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

    The third and final part of my reply to an implicit challenge served up by an online critic of Mormonism and of theism who advocates an especially sweeping and unreflective scientism.  Here’s what he wrote:   You won’t find even one instance where science has had to say it was wrong, and someones sacred scriptures from antiquity got it right. Not. one. time. not. one. item.   Here are some quotations from the late Robert Jastrow (1925-2008), a religiously... Read more

    Continuing my response – this is Part Two of Three — to the implicit challenge offered up by a devotee of a particularly simplistic and historically uninformed scientism, which reads as follows:   You won’t find even one instance where science has had to say it was wrong, and someones sacred scriptures from antiquity got it right. Not. one. time. not. one. item.   We continue with the opposed notions of a created universe, associated with mainstream Christianity, and... Read more

    I sometimes get a kick out of the online comments of a fellow who espouses a particularly crude and simplistic scientism.  He recently posted the following:   You won’t find even one instance where science has had to say it was wrong, and someones sacred scriptures from antiquity got it right. Not. one. time. not. one. item.   Well . . .   My response will occupy three blog posts.   I’ll start with an extended quotation from the... Read more

    In an 1850 debate with several Christian ministers, John Taylor — the British-born member of the Council of the Twelve who would eventually succeed Brigham Young to serve as the third president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and who was grievously wounded in the same anti-Mormon mob attack on the jail at Carthage, Illinois, that killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith — spoke about his relationship with the Prophet Joseph:   I was acquainted with Joseph Smith for years.... Read more

    I hear hints of a premortal existence in the famous “Song of the Flute” from the opening of the Mathnavi, written by the great Persian Sufi poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273).  Why, Rumi asks, implicitly comparing a reed flute to the human soul, is the sound of the flute so plaintive and sad?   Listen to the song of the reed,  How it wails with the pain of separation: “Ever since I was taken from my reed bed My woeful... Read more

    From a letter written by Josiah Stowell (1770-1844), who employed Joseph Smith roughly 1825-1827 (i.e., before the restoration of the Church and the publication of the Book of Mormon), to J.S. Fuller.  The letter, the original of which is located in the LDS Archives, is dated 17 February 1843.  See Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery (1994), 17:   “He [Joseph Smith, Jr.] was a likely young man & at that time... Read more