I was asked yesterday to provide three convincing proofs or evidences of the Book of Mormon.  I’m presented with pretty much the same demand every few weeks, in one form or another.   Now, I have some favorite arguments.  In fact, I’ll be presenting one of them at this week’s FairMormon conference.   Nonetheless, as I sought to explain in a column for the Deseret News a while back, requests such as that mentioned above fundamentally misconceive what Mormon apologists... Read more

    “If there is no God, nothing matters.  If there is a God, nothing else matters.”  (H. G. Wells, 1866-1946)   Posted from Newport Beach, California     Read more

    http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/07/book-recommendation-on-book-of-mormon.html   Posted from Newport Beach, California     Read more

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/mormon-church-pulls-missionaries-out-of-turkey.aspx?PageID=238&NID=102235&NewsCatID=341   Also:   “Church Statement on Volunteers in Turkey”   I’ve seen some mocking comments on ex-Mormon message boards — “mocking” and “indignant” are, on the whole, the only kind of comments some of them ever post — making fun of the Church’s use of the term volunteers to describe its representatives there.   Anybody familiar with the contemporary Middle East, though, knows that the word missionary (or its Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, or Persian equivalents) has a very... Read more

    “God — There is no god but He, the Living, the Sustainer.  Neither drowsiness nor sleep overtakes Him.  To Him belongs everything in the Heavens and on Earth.  Who can intercede with Him, except by His permission?  He knows what is present before them and what will be after them.  They cannot comprehend a particle of His knowledge, except as He wills it.  His throne extends over the Heavens and the Earth, but preserving them doesn’t tire Him.  He... Read more

    Rumor has it that my most obsessive and unhinged critics have been guzzling this stuff for many years now.   Which plainly seems to show that it may have very distinctive and worrisome side effects.   Posted from Newport Beach, California     Read more

    A post by the invaluable Robert Boylan on a very important topic — perhaps the one, more than any other, that constitutes the distinctiveness (and, to many, the heretical blasphemy)  of Mormonism:   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com/2016/07/latter-day-saint-theology-and-acts-1728.html   Posted from Newport Beach, California   Read more

    As usual, just a brief note on today’s reading:   First of all, my comments yesterday about the unrealistic survival rate among Hellman’s 2060 young warriors apply perhaps even more to this chapter.   Secondly, Alma 57 reminds me of my father’s accounts of the Second World War, during which he spent the most significant part of his time attached to the Eleventh Armored Division, a part of General George Patton’s Third Army.   He was stationed in High Wycombe,... Read more

    While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to that mingled pattern.  Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)   Posted from Newport Beach, California     Read more

    “The truth is that just as the ‘West’ is not a homogenous entity with one view on foreign and domestic policy, nor are Muslims.”  (Maajid Nawaz   “There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics.”  (Miroslav Volf)   “Of course, the overwhelming majority... Read more