I’ve posted before — here and here — about the exciting, innovative, and potentially explosive work of Brian Stubbs, in which he argues for the presence of ancient Semitic and Egyptian influences in the languages of the Uto-Aztecan family.   Since I’m not an expert historical/comparative Semitic linguist and know nothing whatever about Uto-Aztecan languages, I’ve been eager to know what people with relevant training and background might have to say about his research.  I’m delighted, accordingly, to... Read more

    Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness. Leo Tolstoy   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more

    “Our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular. You may take geology, for instance, and it is a true science; not that I would say for a moment that all the conclusions and deductions of its professors are true, but its leading principles are; they are facts — they are eternal; and to assert that the Lord made this earth out of nothing is preposterous and impossible. God never made something... Read more

    Some of you may have missed this item, from back in January of 2016:   About that claim of suicides by LDS teens with same-sex attraction   And perhaps you missed this piece, from a year earlier still:   https://virtuoussociety.com/2015/01/26/re-examining-gay-mormon-youth-and-suicide-what-does-the-data-say/   I mention them both again here because they fit well with an item that I posted yesterday under the title “Does a high youth suicide rate in Utah demonstrate that Mormonism is psychologically unhealthy?”   This is a tragically sad... Read more

    I’m delighted to announce that videos of the presentations that were given at the 2016 Temple on Mount Zion Conference are now available on the website of the Interpreter Foundation — at no charge — for anyone who wants to watch them.   Take a look at the offerings.  There are treasures here.   My thanks go to Stephen D. Ricks for organizing an excellent conference, to Tom Pittman for his meticulous work on the videos, and, of course,... Read more

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/12/17/scrooge-grade-school-cancels-performance-christmas-story.html   The world will be a far better place, and our schools much safer, when kids are no longer threatened with Charles Dickens’s notorious work A Christmas Carol.   People should not be subjected to hearing ideas that are different than their own — unless, of course, those ideas are of the right kind — though diversity in other regards should be our highest priority.  I urgently suggest that all products created by the dead white European male called... Read more

    I’ve just seen the suggestion, on a secularist anti-Mormon message board, that, as in this Evangelical Protestant case, a professor at Mormon-owned BYU might be fired for saying that Allah and Elohim are the same being.   However, I offer myself as decisive evidence that such a professor would not be fired.   I’ve said that Allah and Elohim are the same being on numerous occasions, both in writing (here’s an easily accessible example) and in oral presentations, and,... Read more

    Another personal favorite poem at Christmas.  Note the hints of the Good Friday and Easter that would later come (e.g. “three trees on the low sky” and perhaps “dicing for pieces of silver”).  With its gritty and even rather grim details about their journey, the poem gives, I think, a degree of tangible reality to the story of the gospels’ “wise men.”   “The Journey of the Magi” A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the... Read more

    There’s a huge amount of vitriol, on various alt-right and/or Trumpist sites, against Mitt Romney.  They hate him.  (Of course, in fairness, some of them appear to hate just about everybody.  They seem to have perpetually high blood pressure.)   One of the charges against him is that he’s a pathetic loser.   I get something of a bleak kick out of this claim, because it seems to me that, in order to credibly level such an accusation, the... Read more

    The claim is often made.  But some caution might be in order:   http://en.fairmormon.org/Utah/Statistical_claims/Suicide_rate_among_Mormons   And, by the way, there ought to be real reluctance to use the tragedy of suicides as a polemical weapon.  It’s unseemly, to say the least of it.   Posted from Richmond, Virginia     Read more