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“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”

Last updated on: March 20, 2025 at 1:34 am by Dan Peterson

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“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” 2025-03-20T01:34:03-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The official conference poster

I would like to call your attention to an upcoming conference, on “Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition.” It will be convened on the campus of Brigham Young University on two successive Saturdays, 3 May 2025 and 10 May 2025. Please see the poster above and, for further details (e.g., on presenters, program and abstracts, location, times, and the conference poster itself), click on this link.

Through Abraham’s faithfulness, he merited the stunningly universal promise of God that “in [him] shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). Latter-day Saints, in common with those in many other religious traditions, rejoice in the ongoing fulfillment of that promise. However, though the blessings patiently, and sometimes painfully, secured by his family through unwavering faith in the face of trial and heartache are well-documented in scripture, the wealth of insights that ancient and modern scholarship can shed on these scriptural accounts is generally underappreciated.

This two-day conference will gather scholars from Latter-day Saint and other traditions to discuss the enduring legacy of Abraham and his immediate family in scripture, history, and tradition. A primary focus of the conference will be focus on covenant- and temple-related themes that have been deeply woven into relevant accounts in the Bible, the Qur’an, and other religious texts. In addition, believing that authentic history sits behind modern scripture, special emphasis will be given to ancient threads relating to Abrahamic material in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Abraham.

Los Angeles, with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo). I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, earned my final university degree there, and have spent a fair amount of time in and around it since. So I pay attention.

You may have noticed a relatively new story in the news media about a considerable number of sex-abuse cases that have recently been filed against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is sad and regrettable on every level, regardless of the eventual legal outcomes and regardless, even, of the precise facts involved. Christopher D. Cunningham has written a helpful article that will help to provide at least some framework for evaluating for the story: “Understanding the California Sex Abuse Lawsuit: The Church’s Response in Context”

Delicate Arch, in Arches National Park, should be familiar to at least some if only because it’s featured on many Utah automobile license plates. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I’m delighted to see that this is actually going forward. I just hope that what comes out of the facility will be worthy of my adopted home state and its great natural beauty — and (it’s Hollywood, so one must be realistic) not too terribly discordant with the values of the faith (my faith) that founded the state: “Kevin Costner’s movie studio is ready for business in Washington County”

A view of the Hawaiian Islands from space. From the lower right, the major islands are Hawaii (“the Big Island”), Maui (with a ring of clouds around its immense eastern volcano, Haleakalā, and a much smaller cloud over the ruins of its western volcano), Moloka’i, Oahu, and, somewhat more distantly, near a large cloud bank on the right hand side of the photo, Kaua’i. By the way, it may shock some folks who follow this blog to see that Earth’s curvature is plainly visible in the photograph. Of course, it’s a NASA public domain image, so it was probably faked somewhere in Houston.

Flying for thousands of miles over the Pacific Ocean today, I couldn’t help but think of an entry that I’ve always liked in The Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce (born 1842; disappeared sometime in 1914), It reads as follows:

Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.

An avowed agnostic, a cynic, and a vocal denier of the deity of Christ, Bierce was, of course, poking a finger in the eye of the Christians who surrounded him.

It’s a funny line, but, if the contemporary Christian apologist Hugh Ross is to be believed, Bierce’s cynicism may perhaps have been misplaced and misconceived. Before devoting himself to apologetics, by the way, Ross completed a doctorate at the University of Toronto in astrophysics and did postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech. Here are a couple of brief reflections from him on the question of terrestrial water:

“Where Did Earth Get Its Fine-Tuned Supply of Water?” “Such fine-tuning is guaranteed to generate even more philosophical disquiet among Moon-formation modelers seeking strictly naturalistic explanations. For Christian theists, however, it will be cause for rejoicing and celebration.”
“A Planet’s Surface Ocean Formation Requires Fine-Tuning”: “Without surface liquid water there is no possibility for the existence of physical life.”

And here is a relevant item from Dr. Jonathan McLatchie, who holds a bachelor’s degree in forensic biology from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, a master’s degree (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Glasgow, a second master’s degree (in medical and molecular bioscience) from Newcastle University, and a PhD in evolutionary biology from Newcastle University. Before becoming a fellow of the Center for Science and Culture and its resident biologist, he was an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts: “The Properties of Water Point to Intelligent Design”

Just some thoughts to consider while chuckling along with Ambrose Bierce.

Maximilien Luce, “Le bon samaritain” (1895); Wikimedia Commons public domain image

It can be wearisome to try to chronicle the many horrors inflicted upon humankind by theism and theists. But I’m here for you. I do at least some of the work so that you don’t have to. Here’s something, for example, from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Through JustServe and WelcomeNST, families welcome others to their communities: ‘That’s how God’s work gets done,’ says WelcomeNST founder”

And this extraordinarily interesting and important article was located in at least the general vicinity of the Hitchens File: “Perspective: Progressives are starting to come around on the importance of marriage and fatherhood: It’s getting harder to ignore the data that show men fare better when they have the ‘positive pressure’ of caring for a family”

Posted from Poʻipū, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi

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