A final reminder:   I’ll be speaking tomorrow at 10 AM as part of the annual symposium on “Reason for Hope: Responding to a Secular World” sponsored by BYU’s Wheatley Institution.  You can find details about the conference at   http://reasonforhope.byu.edu   ***     A paraphrase of Richard Panek, The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 59-61:   Here’s... Read more

    Several people have inquired about the “manuscripts” that I’ve been citing and from which I’ve been drawing in my posts over the past few months.  They want to know what they’re for, and when they might actually appear.  Permit me to explain:   Some of them — including a few from which I haven’t yet quoted much if at all — really deserve the term manuscript.  The materials that I’ve been posting about Muhammad and about the Jewish... Read more

    On Tuesday night, we had a great Indian dinner at the Kohinoor restaurant in Orem.  Then we attended a really strong performance of Hello, Dolly! at the Hale Center Theater, not too terribly far away.   The ensemble was excellent, and Ashley Gardner Carlson made a fine Dolly Levi.   ***   Here’s a useful little article from clear back in 2010:   “Five myths about mosques in America”   ***   “How the Muslim World Lost the Freedom to Choose: A... Read more

    I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)   ***   I admit that I had never previously heard of this unjustly neglected chemist:   “The Forgotten Scientist... Read more

    Three more on Moore:   “Roy Moore Loses the ‘He Said / She Said’”   “Moore Defenders Betray Conservative Women”   “Praying for a Sessions Write-In Candidacy: If you say you don’t have enough evidence to make a judgment, you are judging Moore’s accusers to be not credible.”   “If Roy Moore Were a Fictional Character: You’d Know He Was a Villain”   ***   I posted a whole slew of links relating to the case of Judge Roy... Read more

    Many Southern Evangelicals and ostensible political conservatives should consider this New Testament passage:  “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)   Some Latter-day Saints probably should, as well.   They should also consider the story of Esau’s sale of his birthright in exchange for a bowl of lentil stew — giving up his inheritance for immediate gratification of his hunger — as it’s told in Genesis... Read more

    A bit more from a still-evolving manuscript:   Evaluations of Muhammad have varied wildly. Skeptical Western writers for years regarded him as a fraud. (Indeed, many liked to link him with Joseph Smith in that regard. To associate the two was to damn both.)[1] The great fourteenth-century Christian poet Dante placed him in one of the deepest reaches of Hell.[2] For Muslims, on the other hand, he is the incomparable Messenger of God, “the seal of the prophets.”... Read more

    William Harrison Homer Jr. recorded Martin Harris’s dying testimony:   The next day July 10, 1875 marked the end. . . .  I stood by the bedside holding the patient’s right hand . . . Martin Harris had been unconscious for a number of days.  When we first entered the room the old gentleman seemed to be sleeping.  He soon woke up and asked for a drink of water.  I put my arms under the old gentleman, raised... Read more