La Terreur

Here’s something new from the ever-dying Interpreter Foundation:  “Now Available on all of our Social Media Channels: “Interpreting Interpreter” Videos with Kyler Rasmussen”:  Watch the first video now on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a5wkAIP2xU

You might have noticed that Latter-day Saints have lately come in for a great deal of attention in “Hollywood.”  Little if any of it has been exactly helpful, let alone flattering.  In the context of that attention, which has been almost comical — note that I said almost — in its unrelenting onslaught, I found this article interesting.  It’s from Kelsey Dallas, a non-Latter-day Saint religion-beat journalist who publishes with the Deseret News:  “Perspective: How should Hollywood handle religion?  When done well, faith-related shows and movies help people ask better questions about religion, rather than making them feel like they’ve got religion all figured out”

And, speaking of movies, Six Days in August continues in a few theaters.  If you’re in the vicinity of of one of those theaters and you haven’t yet seen the film — or you want to see it again on a big screen, or you have friends or family or neighbors or ward members who should see it — you may well be running out of opportunities.  Tonight, instead of listening to commentators who actually know little or nothing more than you do, and instead of waiting around interminably for news of the latest presidential ballot totals from Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, or for survey results drawn from interviews with unemployed left-handed Armenian women in the far southeastern corner of Arizona’s Yavapai County, maybe you ought to go out and catch a showing of Six Days in August, instead.  It may be several days before the final voting figures are in and, besides, we all know that the Libertarian Party is just going to steal the election again this year, anyhow.

If you do go to see Six Days in August, I ask you once again to stick around for the credits that follow the end of the film.  I want you to hear the moving rendition of John Taylor’s “O Give Me Back My Prophet Dear” that runs behind those credits.  It was specially recorded for the movie in an arrangement by Rob Gardner, and it features Casey Elliott, of Gentri.

There is a crackpot claim out there that Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by John Taylor and Willard Richards on orders from Brigham Young.  I thought it important to include John Taylor’s testimony, in musical form, at the end of Six Days in August.  Don’t miss it.

You may perhaps have missed this 56-minute video.  If so, here’s an opportunity to miss it yet again: “BYU Professor Daniel Peterson and Qur’an translator Safi Kaskas compare the shared commonality of shared faiths with the teachings of ancient Islam and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We learn how Jesus and Mary are found in the Qur’an and that the name of God is universal.”

It’s been a while since I’ve shared — I’ve been otherwise occupied, and have quite often been in areas with no internet access, not to mention with a computer that unaccountably failed and then miraculously recovered a few days later — but here are some appalling recent specimens from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

• “Church Extends Assistance to Tropical Storm Victims in Philippines”
• “Nearly 900 people taking refuge in Latter-day Saint buildings after Philippines tropical storm”
• “Church donates $1 million to support American Red Cross hurricane relief efforts”
• “BYU Research Finds Link Between Temple Attendance and Improved Mental Health in Youth: ‘Being able to step back and serve other people, that is a beautiful, beautiful thing and helps us to walk the pathway of healing,’ researcher tells the Church News podcast'”
• “Youth temple attendance correlated with better mental health and more lasting faith: Large study of Latter-day Saint youth finds emotional health benefits from temple attendance — along with sustained and lasting faith over time.”
• “Church Donation Transforms Burn Treatment for Children in Paraguay: The hospital in Asunción performs over 1,500 major surgeries each year, primarily treating children from low-income families”
• “President Freeman’s Ministry in Dublin Highlights the Church’s Support for Children: The Young Women General President will also visit Scotland, Norway and England”
• “Relief work underway in Spain after deadly flash floods: Extreme rainfall in a matter of hours causes widespread damage and kills hundreds of people in eastern Spain”
• “Queen Camilla Opens Pre-School of Hope for Samoa’s Vulnerable Children”
• Washington Post:  “What science says about the power of religion and prayer to heal: Evidence suggests that having strong spiritual or religious beliefs, however defined, can assist psychologically in fighting, and coping with, illness.”

Someday, such evils of religion will be a thing of the past.  Until that (metaphorically) blessed day, though, we can only imagine the better world that will inevitably emerge when theists and theism are no more than dimly remembered horrors from humankind’s distant, primitive origins.  “Man will never be free,” the great French writer, philosopher, and art critic Denis Diderot (1713-1784) famously remarked, “until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”  With the rise of atheistic communist regimes and their mass murders of religious believers and reactionary political figures and thinkers in the twentieth century, Diderot’s glorious vision seemed to be on the verge of literal realization.  But, alas, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Mao’s China and Castro’s Cuba and Enver Hoxha’s Albania and Stalin’s Russia and Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam proved to be merely a false dawn, just as the French Revolution’s “Reign of Terror” had proven to be earlier.