I’ve been watching a lot of Dan McClellan videos and generally speaking, I like his content, although not necessarily his conclusions. Because you’d expect for someone who knows the Bible as well as Dan clearly does, he’d know better than to take any of it seriously, but Dan is a Mormon. That makes no sense to me and I’ve been looking for a way to express that.

I might have found it in a video he did today, so I wanted to talk about it.

First, of course, here’s the video in question. It’s him assessing another video between an unknown content creator and Sean McDowell.

I, as a completely outside observer, find all three positions to be absurd. All of them are taking the Bible seriously and there’s no reason to whatsoever. McDowell says repeatedly “if you’re going to take the Bible seriously” or words to that effect and I’m still left stumped why anyone in their right mind would do that.

Because all of them are starting from the unjustified perspective that the Bible is worthwhile and I’m not. They are all starting from the unjustified position that God is real and I’m not. The Bible is a book of fairy tales based on the evidence that we have, at least once you get to the supernatural claims. Generally, Dan acknowledges that, but even though he professes data over dogma, he’s still got a lot of dogma in his belief systems that are not rationally defensible with data. If you only went with the data, as I do, you couldn’t be a Mormon, could you?

Honestly, I don’t get it. Way back when I was a Christian, I didn’t know the data. Christianity, and other religions to be fair, don’t reach the data. They tell you what they want you to believe and nothing more. The moment that I went out and found the data, I had to reject the beliefs because the beliefs were not congruent with the  data that existed.

We know that Sean McDowell is a con man. Even in the comments of Dan’s own video, people were saying that and I even agreed with them. Sean cares only about making a buck off the backs of the religiously gullible. He’s the one that talked to Paulogia and Paulogia got him to agree to stop saying “something from nothing” because no atheist thinks that, but Sean went back to his old lying ways almost immediately. I don’t know about the other guy, I have no idea who he is and Dan doesn’t provide links to original videos, which I think every content creator ought to do, just to keep themselves honest. That’s why I do it, so people can go back to the original video to make sure I don’t take anything out of context. However, I have no clue who he is so I can’t really evaluate his claims.

Dan, though, I figure ought to know better. He’s actually an educated scholar, but he’s also a lesson in compartmentalization, where he can take his religious beliefs, unsupported though they are, and keep them entirely separate from his scholarly knowledge and rational ideas, because they simply do not play well together. This is how people like Francis Collins can be as brilliant as he is in one area and as absurdly delusional as he is in another. This is not something that anyone should be proud of. The facts are the facts. Follow the facts and leave your childish fee-fees behind. I respect Dan McClellan to a certain degree because he actually understands the source material. That’s fantastic. Now, take what you understand and apply it to your own beliefs. If what you believe isn’t supported by the extant data, then stop believing it. It’s what I did. I don’t really get people who can’t do the same.