The other day, a Caesarotrumpist writing on my Facebook page said that he wanted to see actual primary-source evidence that The Donald is a bad man.   Well, here’s some:   http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/donald-trump-said-a-lot-of-gross-things-about-women-on-howar#.vhpx3dk4P7   Now, maybe you think that such remarks about women, and such behavior toward women, are perfectly okay.   Or, more likely, perhaps you think that Mr. Trump can be forgiven such lapses from ideal virtue because of his strong commitment to sound, conservative principles, constitutional government,... Read more

    The latest installment of my weekly Deseret News column is up:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865649146/The-impenetrable-mystery-of-being-you.html   Already, one of the usual atheistic commentators there has accused me of religiously-motivated obscurantism because I describe consciousness and subjectivity as a “mystery” and as perhaps even an “irreducible” one.   But I’m scarcely alone in this view.  In fact, in writing those words, I was drawing on the work of the philosopher Colin McGinn, who is not (to my knowledge) a religious believer... Read more

    It’s disheartening to me, after all of the effort and ego — and ego, I’m told, is what I’m really all about — that I’ve invested in the Interpreter Foundation, that the thoughts on the 2016 presidential campaign of one single contributor to Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture are getting a lot more attention today, regionally and nationally, than are the thoughts on the same topic of the illustrious president and chairman of the Foundation.   And his... Read more

    In August 2012, Don Bradley delivered this interesting presentation to the annual FairMormon conference:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2012-fair-conference/2012-piercing-the-veil-temple-worship-in-the-lost-116-pages     Read more

    Oh my.  Potentially awkward.   And just when I was about to book a beachfront vacation in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica:   http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/24/global-warming-hiatus-is-real     Read more

    Allahpundit:  “Oh my: Mitt Romney to deliver ‘major speech’ on 2016 race tomorrow” . Washington Post:  “What Mitt Romney should say”       Read more

      “Sweden’s Trademark Universal Healthcare On Its Deathbed”   http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/incest-and-necrophilia-should-be-legal-youth-swedish-liberal-peoples-party-a6891476.htm   Thanks to Kevin Taylor for alerting me to the second item.     Read more

    The most radical question which anyone can be asked is not how much their possessions cost, but whether they have found something of value — that is, something that makes living worthwhile. Alister E. McGrath     The English word radical comes from the Latin radix, or “root.”  This is a question, in other words, that goes right to a person’s deepest core or root.     Read more

    Whether you believe it to be human-induced climate change or not, this is still quite a big deal and much more fundamentally important than many of the more prominent headlines:   http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.706659   I myself have seen the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee shrink considerably since my first visit to the region in 1978.  And the drought exacerbates one of the principal political issues of the area, which is increased competition, as populations and agricultural needs... Read more

    Today’s reading, the single-chapter book of Enos, offers one of the most popular brief stories in the Book of Mormon, a story that is often cited to illustrate points about prayer, forgiveness, and many other topics.  And rightly so.   I’ll pick up a couple of aspects of it.   First, any parent, and perhaps any missionary, should take heart from this story.  Enos’s father may sometimes have felt that his teachings were sailing right past the young man.  And maybe they... Read more