Actually, what I have been saying is an oversimplification. It was only gradually that the chain of transmitters, known in Arabic as an isnad, became a required part of a hadith report. For approximately the first century after the death of the Prophet, no special care was taken in the transmission of traditions about him. Perhaps the Muslims could not imagine anybody willing to lie or to forge in the name of religion. If so, they were naive,... Read more
At 7:00 PM on Friday night, Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Sister Marie K. Hafen will kick off the Interpreter Foundation’s first conference on the Book of Moses, which is being co-sponsored by Brigham Young University’s Department of Ancient Scripture as well as by our sister organizations, Book of Mormon Central and FairMormon. It will be my privilege to introduce Elder and Sister Hafen. I hope that you’ll tune in for all or at least part of the conference,... Read more
Continued: According to William Dembski, while both contingency and complexity are required for the inference of design to kick in, neither contingency nor complexity nor even a combination of the two is sufficient to fully justify such an inference. Both must be present. along with what Dembski calls specificity or specification. If an object or an event is to be properly described as “designed,” he says, it must exhibit a pattern that is independent of mere... Read more
The opposite of sunna, first in pre-Islamic Arabia and ultimately within Islam itself, was bid‘a (“innovation”), which eventually came to mean “heresy” Thus, the Islamic community became a conservative one in which “heresy” was divergence from the established practice of the community. (It might be seen why one sect of Islam claimed for itself the title of Sunni. They were calling themselves orthodox—and, not accidentally, implying that those who disagreed with them were heretics.) Again in keeping with... Read more
I published this column in the Deseret News on 28 April 2016. Its publication had been unaccountably delayed for a long time and, when I discovered that delay — I had been out of the country for a prolonged period and had lost track — I pushed it forward as fast as I could. It was urgent to me because I knew that Senator Bennett was seriously ill. I was, accordingly, relieved and happy that, as a member... Read more
Douglas Axe studied engineering and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he earned his doctorate. He then did postdoctoral research at Cambridge University in England, followed by a stint as a research scientist there. Here are some passages that I marked while reading his book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed (New York: HarperOne, 2016): [T]he flag that has flown for many... Read more
Making Arabic the language of administration in the empire was part of a larger and very important process by which the Middle East became both Arab and, overwhelmingly, Muslim. The first Arab conquerors had been content to let the old bureaucracies from the Persian and Byzantine states continue to run things. But now, some Muslim thinkers wondered if there were not a specifically Islamic way of doing things and, if so, whether they ought to be following it.... Read more
Today is my Dad’s birthday — as I write, it’s late (I’ve had an exceptionally busy day), but it’s still just barely the right date– and I try to post something about him every year on the anniversary of his birth and on the anniversary of his passing. I see it as a filial duty. Certainly it’s an expression of my respect and love. When we chose something to inscribe on his grave marker in California, we went... Read more
Classical Arabic Civilization The late Marshall G. S. Hodgson, one of the greatest Western students of Islam of the past century, developed an outline of Islamic history that I find very helpful.[1] In it, he distinguishes seven different periods. Let me summarize them here. First, Hodgson states, there was the “Pre-Islamic Period.” It isn’t hard to understand what this is about, since it simply refers to the years from earliest time up to about 570 A.D., when the... Read more
Now this is interesting: “Phosphine gas found in Venus’ atmosphere may be ‘a possible sign of life’: Astronomers detected signs of a smelly, toxic gas that microbes can make in the planet’s clouds” *** I began this Fall term at BYU teaching three classes, two of them online and one in person. I’m still teaching three classes. Today, however, I informed the students in the in-person class that, for minimally the next two weeks, it... Read more
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