Mormon Apologist ACCIDENTALLY Proves Me Right! (RESPONSE)

In this video, I break down Jacob's flawed defense of Mormonism, exposing the major inconsistencies and misconceptions he hoped you wouldn't notice.

#Apologetics #CapturingChristianity #ExistenceofGod

[tadgriffin]

I think a friendly debate between Cameron and Jacob is in order. I know Jacob will step up and already has. Lets see what Cameron will do.

[CloudsswordU]

Are we going to get a Cameron and Jacob live debate?!? Please Cameron that would be so Epic!

[isthisdom]

The amount of times I hear the term straw man on podcasts is driving me to the point of burning, every bale of hay, I see.

[rhyde]

If you’ve admitted in the past that you’re “not really that familiar with Old Testament” then why would your channel be one of his favorite Christian apologist channels?

Lifelong devout LDS member currently in OCIA. ❤

[billcynic]

"Now normally I like X. But I was really disappointed when he criticized my side. He completely misrepresented us, he just finds us distasteful, he's disappointingly ignorant of us and others, he has the same problem we have, and actually his "strawman" about us is our view but is it really so crazy to say? Again, normally I like X, but his critique on us was sad, and we've heard it before. PS Constantine ruined the Church."

[thoughtfulfaith]

Hey Cameron, Jacob here. Why don't we just talk to each other instead of at each other. I would be happy to do a formal debate and/or discussion. The topic would very simply be "Which conception of God makes the most sense for a follower of Jesus Christ?" Are you open to this?

[LatterDaySigma]

I’m also a huge can bro and a Mormon/Latterday Saint and I would love to see you and Jacob debate each other ?? Much love my fiend

[rozchristopherson]

I’m a Catholic convert from Protestant churches, too. Prior to converting, I attended an Episcopal seminary. We discussed how references to the “Angel of the Lord” in the Old Testament were manifestations of God prior to the Incarnation. A pre-Incarnate manifestation. So God appeared in a likeness that we could comprehend rather than in grandeur. So such manifestations were for our benefit. They do not indicate that God is a God of flesh and bone. God is still a Spirit but chose to manifest at different times in the Old Testament and New Testament in a form we could relate to. After the Crucifixion and the release of the Holy Spirit, such manifestations of the “Angel of the Lord” ceased.

[jeremygunter]

This is yet another example of a smug and dishonest video you seem to be producing as of late.

1. You start off your video petulant that Jacob committing an "ad hominem" by pointing out your own confessed lack of knowledge of the Old Testament, and you call his behavior a "trend". But at the beginning of the video you also mock his response by saying it's one of the worst responses you've ever received, "and that's kind of saying a lot, because there's some pretty serious competition." You also take snippets of his video and take it out of context, which is also fallacious behavior.

2. You move on to call "Mormonism" and Islam disturbing because they describe God with highly physical features. And the Bible does too. You brush that off by saying that it's "metaphorical", but if you grant yourself that grace, you must also grant that to Muslims. Latter-day Saints do indeed believe that God has a tangible body, and you are correct that Latter-day Saint doctrine does not shy away from that. Yet most Nicene Christians also believe that Jesus has a tangible body, and that Jesus is God, which means that one person of God has a tangible body. Therefore, no Christian should find it "disturbing" that other people not of your sect also believe that two persons of the Godhead have a tangible body.

3. Then you move on to lampoon him for using the term "strawman" to describe your poorly executed attempt at a takedown of "Mormonism". First, in the previous video that Jacob responded to, I point by point demonstrated that you either have an extremely poor understanding of Latter-day Saint beliefs coupled with a low awareness of other ancient writings that have a lot in common with them, or you're incredibly dishonest. Your overall video did indeed consist of strawman arguments whether or not you happened to have one or more instances of truth sprinkled in (which is a tactic of Satan, by the way). If you're going to attack someone else's beliefs, the least you can do is present their beliefs fairly and then explain why you believe they are false. Second, you're being hypocritical by mocking his use of fallacy terms when you yourself use terms like "tu quoque" even in this video.

