For almost all of my life, I’ve been a news addict.  Whenever I was putting on a shirt or tying my shoes, the television was on, tuned to an all-news channel.  First, when it was essentially the only game in town, to CNN.  Later, to Fox.   One of the things that I can say about Donald Trump is that he has largely cured me of my addiction.  I’m so very sick of hearing from him and about… Read more

    I came across this item earlier this morning, from CNN:   “Baby eats ice cream for first time. See reaction that went viral.”   It immediately reminded me of an experience from many years ago with my firstborn son.  And when I showed it to my wife, she instantly thought of exactly the same thing.   Our eldest son was born in a clinic on an island in the Nile River during the last year that we lived… Read more

    On Tuesday (21 January 2020), I posted a blog entry entitled “Moving with Royal Skousen toward a fictional Book of Mormon?”  The following day, I received a response from Dr. Skousen that read, in relevant part, as follows.  I post it here with his permission:   Your write-up does represent my view. The Book of Mormon is an account of real people and real events, but its translation is not a literal one. And its discourses may also… Read more

    Notes from Erik Klemetti, “Early Start for Our First Continents,” Discover 41/1 (January/February 2020): 82-83:   We may well be alive because of the existence, on our planet, of continents.  Among our solar system’s rocky planets (that is to say, not on gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn) only Earth has masses of less-dense rock that rise above a surrounding crust.   “We know that these land masses are a direct consequence of plate tectonics, when slabs of crust,… Read more

    Many of you, I suspect, will have never seen it.  Perhaps you’ve never even heard of it.  Some of you will have seen it long ago but forgotten about it.   However, as we move into this Church adult curriculum year that’s focused on the Book of Mormon, and particularly as more of the responsibility for scripture study has been handed back to individuals and families, you might find this roughly 90-minute-long  2005 film of value:   Journey… Read more

    Newly posted today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   Teachings and Testimony of the First Vision In the Sacred Grove with Prophets Part Four of a Series Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Following are accounts by General Authorities of choice experiences they have had in the grove of trees where Joseph Smith was visited by God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ:   ***   Two new recordings of the weekly Interpreter Radio Show are now… Read more

    A few days ago, I posted a rather lighthearted reminiscence of my first stay in the Middle East, way back in the first half of 1978.  (See “A couple of songs from my first residence in the Middle East.”)   For approximately the first half of that BYU Study Abroad program, we lodged (and had our classes) in the Vienna Hotel, which was located in the East Jerusalem neighborhood called Shaykh Jarrah, which was and remains heavily if not… Read more

    I have a message board that I watch in order to keep my finger on the pulse of a certain curious variety of critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — most of them (from what I can see) disaffected, atheistic former believers.  Periodically, they emit outbursts of joy and satisfaction as, in their view, advocates of the Restoration (and sometimes even the Church itself) take what they perceive, or affect to perceive, as steps… Read more

    Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man Understanding Evolution: An LDS Scientific Perspective Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article by Steven L. Peck originally appeared in Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man (2016). Abstract: Steven Peck, a BYU Professor of Biology, takes it as “axiomatic that evolution in its broad sense is the way the biological world works, although details are still being worked out and amazing discoveries will continue for centuries.” Using vivid… Read more

    In “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses’ (Part 1),” I began to extract notes from an article about possible Pre-Columbian horses in the Americas that appeared in 2015, surveying the state of the question at that time:  Daniel Johnson, “‘Hard’ Evidence of Ancient American Horses,”  BYU Studies Quarterly 54/3 (2015): 149-179.   I continue with that project, thinking that some might find my notes of interest:   Among the responses that LDS apologists have offered to the problem of horses, Daniel… Read more