One of the topics that I will need to address in my forthcoming book on the Middle East, the Arabs, and Islam for a predominantly Latter-day Saint audience is the Islamic Translation Series (ITS), which I conceived and founded, and which expanded into the broader Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI) before new leadership at BYU’s Maxwell Institute severed my connection with it and, ultimately, gave it to E. J. Brill Publishing in the Netherlands.   Here are three... Read more

    From another of my partially completed manuscripts:   Among the most famous of his elements is Moody’s fifth.  Many of those he interviewed told of being drawn very rapidly through some kind of dark space – a cave, a passageway, an enclosure, a valley, or, very commonly, a tunnel.  Often, this appeared to be concurrent with their perception of the noise mentioned as the fourth element.[1]  A congenitally blind informant by the name of Brad Barrows, for instance,... Read more

    I recently finished reading a book that I think some of you might find quite interesting:   Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates   The Amazon.com summary does a good job, so I think I’ll just quote it here:  “In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin’s theory as a nineteenth-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that... Read more

    We’ve had various friends staying with us here.  One stayed for the first week.  Another came over from Arizona and spent a couple of nights with us.  She left today, and my brother’s youngest son and his wife and their three children — my late brother’s grandchildren — are with us now.  We had dinner with them the other night, up near where they live; we’re happy to nurture these relationships.   On another note, I’ve just come... Read more

    For an earlier post on the same subject, see   “Thoughts on the Supreme Court of the United States”   News reports indicate that President Trump will name his nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court of the United States come Monday evening.   It’s urgent, therefore, if I’m intending to post some more links to articles about possible nominees, that I do so soon, before most of these beautiful links that I’ve been accumulating... Read more

    The most recent iteration of the bi-weekly Hamblin/Peterson column in the Deseret News has appeared.  Reading it has not yet been certified unhealthy:   “The last Jewish high priest”   ***   A new curricular development in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I look forward to seeing these materials:   “LDS Church to release ‘Come, Follow Me’ curriculum in 2019 for home, Primary and adults”   ***   Here’s a nice story of a Chinese... Read more

    Nearly two weeks ago, having just returned from watching a documentary about the late children’s television host Fred Rogers, I remarked here on this blog that I had never been a fan of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, had probably never watched an entire episode, and didn’t really enjoy what I had seen:   “A movie-induced walk down memory lane”   That revealing admission seems to have stirred up yet another negative discussion about me (on a mostly atheist and... Read more

    Rough notes for The Book:   Iran – officially, since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, but also historically known as Persia – is the home of one of the greatest and richest civilizations of human history.  That civilization began with the Elamite kingdoms of the fourth millennium before Christ, but it began its rise to greatness in the seventh century BC when the region was unified by the Iranian Medes.  By the sixth century before Christ, the... Read more

    I’ve quoted the great G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) several times lately.  This has apparently disturbed some of my critics.   One of them suspects that I may be unaware of the fact that Chesterton was a Roman Catholic apologist who probably didn’t think very highly of Mormonism.   And, indeed, it stunned me to learn this.   A Catholic!  Who wouldda thunk it?   Having never, myself, been more than three miles outside of Fountain Green, Utah, I... Read more

    A new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, and I must report that it began to draw impassioned responses before it even appeared:   “What is Mormon Transhumanism? And is it Mormon?”   So, for the record, perhaps I should say something about its genesis.   I was approached quite a while ago about whether or not the Interpreter Foundation would be interested in publishing a piece by a president of the Mormon Transhumanist... Read more