I’m halfway through a period of temporary bachelorhood: My wife is babysitting one of our granddaughters out in Virginia, assisted by my middle son. I couldn’t go because of some obligations here at home. But it now appears that I may actually survive. And, someday, I’ll do the dishes and do the wash. Certainly before she comes home! A while back, I posted a number of entries here about the destruction in the New World that... Read more
A new article — this one a review essay — went up earlier today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. As with all of the other journal articles that we’ve published over the past nearly 10.5 years, it is available to all and sundry at absolutely no charge: “An Important New Study of Freemasonry and the Latter-day Saints: What’s Good, What’s Questionable, and What’s Missing in Method Infinite,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw Review of... Read more
Scott Pierson has kindly called my attention to this article from today’s Jerusalem Post about an important recent research discovery. I was already aware of the discovery and will probably write something about it for Meridian Magazine, but I had not seen this particular article, which provides a very accessible summary of the find: “Written records of biblical King David discovered by researchers: The stele was discovered in fragments in 1868 roughly 15 miles east of the Dead Sea... Read more
Up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Conference Talks: Answering New Atheism and Seeking a Sure Knowledge of God,” given by Amy L. Williams In these remarks, which were delivered in 2013, Dr. Williams describes and counters the arguments of the “New Atheism,” a loose movement that some have characterized as espousing the belief that religion should be actively countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument. She also describes the role of faith and verifiability in... Read more
To the considerable irritation of at least a few extremely irritable critics, the Interpreter Foundation continues to produce. Here are three items that went up just today: Come, Follow Me — New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 4, January 16 — January 22: John 1 — “We Have Found the Messiah” As he’s been doing very consistently for a long time, Jonn Claybaugh yet again provides a concise set of notes for students and teachers of the... Read more
Many years ago, there was a period when my speaking engagements on behalf of the old FARMS — the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, predecessor to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and, organizationally, to BYU’s new-direction Maxwell Institute — got a bit out of hand. I was being sent out at least once a month, often to one of the coasts and, once or twice, first to one coast and then immediately, on... Read more
With a group of friends (mostly neighbors and former neighbors), we are putting together a private bus tour for this summer to church history and general historical sites in England and just a bit of Scotland. (Some of the sites will probably play a role in our new “Six Days in August” film project, and it’s likely that at least one of our principal filmmakers from Witnesses and Undaunted and the “Insights” short-video series, and perhaps all three,... Read more
I think that I’ll post another set of draft notes inspired by (and, to a considerable extent, drawing upon) Michael Guillen’s Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Refresh, 2021). The question of the origin of life on Earth — the question of abiogenesis, the emergence of life from non-life — continues to puzzle researchers. Michael Guillen sees two broad categories of proposed... Read more
Today’s new article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship reviews an essay by a friend and former student of mine (one of the brightest that I’ve ever had). It touches on a sensitive and often inflammatory subject: ““We Don’t Know, So We Might as Well”: A Flimsy Philosophy for Same-Sex Sealings,” written by Matthew Watkins Review of Nate Oman, “A Welding Link of Some Kind,” Thoughts from a Tamed Cynic (Substack, September 27, 2022). Abstract: Nate Oman claims to... Read more
I first read the Meditations of the Stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) back when I was in high school. (I belonged to some sort of book club through which I bought fairly inexpensive hardback editions of classic works; I still own the copy that I bought and read when I was about fifteen or sixteen.) I’ve had a deep fondness for him ever since, and (although he himself was a pagan and not particularly friendly toward... Read more
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