This planet, from its description, sounds like a promising candidate:   https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28431-molten-metal-storms-rage-on-orphan-planet-that-lost-its-star/   Posted from Park City, Utah   Read more

    I’m going to try to make it, but may not be able to.  So I would love to hear a report or two.   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    “I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not.” Michael Pollan (University of California at Berkeley)   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    Mark 13:33-37 Luke 21:34-36 Compare Matthew 24:42-51; 25:13-15; Luke 12:38, 40; 19:12-13   As the saying goes, “When the time to perform arrives, the time for preparation has passed.”   We all know this, but — at least, if you’re anything like me — we also all violate the principle time after time after time.  In the last times, though, failure to be prepared may prove to be both physically and spiritually fatal.   Posted from Park City,... Read more

    Critics’ responses to my post regarding Prof. Anthony Sweat’s recent lecture have, on the whole, been entirely consistent with Richard Bushman’s astute observation:   “Secular historians are . . . more inclined than Mormons to suppress source material from Joseph’s closest associates.”   And Professor Bushman was writing about historians.  The typical critic is far less balanced . . .   I remembered the statement, but I appreciate Stephen Smoot’s reminding me of the source.   (Incidentally, too, for background information regarding... Read more

    Five good stories, brought to my attention by Jabra Ghneim:   https://stepfeed.com/more-categories/big-news/5-times-muslims-saved-jews-holocaust/#.VjfBT0vgMds   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    Matthew 24:29-36 Mark 13:24-32 Luke 21:25-33   “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”   Maybe so.  But I’ve watched a few TV preachers who seemed pretty confident that they knew the year, if not the month.   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    It seems to me that critics of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon are confronted by a very difficult challenge in the primary source documents and early accounts of the Restoration — such that they have to devote a great deal of time and effort to attempts to explain those documents away, to show that they don’t really say what they clearly do seem to say.   Here’s a report on a recent lecture devoted to this subject:... Read more

    Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details — the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom — also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist. Owen Gingerich Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more

    “If I adore you out of fear of Hell, burn me!  If I adore you out of desire for paradise, lock me out of paradise.  But if I adore you for Yourself alone, don’t deny to me your eternal beauty.” Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra (d. AD 801)   Posted from Park City, Utah     Read more