Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.  (George Bernard Shaw)   Read more

    Elder Neil L. Andersen delivered a remarkable devotional address this morning, in connection with 2015 BYU Education Week.  I found the first few minutes of it, about President Boyd K. Packer and Elder L. Tom Perry, personally very moving:   http://www.byutv.org/watch/event/5179b69e-9363-44bd-8747-2e95daa0de41?cid=HP_TU_8-18-2015_dCN_fCNWS_xLIDyL2-4_     Read more

    In his important book Religion of a Different Color, Paul Reeve recounts an interesting episode involving Brigham Young:   An early mixed-race (Black and American Indian) member of the Church named William McCary — a rather tenuous and somewhat erratic and even unbalanced fellow, as it turned out, who ultimately didn’t endure faithfully to the end — had encountered racial prejudice among some Church members.   In response to this, President Young counseled the Saints to “use the man... Read more

    Just in case any of you plan to be in Germany next week, here’s the program for the XXI. World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions:   http://www.iahr2015.org/iahr/994.html   I’ll be making my presentation as part of a panel that runs 3:30-5:30 PM on Friday, 28 August.   Hope to see you there!     Read more

    “Natural selection . . . has lifted life from primeval simplicity to the dizzy heights of complexity, beauty and apparent design that dazzle us today.”  (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion [Mariner Books, 2008], 99)   Commenting on this very passage, the atheist writer Curtis White says “Even if we were to take Dawkins’s enthusiasm seriously, shouldn’t we at least ask, what do you mean by ‘lifted’?  Is it that you think it’s better to be human than a... Read more

      John 7:53-8:11    This is one of the most famous stories from the life of Christ.   It’s also absent from the most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament.  (In some other early manuscripts, it appears after John 7:36, or after John 21:25, or even after Luke 21:38, with some textual variations.)   Does that mean that it’s not authentic?   Not necessarily.  But it’s curious.   The story remains a great one, though.   And, beyond... Read more

    Nathaniel Hancock shares an amusing and pointed bit of satire with me:   http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-we-should-legalize-murder-for-hire     Read more

    “Science has faith. We make postulates. We can’t prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.” Charles H. Townes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1964) Dr. Townes believed that “science and religion [are] quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in the long run, they must converge.”  “Science,” he wrote, “tries to understand what our universe is like and how it works, including us humans. Religion is aimed at understanding the purpose and meaning of... Read more

    Shon Hopkin, Martin Tanner, and Bruce Webster join to discuss selected passages from Acts 21-23 and Acts 26-28 (2015 Gospel Doctrine lesson 38) in this, the 136th scripture roundtable posted  by the Interpreter Foundation:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scripture-roundtable-136-new-testament-gospel-doctrine-lesson-38-thou-hast-testified-of-me/     Read more

    We have friends in the Middle East who’re reporting considerable discomfort, and no wonder:   http://www.attn.com/stories/2621/middle-east-heat-wave-climate-change?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=internal   Thanks to Doug Ealy for bringing this article to my attention.     Read more