A quotation from Surprised by Meaning: Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), by the Oxford theologian Alister McGrath, who holds three Oxford doctorates — in divinity, intellectual history, and molecular biophysics:   Examples of the astrophysical “fine-tuning” of fundamental cosmological constants include the following:  If the strong coupling constant were slightly smaller, hydrogen would be the only element in the universe.  Since the evolution of life as we know it is fundamentally dependent... Read more

    A few additional notes from Lawrence E. Tooley, I Saw Heaven: A Remarkable Visit to the Spirit World (Springville, UT: Cedar Fort, 2006):   I felt whole, and complete, and more fully alive than at any time I can ever remember.  (58)   “I’ve never felt like this before.  I feel as if all my senses have increased a hundred fold.”  (60)   I could see a brilliant golden white light, almost like the sun.  When I looked at it, I expected... Read more

    Just a little bit from the manuscript on which I’m currently working — an introduction to Islam aimed primarily at Latter-day Saints:   Each lunar year, Muslims fast during the entire month of Ramadan—from the rising of the sun until its setting. “Eat and drink,” the Qur’an directs, “until you can tell a white thread from a black one in the light of the coming dawn. Then resume the fast till nightfall.”[1] It will be recalled that it... Read more

    What have the age and size of the observable universe, nuclear energy levels in beryllium and carbon, the remarkable properties of water and the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere have in common?  All these things are essential to the existence of carbon-based life and are determined by subtle balances among the forces of nature. These balances have led to a remarkable phenomenon of the last two decades in which many scientists in studying the origin of the... Read more

    As I’ve indicated before, I’m very interested in the phenomenon of near-death experiences.  I’ve studied hundreds of them.  I’ve read extensively on the subject.   They are so widely reported that I find it inconceivable that the phenomenon is “made-up.”  The crucial remaining question, of course, regards their significance.  Do they really point to “another world,” or are they indicators, merely, of subjective brain events, similar across time and cultures because of our shared human physiology?   I’m strongly... Read more

    Remarkably, although the duty of prayer is often mentioned in the Qur’an, that book never specifically mentions a duty of praying formally five times daily. One legend says that Muhammad received the commandment of five daily prayers during his miraculous ascension into heaven from the Temple Mount at Jerusalem. Origi­nally, so the story goes, the Lord imposed a duty of fifty prayers daily on Muhammad and the Muslims. Then, when Muhammad was descending from the presence of God,... Read more

    This morning, my wife and I (and the Utah friends with whom we’ve come) participated in an endowment session in the Phoenix Arizona Temple.   I’ve always loved the temple.  Some of my earliest and most pivotal spiritual experiences came in connection with temples, and — along with several others that I know — I consider temples and temple worship among the greatest evidences of divine revelation to Joseph Smith.   “The temple is a point of intersection between heaven... Read more

    A passage from Surprised by Meaning: Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), by the Oxford theologian Alister McGrath, who holds Oxford doctorates in both divinity and intellectual history — which he earned after he had first received an Oxford doctorate in molecular biophysics:   Yet it is not simply the origins of the universe that seem to show evidence of fine-tuning.  A good case can be made for the same patterns emerging at... Read more

    There are essentially two kinds of prayer in Islam. The one with which we in the West are most familiar is, paradoxically, the one most foreign to us. This is the formal prayer known as salat.[1]  Five times daily—at sunrise, midday, afternoon, evening, and night— pious Muslims prostrate themselves before God, bowing low and touching foreheads to the ground a fixed number of times. A com­plex set of gestures and motions accompanies the recitation of cer­tain phrases during... Read more

    A person who wishes to remain anonymous kindly passed a pair of quotations on to me that he found “very relevant to church members encountering new information about the past.”  Especially, he said, the highlighted portions.   The quotations come from the famous psychologist and psycholinguist Steven Pinker:   The other way in which I do agree with my fellow panelists that political correctness has done an enormous amount of harm in the sliver of the population that might... Read more