From an as-yet incomplete manuscript: It is worthwhile examining the contrasting character of the experiences reported by the Three Witnesses and the Eight, since, I believe, their very difference reinforces them.[1] First of all, the experience of the Three, as they report it, was suffused with the glory and power of God. In a brilliant light, an angel came down and showed them the plates. They heard the voice of God testifying that the translation had been... Read more
“NDE,” writes the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel, “pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness, and the mind-brain relation.” In support of that, he offers considerable material, including the following three quotations, taken from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), pages 162-163. The first is from Dr. Bruce Greyson: The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a... Read more
In the book on Islam that I’m intending to publish for a Latter-day Saint audience, I also plan to include a few words about the Druze and the Bahá’í Faith, both of which (historically speaking) represent offshoots of Islam. Here’s a first, hasty draft of the beginnings of the latter discussion: The Bahá’í Faith, which was founded by Bahá’u’lláh in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1863, emerged out of Shi‘ite Islam, but quickly diverged so far from mainstream Shi‘ism that... Read more
Farid al-Din Attar was a Sufi (that is, a Muslim mystic) who died in the early thirteenth century in what is today Iran and who is widely considered to rank among the greatest of all Sufi writers. The title of his most famous literary work, a lengthy allegorical poem called — in both Arabic and, derivatively, also in Persian — the Mantiq al-Tayr, is typically rendered in English as The Conference of the Birds or else as The Parliament of... Read more
A few more notes from my virtual “notebook”: “At the fundamental level,” observes physicist David Gross, “nature, for whatever reason, prefers beauty.”[1] Science writer K. C. Cole says that “the same properties that make a snowflake appealing underlie the laws that control the universe. Truth and beauty are two sides of a coin.”[2] “The selfsame symmetries . . . appeal to the senses in art and music and natural forms like snowflakes and galaxies. The fundamental... Read more
This is good news: “New Marriott rooms across the globe will get Bible, Book of Mormon” *** Have you seen this interesting series of articles? “Inside the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: The Ministry of President M. Russell Ballard and His Brethren” “Inside the Quorum of the Twelve: What It’s Like to Be a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator” “Inside the Quorum of the Twelve: The Divine Calling Apostles Share with Missionaries” ... Read more
Nearly a year ago, an article appeared in Time about New Zealand’s then-new and quite young ex-Mormon prime minister, the politically progressive Jacinda Ardern: “Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 37-Year-Old Leader, Rolls Up Her Sleeves” I missed that article when it was first published. However, a reader of this blog in New Zealand who goes by the moniker of Kiwi57 — I’ve met him, been in his home, and know his actual name, but I don’t feel authorized... Read more
Farid al-Din Attar, who died in the early thirteenth century, is one of the greatest of all Muslim mystics. His most famous work is a lengthy allegorical poem entitled Mantiq al-Tayr, which is typically rendered in English as The Conference of the Birds or The Parliament of the Birds. It’s full of little sermonettes and stories and exhortations, subordinate to the overall plot of the story that it relates. Here is one of them, as translated by Afkham Darbandi and Dick... Read more
Below, I share three passages from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010). Dr. van Lommel is a Dutch cardiologist. Various naturalistic explanations have been proposed for the phenomena reported in accounts of near-death experiences. Here are Dr. van Lommel’s responses to two of them: Because low doses of ketamine, a drug formerly used as an anesthetic, can cause hallucinations, it has been postulated that this kind... Read more
On Saturday night, my wife and I took in a very good Utah Shakespeare Festival production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Set somewhere, I would guess, between 1895 and about 1920 — the era of “ragtime” — it used Shakespeare’s text (of course) but supplemented that with asides and with music from roughly the appropriate period. *** I suspect that Brigham Young’s tastes in theater may have been more overtly didactic than mine are, and... Read more
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