In an entry that I posted on Friday, I cited the account given by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed of the survey on which they based their book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007).  Here, now, are some of their results, in headline form (from pages xii-xiii):    Who speaks for the West?  Muslims around the world do not see the West as monolithic.  They criticize or celebrate countries based on... Read more

    Some notes from (as usual) an incomplete manuscript:   In Charles Darwin’s 1876 autobiography, he wrote: Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason, and not with the feeling, impresses me as having much more weight.  This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. ... Read more

    I’m back from Ephraim, Utah, where I participated in a History of the Saints program in the Eccles Performing Arts Center at Snow College.  This is the first one of these in which I’ve taken part; I’ve been invited to participate two or three times before, but my schedule of travel and other obligations has always prevented me from doing so before now.   I enjoyed it very much – and not merely because, being a professor, I’m... Read more

    A passage from a rough manuscript:   “The Book of Mormon is true,” David Osborn heard [Joseph Smith] testify in 1837, “just what it purports to be, and for this testimony I expect to give an account in the day of judgment. . . . If I obtain the glory which I have in view I expect to wade through much tribulation.”[1] The persecution began very early. Joseph’s mother remembered that “every kind of opposition and persecution” started... Read more

    The latest installment of the bi-weekly Deseret News column jointly authored by William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson has appeared:   “Building a bridge at BYU between the Muslim world and the West”   ***   Very plainly, Muslims and Islam have a public relations problem.  That’s obvious.  And it’s obvious why, too.  There is simply no denying that the Islamic world is profoundly dysfunctional in many ways — see this recent item in The Economist for an unexpected... Read more

    It’s Friday.  So, if you’ve been following these things at all, you can’t possibly be surprised that a new article has just appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   “Et Incarnatus Est: The Imperative for Book of Mormon Historicity”   ***   We’re rapidly approaching the 2018 Christmas season.  As I write, there are only 59 shopping days remaining until The Big Day.   I couldn’t possibly be more thrilled.   If you’re like me, and you... Read more

    These cases are difficult.  There are a number of things that I dislike about Lawrence Krauss, and I don’t find it at all difficult to believe that he thinks himself entitled and that he’s guilty of some or all of the offenses that have been laid at his feet.  On the other hand, academic investigations of sexual harassment and misconduct are notoriously prone to ignore due process, elementary rules of evidence, the presumption of innocence, and the rights... Read more

    There’s a famous folkloric character who shows up across much of the Middle East, in the Balkans, and etc.  He goes by various names — e.g., Nasruddin Hoca (pronounced Nas-ru-deen Ho-jah) or Nasreddin Hodja in Turkish, and Mulla Nasruddin, and, in Arabic, Juha (or, in the dialect of Cairo and Lower Egypt), Goha — in hundreds of jokes and little stories.  To the extent that there’s a real historical personage behind the anecdotes, which typically portray him as a kind of wise fool,... Read more

    “The first vertebrates on Earth arose in shallow coastal waters: A new study answers an enduring question about where our earliest backboned ancestors lived”   It’s said that they evolved from liberal politicians, who (as the above graphic shows) tend to occur in habitats and ecosystems clustered along seacoasts and around major bodies of water.  (William F. Buckley Jr. published his book Up from Liberalism in 1984.   Science now seems to have vindicated his title in a... Read more

    I’ve been interested to see the very negative response, in certain regions of the web where everything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is mocked and disdained by bitter apostates, to President Russell M. Nelson’s periodic whirlwinds of national and international “ministry tours.”   Rather than marveling at a 94-year-old man’s remarkable vigor and at his strong desire to be out among his fellow Latter-day Saints, encouraging and comforting and strengthening them — which, even... Read more