to us, so they're important to God.

Quinten Cowley: 41:43

On my mission I had a friend of mine wasn't baptized yet. He was the father of a family that were all members of the church and the wife was really upset about this because it's like you know, it's true, you know you've had all of these experiences with us, with the kids, and why don't you just believe in? I guess she was just kind of forced this on him, but he's like I have all these questions, I have all these things that I need to know, and the wife's like those don't matter. It's like you're only like the big things matter, which is true, which is absolutely true. But this held him up and then it really bothered him that he had these things. And then, when I was teaching him, I just felt the inspiration, just like address his questions. And so we taught him the basics, which he'd been heard a million times. But then we dived into his actual questions and then he got baptized and then I asked him I'm like, well, what was it really answering the questions that like helped you? And he said not really. That's like the questions were pretty small. I just needed to know somebody cared, and I love that. I really touched my heart.

Quinten Cowley: 42:44

God really cares about our little questions. God really wants us to know the full truth. He isn't hiding something away and he won't grudgingly acknowledge like, okay, here you go, you've dug enough. That's not God. He's slowly watching you become like him and he wants you to have all the truth in the world and that's just something beautiful. And so if you're listening and you have questions and you're like I want these answers, god wants you to have them too, and he actually does care. He wants you to be there in a state where you can, like Sam said, be okay and believe, even though these things might bother you right now, just hold on, like Tyler said, like everything will be revealed eventually and it'll be okay.

Tyler K. Gordon: 43:22

I love that so much. Cool, we're going to kind of start to wrap up. I'm going to let Sam give some closing thoughts. I'll give some closing thoughts and then I have a question for you, quinton, and then I'll do our outro and we'll call it good. So, sam, any closing thoughts?

Sam Binns: 43:38

Some people outside of the church will get mad at the idea of when something still bothers, you just let it go to the side, right? They'll think, oh, you're just putting things to the side so that you don't have to deal with it, so that you can still believe. I think you have to find a spot where what is your tolerance of the unknown for your belief and for the difficulties? If, in my opinion, if you understand Jesus Christ and you understand the plan of salvation well enough, there will be no threshold for uncomfortable things that you're willing to deal with, for at least whatever exists, you'll be able to take on any kind of problem with the hope that you can eventually get a satisfactory answer or the answer.

Tyler K. Gordon: 44:28

Yeah, I think what's been said here is beautiful.

Tyler K. Gordon: 44:30

I think, at the end of the day, on either side, whether you're a believing Latter-day Saint or you're an ex-Mormon or- you know, whatever you may believe, there is going to be evidence for the Church, there's going to be evidence against the Church, and that's why faith is a thing, that's why we have to have faith. I say this sometimes I personally don't believe there will ever be more than 49% proof of the Book of Mormon, because once you get over that threshold, then there's no room for faith because it's proven. You can say, statistically this is significant and I can believe it, and because of the statistics, and that's not what faith is. So I love what Quentin was saying God cares about your questions, god cares about you. God cares about your worries and your concerns, the small ones, the big ones. He cares about you, and that's where I find my solace, in knowing that God wants to be with me. I know that God loves us and cares about us and wants us to ask questions.

Tyler K. Gordon: 45:44

The whole reason why we're here sitting here doing a podcast is because a boy in 1820 had a question and went and asked it. That's like questions and finding credible sources is the foundation of our religion, and so I think it's super important to recognize. Okay, is this a scientific question? Do I need to go to a scientific source to ask it, or is this a religious question? Is this a God question, and can God answer it for me and then go to him with that? I think it's so important that we recognize that prayer is, at the same time, something that's really difficult but so easy, and I love that in my own life. So those are my thoughts. We're going to close with a question to Quentin Quentin. We are the From Grace to Grace podcast and I wanted to ask is how have you seen the grace of Jesus Christ in your own life?

Quinten Cowley: 46:41

I love that question. I'm going to go with a recent example. I think I could probably just spend the rest of the day talking about that. But recently I had a really cool experience where I'm currently in school. Like I mentioned at the beginning here, I'm in Calculus 2. And if anybody's taking Calculus 2, maybe the audience just groaned in pain with me there.

Quinten Cowley: 47:00

It's a pretty difficult one. It's pretty infamous in the study of mathematics because there's something called series that you learn, and series is pretty difficult. It's a new concept. You have to learn about all these new equations, new rules, and it's something you've never experienced through all of math in your whole life. And math's not easy, even like the beginner stuff. So, and it's never been my favorite thing, but this time around, on my previous exam, when we started series, I didn't do so well. I think I got a 63. It was pretty rough and I was feeling really bad about myself. I was thinking like, oh man, how am I going to ever graduate? Do I have to retake this class? And I was just really stressing about this During that exam. This was a comforting thought to me.

Quinten Cowley: 47:40

I remember seeing three students praying together and I was like they're praying out loud at the University of Utah not the most religious school and I was like, oh, that's really cool. It doesn't matter what denomination they were, I didn't know if they were of our faith or not but I just thought it was really cool to see them openly pray. And so I was like you know what I'm going to do, that I'm going to involve God in my academic schooling, which is like an obvious for some of us, but for me it was like a real big revelation. And so I studied really hard. I went to all of the study halls, I did LA practices, I did my personal study. I was doing my best, but I was also involving God.

Quinten Cowley: 48:17

Right, and this time around, I got a 90 on my previous midterm, which was just this past Monday, which I thought was really cool, but I remembered those three people praying in the classroom. And so what I did beforehand was I prayed before I took the test. And I think that God really cared that you were struggling on calculus, even though calculus is not required for your salvation, it's not a prerequisite to the celestial kingdom. I know, I know it's maybe to the, to the uh, the horror of some math professors, but God really cared, that I cared and he helped me out there.

Quinten Cowley: 48:53

And it was just such a sweet moment for me and the professor just had the biggest smile on his face when he handed me my test because he knew that I was kind of struggling with this and I was putting in a lot of effort, because he saw me a lot in his office hours after that second test and I just knew that God was the one who helped me get there.

Quinten Cowley: 49:09

Sometimes if we're struggling with something, whether it's a test, a question, with a trial, god really cares about those circumstances in our lives and that was just another proof to me this week that God loves to help us in our circumstances and His grace is sufficient to help us. Even though we're struggling calculus, question, faith, whatever it is he can help us get to that 90%. I just wanted to say that I guess I want to bear my testimony a little bit, if that's all right, and I do know that questions are good, but the end of every question is God is real, that God does exist. He is our Heavenly Father, and I've asked a lot of questions in my life, I've done a lot of digging and I've come to know that these things are true. I've asked a lot of questions in my life, I've done a lot of digging and I've come to know that these things are true, and I just want to say that in the name of.

Sam Binns: 49:55

Jesus Christ, amen, amen, amen. Thank you for listening to the From Grace to Grace podcast. We hope you have a fantastic day. Part of our ending here, we want to call you to action and give you an invitation to share the podcast with at least one other person, and we promise you that it'll bring more interesting conversations into your life.

Tyler K. Gordon: 50:17

I think that's a wrap. I think we're good.