Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation “Conference Talks: The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be,” originally presented by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw on Saturday, 12 March 2016, at the 2016 Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit. Moreover, two new items went up yesterday on the Interpreter Foundation’s website: Come, Follow Me — New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 32, July 31 — August 6: Acts 22–28 — “A Minister... Read more
I’ve been thinking today, as I sometimes do, of the perils of reliance upon translators and translations. In such pondering, a specific book often comes to mind, Curiously, and although I own a copy of it, even now I still haven’t read the entirety of Alexander Kinglake’s 1844 book Eothen; or Traces of travel brought home from the East. But one particular passage — a fictional conversation between an English visitor and an Ottoman (Osmanli) pasha by means... Read more
I read a really interesting article in the New York Times today, about a recent expedition led by Avi Loeb. I don’t know how many of you, if any, will be able to access it. Just in case you can, though, here’s a link to it: “Scientist’s Deep Dive for Alien Life Leaves His Peers Dubious: Avi Loeb, a Harvard astrophysicist, says that material recovered from the seafloor could be from an extraterrestrial spacecraft. His peers are skeptical.”... Read more
Tomorrow is Pioneer Day — a legal holiday in Utah, but an anniversary that is observed, in one way or another, by many Latter-day Saints beyond the borders of my adopted home state. (Please see my 21 July 2023 article in Meridian Magazine.) On Saturday, 22 July, after joining the audience for the annual Pioneer Day parade in Cokeville, Wyoming, my wife and I were the speakers in the church there for their Pioneer Day program. We drove... Read more
I’m late in calling attention to it — for the perfectly valid reason that I had no Internet access over roughly the past thirty hours, either because I was on the road between Orem, Utah, and Cokeville, Wyoming, or because I was in a location in Cokeville without access to WiFi. But I published an article in Meridian Magazine yesterday that some might find perhaps only slightly objectionable: “Why Pioneer Day is a Celebration for Church Members Across... Read more
New just yesterday on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: In the Visions of the Night: The Human Brain and Divine Revelation, originally presented by Brant A. Gardner on Saturday, 12 March 2016, at the 2016 Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit. *** Hal Boyd is always interesting, and this recent article for the Deseret News especially caught my notice: “The winds of change: The Middle East is in... Read more
Earlier today, one of the commenters on this blog — I hope that he won’t mind my describing him as a non-believer — posted the following: When faced with an unresolvable uncertainty, the correct response is agnosticism, not to embrace whatever hope or bias you have. You can want or hope, but the moment you let your desire outweigh your objectivity, you’re going to quickly find ways to reinforce it. No-one’s perfect at avoiding this, but that doesn’t... Read more
Two new items went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation today: Come, Follow Me — New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 31, July 24 — 30: Acts 16–21 — “The Lord Had Called Us for to Preach the Gospel” Once again, Jonn Claybaugh provides a concise but helpful set of notes for students and teachers of the Church’s “Come, Follow Me” curriculum. The New Testament in Context Lesson 31: “The Lord Had Called Us for to... Read more
I posted here a few days ago about Dante and the salvation of the unevangelized. (see “Catholic theology made no such provision”), based upon a reading of Prue Shaw’s Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity.. Here is another passage from Dr. Shaw’s superb book that is relevant to the topic: When Dante makes his confession of faith to Saint Peter in the Paradiso, he offers a grammatical gloss on the mathematical conundrum of three-yet-one: e credo in tre persone... Read more
Yesterday, I read Barry R. Bickmore, ““Show Them unto No Man”: Part 1. Esoteric Teachings and the Problem of Early Latter-day Saint Doctrinal History,” in BYU Studies 62/1 (2023): 29-60. Dr. Bickmore holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech (more formally, from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University). He is a professor of geological sciences at Brigham Young University, where he specializes in mineralogy, petrology, hydrogeology, environmental geology, and geochemistry. He has, however, also had a longstanding and... Read more
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