Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1185

More in sorrow than in anger

    Yesterday, David Bokovoy responded to my response to him.  Thus, we provide empirical proof of the theological principle of “one eternal round.”   I was pleased at David’s pacific tone, but was, frankly, disheartened and even saddened by the overall thrust of his reply to me.  I’ll address specific points below, with his [Read More...]

Iraqi TV show makes terrorists face their victims

    http://www.ksl.com/?nid=1206&sid=...   I understand concerns about Iraq’s justice system; I’ve lived in the Middle East, and I know something of how these systems work there, even in places that aren’t under pressure from terrorists and/or civil war.  (Even in the United States, remember, Abraham Lincoln — of all people — suspended the right of [Read More...]

After the normalization announcement

    My complaint about Mr. Obama’s recent announcement that he intends to resume diplomatic relations with Cuba centers not so much on that resumption of relations, for which a solid case can be made, but on his (typical) failure to get anything at all in exchange for his granting to the Castro regime something [Read More...]

“It’s like looking at God.”

    “Then, last week, American scientists announced the discovery of radiation patterns in space that may mark the beginning of time itself. Said astrophysicist George Smoot, leader of the research team: ‘If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God.  The order is so beautiful and the symmetry so beautiful that you think there is [Read More...]

New Testament 18

    Matthew 3:13-17 Mark 1:9-11 Luke 3:21-22 John 1:29-34   Whole books can be, have been, and should be written about the baptism of Jesus, and about the proper concept of baptism itself.   I’m not going to write one here, but I’ll offer a couple of very brief observations:   I cannot imagine [Read More...]

Of madness and sanity

    A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.” —Attributed to St. Anthony of Egypt (AD 251-356)

A FARMS time capsule from 1999

    I discovered just tonight — I suppose that I must have known it would be there, but I’d never thought about it — that a BYU devotional address (about the work of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies or FARMS, and its Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts) that I [Read More...]

Inferring purpose from the universe, and God as the purposer

    “The best data we have (concerning the Big Bang) are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.” “If there are a bunch of fruit trees, one can say that whoever created these fruit trees wanted [Read More...]

Objections regarding the “new direction” at the Maxwell Institute

    Bill Hamblin responds, more or less, to David Bokovoy’s response to me:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/enigmati...    

“Why do they leave?”

    An extremely interesting blog entry from John Gee on the question of why youth in general (and Mormon youth in particular) reject faith and/or disaffiliate from their church, synagogue, or mosque:   http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/201...   Those who seek to address such defections will be more effective if they accurately understand what’s causing them.  This [Read More...]