“Santa Claus Converts To Calvinism, Moves Everybody To Naughty List”   ***     St. Nicholas of Myra, the prototype for St. Nicholas > Santa Claus, was an active participant at the Nicene Council.  My favorite scene from Nicaea comes when St. Nick, incensed at what the soon-to-be-designated arch heretic Arius of Alexandria had said, walks up and clobbers him.   Ho ho ho!   (And thus did the Holy Spirit guide the deliberations of the Fathers of... Read more

    The theme for today, the twenty-third day of the “Light the World” 2017 Christmas initiative sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is   “I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”   ***   In that connection, this was a spectacularly good idea, and I hope that it will spread even further next year (and perhaps throughout the year):   The Deseret News:  “Light the World initiative’s charity vending machines raise $469K”  ... Read more

    Below, I reproduce a column that I wrote for the Deseret News back in 2010.   First, though, here’s a link to the column that Bill Hamblin and I published in the Deseret News this morning:   “Christmas after the Protestant Reformation”   ***   And now on to the main event:   Today is Joseph Smith’s birthday. Contrary to the claims of our more extreme critics, Latter-day Saints don’t put up “Smithmas” lights, sing “Smithmas” carols or recite... Read more

    The English mathematician, mathematical physicist, and philosopher of science Sir Roger Penrose (b. 1931) is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford.  Here are some passages that I’ve extracted from the first few pages of his book The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (New York: Vintage Books, 2004):   To mathematicians (at least to most of them, as far as I can make out), mathematics is not just a... Read more

    Continuing with a manuscript that I’m readying for publication:   This Muslim emphasis on the words and style of the Arabic Qur’an was vividly illustrated for me once on a trip, many years ago now, to Cyprus. That island, of course, is divided between Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks. I found myself, one day, driving with others in the Turkish part of the island. It occurred to me that I ought to buy a Turkish transla­tion of the... Read more

    I published this column in the Deseret News back in 2014.  This year, today  is the anniversary of Joseph’s birth:   Tuesday, Dec. 23, will be the 209th anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Appropriately, this year as every year, that anniversary will be vastly overshadowed by celebrations of Christmas, the traditional birthday of the master he sought to serve. Nevertheless, I want to say something here about Joseph, who is important not only as the... Read more

    My wife dragged me off tonight, with friends, to see Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman.  I confess that I wasn’t overly thrilled.  I have to be in the right mood for musicals, I’m not much into dance, and I had skimmed a couple of negative reviews.   I was surprised to like it as much as I did.  The negative reviews weren’t altogether wrong, and I still don’t get all that thrilled about dancing.  But Hugh Jackman... Read more

    Continuing with a manuscript on which I’m working:   Muslims believe that the Qur’an as they have it today is an actual transcript from a heavenly volume known as the “Preserved Tab­let,” or the “Mother of the Book.”[1] They believe that Muhammad did not write it and that it contains no admixture of his own per­sonality or individual idiosyncrasies. He was merely the pipeline, as it were, the conduit through whom God’s revelation came. Given such an understanding,... Read more

    Here are some brief quotations from Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona:   “The two main ingredients of our universe, dark matter and dark energy, are still enigmatic . . . ”  (x)   (In this context, see my 2015 Deseret News column “Materialism isn’t what it used to be.”)   “. . . cosmologists who reconstruct cosmic history from slender shards of evidence, some of whom... Read more

    Every once in a while, Helen Radkey — an ex-Mormon who left the Church decades ago and plainly can’t leave it alone — tries to embroil the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a scandal regarding its belief in the efficacy of vicarious temple work on behalf of the dead.  Here’s a brief account of her latest effort, including a comment by my friend and Interpreter Foundation colleague Dr. Noel B. Reynolds:   “Recent Mormon baptisms for Holocaust... Read more