Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1197

Recovering, at long last, from the plague of Mormon exceptionalism

    The new issue of the Maxwell Institute’s substantially redesigned Journal of Book of Mormon Studies features a review by Benjamin E. Park of David F. Holland’s Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (Oxford, 2011) and Eran Shalev’s American Zion: The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution [Read More...]

Mother and child

    “One thing is certain: When the time has come, nothing which is man made will subsist. One day, all human accomplishments will be reduced to a pile of ashes. But every single child to whom a woman has given birth will live forever, for he has been given an immortal soul made to [Read More...]

Christmas Cheer 16

    Do you hate Christmas?   Well, I still think that one or more of these stories might make you feel at least a tiny bit happier:   http://globalnews.ca/news/1721744/ran...   Posted from Orlando, Florida    

The mathematics of nature

    “We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.”  (Alexander Markovich Polyakov [Алекса́ндр Ма́ркович Поляко́в], formerly of the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Moscow and now of Princeton University)   Posted from Orlando, Florida      

Alma 6

    Today’s brief chapter, Alma 6, tells of the chief priest’s setting in order local units of the church — including, I take it, ordaining men to what we would call the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods.   Much of Church leadership — in my experience in bishoprics and on high councils and according to [Read More...]

Music of Christmas 15

    If you get the chance, watch BYU Television’s film about the creation of G. W. F. Händel’s great oratorio Messiah:   http://byu.imodules.com/redirect.aspx...   You’ll never hear the aria “He was despised” quite the same way again.   Even the New York Times gave the documentary a reasonably positive review:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/art....   Posted from Orlando, Florida [Read More...]

Mormonism and torture

    The CIA, the Bush administration, alleged torture, and alleged cover-ups are all in the news.   Two Latter-day Saints were involved in some of this, and certain critics of the Church are exploiting their involvement in order to (surprise!) attack Mormonism.   Even some fairly sophisticated people, including some members of the Church, [Read More...]

This April in the Holy Land!

    There are, I’m told, still a few places in the group:   http://www.cruiselady.com/tour-detail...   Posted from Orlando, Florida    

“5 ways other religions have made me a better Latter-day Saint”

    An interesting blog post out of Texas:   http://www.aggielandmormons.org/2014/...   I completely agree with the spirit of the post.  I’ve been talking and writing about Krister Stendahl’s concept of “holy envy” for many years.  (I used it in these oral remarks from 2000, for example.)   I don’t like the concept of “tolerance” [Read More...]

Pranking Harvard

    Those who know me will find it easy to believe that I would give my eye teeth to have pulled something like this off:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuubO...   And those who know me really well will be aware, perhaps, that one or two pranks in which I was involved as an undergraduate have found [Read More...]