I published the article below in the Deseret News on 15 June 2017: Critics of religious faith often like to compare it, unfavorably, to science. Science, they say, has cured polio and malaria, sent humans to the moon, created powerful computers and plumbed the secrets of distant stars and galaxies. Religion has done none of these things. However, this is a profoundly misguided argument. For one thing, it suggests that only such accomplishments as these have value.... Read more
When I went to Iran at the invitation of the authorities there, I knew that a faction in the government welcomed my arrival. But I wondered whether that faction would be in the ascendant when I actually arrived and throughout my stay. There were, and evidently still are, fiercely competing groups within the regime. At that time, the relatively moderate Mohammad Khatami, a cleric, was serving as Iran’s fifth president, but the hardliners had recently managed to put his... Read more
Here’s an updated account from Tad Walch, for the Deseret News: “Rome Temple a ‘hinge-point’ in Latter-day Saint history, President Nelson says as he leaves Italy” From the United Kingdom, Clive Glenister kindly brings this short official Catholic video to my attention: “Pope meets Mormon leaders” You will notice the way the Catholic video ends on a critical note. It’s interesting to contrast its tone with the tone of President Nelson’s remarks in the official... Read more
Matthew 10:17-25 Compare Mark 13:9-13; Luke 6:40; 12:11-12; 21:12-19; John 13:16; 14:26; 15:20; 16:2 What is notably absent from the litany of oppression and persecution given in these passages is any promise of this-worldly success. There’s nothing along the lines of “Just hold on, and your efforts will be crowned by success! Everybody will eventually honor and respect you, and the Church will triumph! Christendom will spread throughout the earth!” Instead, the message to the original apostles... Read more
This solar storm effectively knocked radio and television technology, which were just beginning to gain a foothold in the seventh century BC, back into the Stone Age: “One of the strongest known solar storms blasted Earth in 660 B.C.: Traces left in ice cores and tree rings allowed researchers to estimate the storm’s power” Unless you count the pioneer work in telegraphy done by Samuel F. B. Morse, Joseph Henry, and Albert Vail back in the... Read more
More than two decades ago — how things have changed since those sunny and optimistic times! — BYU’s Islamic Translation Series published its second book: Al-Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights, translated, introduced, and annotated by David Buchman (Provo: Brigham Young University, 1998). It’s fun to glance through the reader reviews of it at a site like goodreads, and to recognize the international character of its audience. We were doing important things then, and the future looked endlessly bright.... Read more
There was an interesting episode in domestic American politics at the end of February and the beginning of March. Many articles appeared on the subject; I choose two of them, largely at random, so that you’ll know what I have in mind: “Warren takes aim at Pence: He’s not a ‘decent’ man” “Joe Biden Backtracks After Calling Vice President Pence ‘a Decent Guy'” *** I worry about the state of civil discourse in the... Read more
At the April 2008 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latteer-day Saints, President Boyd K. Packer of the Council of the Twelve told a remarkable story: In 1976 an area general conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Following the closing session, President Spencer W. Kimball desired to visit the Vor Frue Church, where the Thorvaldsen statues of the Christus and of the Twelve Apostles stand. He had visited there some years earlier and wanted all of... Read more
Current estimates of the age of the Earth put it at about 4.543 billion years. That makes this find potentially stunning: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/3-7-billion-year-old-fossils-evidence-of-ancient-bacteria-in-ancient-rocks/ If the discovery isn’t overturned — has anybody seen anything to overturn it? — the biology on our planet is at least 3.77 billion years old, and it could even be as old as 4.28 billion years. That means that organic life was underway on Earth within no more than 773 million years of Earth’s earliest existence —... Read more
It seems to me that I’ve told this story somewhere before but I can’t find it, so I guess that I’ll tell it. Again, perhaps. After a few days at our conference in Tehran, some of us Westerners began to think about Sunday’s coming program. It was crammed full of meetings. No time set aside for religious observance. I was the only Latter-day Saint in the group. (Heck, for all I know I was the only... Read more
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