This Friday in Logan

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It seems that I’m scheduled to speak this coming Friday up at the Latter-day Saint Institute of Religion in Logan, Utah:

• Fri. 11:30am: Religion in Life  – Daniel C. Peterson (Producer of Witnesses movie). Refreshments after.
• Fri. 7pm Movie Witnesses – Treats, games, prizes, popcorn. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NEiXWtijQw

And, in case you still crave more of Me (and in case you missed it on my blog), here’s a little piece of mine that was picked up by Meridian Magazine:

“On the Divine Name in Exodus 6:2-3”

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From the account of Dr. George G. Ritchie’s near-death experience given in his book Return from Tomorrow:

“What did you do with your life?
It seemed to be a question about values, not facts: What did you accomplish with the precious time you were allotted?
How much have you loved with your life? Have you loved others as I am loving you?  Totally?  Unconditionally?
I have shown you by the life I lived.  I showed you by the death I died.  And if you keep your eyes on Me, you will see more. . . . “

“Death is nothing more than a doorway,” Dr. Ritchie insisted, “something you walk through.”

George G. Ritchie, M.D. (1923-2007), was born in Richmond, Virginia.  He eventually served as president of Richmond’s Academy of General Practice; chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Towers Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia; and founder and president of the Universal Youth Corps, Inc., for almost twenty years.  In 1967, he entered private psychiatric practice in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Then, in 1983, he moved to Anniston, Alabama, in order to serve as head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center. He returned to Richmond in 1986 to continue in private practice, retiring in 1992.

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I won’t pretend that we’re close friends, but I’ve known (and respected) Thomas Griffith for a long time.  Along with the various credentials listed in the article to which I link below, he is also a former stake president.  Some here will care about that fact:

“A man for this season: Retired Judge Thomas B. Griffith, BYU’s former general counsel, introduced Ketanji Brown Jackson before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday. He’s trying to introduce America to a different kind of Washington, D.C.”

I have personally only caught a few minutes of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Perhaps a total of half an hour.  In what I have seen, she has come across as reasonable and articulate — even, quite surprisingly, as something of an “originalist,” which is very much to my personal taste.  I can’t really speak to what I haven’t watched, but I’ll admit that these articles do concern me:

“Judge Jackson Refuses to Define ‘Woman’ during Confirmation Hearing: ‘I’m Not a Biologist’”

“Judge Jackson’s Curious Agnosticism on Who Is a Woman”

“How to Answer the Question ‘What Is a Woman?’”

“It’s Okay, I’m Not a Biologist Either”

“Schrödinger’s Woman”

On the general question of Judge Jackson’s nomination, my opinion is this:  She wouldn’t have been my choice.  I’m a federalist, free-market, pro-life, strict-constructionist (or originalist) conservative.  (I was for Amy Coney Barrett when being for Amy Coney Barrett wasn’t cool.)  But Joe Biden is the president, and the right to nominate justices to the Supreme Court of the United States is a constitutional prerogative of the presidency.  The Senate has the obligation to advise and consent.  Not necessarily to roll over and play dead, but, historically, the Senate has (until recent times) generally approved SCOTUS nominations by pretty bi-partisan majorities — even, in not a few cases. by voice votes.  Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed 99-0, Anthony Kennedy 97-0, Antonin Scalia 98-0, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg 96-3.  Unless a nominee is morally or intellectually defective, or a Communist, or a Nazi, or a fan of reality television, the president’s should be granted considerable (though not unlimited) deference.  Elections have consequences.  Mr. Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election — and, for the record, he did win it — entails certain things.  And the utterly preventable and completely stupid Republican loss of those two Senate seats in the January 2021 Georgia special election has had consequences, too.  Had the Senate been 52-48 Republican, Judge Jackson might well not have been President Biden’s choice for the Court.

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Two related thoughts, totally unrelated to the political ruminations above:

I’m reminded of the [Richard] Dawkins-sponsored ads that appeared on the sides of London buses, declaring in bright colors, ‘There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’  Interesting logic.  You are a meaningless by-product of the circulating ooze in some ancient pond, soon to return to the dead chemicals that burped your ancestors out, sooo . . . go enjoy your life. . . .  Life is meaningless.  Isn’t it beautiful?  [Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 263, 264.]

If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter.  If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper.  You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically.  This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions. . . .  Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent.  They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before.  If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water.  This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality.  If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water.  And nothing else.  (Douglas Wilson)

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Obviously, this article isn’t directly relevant to the Book of Mormon.  But it’s interesting nonetheless:

First people in America didn’t arrive by land bridge but by SEA due to Game-of-Thrones-esque wall of ice that new research suggests may have covered the area that is now Alaska

•  A land bridge running down from Siberia to the Great Plains of America is long thought to be how the first migrants arrived from Asia into America
• Researchers examined the exact age of the opening of the ice-sheet corridor on this land bridge
• They determined that a giant wall of ice would have prevented the first migrants 
• New work instead suggests the first wave of humans arrived in America on small boats 

Thanks to (I believe) Cody Quirk for calling it to my notice.

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Parts, at least, of this extremely interesting article plainly belong in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©:

“The state of faith: Yes, organized religion is on the decline. But new research shows faith still plays a powerful, unifying role in American life”