Alas!  I think that Ardis Parshall nails it in this brief blog post:   http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2017/04/11/firm-foundation-my-last-distressed-thoughts/comment-page-1/#comment-1506346   Thanks to Zander Sturgill for bringing it to my notice.   I’m reminded of the impassioned appeal of the great medieval philosopher-theologian al-Ghazali (d. AD 1111), toward the end of his Al-munqidh min al-dalal (“The Deliverer from Error”), in which he laments the anti-scientific attitude that he had already noticed among some of his contemporary fellow-Muslims:  When they reject scientific explanations... Read more

    This article tries to find a place where both the religiously faithful and those who lack religious faith can meet.  It suggests . . . science:   http://sinaiandsynapses.org/multimedia-archive/divided-world-can-religion-science-common-ground/     Read more

    A very touching three-minute video for this Easter season:   https://www.mormon.org/easter/principles-of-peace/faith   Plus:   I’m late on this — I should have begun on Sunday — but here’s a helpful little timeline for Easter week:   https://www.mormon.org/easter/easter-week   And here is the First Presidency’s statement for Easter 2017:   At this Easter season, we remember with immense gratitude the sacrifices of our Savior in Gethsemane and on Calvary’s cross.  No mere mortal can comprehend the full import of... Read more

    My friend and colleague Ralph Hancock — highly valued in so very many ways — has written a characteristically good piece for the Deseret News:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865677614/Ralph-Hancock-Two-cheers-for-nationalism.html   I’m reminded of Paul Johnson’s deliberately provocative book Intellectuals, which illustrates through a series of biographical case studies (of Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, and others) how many lovers of “mankind” tend to be uncaring beasts toward the actual human individuals so unfortunate as to be close to them.     Read more

    This is nice to read:   https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/ksl-craigslist-classifieds/521916/     Read more

    “He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind.  No.  He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself... Read more

    Have you heard about the 69-year-old doctor who was forcibly dragged from his seat on a United Airlines flight the other day because the airline had oversold tickets for it?   If you haven’t, it’s pretty amazing.  Even if you have, it’s worth reading these two pieces:   Future students of business management and corporate communicates will study this case:   “Not so friendly skies: United Airlines’ public relations disaster”   This David French article takes a slightly... Read more

    The first part of this article recounts the now familiar news of the horrific Palm Sunday bomb attacks in Alexandria and Tanta.  But the second part gives a bit of historical and theological background on the Copts that some here, I think, may find helpful and of interest:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/who-are-egypts-coptic-christians-and-what-do-they-believe_us_58ebc537e4b0c89f912058d5     Read more

    My mother died twelve years ago today, just one day after the anniversary of her birth.  In conformity to my annual tradition, I repost here the remarks that I delivered (very, very poorly) at her funeral in 2005.  It’s not much.  It’s not anything, really.  But it’s an attempt, grossly inadequate, at a tribute to her.  An utterly insufficient attempt to tell her “Thanks.”   My very earliest memories of my mother, I believe, are of traveling with her to... Read more

    This is a somewhat lengthy but, to me, really interesting blog entry from Rod Dreher (he of The Benedict Option), substantially made up of a note from someone who has left Evangelicalism with his family because they found it unsatisfying:   http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/goodbye-evangelicalism/   I don’t post it in any way as a criticism or mockery of Evangelical Protestantism.  Rather, I hope that at least a few Latter-day Saints will read it and think about it and about the... Read more