A vocal number of angry secularist ex-Mormons like to complain online about humanitarian aid given out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   It’s not enough, they say.   I’ll leave aside the likelihood that they themselves give little or nothing, because I can’t know in any individual case what they do.  But study after study indicates that religious people typically give far more to charity, and far more service, than do secularists.  And religious... Read more

    Some scattered quotations from the playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956):   Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.   Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.   He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.   What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?   The finest plans have always been spoiled by the littleness of them that should carry them... Read more

    I’m so, so sad at this news.  (I wrote about Elder Perry yesterday, here.)   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/elder-l-tom-perry-dies-at-age-92   He was so remarkably clear and vigorous up until his diagnosis with cancer.  Thereupon, things went rapidly.  Mercifully, I suppose.   My wife and I were able to send something from Israel to him upon our return earlier in May, something that we knew would mean something to him, and I treasure the response that we received.   Hearing, though, that things... Read more

    I’m going to leave that to my students.  Let them worry about it:   https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/learning-to-chill-cd8f4fe607d4   Serves ’em right.   But it will be too bad, assuming that the universe is really all that there is and that it’s purely naturalistic, that Shakespeare, Little League coaching, Beethoven, service as Cub Scout den mothers, the Taj Mahal, Confucius, studying organic chemistry, Michelangelo, the Beatles, tending aged parents, Dante, learning to cook gourmet meals, Einstein, bandaging hurt knees, all the... Read more

    I often marvel at the bizarre internet behavior of certain apostate critics of Mormonism.   Now, though, I think I may have found an explanation:   https://www.braindecoder.com/caffeine-induced-mania-1168100701.html   More than a few of them also post from time to time on the life-transforming wonders that they’ve discovered in their post-liberation consumption of coffee.   Pure coincidence?   Maybe.   But I’m a man of science, and the alternative seems to me something more along the lines of demonic... Read more

    This has become a recurrent theme of members of the Council of the Twelve, both within the United States and internationally.  It behooves Latter-day Saints to be aware of the issue and informed on the issues:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/elder-cook-calls-for-global-effort-to-protect-faith-and-religious-freedom   Elder Cook is, among other things, a graduate of Stanford Law School.   Posted from Berlin, Germany     Read more

    The latest installment of the semi-weekly Hamblin/Peterson Deseret News column is now up, for better or for worse:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865629704/Buddhisms-Pali-Canon.html   Posted from Berlin, Germany     Read more

    Not surprising.   Challenging, of course, for those of us who think it a bad trend, but not surprising:   http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=75623   Again, this is the environment in which believers — and especially missionary-minded believers — need to work.  So we need to understand it.   Posted from already largely unchurched Berlin, Germany     Read more

    For an interesting and by no means atypical case, see here:   http://www.yaf.org/slu-cultural-sensitivity.aspx   You might enjoy this little item, too, about classroom crosses at (Catholic) Boston College and the 2009 controversy surrounding them:   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/11/bostoncollege   May BYU remain forthrightly and unapologetically Mormon!   (Experience has taught me that that’s not as easy to maintain, nor as self-evidently desirable for some Latter-day Saints, as I once assumed.)   Posted from Berlin, Germany     Read more

    My, my, my.  Applications for this quotation (in talks on morality, in responses to triumphant apostates, and so forth) are far from difficult to think of.  But, obviously, we shouldn’t only (or even primarily) apply to others.  It can and should also be used for self-examination:   None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.  (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)   Posted from Berlin, Germany   Read more