I offer here a potpourri of quotations from the very early pages of Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), quotations that I’m extracting for my notes: Classical physics explains the world quite well; it’s just the “details” it can’t handle. Quantum physics handles the “details” perfectly; it’s just the world it can’t explain. You can see why Einstein was troubled. (7) When... Read more
My latest bi-weekly column for the Salt Lake City Deseret News has now appeared: “Who, exactly, founded Hinduism?: The title “Hinduism” doesn’t incorporate the name of its founder. An excellent reason can be given for this: Hinduism has no single, known founder” *** I share here a fairly lengthy excerpt from Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam (New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown and Company, 2010). Fuller probably isn’t exactly what would be termed a “bleeding-heart... Read more
While I have the book out and while it’s sitting to the left of my computer, I think I’ll draw just a bit more from James Zogby, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why It Matters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): I should mention that not all Arabs are Muslim — or even particularly religious. In fact, weekly mosque attendance rates in the Arab World closely parallel church attendance rates in the United States. (100) [James... Read more
Indignant critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found renewed reason for indignant criticism of the Church when they learned that Brigham Young University in Provo, along with BYU-Hawaii and BYU-Idaho, was set to receive millions of dollars of COVID-19 relief from the federal government of the United States: Allocations for Section 18004(a)(1) of the CARES Act Howls of outrage ensued, accompanied by angry denunciations of the Church’s greed and materialism and furious... Read more
On pages 89-90, Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017), tells an interesting and instructive story from twentieth-century physics. One of the more dedicated detractors of my blog likes to dismiss my science-related entries here as “junk science.” At the risk of drawing that epithet from him yet again, I share a passage from Dr. Rovelli’s book that I’ve copied for my notes.... Read more
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014) was one of the most prominent German Protestant theologians of the past century. Herewith, I offer some passages extracted from Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus — God and Man, 2d. ed., translated by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A Priebe (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977): [Werner] Elert rejected this approach, which asks why the “predicate” of divinity has been “conferred on” Jesus, by pointing out that Jesus himself placed himself on God’s side in his claim... Read more
James Zogby, born to a Lebanese Catholic immigrant father, earned a doctorate in Islamic studies. From 2001 to 2017 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. His brother, John Zogby, is a prominent American public opinion expert, the founder of the Zogby International poll. I share, here, some additional extracts from James Zogby, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why It Matters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). In the first of... Read more
I found this piece fascinating: Joel Frohlich, “Frames of consciousness: Can electrical impulses in the brain explain the stuff that dreams are made on? What a new consciousness-detector reveals,” Aeon. Here are a couple of quotations from Dr. Frohlich’s essay: Understanding consciousness might be the greatest scientific challenge of our time. How can physical stuff, eg electrical impulses, explain mental stuff, eg dreams or the sense of self? Why does a network of neurons in our brain feel like... Read more
Some additional extracts from James Zogby, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why It Matters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): Whenever I hear people talking about what fire-breathers Arabs are — angry and consumed by contempt for the West and especially America — I think of the afternoon I spent in the living room of a Tunisian friend, debating his college-age nephews on politics, morality, and the United States. Like young idealists everywhere, they were... Read more
Unusually for a Monday, here’s the announcement of an article — this one by the late Matthew B. Brown — appearing in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Cube, Gate, and Measuring Tools: A Biblical Pattern” Abstract: This article explores the biblical pattern that relates the temple-related symbols of the cube, the gate, and measuring tools. The tools of architecture and measurement were associated with the kingship motifs of creation and conquering chaos, and... Read more
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