I had the pleasure and the privilege of speaking to a conference of Latter-day Saint chaplains this afternoon, up in Salt Lake City.  I’ve done this two or three times before, but not for several years.  This time, it wasn’t just military chaplains, but also hospice chaplains, police chaplains, chaplains associated with the United States Border Patrol, and so forth.   My remarks, which addressed the theme “By Study and Also by Faith,” were of negligible importance.  ... Read more

    New, from the Interpreter Foundation:   “‘Abound in Hope’: Stories of the Saints in the DR Congo, Part 6”   ***   For those who like to keep adding to their files, here are two new items.   First, for the already bulging “Utah is a provincial backwater and a Mormon-riddled hell on earth” file, there is this from a while back, brought to my attention just recently:   “The fastest growing (and shrinking) states: A closer look”  ... Read more

    Demographic shrinkage of the West relative to, say, the Islamic world — and that shrinkage is dramatic — and of the more prosperous and highly educated portion within Western society relative to other classes, will have (is having) economic, political, and social effects far beyond its impact on the specific people who’re deciding not to have children.   I haven’t read systematically on this topic, but George Weigel’s 2006 The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God, Mark Steyn’s 2008 America... Read more

    My recent debate adversary, Dr. Michael Shermer, has a useful piece in the October issue of Scientific American:   “Why Do People Kill Themselves?  Why do people die by suicide?”   ***   This coming Friday, 12 October 2018, there will be a planetarium show at BYU under the title of “October Sky and Our Creator’s Cosmos.”   It will be presented at 7 PM and then, again, at 8 PM.   “October Sky and Our Creator’s Cosmos”... Read more

    A couple of passages from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist: A Criticism of Christianity [1888], translated by Anthony M. Ludovici (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2006).  But, first, a few lines from Dennis Sweet’s introduction to this edition:   In earlier books Nietzsche had made that most profound announcement: “God is dead.”  In other words, there are no absolute, unconditional, or objective values in the world.  Whatever meanings that exist in life are put there by us, by human beings,... Read more

    An interesting article from The Economist:   “Anglophones and Francophones still approach Islam differently: The English and Americans offer pragmatism, the French zeal”   ***   Not infrequently, people write to me to assure me that all Muslims always want to destroy churches and obliterate Christianity, and that no Muslim would ever defend a Christian church.   This is flatly false, and I offer two pieces of evidence here to support my claim:   1)     The Church... Read more

    I’m pleased to be able to share the provisional program for an upcoming conference, co-sponsored by the Interpreter Foundation.   The Fourth Temple on Mount Zion Conference in memory of Matthew B. Brown 10 November 2018 251 Tanner Building, Brigham Young University   Stephen Ricks: Session chair 9:00                 Welcome and prayer 9:15                 S. Kent Brown: Jesus’s First Visit to the Temple 9:45                 Kerry Muhlestein: On Earth When It Was in Heaven: Sacred Time and its Protection in Egyptian... Read more

    From one of my still-incomplete manuscripts:   An anonymous correspondent for the Buffalo Spectator, recounting his alleged encounter with a Mormon missionary, a fellow-passenger in a stage coach, supplies a striking illustration of what many early nineteenth century skeptics expected to find in the Book of Mormon: I stated that I had read the book of Mormon enough to find in [it] the terms, “gunpowder, marriner’s compass,” and several others of recent origin, introduced into a silly story... Read more

    I found President M. Russell Ballard’s talk at the beginning of today’s morning conference session profoundly significant and deeply, personally, moving.  And particularly appropriate, for me, on this very date.   My brother, my only sibling, would have been seventy-six years old today.  Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly in March 2012.   I miss him terribly.  Few days, if any, have passed since his death without my thinking of him.   For years, I had feared that his... Read more

    I believe that I’ve seen the image above before, but I definitely ran into it today and, thus, I assume that it’s going the rounds now at conference time.   First of all, let me state for the record — though some will doubt my words, since I’m widely known in certain circles that don’t know me to be callously heartless, unfeeling, unprincipled, and cruel — that I have absolutely nothing in principle against listening to people, not... Read more