Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1124

The Book of Mormon as “inspired fiction”?

    The idea is popular in certain very small circles within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and on its fringes:   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.d...   Posted from Wittenberg, Germany    

Does the Church boast, unscripturally, about the humanitarian good that it does?

    A vocal number of angry secularist ex-Mormons like to complain online about humanitarian aid given out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   It’s not enough, they say.   I’ll leave aside the likelihood that they themselves give little or nothing, because I can’t know in any individual case what [Read More...]

From and about a great modern German writer (if a problematic man)

    Some scattered quotations from the playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956):   Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste.   Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.   He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.   What happens [Read More...]

“Elder L. Tom Perry dies at age 92″

    I’m so, so sad at this news.  (I wrote about Elder Perry yesterday, here.)   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article...   He was so remarkably clear and vigorous up until his diagnosis with cancer.  Thereupon, things went rapidly.  Mercifully, I suppose.   My wife and I were able to send something from Israel to him upon our return [Read More...]

I’m not frightened by the approaching heat-death of the universe.

    I’m going to leave that to my students.  Let them worry about it:   https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang...   Serves ‘em right.   But it will be too bad, assuming that the universe is really all that there is and that it’s purely naturalistic, that Shakespeare, Little League coaching, Beethoven, service as Cub Scout den mothers, [Read More...]

Apostate internet behavior scientifically explained?

    I often marvel at the bizarre internet behavior of certain apostate critics of Mormonism.   Now, though, I think I may have found an explanation:   https://www.braindecoder.com/caffeine...   More than a few of them also post from time to time on the life-transforming wonders that they’ve discovered in their post-liberation consumption of coffee. [Read More...]

In Australia, Elder Quentin Cook calls for a global effort to defend religious liberty

    This has become a recurrent theme of members of the Council of the Twelve, both within the United States and internationally.  It behooves Latter-day Saints to be aware of the issue and informed on the issues:   http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article...   Elder Cook is, among other things, a graduate of Stanford Law School.   Posted [Read More...]

“Buddhism’s Pali Canon”

    The latest installment of the semi-weekly Hamblin/Peterson Deseret News column is now up, for better or for worse:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...   Posted from Berlin, Germany    

Millennials: The Least Religious Generation

    Not surprising.   Challenging, of course, for those of us who think it a bad trend, but not surprising:   http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newsc...   Again, this is the environment in which believers — and especially missionary-minded believers — need to work.  So we need to understand it.   Posted from already largely unchurched Berlin, Germany [Read More...]

When leftist mythology meets Catholic belief on a Catholic campus, which one wins?

    For an interesting and by no means atypical case, see here:   http://www.yaf.org/slu-cultural-sensi...   You might enjoy this little item, too, about classroom crosses at (Catholic) Boston College and the 2009 controversy surrounding them:   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2...   May BYU remain forthrightly and unapologetically Mormon!   (Experience has taught me that that’s not as [Read More...]