My friend and Interpreter Foundation colleague Mike Parker has brought this item, from Father Dwight Longenecker, to my attention:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2015/05/twelve-reasons-why-i-never-argue-with-internet-atheists.html   I can’t, personally, claim “never” to have argued with internet atheists.  But I generally have little time for them — for pretty much the same reasons that Father Longenecker gives.   Posted from Atlanta, Georgia     Read more

    Something fun, brought to my attention by my Australian friend Ray Agostini:   http://www.fuse.tv/2015/05/mormon-bands-artists-musicians#1   Well, actually, maybe you did know some of them.  I did.  But did you know all of them?   You should have guessed, of course, from the sheer title of Lindsey Stirling’s “Beyond the Veil”:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7L0OQiN78   Here’s her “I’m a Mormon” video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jOhOB8MD7g   Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah     Read more

    You may already have seen the statue above and regretted its existence.   I know, I know.   If only the sculptor hadn’t been ruined by religion — even his name is religious! — he might have amounted to something.  Maybe he could have been a stone mason.  Or a fishmonger.     Read more

    Mark 9:38-41 Luke 9:49-50 Compare Matthew 10:42   This passage offers a generous charter for making common cause with people whose values align with ours, but whose doctrinal agreements are only partial and approximate.   I’ve been sounding this theme myself for quite a while, in ways big and small, most recently here and here, but also here — though it seems that I never actually got around to posting my promised “Richard Mouw, Part Two.”     Read more

    Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. Immanuel Kant Read more

    Some who know me are aware that I have a very strong “sense of place” — it’s among the reasons I travel so much — and that I’m passionately interested in questions of historical preservation, especially (but not solely) in connection with the story of the Restored Church.   So I was thrilled, a couple of weeks ago, to see some changes that had occurred since the last time I visited the area around Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania.  ... Read more

      I posted an item yesterday about a remarkable case of academic fraud in the medical sciences.   As you might imagine, the temptation to falsify results can also be quite powerful in the social sciences, and especially when the subject involved is one on which there are passionate disagreements.   Well, here’s an apparently quite clear example:   http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/how-a-gay-marriage-study-went-wrong?intcid=mod-latest   It’s instructive.   It says something about possible ideological biases in research, publication, and the peer-review process.... Read more

    This is an exceedingly important point:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418738/iraqs-decline-chaos-traces-back-2011-not-2003-charles-krauthammer   And it’s important not merely as an academic historical issue.  It sheds valuable light on one of Mr. Obama’s most vital foreign policy results — and on the judgment of Hillary Clinton, who was serving as his Secretary of State during the period in question.   Incidentally, you’re aware, aren’t you, that ISIS now controls half of Syria, as well?     Read more

    Matthew 18:1-5 Mark 9:33-37 Luke 9:46-48 Compare John 3:3, 5; 13:20   The idea that we should be childlike has become a cliche.  Sometimes we scarcely hear it.  And, sometimes, we misuse or misunderstand it.   But, coupled with concepts that the greatest of us should (in a sense) be the least of us, and that leadership consists in service to others, it’s difficult to understate the radical character of Jesus’ teaching on this point.   His notion... Read more

    Is this really what we’re coming to?   A person who objects to same-sex “marriage” cannot refuse to provide services for such a marriage, but must keep his or her moral convictions private even if they seem to implicate him or her in an immoral act.  However, after he or she has provided those services, the person who has received those services can decide not to pay for them, on the grounds that the person’s private moral convictions have tainted... Read more