Alister McGrath, the Anglican priest and Oxford University theologian who, before earning doctoral degrees in theology and intellectual history, first earned a D.Phil. in molecular biophysics, recalls his youthful atheism:   I was quite convinced that religion demanded disengagement from reality and taking refuge in an invented universe which bore no relation to what I knew through physics.  Religion dealt with a fictional universe in which everything was made up.  Science dealt with things that could be proved... Read more

    Publishing a new article for the 277th consecutive week — out of its 278.5 weeks of existence — the Interpreter Foundation obviously remains on its deathbed, just as its critics have always known and insisted.  Here is the latest article to appear in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   “Miracles in the Book of Mormon”   ***   Incidentally, in case you’re still unaware of this, you can contribute to the work of Interpreter — in quite... Read more

    A pretty bracing way of looking at it:   “Then how blessed, indeed, someone will exclaim, must they be who are born to riches, who were born to titles, to dukedoms, earldoms, and lordships! How faithful must they have been who inherit these privileges and blessings! Whose life is one continuous summer, whose existence is as a sea without a ripple! Nay, I pray you, take no such view of it as that. This class that I have described... Read more

    An autobiographical reminiscence:   Living, as they do, in a very stable, highly educated, extremely prosperous, and largely crime-free country that hasn’t been involved in a war for roughly two centuries and whose landscape ranges from beautiful to spectacularly beautiful, it’s not surprising that the Swiss are comfortable.  (Some would say that they tend to be a bit complacent.)  They’re not necessarily seeking to make big changes.   Nor are they religiously anguished nor energetically searching for new spiritual paths.... Read more

    More notes:   The persecution began very early. Joseph’s mother remembered that “every kind of opposition and persecution” started right after the First Vision.[1] During the period in which Joseph claimed to have the plates, he had to cope with various conspiracies to steal them from him.[2] Within a week of the Book of Mormon’s publication on 26 March 1830, the Rochester Daily Advertiser announced the book under the headline “BLASPHEMY,” declaring that “The Book of Mormon has... Read more

    Another passage from a manuscript-in-progress:   There were other connections between Arabian paganism and the religion of the biblical peoples. The pre-Islamic Arabs thought of themselves as the descendants of Ishmael. Beyond that, they seem to have been familiar with a story according to which both Ishmael and his father Abraham had come to central Arabia and had constructed a shrine in the town of Mecca, known as the “Ka’ba.” The Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, refers... Read more

    Eliza Snow remarked of Joseph Smith that “in his devotion [i.e., in his prayers] he was as humble as a little child.”[1]  He was, concurred George Q. Cannon, “as meek and gentle as a little child.”[2]  This aspect of his personality was also noted by Daniel Tyler: At the time William Smith and others rebelled against the Prophet at Kirtland, I attended a meeting “on the flats,” where “Joseph” presided. Entering the school house a little before the... Read more

    My wife and I have just returned from hearing Jack Welch deliver the 2017 Laura F. Willes Book of Mormon Lecture at the Assembly Hall of the Gordon B. Hinckley Center at BYU.  The title of his remarks was “Hours Never to Be Forgotten: Timing the Book of Mormon Translation.”   He’s spent decades, off and on, considering the question of the translation timeline for the Book of Mormon; his most recent publication on the subject appears in... Read more

    My wife and I attended a performance, last night, of Forever Plaid on the Sorenson Legacy Jewel Box Stage at the new Hale Centre Theatre in the very nearly completed Mountain America Performing Arts Centre.   Forever Plaid is, I’ll admit, not my absolutely favorite play.  But it’s entertaining and fun, and the superb cast that we saw last night included a son of our very, very good and longtime friends Dil and Laura Beth Parkinson, who are currently serving... Read more

    When I was growing up in California, critics of the Book of Mormon quite commonly opposed it to the theory that the first Americans had arrived from Asia via a prehistoric land bridge, now submerged, located at the Bering Straits.   It was, supposedly, an either/or.  If the Book of Mormon is true, so the reasoning went, it must account for the origin of every Amerindian before Columbus.  On the other hand, went the corollary, if the Bering Straits... Read more