Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1082

“To Mormons, with love from your non-LDS neighbor”

    Doug Ealy alerted me to this little article, which, I think, offers some helpful insights and the almost-always-useful perspective of a friendly “outsider”:   http://www.ldsliving.com/To-Mormons-W...   O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion (Robert Burns) [Read More...]

“Didn’t worry me then. Doesn’t worry me now.”

    Few American theologies are more complex than that of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but its flagship Brigham Young University teaches off-the-shelf, industry-standard evolution. That has been the case since 1931, when the church officially said: “Leave biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the [Read More...]

“One Believer’s Reactions to the CES Letter”

    An interesting response, brought to my attention by Dan Hardey:   http://rationalfaiths.com/one-believe...   While I’m at it, here’s some relevant material from FairMormon:   http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of...   And here’s a transcript of my oral remarks on  the topic, from the 2014 FairMormon conference:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspective...    

“Maya mural reveals ancient ‘photobomb’”

    Thanks to Kevin Flanigan for calling this to my notice:   http://www.livescience.com/49855-obsi...    

New Testament 244

    John 8:21-29   Jesus speaks very enigmatically here, and “the Jews” predictably fail to understand him.   One of the central points to take away from the passage, though, is entirely clear: “You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.”   That applied to them then, and it [Read More...]

“Progressive Muslims Fight Back Against Fundamentalism”

    An interesting little video clip — not quite six minutes long — called to my notice by Jabra Ghneim:   http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpictur...    

“Speaker gives ‘barebones secular argument for the Gospel’”

    I heard this speech.   It was nothing but insults and vicious ad hominems, mingled with lies:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...    

Scientific reductionism, brain, and mind

    “I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . .  We have to recognize that we are spiritual [Read More...]

Amusing.

    No, GEICO isn’t paying me to push this commercial:   http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7UFD/geico-kra...   I just think it’s funny.    

New Testament 243

    John 8:12-20   If you know Jesus, in some significant sense, you know the Father — of whom Jesus is a perfectly faithful representation.