Belief in God would seem to be a straightforward matter.  You either believe or you don’t and you either try to obey Him or you don’t—in cartoon terms, you are either a good guy or a bad guy. However, the scriptures seem to suggest that it is entirely possible to believe in God and draw little or no value from that belief.  It can even lead to our condemnation. I am convinced that the only effectual belief is belief in... Read more

Environmental humanities is a new term that we see increasingly used at universities to describe the particularly cultural dimensions of environmental issues and problems. Examples include the Environmental Humanities Masters degree at the University of Utah or the Environmental Humanities Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. It appears that such a center might be in the works at UCLA. At first glance, environmental humanities would appear to be a subfield of the humanities, a kind of thematic set of... Read more

It is not uncommon these days to hear doubts expressed about the value of a humanities education. In difficult economic times like these, there is increasing pressure to convert that value into monetary terms. Will they or will they not make a difference in employment after graduation? (more…) Read more

I recently traveled to Germany, a country where I spent six months of my life when I was in college in 1988. I had not been back since. Any trip to Germany inevitably raises the specter of Germany’s shocking and sickening past. My son Sam and I went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, and as we wandered through the museum and saw fragments of faces and letters, snapshots of individual lives and families in... Read more

The sociologist Max Weber once described scientific understanding as leading to a disenchantment of nature. This is a paradox, of course, since a sense of amazement is vital to an ethic of care and preservation, and yet we cannot expect to take proper care of land without understanding it works. Weber’s point was perhaps overly simplified, since as writers such as Annie Dillard and Marilynne Robinson have made clear what we gain in understanding about the workings of the world... Read more

BYU sponsored a conference on Europe this week, and one of the panels was devoted to a discussion of energy and environment. The speakers included David Long, a BYU professor of Electrical Engineering, who has done extensive work on remote sensing that has played a key role in gathering evidence of the climate’s warming patterns; Günter Hörmandinger, the Environmental Counselor for the European Union delegation in Washington, DC; and Michael Mehling of the Ecologic Institute, also in DC. What was... Read more

Mark Strand recently read his poetry on campus at BYU. In the question and answer session, he made a stunning remark that is worth consideration. He wondered out loud what kind of a different world we would have if heads of state gave some time to poetry in their lives. This is a topic that has garnered the attention of some of Western civilization’s greatest thinkers, of course, and is a debate as old as that between Plato and Aristotle.... Read more

At the risk of repeating what I have already said about community and about politics, in this season of political bickering I wish to reiterate a few principles. I do this because I am centrally interested in the meaning of community, and I have always believed that community is not possible without the foundational practice of forbearance and charity. I have also been inspired recently by two speeches, one by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve... Read more

I confess to feeling my utter insignificance. Even when I imagine my life as having realized its maximum impact on the world, it doesn’t take much imagination or realism to acknowledge that one’s life becomes insignificant in the long term with only a turn or two of the years. And what does it matter anyway? Why feel the need to leave a mark, to be remembered? What could possibly motivate this other than some kind of romance about immortality, about... Read more

Recently I was asked to be on the Mike Townsend show at KBYU Radio. Mike is a specialist in family relationships, and he wanted to talk about the value of getting our kids outside. I don’t consider myself an expert in child psychology nor do I think I have managed to get my kids outdoors with exceptional frequency. But I have strong feelings about the importance of experiences in nature that shape us from an early age. (more…) Read more