Evaluations of Muhammad have varied wildly. Skeptical Western writers for years regarded him as a fraud. (Indeed, many liked to link him with Joseph Smith in that regard. To associate the two was to damn both.)[1] The great fourteenth-century Christian poet Dante Alighieri placed him in one of the deepest reaches of Hell.[2] For Muslims, on the other hand, he is the incomparable Messenger of God, “the seal of the prophets.” His place in Islamic piety is astonishingly... Read more
A few days ago, I recorded a lecture for BYU Education Week 2020 entitled “The Book of Mormon Witnesses: Sincerity and Reality.” As this news item indicates, it will be available for viewing in October of this year: “BYU Education Week to be held online in October” *** In the interim, though, I let Sic et Non slip briefly into People magazine mode with regard to two public Latter-day Saint personalities based in the eastern... Read more
New, via the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Producing Ancient Scripture — Thomas Wayment on Joseph Smith’s Use of Adam Clarke in the JST” *** Also new on the Interpreter Foundation website: Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 33 “The Rock of Our Redeemer”: Helaman 1-6 The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon Lesson 33, “The Rock of Our Redeemer,” on Helaman 1-6, featured Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Mike Parker. This roundtable was extracted... Read more
The uniform silence out there surrounding the question of what I think about Joe Biden’s vice presidential selection proves to me that, although millions of Americanos desperately want to know my thoughts, they’re all too intimidated and too shy to ask. So, out of kindness and an earnest desire to end the misery of anticipation, I will briefly share here some of my views. It may not have escaped some of you that I’m not an especially... Read more
By the year 632, Muhammad had subdued all of the Arabian peninsula. The revelation of Islam was complete. “This day I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favour to you,” says the Qur’an in the voice of God, in what many believe to be the last verse of the book to be revealed. “I have chosen Islam to be your faith.”[1] The tribes were now united, and the question arose, where could they plunder? They could... Read more
Gemli wonders why anyone cares what people from the 17th century thought about this or that religion. Most were busy dying young of pneumonia and poor sanitation. If they had such great minds, perhaps instead of wasting time thinking about invisible sky spirits they might have investigated the real world that was killing them due to their ignorance. That’s this board’s amusing resident atheist, “gemli,” speaking of himself, in the third person. I was struck, when... Read more
All truth, it is said, passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is passionately and sometimes even violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident. Something similar happens, unfortunately, with certain falsehoods. The reputations of Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler don’t rest upon their acceptance of the astronomical consensus of their times. Albert Einstein, accepting the consensus of a static and unchanging cosmos, mistakenly shied away from the expanding universe predicted by... Read more
For all that it criticizes the unbelievers of Arabia, though, the Qur’an does not spare Muhammad either. He was never allowed to forget that he too was human. At one point, for example, despite all the Qur’an’s denunciations of the wealthy, Muhammad seems to have shown too much deference to a rich man. He had violated one of the cardinal tenets of true Islam, the equality of all men before God and before his Prophet: He [Muhammad] frowned... Read more
A small sampling of additional passages that I marked during my reading of John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998): The history of the interaction between science and theology, says Professor Polkinghorne, is not susceptible to simple characterisation, either in terms of conflict or of harmony. (76) At the moment the biological world, particularly in its members who work with molecules rather than organisms, displays notable hostility... Read more
I wrote the little mini-essay below in response to a request connected with the bicentennial of the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It can be found online at the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I view it, here, as a companion piece to my blog entry from a couple of days ago (“My Hope for the Eternities”), and, like that one, it represents my actual view — as opposed to the view that... Read more
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