From a manuscript of mine:   The medieval Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (d. 1321), author of the immortal Divina Commedia, concludes his famous journey through the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, in the Empyrean, or tenth heaven, where, a lone mortal among immortals, he beholds the “Eternal Light.”  He is overwhelmed, and, later, professes to have forgotten most of what he briefly knew.   . . . [M]y sight, becoming pure, was able to penetrate the ray of Light... Read more

    I continue with a few notes from James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (Washington DC: Henry Regnery, 2011).   First, from the book’s introduction to the book, titled “The Truth about Science in the Middle Ages”:   Commenting upon the legacy of Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), president of Cornell University and one of those chiefly responsible for creating the very often illusory narrative of historical conflict between religion and... Read more

    A Canadian woman told the Guggenheims about seeing her two daughters, ten days after their death in a farm accident: Noelle and Christie were standing there, hand-in-hand, sort of looking up.  They were bathed in a very bright, clear white light.  The light was indescribable!  It was brighter than anything I’ve ever seen, and it should have hurt my eyes, but it didn’t.[1] As one experiencer described it, it is a “white, lovely, iridescent light. . . . ... Read more

    There is a great deal of concern among some Americans about shari‘a (or sharia, or shari‘ah; there is no single “right” way of transliterating Arabic شريعة‎) or what is sometimes called, a bit redundantly but also somewhat misleadingly, shari‘a law or Islamic law.  Much of that concern, I think, can be eliminated by learning more about what shari‘a actually is.   Herewith, a few partial and preliminary notes on the topic, with no pretense — so please don’t... Read more

    It’s time, probably, for me to post some of the links that I’ve been accumulating on broadly socio-political topics lately.   First, some of you may be aware that Vladimir Putin and his approximate United States counterpart, До́нальд Трамп, joined together for a press conference in Helsinki, Finland, earlier this week, and that reactions to the press conference have not been uniformly positive.  Here are a few responses that you may or may not have seen:   First, from... Read more

    I’ve just begun reading James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (Washington DC: Henry Regnery, 2011).  Hannam earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at Oxford University and a doctorate in the history of science from the University of Cambridge.   Here are a few notes from his introduction to the book, which is titled “The Truth about Science in the Middle Ages”:   “Writers use the adjective ‘medieval’ as a... Read more

    During the period between roughly my graduation from high school and going away to college, on the one hand, and, on the other, the arrival of my own children, I observed a couple of households that seemed to me pretty much my ideal of the Latter-day Saint family.  In the years afterward, however, I noticed that even such seemingly “ideal” families had problems and experienced sorrows and heartbreaks — and perhaps, in those two particular cases, ironically even... Read more

    Just a few notes from, yes, yet another of those incomplete manuscripts:   Oxford theologian Alister McGrath: Through the grace of God, the creation points to its Creator.  Through the generosity of God, we have been left with a latent memory of him, capable of stirring us toward a fuller recollection of him.  Although there is a fracture between the ideal and the empirical, between the realms of fallen and redeemed creation, the memory of that connection lives... Read more

    From one of my manuscripts:   Another famous element on Moody’s list is his eighth, the “being of light.”[1]  This, says Moody, “is certainly the element which has the most profound effect upon the individual.”[2]  Similar apparitions seem to have a similar effect in deathbed visions, too.  Osis and Haraldsson pass on a nurse’s report of the experience of a “simple miner.”  “I see God,” he suddenly said to her. He started to cry and moan that he... Read more

    I was surprised to see, in the July/August 2018 issue of Smithsonian, an article titled “Secrets of the Scrolls: A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from early days of Western civilization.”   As I expected, it’s about the recovery of texts from the ruins of ancient Herculaneum, a city that was covered in AD 79 during the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius — the same cataclysmic event that destroyed nearby Pompeii.  They... Read more