Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 140

“Putin! Putin! Putin!”

      ***   Cody Quirk has kindly brought to my attention a report in the Salt Lake Tribune indicating that the professional ex-Latter-day Saint podcaster John Dehlin makes at least $236,000 per year for his efforts.  Clearly, I chose the wrong line of work.   ***   I was very surprised and even […]

Brief Notes on “Terminal Lucidity” and Consciousness in Brain-Death

    ***   From The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences, by the British intensive-care nurse and researcher Dr. Penny Sartori:   An account related to Dr. Sartori by Lyon White, of Sussex: “My mother Peggy, whilst in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s disease was no longer able to converse with any coherency at all.  Her […]

Life in a Finely-Tuned Cosmos

    ***   Some time back, I read Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).  Here are just a few of the passages from the book that I marked for future use:   Consider gravity.  Newton described gravity with his […]

What can Ukrainian Latter-day Saints expect if Putin gets his way?

      ***   “Ukrainian prayers of faith: Watch CNN footage of citizens praying in public square”   Over the past couple of days, I’ve posted blog entries here that, among other things, have alluded to religious dimensions of the struggle between Russia and Ukraine.  I’m grateful to certain readers of this blog for […]

“First Presidency Statement on Armed Conflict”

      ***   This just in:   “First Presidency Statement on Armed Conflict: Church leaders plead that “peace will prevail among nations and within our own hearts””   ***   National Review:  “Mitt Romney Is Entitled to His ‘I Told You So’”   ***   Now seems an appropriate time for me to […]

“Overwriting Ether: Moroni’s Transfiguration of Jaredite Scripture”

      ***   A new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Overwriting Ether: Moroni’s Transfiguration of Jaredite Scripture,” by David J. Larsen Review of Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, Ether: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 128 pages. $9.95 (paperback). Abstract: The Book of Ether […]

“Under the Banner of Heaven”

      ***   Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be aware that they are about to be front and center yet again in a not-insignificant pop-cultural event, a five-part Hulu television mini-series entitled Under the Banner of Heaven that will air this coming spring.  It’s scarcely the first […]

It’s been, astoundingly, nearly thirty years . . .

    ***   Back in the first half of 1993, I led a small contingent of fairly advanced undergraduate students of Arabic to East Jerusalem for an intensive five-month language program there.  (We also visited Egypt and Jordan.)   One of those students, who has been teaching at Cornell University for quite a few […]

Of Atheistic “Brights” and Religious “Dims”

    ***   First of all, I hope that you’re having a happy 22/02/22.  However, I’m going to leave the festive celebrations of the day for a moment and move on to other pressing matters.   I’m a bit late in mentioning it, but my latest article for Meridian Magazine went up yesterday:   […]

Of Victims and Psychics

    ***   The invaluable Jeff Lindsay has posted an interesting item on his blog regarding the portion of the Book of Mormon that is set in ancient Arabia:   “An Update on Maps of the Arabian Peninsula Showing Nahom-related Names”   ***   Some time back, I was deleting some old computer files […]