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

    The 2017 personal Christmas guest essay from the Interpreter Foundation has now appeared:   “Christmastime: When Our Souls Can Sing”   ***   Tomorrow — Saturday, 23 December 2017 — is the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  In that connection, my friend and Interpreter Foundation colleague Dr. Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw, who is currently serving a mission with his wife in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sent me a video testimony of the Prophet.... Read more

      Here’s  a Deseret News news column that I published on 15 December 2017:   The Book of Mormon is something worth noting at Christmas time: It’s a second witness for Jesus Christ. It begins, on its title page, by declaring that it comes forth “to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.” The magnificent chiasm of Alma 36 is literally centered on Christ. The most important event... Read more

    Today is the twenty-first day of the “Light the World” campaign, sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The theme for today is   “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat.”   An excellent way to act on today’s theme can be found at the Liahona Children’s Foundation.   You know that I’ve been urging donations — even small ones — to the Interpreter Foundation.  It’s a cause in which I deeply,... Read more

    Back in 2014, Bill Hamblin and I published a Deseret News column titled “Is Islam a primary cause of international violence?”  It was focused upon (and inspired by) a book by the former CIA political analyst (and Kabul, Afghanistan, station chief) Graham Fuller.   Here are some quotations from that extremely stimulating book:   “Islam seems to offer an instant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone for most affairs in the Middle East, by which to make sense of today’s... Read more

    A quotation from astronomer and astrophysicist Seth Shostak, extracted from something that I read earlier today:   Ever since Galileo, astronomers have somberly charted a universe that is stupefyingly large, bitterly cold, and implacably hostile.  As every schoolchild knows, we occupy a small planet around a common sort of star, itself just one of a hundred billion suns in a rather ordinary galaxy.  Our cosmic situation is insignificant, and life, particularly intelligent life, might be only an accident of... Read more