“Do We Have Non-Biblical Evidence That Jesus Existed?”

Scrovegni Judas — “The Arrest of Jesus,” a fresco done between 1304-1306) by Giotto, in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

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First, though, some Witnesses news:

Some will be interested know that the entire Witnesses film is illegally available online at a site that, for obvious reasons, I won’t identify. (It apparently comes out of one foreign country via another.). Theft of intellectual property is really no different than any other kind of theft. This is contemptible, but it’s difficult to prevent or to stop. Supporting such a site is an endorsement of illegal and unethical behavior.

On a much brighter note: Three of the actors from Witnesses — Paul Kandarian (older David Whitmer), Samantha Valletta (Elizabeth Cowdery), and Michael Zuccola (younger David Whitmer) — will be at the AMC Boston Commons theaters for the 7 PM screening of the film this coming Friday, 25 June.

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I’ve just published an article in Meridian Magazine that some of you might find interesting:

“Do We Have Non-Biblical Evidence that Jesus Existed?”

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On a quite different front, I love this 17.5-minute video from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s about Elder Peter Johnson, whose background is, umm, somewhat different than mine and certainly not typical of that of General Authorities in the past:

“Running Toward the Light”

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Switching to a quite unrelated note, I just watched an interview on CNN with a health official from Mesa County, Colorado. For those of you who may not remember where Mesa County is, it’s directly adjacent to the Utah state border. It’s where Grand Junction is located. And, thanks almost entirely to low rates of vaccination, it’s experiencing a surge in cases of the COVID-19 delta variant. This gives me hope that, if we’re really determined, we can continue to delay the reopening of temples and stop the work of redeeming the dead, we can still interfere with missionary work to prevent people from finding the Restored Gospel, we can continue weakening the fellowship of our local congregations, and we can perpetuate viritual General Conferences into the indefinite future.

“How did Brazil’s COVID-19 outbreak get so bad? The South American country is facing a third deadly wave with no sign of letting up. Why?”

Low vaccination rates contributed significantly to this magnifient achievement.

“Here’s how coronavirus spread inside a government office in Florida — and how one official says it stopped”

And refusal to be vaccinated helped here, too.

Can we do it in Utah? Yes, we can!

“Understanding the risk of the delta variant could be a motivator to get the young vaccinated”

COVID-19 cases are going up among younger Utahns as the highly contagious delta variant of the virus continues to spread among a population where less than half of all residents have had even one dose of vaccine, University of Utah Health physicians warned Tuesday.

“That same population who is less likely to get vaccinated has been getting more COVID-19,” Dr. Russell Vinik, chief medical operations officer of the Salt Lake City-based University of Utah Health, said during a virtual news conference, calling the lagging vaccination rates and increased cases among younger Utahns “very, very concerning.”

“‘This virus will still find you,’ expert says: The delta variant could create a surge in the fall. The virus can still find you”

But, in order to further hinder the progress of the Kingdom, we must absolutely stop such developments as this one:

“‘A new day for missionary training’: Church resumes in-person training at Provo MTC”

It’s important that we vaccinate as few people as possible from here on in. The more the coronavirus spreads and the more bodies it’s allowed to settle into, the more opportunities it will have to mutate. It’s helpful to think of each newly infected person as a kind of mutation laboratory. And, if all goes well, the virus will eventually mutate into a form that our current vaccines will be unable to combat — and then we’ll be off to the races again!

But we’ll need to come up with better and more persuasive rationalizations for our refusal to accept vaccination:

“Vaccine Skeptics’ Misplaced Infertility Concerns: Addressing the latest flawed theory on the long-term health effects of coronavirus vaccination.”

“3 COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories, debunked”

This argument might work, of course:

“For evangelical leader Jamie Aten, advocating for vaccines led to a death threat: Aten, who teaches at an evangelical college, has received swarms of angry anti-vaxxer emails — including one saying his work was ‘punishable by death.’”

I believe in us. We can do this! We can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

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I couldn’t possibly be more excited than I am about this story: “New Zealand Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard Set To Become First Transgender Athlete To Compete At The Olympics.” With apologies in advance for the subject matter, which some may find uncomfortable but which is in a very real way inescapable, I call your attention in this context to a related article: “Female Weightlifter Suffers Tragic Testicle Injury Just Weeks Before Tokyo Olympics”

“First Transgender Athlete To Compete In Olympics”

“Woman Briefly Identifies As Man To Avoid Long Bathroom Line”

“What to read, and why, as Catholic bishops mull plan to deny Biden Holy Communion”

“U.S. Catholic bishops OK drafting Communion guidelines: Press asks about politics — period”