I wrote this column for the Provo Daily Herald newspaper back in 2007: Years ago, while a graduate student in Egypt, I was introduced by a friend to a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. After a pleasant conversation, the professor asked what an American was doing in Egypt, studying Arabic and Islam. “Are you a Muslim?” he inquired. When he was told no, he asked, “Why not?” Such a question is, of course, a bit... Read more
A few days ago, I published a blog post expressing my discomfort with the prominence of the sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg in the current agitation over climate change: “Don’t yell. Don’t demonstrate. Plant some trees!” I fear that she is being exploited. I also dislike the use of children for just about any controversial cause because it seems to me an attempt at coercive manipulation of their audience: Since they are children, they cannot really... Read more
Here’s a new item from the extremely valuable new Pearl of Great Price Central website: “Abrahamic Legends and Lore” *** I know. I know. Your Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File is insatiable. There can never be enough examples of the evils of faith. But we here at Sic et Non live to serve, and we want to help. So here’s another item to include in that file: “Church... Read more
First, some general science news, which ranges from the sublime: “Why Your Dog Likes Sticking Its Head Out the Car Window” “Nature paper on ocean warming retracted” To the ridiculous: “NASA is close to finding life on Mars but the world isn’t ready for the discovery, the agency’s chief scientist says” “Venus was potentially habitable until a mysterious event happened” “How Many Humans Could the Moon Support? First, we need to answer... Read more
“Sports Illustrated reports on Freedom From Religion Foundation’s complaints about Clemson football” It may shock some to learn that I find myself sympathetic in this case to the position of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. What is plainly appropriate and good for a place like Brigham Young University or Baylor University or the University of Notre Dame seems quite obviously inappropriate for a place like Clemson, which is a public school. *** Again, private colleges... Read more
I just ran across this interesting 7.5-minute item on the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which you might enjoy: “Interview with NASA Rocket Scientist, David Oh – September 04, 2015” The Church websites also offer this 2:20-minute video, which features David Oh and his wife and children: “Family: One Big Experiment” If you would like to know more about Dr. Oh’s background — and, accordingly, about the background to... Read more
I first published this column in the Provo Daily Herald back sometime in 2007: A rough contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria has had enormous influence on the development of religious thought not only among his fellow Jews, but in Christianity and Islam as well. Yet he is little known, except among specialists. Philo Judaeus, as he is sometimes called, received a superb education in Greek literature and philosophy and rose to prominence in the large Jewish... Read more
Bill Hamblin and I launched our series of columns on world religions for the Deseret News back in 2012. I submitted this column as our inaugural article: When an advisor warned him against conflict with the Catholic Church, Josef Stalin contemptuously demanded, “How many divisions does the pope have?” It was a rhetorical question. It presumed the obvious: With no army at all, what threat could the pope pose to Soviet tyranny? Stalin’s presumption was wrong. Less... Read more
“The Milky Way’s supermassive black hole reached record brightness this year: The behemoth at the center of the galaxy flared up in near-infrared wavelengths” Why is it flaring up? One possibility — just a hypothesis, mind you — is that it is anticipating a vastly greater offering of sacrificial victims of socialism as the Democratic Party turns leftward and as Elizabeth Warren surges in the polls. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have data for its level of brightness... Read more
It is essential to recognize, first, that the term jihad doesn’t actually mean “holy war,” although it is certainly used primarily in that sense and although it certainly can be and often is used to refer to literal, physical, military combat. The word jihad comes from the triconsonantal Arabic root jhd, which has the basic meaning of “striving,” “working,” or “exerting.” Other derivatives from the same root include the verbs jahada, ajhada, and ijtahada, which mean, respectively,... Read more
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