Matthew 22:34-40 Mark 12:28-34 Compare Matthew 22:46; Luke 10:25-28; 20:40   It’s significant that, according to Jesus, the “first” or “greatest” commandment isn’t to affirm the ontological unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, “neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance,” but to love God.  And the second isn’t, say, to confess the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in an uncreated Son who eternally proceeds from the Father, nor even to get the relationship of faith... Read more

    A critic of the Church, writing last night, has faulted a list of scholars formerly associated with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies and/or the subsequent Maxwell Institute because they’re all Latter-day Saints.   It’s not the first time I’ve seen such a thing.  Nor even the hundredth time.  This dismissal, on this basis, is very common among a certain type of critic.   So I’m going to cut to the chase.  Arguments — and I... Read more

    Matthew 22:23-33 Mark 12:18-27 Luke 20:27-40 Compare Matthew 22:46; Mark 12:34   The point of the exchange recorded in these passages is obviously not about marriage as such.  Rather, the Sadducees were using a highly unusual story (which happened to involve marriage) in order to demonstrate, by their lights, the absurdity of the idea of resurrection.   Still, critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have sometimes used this exchange, and specifically Christ’s comments in... Read more

    http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/27138/Default.aspx?topic=article_title   Humongous is a technical term in advanced archaeological science, roughly synonymous with ginormous.     Read more

    I’ve seen comments describing this organization as a “hate group” and characterizing this meeting, in advance, as a “hate fest”:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/elder-ballard-addresses-traditional-marriage-world-congress-families   Such comments simply indicate, to me, how radically intolerant — and, yes, hateful — some of those advocating the redefinition of marriage and family have become over the past few years.  They can’t seem to admit the existence of honest, sincere, decent, and well-intentioned people who dissent from their views.     Read more

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/23/whole-foods-america-s-temple-of-pseudoscience.html   I’ve had dinner with John Mackey a couple of times and listened to him speak on several occasions.  I like him.  And I like his libertarian views.   But I don’t share his veganism, and I have to admit that I think this article lands some solid hits.   Furthermore, it makes the important point that, despite what you’re often told, pseudo-science isn’t a monopoly of irrationally religious right-wing knuckle draggers such as myself.  Whenever I’m in... Read more

    “Faith is trust in what the spirit learned eons ago.”  (B. H. Roberts)     Read more

      A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. Muhammad Ali     Read more

    An interesting read on perhaps the most important remaining undeciphered ancient script in the world:   http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-civilization-cracking-the-indus-script-1.18587     Read more

    Matthew 22:15-22 Mark 12:13-17 Luke 20:20-26 Compare Mark 12:12; John 3:2   The episode described in these passages is pivotal for the history of western civilization, because it offers a basis for the separation of church and state.  No such basis is clearly established in the Hebrew Bible, and it’s not evident in the origins of Islam either, where Muhammad functioned for the last ten years of his life (AD 622-632) as both prophet and statesman.   Of... Read more