More notes from an uncompleted manuscript:   When, in late June of 1844, Governor Thomas Ford demanded that Joseph come to Carthage, Illinois, a hotbed of hostility both to Mormonism and to Joseph personally, in order to answer serious charges that had been leveled against him by his enemies, Joseph first decided to flee across the Mississippi and then, if possible, to make a personal appeal to U.S. President John Tyler.  But many, perhaps even his wife, accused... Read more

    I admire science and scholarship enormously.  Maybe, indeed, even too much.  But they’re human enterprises, carried out by humans — and, despite their overall very impressive record, they often manifest the flaws that are associated with humans.  The recent crisis of non-reproducible results in psychology and the other social sciences (and, to a lesser degree, in the other sciences as well) illustrates this fact all too clearly:   “‘Replication crisis’ spurs reforms in how science studies are done”... Read more

    In Facsimile 3 of the Book of Abraham, the patriarch Abraham is represented as deeply conversant with ancient astronomical lore.  He doesn’t appear that way in the Bible, but other ancient texts pick up the same theme.  Here, for example, is a passage from the seventh-century Arabic Qur’an that shows him pondering the heavens:   “In this way We showed Abraham [God’s] mighty dominion over the heavens and the earth, so that he might be a firm believer. ... Read more

    My book Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East has badly needed an update since its revised, second, edition came from the press in June 2001.  (Just think, for example, of what occurred later that very year, on 11 September!)   Well, I’m working on it.  Occasionally.   The trick (beyond getting the substantial stretches of time that I crave) is to not overburden the revision with details, not to make it too academic.  It needs to concentrate... Read more

    Raymond Moody, who holds a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Virginia, an M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of West Georgia, more or less launched the modern interest in near-death experiences with his path-breaking 1975 book Life after Life.  Here are two reflective quotations from him on that subject:   “I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is,... Read more

    Sometimes, people who’ve adopted a patently absurd position will persist in it long past the time that it’s become an embarrassment.  And, sometimes, that position is just too darned funny not to . . . well, not to have some fun with it.   Perhaps the strongest and most cogent argument adduced by the small group who continue to argue for the silly notion that Latter-day Saint art in general — not just temple architecture! — is “Stalinist”... Read more

    My schedule for late November of this year in Australia is beginning to firm up.  I’ll have more details eventually, but here are some solid dates:   1. Church fireside in Melbourne on Sunday, November 25th 2. The University of Notre Dame (UNDA) 7th Annual Religious Liberty Lecture, in Sydney, on Tuesday, November 27th 3. Church fireside in Sydney on Wednesday, November 28th.   If you’re intending to be in Melbourne or Sydney on one or more of... Read more

    From an incomplete, rough manuscript:   In a notarized statement dated 29 October 1921, George Godfrey, who prepared Martin Harris’s grave in Clarkston, Utah, summarized his lengthy acquaintance with the Witness.  Then he offered this interesting statement: Prior to his death and in his last sickness I sat up nights with him upon many an occasion, in connection with my Brothers, John E. Godfrey and Thomas Godfrey, both of whom now reside at Clarkston, aforesaid, and who can... Read more

    Some folks seem to assume that there were no accounts of near-death experiences prior to Raymond Moody’s 1975 bestseller Life After Life.  That, however, is far from the case.  Here, for instance, are three nineteenth-century reports culled for my notebook from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).  They contain several of the features specifically listed by Dr. Moody many years later.  The inserted biographical links are mine:   1.   In... Read more

    A few folks seem to be powerfully disinclined to follow the argument set forth in my prior posts “The Parthenon of the South Pacific?,”  “The Latter-day Saints and ‘Stalinist Art’ Revisited (Part One?),” and “The Latter-day Saints and “Stalinist Art” Revisited (Part Two).”   So — still motivated, of course, by my characteristic ungovernable rage — I’ll try to spell part of that argument out a bit more clearly, in hopes that, even though it be plainly against their wills... Read more