Three passages from a response to Richard Dawkins by the distinguished British writer and Cambridge University academic John Cornwell, editor of such volumes as Nature’s Imagination, Explanations, and Consciousness and Human Identity and author of such books as Coleridge: A Critical Biography, Hitler’s Pope, Power to Harm, Hitler’s Scientists, and The Pope in Winter:   I want to write to you now about your Utopia.  You have issued a glowing promise of ultimate happiness, if only your readers will trust in... Read more

      Here’s a pleasant article, brought to my attention — if I’m not mistaken — by Matthew Wheeler:   “The Muslim youth group who help bring festive cheer”   ***   And this is a topic that richly deserves attention:   “One story to watch: Will 2018 see notable decline in the Middle East’s hardline Islam?”   Will such projections turn out to be correct?  Much hinges on which way things go.  For the entire world.   ***... Read more

    We’re nearing the time for New Year’s resolutions.  They can be helpful, sometimes.  We often focus on quantifiable goals, like losing twenty pounds or saving a thousand dollars or exercising five days a week.  But the most important goals are often not measurable in such simple ways.   Two of the most important things that we might do over the next year would be to be more self-aware and to be more charitable in judging others.   On... Read more

    I realize that this is a thankless task, and that it can only serve to confirm the position of those who already agree with me and to further inflame those who already don’t.  I recognize, too, that doing so will expose me to inevitable accusations of insensitivity and disrespect and even, from my worst critics, of anti-Semitism.  But I’m going to comment once again — see also my prior entry, titled “On performing baptisms for Jewish Holocaust victims”... Read more

    I’ve been struck, over the past few days, by the number of people who have lost close relatives or friends this Christmas season.   I posted an entry about one of them earlier today, under the title of “The passing of a truly remarkable Latter-day Saint.”  And here’s a sad new story from the mission field in Africa:  “Mormon Missionary Serving in Nigeria Passes Away.”   I don’t know whether the number, from within my broad circle, is... Read more

    From the manuscript to which I’m devoting the majority of my attention right now:   The Qur’an clearly and repeatedly teaches a dispensational view of the earth’s religious history, in which there have been repeated reve­lations of God’s truth and repeated human apostasies from that truth that required it to be restored again. There was a time, it says, when men followed a single religion. But then discord arose.[1] God tried to remedy this situation. Every nation has... Read more

    On Monday night, my wife and I went to see Darkest Hour, the new movie about Winston Churchill’s first weeks as the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.   Gary Oldman — previously known as the terrorist Egor Korshunov in Air Force One, Commissioner Gordon in the Batman films, and Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies — was superb as Churchill, and I thoroughly enjoyed the film.  Of course, I’m deeply interested in the Second World War, so... Read more

    I published this column in the Deseret News on 1 January 2015:   January, the first month of the calendar year, most likely takes its name from the ancient Roman deity Janus, who was believed to be the gatekeeper of heaven. More generally, he was the god of doors, gateways (including city gates) and boundaries, and thus of beginnings and transitions, as well as a patron deity of traveling, trading and shipping. Jan. 1 was New Year’s Day... Read more

    Continuing with a manuscript-in-progress:   But there is a deeper theological reason for the claim that the Qur’an cannot truly be translated, that what results from the pro­cess of translation is something related to the Qur’an but cannot properly be said to be identical with it. I have said that Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the word of God. We hear such a phrase— “the word of God”—and think we know what it means. But Mus­lims take... Read more