4. You also are peppering your video with extremely pejorative terms like "Mormon heresy". Do you think that you convert people over to your cause with vitriol and by mocking them? People can very easily sense your contempt for them and their beliefs. If you want to change people's minds, you need to dispense with your malevolence and replace it with compassion.

5. You move on to state that "at no point did [you] make the claim that the 'Mormon' argument is false simply because it is 'weird'". And then you put up imagery of things that you think are weird about it. That's being extremely disingenuous. You're using terms like "disturbing" to describe Latter-day Saint beliefs and you're presenting Latter-day Saint beliefs in in the worst light you can. Seems like the textbook definition of a strawman. You say that "reducing [your] belief to a matter of personal taste is misleading and it avoids engaging with the substantive theological differences between our perspectives". You know what also is misleading and avoids engaging with the substantive theological differences between Catholic and Latter-day Saint perspectives? Painting Latter-day Saint beliefs as "weird" and "disturbing" like you do. I'm sure you don't like it when Protestants caricature Catholic beliefs by trying to make Catholic beliefs look as weird and disturbing as possible, which also is not hard to do.

6. With your face beaming, you move on to attack Jacob's use of Exodus 24:10, which describes God as having feet, by saying "he doesn't realize that the passage that he quotes says no such thing, like even the translation that he used rejects the literal interpretation by using the idiom 'as it were', which is an idiom that a signifies a figurative meaning." You know what doesn't have the idiomatic expression "as it were"? The actual Hebrew. The Hebrew states "And they saw the God of Israel, and under his feet, a work of paved sapphire stone. And it was like the Heavens in clarity." Idiomatic interpolations added to the text by a translator to bolster a dogmatic position are not scripture, so you can't lean on them to dismiss someone's beliefs. Doing so either shows your lack of awareness, or it shows your willingness to be dishonest. Now, personally, I don't believe Moses and the Israelites interacted with the Father, I believe he interacted with Jesus in preincarnate form, so I don't think the verse supports the Latter-day Saint argument, so if I were critiquing Jacob, that's the approach I would have taken. However, that option wasn't on the table for you to use because you already described corporeal conceptions of God as "disturbing", and so forced yourself into a corner where all you can do is claim that corporeal depictions of God in the Bible are figurative (while hypocritically denying Muslims that opportunity).

[matthewkimball]

People need to understand that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of LDS also know the same verses that Trinitarians read. They interpret them to say that God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are one in purpose, character, ect. and not in being, so quoting scriptures that they already know does not prove to them that their interpretation of that verse is any less true than they believed it to be. For example, Jesus prays for his disciples to be one with him as he is with the Father (John 17:22) with Trinitarian understanding does this mean the disciples become literally one with God so they are the same being as God? Most would say no. Jesus also quoted a scripture that says man shall cleave to his wife and be one flesh (Matthew 19:5), does this mean that husband and wife are literally meant to become one body and not two? Most would say obviously not. Seems both sides need to understand that there is a genuine reason either side believes what they believe, it's more complicated than saying "oh obviously they don't read the bible because it says here that..." because both sides have biblical reasons for their beliefs.

[shanehanes]

When Jacob alleged that early Christians came up with the Trinity to appeal to the Greeks, I almost lost it!. If the early Christians wanted to create a god appealing to the Greeks, they would’ve come up with a god like the Mormons have since the Mormon god is basically Zeus! As is the whole pantheon of Greek pagan gods as merely supermen.

[fireinthesky]

I was raised Mormon. After 15 years of agnosticism, Im on the cusp of conversion to Orthodoxy. The reasons im not Mormon and have had my name removed from their Church:

1) The Trinity. As a Mormon, we laughed at it. Im not laughing anymore.

2) Materialist ontology. Clearly a theological product of 19th century excitement over technological advance.

3) Mormon doctrine of achieving godhood over Orthodoxic theosis. As Mormons would have it, the difference between God and man is merely one of degree, not kind.

