The Interpreter Foundation continues to produce, and to make its products available at no charge or, in the rare cases where it’s necessary, at cost. Here are some of the most recent things to appear on the Foundation’s website: Teachings and Testimony of the First Vision: Elder Joseph F. Merrill Teaches and Testifies about the First Vision: Part Eight of a Series Compiled by Dennis B. Horne Elder Joseph F. Merrill of the Quorum of the Twelve (1868-1952), known... Read more
I published this column in the Provo Daily Herald on 28 July 1999: During a rambling, all-night discussion in the late 1960s, a famous Nobel laureate physicist told a group of college students that, though he loved C. S. Lewis’s science fiction novels, he hated the “religious propaganda” that Lewis tacked on to them. Mr. Feynman was wrong. The religious themes of C. S. Lewis’s stories are far from “tacked on.” They are central to his fiction,... Read more
The numbers need updating, of course, as do some other elements of the article, but the basic point of this column, which I published in the Provo Daily Herald back in 1999, not long after a trip to South America and another to southern Mexico and Guatemala, still holds: While many in the United States continue to think of Latin America as almost uniformly Roman Catholic, this is no longer true (if it ever really was). The... Read more
I thought that I would share with you another charming little eighth-century animal fable (in my translation) from Munther A. Younes, Tales from Kalila wa Dimna: An Arabic Reader (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989): A raven was living in a tree, and near the tree was the hole of a large black snake. And every time the raven had chicks, the snake ate them. So the raven was deeply sad about its chicks. One... Read more
I’ve begun to publish a short series of notes extracted from an article written by a longtime friend of mine, the Latter-day Saint geologist Dr. Bart Kowallis, about the natural catastrophe described in the Book of Mormon as occurring in the New World around the time of the death of Christ in the Old World. “Geology and Third Nephi (1): The Time of Darkness (A)” “Geology and Third Nephi (2): Santorini and the Land of the Pharaoh”... Read more
With my wife and a couple of Utah friends, I made yet another pilgrimage yesterday to Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and desert laboratory and architectural school at Taliesin West, in Scottsdale. Then we met up with old friends who now live in Gilbert, and they suggested that we visit the Zelma Basha Salmeri Gallery in Chandler. We had never heard of it, but I need to give a strong, strong recommendation for it here.... Read more
I continue with some notes from Bart J. Kowallis, “In the Thirty and Fourth Year: A Geologist’s View of the Great Destruction in 3 Nephi,” BYU Studies 37/3 (1997-1998). He identifies twenty-one specific elements or events that are expressly mentioned in the account of natural catastrophe described in 3 Nephi 8-10: A great storm (8:5) A strong and terrible tempest (8:6, 12, 17; 10:14) Terrible thunder (8:6, 12, 17) Shaking of the whole earth (8:6, 12, 14, 17, 19; 10:9)... Read more
As I continue to read David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019), I’m struck by how much of his discussion about “commitments” seems to mirror Latter-day Saint thinking about “covenants,” and by how well a committed Latter-day Saint life matches the kind of life (on his “Second Mountain”) that he is commending to his readers: A commitment isn’t just love and a promise, of course. It is love and promise put... Read more
“‘We were one people today — the people of Jesus Christ,’ says Elder Rasband at Durban temple dedication” “South Africa’s Second Temple is Dedicated: Durban South Africa Temple becomes continent’s fifth temple” I rejoice every time a new temple is dedicated. Each new temple seems to me to represent one more toehold of Zion in Babylon, one more victory for the Lord over Satan, one more extension of the Kingdom of God, one more step on the road... Read more
New, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man Life Sciences Panel Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man (2016). Abstract:This panel, comprised of five Latter-day Saint scholars in the Life Sciences (Emily Bates, R. Paul Evans, Steven L. Peck, Michael R. Stark, and Trent D. Stephens), provides personal perspectives on the development of their ideas and their... Read more
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