Boyd K Packer is often maligned for his parable of the atonement he put for in his 1977 conference talk entitled the mediator.
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Well, I finally am moving on with a little bit more of Ostler, and I’ve stumbled into a problem.

You see, Ostler notes that original sin isn’t really as the rest of the world has conceived it. However, he does note that entrance into the world does submit us to genetic pre-conditions and the traditions of our fathers. This means we all do sin, based on these propensities built into us.
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So far so good with my pre-season predictions for BYU football. I predicted a BYU victory and that part was right. I predicted a final score of 16-9 so a 20-7 actual score wasn’t too far off. What I didn’t predict was that this was never a close game at all. BYU totally dominated Arizona on Saturday in ways the final score just doesn’t reveal. Here is what I saw on Saturday:

Defense

It was a dominating performance by the defense. The seven points given up came in the waning seconds of the game. The Cougs were just that close to pitching a shutout. The defense is living up to the hype so far. That is good news to Cougar fans and bad news to opposing teams.
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Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters get a lot of attention, but I find most people have not read much C.S. Lewis beyond that (if anything, the Great Divorce, The Abolition of Man, maybe The Weight of Glory). Although I’m a big fan of his famous books like Screwtape Letters, most of my favorite Lewis comes from his shorter essays and lesser known stuff. Here are some snippets from the Letters of C.S. Lewis, a collection of some of his personal letters to fans and friends. I thought some of these might generate interesting discussion if people are inclined to discuss. I numbered them so you can refer to them more easily. (more…)