Sic et Non

    An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. It almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1948), 73 [Read more…]

    I’m interested in people and organizations who examine the intersections and collisions between religious belief and contemporary science.   Here’s one such group, this one Evangelical Protestant in orientation:   http://www.reasons.org   I don’t always agree with them, but I generally find them interesting and often helpful.     [Read more…]

      Luke 6:17-20 Compare Matthew 4:24-5:2; Mark 3:7-13   There is an obvious version of the Sermon on the Mount given in Luke.  It’s often called “The Sermon on the Plain.”   Is Luke giving a variant account of the incident in Matthew?   Maybe.   I think it entirely plausible, though, and not [Read More…]

      Who woulda thunk it?   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-hollister/eating-hummus-with-the-en_b_6670096.html   Of course, as an anonymous-message-board-poster-certified hater of everyone who isn’t white, conservative, and fanatically Mormon like myself, I imagine that I’m against such friendly meetings.     [Read more…]

    Roughly a year ago, I posted an entry about an exquisitely beautiful piece of choral music that I had just heard for the first time.  (I provided the words of the moving Sara Teasdale poem on which it’s based, which might prove useful.)  Unfortunately, the best online recording of the piece that I could find [Read More…]

    Nearly three decades ago, when I first joined the faculty of Brigham Young University (after having fallen in love with the place as an undergraduate), I might well have read this article with a complacent (perhaps even somewhat superior) sense of “it can’t happen here”:   http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/02/we-hide-the-word-catholic-from-prospective-students   These days?  Not so much. [Read More…]

    A very good article in the Deseret News by Taylor Halverson:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865621899/In-the-gospel-faith-must-come-first.html     [Read more…]

    Just a reminder of several Mormon-oriented blogs by people whom I like:   http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/enigmaticmirror/   https://seesangelsinthearchitecture.wordpress.com   http://www.studioetquoquefide.com   http://www.plonialmonimormon.com   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.ie   They’ve each added one or more entries since last I mentioned them.   And don’t forget this one, either, from another friend:   http://etherscave.blogspot.com   I’m sure that [Read More…]

    Apart from the gratuitous silliness of trying to blame the United States for ISIS, this is an article worth reading:   http://www.infowars.com/islamic-state-continues-destruction-of-antiquities-in-iraq/   See this earlier item, as well:   http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/27400/isis-planning-to-destroy-ancient-walls-of-nineveh-middle-east/#ROGefWpF1mDdqheE.97   It’s good to know that the depravity of ISIS isn’t limited merely to the mass murder of innocent people.     [Read more…]

    How to explain the difference between involvement and commitment?   Think of a breakfast of ham and eggs.   The chicken is “involved.”  The pig is “committed.”     [Read more…]