All too often people of faith are fearful of science because it seems to come into conflict with their belief system. God is all powerful, they argue and functions outside the laws of nature. When they read passages in the bible that teaches God is the creator, they conclude that any natural explanations of how our universe came to be must be wrong. (more…)
Having a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Especially when you don’t know how your knowledge fits into the bigger picture. Often critics will misuse a bit of knowledge trusting that the type of people who listen to them are too lazy to find the truth. Flat earth advocates fall into this category. They slam all the rest of humanity by presenting facts out of context and by dismissing other more obvious facts without logical cause. (more…)
I was recently sent a quote from a self-proclaimed healer by the name of Matt Cahn that states “the difference between spirituality and religion is that spirituality is pro light and religion is anti sin”. This apparent sage wisdom comes from a man who presents himself as “a spiritual teacher and highly-attuned empathic healer”Whatever that means. And you can be healed by him for the small cost of $395/hour. And what are his qualifications to charge this amount? (more…)
A recurring mantra I hear from politicians vying for votes is the promise to make life easier for working families. There has emerged in our wealthy western civilization the political determination that easy is better and nobody will get ahead if any degree of difficulty is involved. At some point in our socially progressive society, we began a war on hard. Hard has become bad. (more…)
The number ‘666’ has become a part of our culture, showing up in horror movies, and horror spoofs alike for generations. There are reports of people refusing to use phone numbers with the sequence in it, or finding significant in financial markets when values of 666 appear. The number comes from The Book of Revelation 13:18 “let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number or a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six”. This just one of many numbers that appears in the bible whose meaning has been distorted, miss applied and misunderstood. (more…)
The Mormon faith is unique in its teachings of the nature of God. We teach that God is literally the Father of our spirits, which means we are the same species and destined to the same potential (Romans 8:13). We also believe that God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate and distinct individuals (Acts 7:55,D&C 130:22). (more…)
I have been asked a few times by theists and atheists alike what purpose prayer serves. One harsher critic advised that he prayed every day for a month and found that it had no effect on his life compared to months when he did not pray. None of his requests were answered, and he found no measurable change in his emotional or spiritual health. Softer critics ask why is it that they plead with God and seem to get no answer, or why is it that they have to plead at all? Why does God require us to beg him for what he should just provide as a loving Father in Heaven? (more…)
There is a well known line from the movie The Princess Bride where the villain continually declares things to be inconceivable. Despite his declarations, everything he claims to be inconceivable is not only conceivable, but in fact comes to pass. This leads the swordsman Inigo Montoya to utter his famous line ‘I do not think it means what you think it means’. (more…)
Little is said in the bible concerning heaven and hell. All we know is that the righteous go to one and the wicked go to the other. Most artistic renderings depict hell as the pit of an active volcano where the bad people live for ever and ever, with Satan and his minions in charge to torture and harass them. It is an unimaginably horrifying place that the vilest among us could not conjure up. It is, in my opinion, a place so counter to the God of the New Testament that I am rather confused why anyone would believe such a place exists. (more…)
In the early 1970’s our family purchased a plot of land on Galiano Island, one of an archipelago of islands off the coast of British Columbia known on the Canadian side as the Gulf Islands, and on the American side as the San Juan Islands. For the first few summers, we would camp in a tent trailer while plans were laid to build a cabin. (more…)
