Now well into my dotage, I’ve become ever more concerned at my relatively newfound propensity to tear up at the climactic moments of certain movies and plays.  I’m justly famous in some circles for my utter heartlessness and meanness of spirit, and this concession to weakness and human sympathy worries me.   Tonight, my sentimentality was on full display near the end of Lion.  Shame on me.     Read more

    I’m glad that we’re now being completely forthright on this and other issues.  We have nothing to hide.  The Gospel is true.   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2017/02/joseph-smiths-use-of-seer-stone-in.html   Thanks to Robert Boylan for alerting me to this.  I’m not a regular reader of The Friend.     Read more

    This video is pretty funny:       Read more

    “During all the first part of the Middle Ages, no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula.  For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the Far East.  From the IXth to the XIIth... Read more

    Although I haven’t done a systematic survey, my sense is that the argument made in this brief article is pretty much the standard view now among historians who’ve considered the matter.  It’s not really even controversial:   https://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/evangelical-history/2017/02/01/who-is-to-blame-for-the-greatest-myth-in-the-history-of-science-and-religion-these-two-guys/   But the truth may surprise a lot of nonspecialists, and the myth lives robustly on.     Read more

    In the 196th scripture roundtable to be posted by the (as always) virtually comatose Interpreter Foundation, Kristine Frederickson, Martin Tanner, Daniel Peterson, and Craig Foster discuss a collection of scriptural passages regarding faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost.  They do this in connection with Lesson 7 in the 2017 Gospel Doctrine manual:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scripture-roundtable-196-doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-lesson-7-the-first-principles-and-ordinances-of-the-gospel/     Read more

    “I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven, but of Heaven is my birth.” So the deceased is to identify himself or herself when seeking admission to the realm of the gods.  (Part of the text of a pre-Christian Totenpass or “passport for the dead,” taken from an ancient gold plate found in Greece.)     Read more

    This Mormonism-related story experiences occasional flare-ups of publicity:   http://www.thenational.scot/world/15071724.Profile___Diamond__Dave_Hall/   I confess that, if he owns the property and he complies with reasonable local laws and regulations, I’m not sure that I can see why he shouldn’t be able to do with his property whatever he wishes to do.     Read more

    http://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2017/02/make-america-great-again-by-protecting.html     Read more

    Can the mind be reduced to the brain?  Is eliminative reductionism the future of psychology?  Are we witnessing the death of the soul?   https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/talking-apes/201702/is-neuroscience-the-future-or-the-end-psychology     Read more