There’s a small gaggle of hyper-hostile critics out there who watch this blog with obsessive interest and who post extremely negative comments on it virtually daily.   I find them fascinating as a kind of laboratory specimen of odd human behavior.  I look in on them almost every day, for at least a minute or two.  (Some understandably ask me why I pay them any attention.  My personal fascination with the lengths to which they routinely go is at... Read more

    Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.  (Charles Swindoll)   Posted from San Antonio, Texas     Read more

    I liked this item, posted today by my friend and former FARMS and Maxwell Institute colleague John Gee:   http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-thought-from-elder-scott.html   May those hear Elder Scott’s message who need to hear it.   Posted from San Antonio, Texas   Read more

    Does the Book of Mormon personal name Gidgiddoni have any plausible place in the ancient Near East?   Yes, as a matter of fact.  It does:   http://etherscave.blogspot.com/2015/06/right-on-target-gidgiddoni.html   My friends and former FARMS colleagues John Gee and Matt Roper continue to do very valuable work.   Posted from San Antonio, Texas     Read more

      My wife and I attended church at my niece’s Canyon Springs Ward today.  They meet in an unusually pretty chapel, surrounded by woods, meadows, and pastures.   The congregation was large, and there were two sacrament meeting speakers.   The first, Elder John Armbruster, had just returned a week ago from two years of service in, if I heard correctly, the Philippines Olangapo Mission.  He spoke well, about building faith.   I especially liked one of his stories.... Read more

    Three years ago today, the Maxwell Institute, formerly known as FARMS (or the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies), was purged of the mean-spirited pseudo-scholarship that had dominated it for so many years.   Thus, today is a day for humble gratitude and great rejoicing, a great day in the history of Mormonism, a mighty step forward for Mormon scholarship.   Here’s some appropriate music:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBZ7AfZR9xs   Some, of course, fail to appreciate the immense good... Read more

    In my judgment — and not in mine alone — this is one of the greatest prophetic statements ever made regarding education:   https://education.byu.edu/edlf/archives/prophets/eternity.html   It’s been nearly fifty years since Elder Spencer W. Kimball delivered this address.   Where do we stand now?  Have we made any progress since then?  Are we still moving forward?  What steps should we be taking in order to move closer to the fulfillment of Elder Kimball’s vision?   Posted from San Antonio,... Read more

    I’m mystified by the implicit insistence of certain atheist polemicists that religious faith precludes the acceptance of science and/or interferes with a sense of the wonder and grandeur of the cosmos:   “How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and conclude, ‘This is better than we thought!  The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’?  Instead they say, ‘No, no no!  My god is a little god,... Read more

      My hasty translation:   And when your Lord took their descendants from the children of Adam, from their loins, and caused them to testify against themselves.  “Am I not your Lord?”  “Yes, we have testified.”  Lest you should say, on the Day of Resurrection, “We were unaware of that.” Or should say “Our fathers were idolators before us, and we are their descendants following after them.  Will you destroy us for what the falsifiers have done?”  ... Read more

    Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it in all at once.  (Audrey Hepburn) Posted from San Antonio, Texas   Read more