http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/08/great_theologian_quotes_on_science.html   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more

    A couple of nights ago, we had dinner in the town of Weimar, only about 12.4 miles from Erfurt, as the crow flies.   Weimar is tiny — it has only about 65,000 inhabitants — but its cultural importance is enormous.   Martin Luther was in Weimar on several occasions.   Between 1608 and 1617, Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a court organist in Weimar.   In the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt made the city a center of German... Read more

      “A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.”  (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more

    The most recent iteration of my regular Thursday column for the Deseret News:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865635418/Nephi-and-the-Israelite-exodus.html   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more

    Whether the Mormon Church would maintain its traditionally strong relationship with the Boy Scouts of America has been up in the air for several weeks, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision redefining marriage, which led to a BSA decision to permit the appointment of homosexual Scoutmasters.   No longer:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865635368/LDS-Church-will-continue-Boy-Scout-program.html?pg=all   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/08/27/us-drone-strike-in-syria-reportedly-kills-top-isis-online-recruiter/?intcmp=hpbt2   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more

    We attended an interesting session on Thursday morning on secrecy or esotericism in religion.   One of the four papers concerned “Secrecy in Mormonism: From Separation to Speculation.” It was presented by Chrystal Vanel from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris (who seems to have, or to have had, some sort of affiliation with the Community of Christ, the former RLDS Church).  Here is his paper abstract:   Mormonism is a strongly proselytizing religion, with more than 80,000... Read more

    Should evolution be taught at Latter-day Saint universities?  This professor at BYU-Idaho seems to think so:   https://www.byui.edu/Documents/instructional_development/Perspective/V4n2/v4n2_firestone.pdf   Posted from Erfurt, Germany         Read more

    “What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.”   “The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”   “One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.” Posted from Erfurt, Germany Read more

    An item from a few weeks ago about the Trump Phenomenon:   http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/422269/rudeness-not-conservative-principle-jonah-goldberg   Posted from Erfurt, Germany     Read more