![\"Classic](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2020\/10\/Girl_listening_to_radio.gif\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just finished recording a podcast with Richard T. Steadman (\u201cRichie T\u201d) of The Cultural Hall<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure when it will go public.\u00a0 Maybe next Tuesday or so.\u00a0 (I assume that it will<\/em> go public!)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here are some new items for you on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me<\/em> Old Testament Lesson 22 \u201cBe Strong and of a Good Courage\u201d<\/em>: Joshua 1\u20138; 23\u201324<\/a><\/p>\n The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me<\/em>\u00a0Old Testament Lesson 22,\u00a0\u201cBe Strong and of a Good Courage,\u201d<\/em> on Joshua 1\u20138; 23\u201324, features Martin Tanner, Kris Frederickson, and Michael Parker.\u00a0 This roundtable was extracted from the 17 April 2022 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show. The complete broadcast may be heard at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreter-radio-show-April-17-2022\/<\/a>.\u00a0 You can listen live to the Interpreter Radio Show on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nibley Lectures: One Eternal Round<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Lesson 9<\/a><\/p>\n In 1990, Hugh Nibley presented a series of twelve lectures on Facsimile 2 in the Pearl of Great Price. The lectures occurred almost weekly beginning on June 27, first in the Maeser Building and later in the Joseph Smith Building auditorium.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Interpreter Radio Show \u2014 April 17, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n In the first hour of this installment of the weekly Interpreter Radio Show, Martin Tanner, Kris Fredrickson, and Michael Parker discuss Easter.\u00a0 The second portion of the show was devoted to a roundtable discussing the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson #22 (Joshua 1\u20138; 23\u201324).\u00a0 (See above.) The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard live each and every Sunday evening between 7 PM and 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.\u00a0 As an alternative, and without regard to where you\u2019re located, or you can call it up on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On a predominantly atheistic message board that I watch \u2014 largely because I\u2019m a constant (by which I mean daily) target there \u2014 someone raised a question about whether the Witnesses<\/em> theatrical movie or the Hulu\/FX miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em> is more \u201caccurate.\u201d\u00a0 (Given the place where it was posed, the answer to that question was, of course, never seriously in doubt.\u00a0 It would be rather like proposing \u201cIs Dan Peterson a ridiculous, incompetent, unprincipled, and malicious mediocrity?\u201d as a topic for debate before the house.\u00a0 I mean, such a question is scarcely worth asking.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One of the brighter participants there responded that, of the two films, Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em> is more accurate.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Why?\u00a0 Partly, he says, because the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon were just a small group.\u00a0 And that, of course, is true.\u00a0 Including Joseph Smith himself, there were only twelve of them \u2014 the same number that typically serve on a jury in the United States.\u00a0 (American juries are sometimes entrusted with decisions of great import, even life and death.)\u00a0 And there were only about sixteen or eighteen of them altogether, even if we include the informal<\/em> or unofficial<\/em> witnesses.\u00a0 So, yes, just a small group.\u00a0 But still far more eyewitnesses than are typically needed to establish even a very weighty fact in court.\u00a0 Another reason for dismissing Witnesses<\/em> as inaccurate is that the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, he says, were \u201cunreliable.\u201d\u00a0 (He offers no evidence or argument for this characterization, which, for the record, I declare to be false, baseless, and unjust.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n His more interesting objection, though, and his principal reason for deeming Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em> to be accurate while dismissing Witnesses<\/em> as inaccurate<\/em>, is that Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em> involves no \u201csupernatural\u201d events.\u00a0 Which is true.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s an obvious and revealing example, of course, of how assumptions (or \u201cprior commitments\u201d) influence and constrain our judgments, no further thought or investigation required.\u00a0 (If I\u2019m convinced that the earth is only six thousand years old, no amount of fossil evidence is likely to persuade me of Darwinian evolution.\u00a0 If I\u2019m absolutely certain that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in a runaway landslide, I won\u2019t be convinced by any number of investigations purporting to demonstrate that he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 If I know for sure that COVID-19 is fake news and\/or that a secret cabal of pedophiles are running the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, in fact, our government in general, I\u2019ll find reasons everywhere to justify my views and to dismiss any and all evidence to the contrary.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m reminded of the atheistic historian Dale Morgan (1914-1971), who was once something of a fashionable darling of cultural Mormons<\/a>.\u00a0 In 1945, he wrote a letter to the believing Latter-day Saint historian Juanita Brooks in which he stated the fundamental issue with unusual frankness and candor:\u00a0 \u201cWith my point of view on God,\u201d he said, \u201cI am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith\u2019s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church.\u201d\u00a0 (Dale Morgan to Juanita Brooks, 15 December 1945, at Arlington, Virginia. Transcribed in John Phillip Walker, ed., Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History<\/em> [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986], 84\u201391. The quoted passage occurs on page 87.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, taken simplistically and in isolation, the same standard of judgment \u2014 non-\u201csupernatural\u201d accounts are, by that measure alone, always and everywhere to be preferred to \u201csupernatural\u201d accounts \u2014 would also suggest a reason for approving the superior accuracy of D. W. Griffith\u2019s classic (and deeply racist) 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation<\/em> and Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s famous 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph des Willens<\/em> (\u201cTriumph of the Will\u201d).\u00a0 Neither of these cinematic landmarks, so far as I can remember, invokes the \u201csupernatural\u201d or claims to depict explicitly divine actions.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I guess it\u2019s a matter of what one\u2019s worldview counts as acceptable.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The news media don\u2019t seem to be very interested in stories like this:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPro-abortion rights activists hit Catholic churches, but you probably didn\u2019t read about it\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an interesting article that\u2019s relevant to questions of the relationship between religion and science:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n