Another passage from one of my rough-cut manuscripts: We’ll first look at various explanations holding that, yes, there was an objective reality [to the plates, etc.], but it was an artifact of fraud. This is perhaps the most common explanation advanced by skeptics. As one recent book from a prestigious academic publisher remarks in passing, with regard to the Book of Mormon, “Exactly how this work was composed remains a matter of debate, but most non-Mormons would... Read more
“United Arab Emirates leaders welcome Latter-day Saint temple in series of tweets” *** Most books really don’t change the way I think about things. Most non-fiction books simply give me some new facts or understandings that fit fairly well with what I already think. Some, though, redirect my reflections in a fundamental way. One that did that for me was Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam (New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown and Company,... Read more
Newly published on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel: Genesis 8: A New Creation, A New Covenant 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... Read more
The item below, from Bob and Gloria Rees, was passed on to me yesterday and, with Bob’s kind permission, I’m sharing it here. Brother Rees is a retired member of the faculty at UCLA, as well as a former editor of Dialogue and the co-founder and vice president of the wonderful Bountiful Children’s Foundation (formerly the Liahona Children’s Foundation), whose website, for some reason, I cannot currently access. I commend the following note to your attention. Thanks... Read more
New temples: Syracuse, Utah Bahia Blanca, Argentina Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Tallahassee, Florida Benin City, Nigeria! Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo!! Shanghai!!! DUBAI!!!! By the time those last two temples had been announced, I confess that I was in tears. When the multinational choir came together for “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” I could not join in. I was simply unable to sing. *** From Lee Nelson, Visions from Beyond the Veil... Read more
I offer another note taken from Andrew Sims, Is Faith Delusion? Why Religion is Good for Your Health (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). But, first, I need to point out that his use of the name Joseph Smith here is probably not significant. For one thing, of course, the Prophet Joseph Smith most definitely did not imagination himself to be Jesus Christ and was never a resident of a mental hospital, and the passage below makes... Read more
The late Bill Hamblin and I — how it still surprises and grieves me to write that phrase, “the late Bill Hamblin”! — published the article below in the 19 April 2014 issue of the Deseret News: Historically, Easter has been the most important Christian holy day, as well as the oldest. Since the Reformation, many Protestant groups have simplified their Easter celebrations, focusing only on brief services on Easter Sunday itself. For Roman Catholics and eastern... Read more
Some while ago, I read Andrew Sims, Is Faith Delusion? Why Religion is Good for Your Health (London and New York: Continuum, 2009). Dr. Sims, who taught for many years as a professor of psychiatry in the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, was founder-editor of Developing Mental Health and, for ten years, the founding editor of Advances in Psychiatric Treatment. He is also a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Here are a few... Read more
From Lee Nelson, Visions from Beyond the Veil (Springville, UT: Council Press, 2014): In doing research for a biographical novel on Walkara, a Ute Indian chief, I uncovered what appeared to be a classic out-of-body experience. Walkara told the story to early trappers and later to the pioneers who settled in his homeland. As a young man, Walkara went high into the Uinta Mountains in search of the Great Spirit, Towatts. The chief said his soul was... Read more
I share some further notes from Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2002). The first simply makes a point that I too want to remember to make, and to expand upon, in a book that I’m writing: The year that began in Tehran with the victory of the Islamic Revolution to the battle cry of “Down with America!” [an alternate rendering of... Read more
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