I have to admit that I was intrigued to see this item, and that I’m very curious to find out more about what the speaker will be saying:   “Can the human soul be a scientific concept? 
One ivy league neuroscientist says, “Yes!””   He seems to be taking a rather daring and unfashionable position, and I’m eager to see what the reaction to his thesis will be.   Still, to be frank, my initial interest was tempered somewhat... Read more

    Here’s a wonderful case of extracting good from bad or, as the old saying has it, of making a silk purse from a sow’s ear:   “Choir Goes Viral for Singing “I Believe in Christ” During NY Blackout”   ***   In any given month, there’s a whole lot going on in places far removed from Church headquarters and the Wasatch Front.  Here are a few examples:   “Latter-day Saints Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites, July 12,... Read more

    Frank Wilczek, an American theoretical physicist and mathematician and a 2004 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, is currently the  Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  He has been described as an agnostic, but apparently insists that it would be more accurate to call him a pantheist.   I offer three quotations from Professor Wilczek that I’ve come across, and that caught my attention.  They come from his 2016 book A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design, which has now jumped... Read more

    Stephen Cranney has just published a review in BYU Studies of The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church (New York City: Oxford University Press, 2019), which was written by Jana Riess with assistance from Benjamin Knoll:   https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/next-mormons-how-millennials-are-changing-lds-church   It’s well worth a look by anybody who read the book or who is interested in the topics that it covers.   “Stephen Cranney is a Washington, D.C.–area statistician, married father of four, and lame-duck scoutmaster in his ward. He has a... Read more

  Three passages taken from P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2007):   As he lay dying on the ground near his mangled car, comedian Sam Kinison was heard talking softly with an unseen presence.  An individual at the scene later told reporters from the Las Vegas Sun what he had said as he conversed with “somebody upstairs.”  Sam pleaded, “I don’t want to die,”... Read more

    I bought Alvin Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) shortly after its initial publication.  To my shame, however, it’s been sitting unread on my shelf since that time.  So I’m finally getting around to reading it — although, thus far, only at the rate of a few pages per day.   I’ve now completed the first two chapters — “Evolution and Christian Belief (1)” and “Evolution and Christian... Read more

    My late friend Huston Smith (1919-2016), whom I first met when he was retired from a career of teaching at Washington University in St. Louis (1947-1958), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1958-1973) and Syracuse University (1973-1983) and was serving as a visiting professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote a number of books.  I quote from one of them about what he sometimes called the “Modern Western Mindset”:   The clue to it can be stated in a single sentence: An... Read more

    The 2019 FairMormon conference will be held at the Utah Valley Convention Center, in Provo, Utah, on 7-9 August.  That’s slightly less than a month away.   I’m thinking of attending the conference myself.  I hope to see you there.   You can learn about the conference, register to attend the conference, and/or find out how to watch streaming video of the conference via this website.   If you don’t attend the conference or watch it online, it’s possible... Read more

    I have, quite candidly, paid absolutely no direct attention to Mr. Jonathan Neville’s writings, public speeches, and blog.  But perhaps I should have been paying attention.  The more I hear about them, the more concerned I become.  Really.  Genuinely concerned:   “Jonathan Neville accuses Church missionaries of deception”   ***   “I will give you one of the Keys of the mysteries of the Kingdom. It is an eternal principle, that has existed with God from all eternity:... Read more

    I have to admit that I resonated with this story just a little bit because of my own quite unexpected 2012-2013 experience with nasty campus politics.  But it raises far more important issues than that, and I hope very much that you will read it:   “Gender Dissenter Gets Fired: Dr. Allan Josephson discusses academic freedom, child welfare, gender ideology, and the price he has paid for his principles.”   We’re living through a distinctly weird time, and, in... Read more