But first:   “Hevrin Khalaf, Kurdish Politician Who Championed Christians, Executed in Syria”   “Turkey holding 50 US nuclear bombs ‘hostage’ at air base, report says”   “US jets destroy anti-ISIS coalition base in Syria after withdrawal, official says”   “US military uses ‘show of force’ to disrupt Turkish-backed fighters in Syria”   “Frustration on Syria mounts from Republicans during ‘heated’ Esper meeting”   “Trump doubles down on Syria decision with false claims as Republican anger grows”  … Read more

    I published this article in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News on 11 March 2010:   During his forum address at Brigham Young University on Feb. 23, Francis Cardinal George, head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, mentioned last year’s participation by President Thomas S. Monson and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the centennial celebrations for Salt Lake City’s Catholic Cathedral of the Madeleine. He wondered aloud whether Brigham Young and Lawrence Scanlan, the first Catholic bishop of… Read more

    In my capacity as a highly-paid apologist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (whose apologetic checks seem to have been lost in the mail for the past nearly forty years or so), I regularly encounter two distinct but related atheist claims about religion and science:   1.  Religious faith is incompatible with scientific reason, both as method and in terms of the substantial results.   2.  Religion has long been an enemy and an obstacle… Read more

    I grew up not far from the San Gabriel Mission — more properly, the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.  I saw it nearly every day of my life for my first seventeen years; it was essentially across the street from my high school.  And I’ve visited most if not all of the other Spanish missions in California.  That’s part of the reason behind my writing this article for the Provo Daily Herald back in 2001:   The oldest historic buildings… Read more

      I had a few spare seconds, and so I found an article in the 1951 Annals of Surgery by one Russell M. Nelson, M.D., that was based upon research that he had undertaken while working on a second doctorate, this one a Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota.  You can inspect it here:   Russell M. Nelson, “Metabolic Effects of Paracolon Bacteremia,” Annals of Surgery 134:5 (November 1951): 885-896.   If you’re interested, you can also look for such… Read more

    “US troops express anger at Trump’s Syria policy: ‘We betrayed’ the Kurds”   “Bill Bennett: I don’t think I can defend Trump’s policy on Syria”   “Trump’s Syria Pullback Is an Obama-Like Blunder: Obama triumphantly exited Iraq, only to have to go back when things spun out of control. If Trump wants to be done with Syria, it might not be done with him.”   In the meantime, Mr. Donald J. Trump appears to have done a very considerable… Read more

    Here’s another column that I published in the Deseret News a number of years ago:   Religion and politics can ignite ugly passions.  Perhaps it’s not amiss, therefore, in a column broadly dedicated to “defending the faith,” to consider how such defense ought to be conducted.   A recent book by Richard J. Mouw, “Talking with Mormons: An Invitation to Evangelicals,” offers some excellent thoughts on the subject—and provides a good example of respectful, fair-minded disagreement.  Mouw, a… Read more

    We had a quick but good trip down to St. George and Cedar City in southern Utah.  It included a session in the St. George Utah Temple, taking in a performance of Arthur Miller’s The Price and a performance of Hamlet (by Mr. William Shakespeare or, at least, by someone writing under his name) in Cedar City, running into friends, staying with other friends, a fireside in Cedar City, visiting with a niece and her toddler-age youngest son,… Read more

    The most recent Hamblin-Peterson column for the Deseret News appeared three days ago.  I’ve simply been too busy, too much on the road, and too distracted, and I failed to mention it.  But here’s a link to it now:   “The Kurds, caught between four modern countries”     The Middle East has been a mess for several generations, but — O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! — the Trump administration has recently pitched in to make it even worse…. Read more

    I published the column below in the Deseret News back in 2012:   In one of his dialogues, the Greek philosopher Plato cites his beloved teacher, Socrates, as saying that “philosophy begins in wonder.”   Plato’s student Aristotle expresses a similar sentiment in his “Metaphysics”: “It was,” Aristotle says, “their wonder, astonishment, that first led men to philosophize and still leads them.”   In ancient Greece, of course, science hadn’t yet emerged as a separate discipline.  For many… Read more