April 2009 Archives

At Mormon Insights, a post on the do's and don'ts of teaching evolution to college students.

The author:

I am a happy and content Latter-day Saint who teaches evolution at a non-LDS university. In fact, I have taught evolution in various forums and institutions for 30 years.

That and other interesting questions debated in the hundered-plus comments to "What do you think about Evolution?" at Mormon Matters. FYI, I would not rely on the way the quote that constitutes the bulk of the post tries to distinguish natural selection from evolution.

Lots of stories on the latest Pew Forum survey, "Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S." Here is the first paragraph from the summary prepared by Pew:

Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once.

At Harvard, as reported in the campus paper, the Harvard Crimson: "Mormons Clarify Beliefs." Don't laugh -- the way the newspaper business is going, campus papers might be all we have left in a couple of years.

In the Saturday afternoon session of the recent LDS General Conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook, one of the newer members of the Quorum of the Twelve, related a fascinating vignette concerning Charles Dickens as part of his address ("Our Father's Plan—Big Enough For All His Children"). Here is the vignette in its entirety.