If you’re along the Wasatch Front or in Idaho’s Magic Valley, you should probably save the following dates — so that, according to your preference, you can either attend one of my lectures or make alternate plans that will enable you to avoid them like the plague:   1.   On the evening of Friday, 7 April 2017, I’ll be speaking in the Twin Falls, Idaho, area on the subject of Islam.  I’ll have more details on that... Read more

    http://www.livescience.com/56300-gate-shrine-excavated-in-israel.html   This might helpfully be read in conjunction with my 15 February 2017 Deseret News article:   “Biblical ‘minimalists’ and the historical record”   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    When, back in 1997 or 1998, we learned that the Southern Baptist Convention was planning to hold its 1998 annual national meeting in Salt Lake City — a place that has been blessed with relatively few Baptists — and that it was planning a massive attempt to convert Latter-day Saints to Christianity© — we at what was then called the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormons Studies (FARMS) decided to proactively prepare some materials for that event.   Here’s... Read more

    “Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God — the design argument of Paley — updated and refurbished.  The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design.  Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one. . . .  Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.” Edward Robert Harrison        Read more

    Some, I hope, will find this short piece by Taylor Halverson helpful:   http://www.ldsliving.com/Why-Do-We-Suffer-Here-s-One-Important-Reason-We-Hardly-Ever-Talk-About/s/84733   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    “It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.” Marilynne Robinson, Gilead   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    A wonderful how-to video that will teach you how you can demonstrate your superior moral sensitivity to even the most stupidly inferior people around you and silence views that differ from your own:     It fits perfectly with my post from the other day,   “My eagerness to be indignant demonstrates my virtue”   as well as with this item:   “Campus-Wide E-mail Tells White Girls to Stop Wearing Hoop Earrings Because It’s Cultural Appropriation”   Posted from... Read more

    I’ve always been struck by the verses in Moses 7 in which a personified planet Earth speaks:   48 And it came to pass that Enoch looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying: Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may... Read more

    It’s perhaps time to remind some of those who read my remarks here of an organization led by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, with whom I’ve shared the podium a couple of times — the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.  Have a look around their website.   “Believers! Conduct yourselves with justice, and bear true witness before God; even if it be against yourselves, your parents, or your kin.” يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَىٰ... Read more

    A helpful compendium at the FairMormon website:   http://en.fairmormonevidence.org/Main_Page   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more