(NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Arizona State University)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image
***
Here’s a new posting on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:
***
And here are two new short pieces from the Interpreter Foundation’s own Jeff Lindsay:
“Many Hits But Plenty of Misses in Vogel’s Book: Part 2 of My Review of Book of Abraham Apologetics“
***
I’ve been neglecting my Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify (formerly Mormon Scholars Testify) website. Unexpectedly, though, a new submission came in just the other day from my former BYU department chairman. I had requested it quite some time back, and was surprised and pleased to see it:
Robert A. Russell, Associate Professor of Japanese, Emeritus, Brigham Young University
My thanks to Tanya Spackman for her help in getting the entry up
***
Yesterday, as on virtually all other days, I saw a few anonymous online attacks against me. One of them declared me a “monster.” (All too true, say I!) Today one of them says that I’m a narcissist. And, of course, that accusation may well be true, as well. (Who am I to judge?) It also pronounces me a sociopath. Which, I expect, is also very likely true. Further, it declares, I practice priestcraft, profiting financially from the Restoration while knowing full well that its claims are false. Here, however, I want to quibble. In fact, I don’t know that the claims of the Restoration are false, probably because I’m simply too stupid. But I’m really puzzled by the charge of “priestcraft.” Where’s my check?
***
Robert Starling shared a couple of film ideas with me today and, with his permission, I’m sharing one of them further here. I would love to see something come of it:
***
The Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File© runneth over continually. Here are a few recent items that should send a thrill of horror through the hearts of decent readers:
“Latter-day Saints Open Doors to Fire Victims in Davao City”
***
It’s helpful to contrast the horrors sampled above with the current record of the People’s Republic of China, which is an officially atheistic state. Since 1949, China has been governed by the Communist Party of China, which, consistent with the Marxist-Leninist ideology that it espouses, is explicitly atheistic, prohibiting party members from practicing religion while in office.
Here, for example, is a statement (which I cite from Wikipedia), from Sa’eda Buang and Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew, eds., Muslim Education in the 21st Century: Asian Perspectives. (Routledge. 2014): Subsequently, a new China was founded on the basis of Communist ideology, i.e. atheism. Within the framework of this ideology, religion was treated as a ‘contorted’ world-view and people believed that religion would necessarily disappear at the end, along with the development of human society. A series of anti-religious campaigns was implemented by the Chinese Communist Party from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. As a result, in nearly 30 years between the beginning of the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, mosques (as well as churches and Chinese temples) were shut down and Imams involved in forced ‘re-education’.
Here are some links that I’ve been unsystematically gathering over the past year or two on the current plight of the Muslim Uyghurs and other religious groups under Communist Chinese rule.
National Review: “China Sentences Founder of One of the Nation’s Largest Independent Churches to Nine Years in Prison”
BBC: “Inside China’s ‘thought transformation’ camps”
GetReligion: “China and its creepy facial recognition technology targets Uighur Muslims”
ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] News: “‘Deeply disturbing’ footage surfaces of blindfolded Uyghurs at train station in Xinjiang”
Real Clear Religion: “America Must Condemn China’s Abuse of Muslim Minority”
National Review: “The Latest Research on Beijing’s Concentration-Camp Lies”
Deseret News: “China sanctions Cruz, Rubio, Smith, Brownback for criticizing its treatment of minorities, people of faith”
Deseret News: “Romney, McAdams urging sanctions against China over alleged forced sterilization of ethnic minorities”
Deseret News: “Mitt Romney says video of Chinese treatment of ethnic minorities ‘absolutely sickening’”
The American Spectator: “China Is Persecuting Muslims, and We Should Do Something About It: A mounting case that China is committing both genocide and crimes against humanity.”
National Review: “‘Even If Genocide Were to Happen’: A Uighur intellectual and victim of China’s repression foresaw the forced assimilation of the Uighur people.”
National Review: “Shame on Sarah Jeong for Belittling the Uyghur Genocide”
National Review: “Incoming Secretary of State Backs Pompeo’s Uyghur Genocide Designation”
Islam21C: “Report on Uyghur Muslims: China has breached every act of Genocide Convention”
GetReligion: “BuzzFeed plumbs satellite photos for exhaustive report on China’s persecuted Muslims”
National Review: “Apple Spent $90,000 Lobbying Lawmakers on Uyghur Forced Labor Bill”
Reason: “Disney Thanks Chinese Labor Camp Authorities in Mulan Credits”
National Review: “Corporate America’s ‘Xinjiang Silence’ — and One Promising Exception”
The Forward: “We Jews Know What Happens in Concentration Camps: We Cannot Be Silent About China’s Abuses”
The Forward: “For Passover, this Jewish congressman wants to ‘help free another people’: the Uyghurs”
GetReligion: “Question: What is the world’s worst government on religious liberty? Clearly, it’s China”
The Daily Signal: “How the Chinese Communist Party Robs Children of Their Religious Faith”
I hope that you’ll take the time to look at one or two or a few of them. We shudder with righteous disbelief at the inaction of earlier generations in the face of the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem,” confident that, had we but been alive in those days, things would have turned out differently. But would they?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In