A Faithful Alternative to Jacob Hansen’s Collective Witness Model

Can prophetic consensus reliably tell Latter-day Saints what is true—or does the process simply disguise our existing assumptions?

In this episode of Let’s Disagree and Other Interesting Conversations, I’m joined by Jonathan Young, an active Latter-day Saint and elders quorum instructor, to examine Jacob Hansen’s “Collective Witness Model.”

Jacob’s model proposes that believers can identify the mind and will of God by combining reason, personal spiritual impressions, and the collective teachings of prophets across scripture and Church history. Jonathan approaches that proposal sympathetically—but argues that the method faces serious problems when we try to apply it consistently.

We discuss:

• How much weight should be given to reason, spiritual intuition, and prophetic authority
• Whether adjustable weighting makes the model vulnerable to confirmation bias
• How believers unconsciously select some prophets while ignoring others
• What happens when most supposed “witnesses” are silent
• Whether new revelation can ever overcome an existing prophetic consensus
• Adam–God, evolution, the priesthood restriction, and changing LDS teachings
• How culture shapes what believers identify as reason or revelation
• Why ancient scripture is often interpreted through modern assumptions
• The divine council, the Nephilim, Huldah, Junia, and disputed biblical translations
• Whether repeated scriptural teachings actually represent independent witnesses
• How editing, redaction, translation, and proof-texting can manufacture apparent consensus
• What a transparent and consistently applied model would need to look like

Jonathan’s argument is not that prophets, scripture, tradition, or spiritual experience are worthless. His concern is that the Collective Witness Model does not provide clear rules for choosing, interpreting, and weighting its evidence. Without those rules, the model may function less as a method for discovering truth and more as a rhetorical tool for validating conclusions someone already holds.

This conversation brings together a believing Latter-day Saint and a post-Mormon critic to ask a shared question: How can faith remain intellectually honest when religious authorities disagree?

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#Mormonism #LDS #JacobHansen #CollectiveWitnessModel #Epistemology #BiblicalScholarship #LatterDaySaint #ExMormon #ReligiousDeconstruction #LetsDisagree

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