4) The blatant non historicity of the Book of Mormon. You heard it here first, but in the coming decade 'all the rage' will be for Mormon apologists to deny the relevance of its historicity.

5) Polygamy.

[dinkledork]

I wouldn't call Mormonism polytheistic. Henotheistic would be a much more apt term wherein they believe there are multiple gods but only show adherence to one.

[SamHollidayVMusic]

I went through a phase where I was searching for truth, and Mormonism initially appealed to me—the people seemed genuinely kind, and there’s a real beauty in their community. But I couldn’t reconcile their non-Trinitarian theology with the clear words of Christ. In John 10:30, Jesus says, ‘I and the Father are one, ’ and Colossians 2:9 tells us, ‘in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.’ These verses just don’t jive with the Mormon view of God as separate beings.

I also looked at the evangelical world, which seemed lively and fun—guitar-driven worship and all—but their ‘faith alone’ doctrine didn’t sit right with me either. Jesus ties salvation to actions throughout the Gospels, like in Matthew 25:31-46, where he separates the sheep from the goats based on how they treated ‘the least of these.’ His teachings on repentance and judgment, like in Luke 13:3, show a fire-and-brimstone edge often softened today. In the end, only Catholicism held together both faith and works, giving full weight to the challenging words of Christ and offering a coherent path that embraces the entirety of Scripture.

[maxsigmon]

As I was watching this, I thought "Is Jacob going to make the argument that because Jesus has a body, that God the Father has a body?" Then I was like "No, surely he won't make an argument that bad." But sure enough...

[stonefallknives]

Cameron: takes shot at the lds

Jacob: those are ridiculous, lets talk.

Cameron: no, ill take shots but refuse a conversation and bring in someone else to do my talking.

Sounds like a glass house owner. Hopefully Cameron will find whatever he needs to talk one on one with Jacob. It would be a good conversation, i think.

[John-...]

I'm surprised he didn't blame the Boogeyman Constantine or the famous council of Nicaea

[johnroberts]

🤔 Do Mormons believe that God has a glorified body of flesh and bone? YES. But how can that be? First, man, we're told, is made in the “image and likeness” of GOD. The scriptures also say that Seth was in the “image and likeness” of Adam.

It's the same language!

So we may surmise from this that God has form and likeness. Arms, legs, feet hands. Thus we ask, why does God have a body that _looks_ like man?

You discount the passage in Exodus 24, which states, “Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they _saw_ the God of Israel: and there was _under his feet_ as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.”

You say this isn't literal because it says, “as it were, ” but look again. It says, “as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone.” The “as it were” refers to the sapphire stone, not the feet! And the “body of heaven in his clearness.”

You're misinterpreting it! The NIV renders it: “they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky.” And Young's translation says, “they see the God of Israel, and under His feet [is] as the white work of the sapphire, and as the substance of the heavens for purity.”

So we see that God has feet and that he sits as we sit. Nothing in the scriptures suggest God is everywhere present or that he is without form himself.

Second, Jesus is himself the God of Israel, yet he has a glorified body of flesh and bone does he not? He showed himself to the Twelve and they so testified. So answer me this, if the Father is a Spirit, but the Son has a resurrected and glorified body of flesh and bone, how do they interact? Jesus told Mary, “Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father in Heaven.” (So much for God being everywhere!)

Third, John writes: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) We see here that if we are resurrected with actual flesh, real bone, glorified and spiritual in nature, does this not indicate that God is the same, for we see him thus?

If not, tell me what I'm missing.

Finally, the Holy Spirit also is God. He is a Spirit and thus differs from the Father and the Son. So any indication that he is God and a Spirit works just fine with us.

..

[chrismiller]

Just do a formal debate. If you have time to make response videos you have time to do a formal debate.

[joseflores]

It would be great to see you debate Jacob. It would even better to see the debate on the Crucible with Andrew Wilson and his crew moderating. Bloodsport debate.