I share, here, several quotations that I’ve extracted from John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011): We ought . . . to think of creation in terms of functions rather than material objects. (vii) I posit that, in the ancient world, bringing about order and functionality was the very essence of creative activity. I also pay close attention to the ancient ideology of temples to show the close connection between... Read more
Some readers will want to add this to their Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” Files. Others, I hope, will want to join in, where they can, in the projects described here: “First Presidency has approved humanitarian projects in 57 countries to battle COVID-19: Church approves 110 global coronavirus aid projects, asks Utah members to help sew 5 million medical masks for healthcare workers” “Latter-day Saints Participate in Global COVID-19 Relief Efforts: Church assists with projects in... Read more
Here are some notes based upon John W. Welch, et al., eds. Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017): And it came to pass that after king Benjamin had made an end of teaching his sons, that he waxed old, and he saw that he must very soon go the way of all the earth; therefore, he thought it expedient that he should confer the kingdom upon one... Read more
This blog entry is a test. I’m curious to see how many Trumpist readers will unfriend me or write nasty notes to me because of its title, without having actually read what I’ve written. As a matter of actual fact, I will not vote for Joe Biden this November. Nor, just to be fair and balanced, am I very likely to vote for Donald Trump. (In the state in which I reside, my vote will probably make no... Read more
I offer here a few passages that I’ve extracted for my notes from Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009): Since the seventeenth century, it had been widely assumed that no special initial conditions were required for the emergence of a life-bearing universe. Yet in the last few decades, it has become clear that this is not the case. There has been a... Read more
I liked Charles Kurzman’s book The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists (Oxford: 2011) very much, and I think it an enormously important contribution. Here’s a passage that hit me personally, describing my own personal experience quite well: Many of us who chose to study Islamic subjects prior to 2001 find it somewhat disconcerting that our field is suddenly in demand. The more that non-Muslims fear Islam, the more that security threats are hyped, the... Read more
I’ve experienced just a bit of pushback since suggesting, a few days ago, that the design of the forthcoming Dubai United Arab Emirates Temple should, ideally, draw on the rich artistic and architectural heritage of the Islamic world in which it will sit. (See my “Designing a Temple for Dubai.”) I had thought that what I said was merely consistent with President Russell M. Nelson’s explanation in his General Conference announcement of eight new temples, including Dubai’s, that... Read more
I’ll share a passage here from Jeff Wynn and Louise Wynn, Everyone is a Believer: The Growing Convergence of Science and Religion (2019). Dr. Jeffrey C. Wynn, a self-described “recovering atheist” and convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is a research geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) who is currently based at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, one of the five USGS volcano observatories in the United States. His wife, Louise Wynn, is... Read more
Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: In God’s Image and Likeness 2 Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel: Genesis 9: Glory, Fall, and Judgment Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel (2014) by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and David J. Larsen. Abstract: The story of Genesis 6-9 is structured into a grand chiasm illustrating the themes of creation and... Read more
As I do every year at this season, I share a poem by the late Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, and poet John Updike (1932-2009) that I have long loved: “Seven Stanzas At Easter” Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not... Read more
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