Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 154

Some Thoughts on Science and Faith

    ***   I feel like sharing some quotations that I’ve previously gathered from believing scientists/mathematicians:   “While . . . media attention goes to the strident atheists who claim religion is foolish superstition, and to the equally clamorous religious creationists who deny the clear evidence for cosmic and biological evolution, a majority of […]

“Oh, that I were an angel”

    ***   A new article appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.  It was written by someone too mean-spirited, nasty, dishonest, and ignorant to mention.  (I’ve been reading some anonymous online comments about the author, so I know.)   “Oh, That I Were an Angel!” Abstract: Alma’s conversion experience […]

See it!

    ***   My wife and I went last night to see a showing of The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C. S. Lewis. at a theater near the local campus of the University of California at Irvine.  We were expecting to go with a friend who was to be along with […]

“For Arthur VanWagenen and family”

    ***   I’m deeply distressed to write this blog entry, but I feel that I should do so.   Our friend Arthur VanWagenen, of Excel Entertainment, is in desperate medical straits.  My wife and I met him slightly past midway in the development of the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses theatrical film.  He was centrally […]

On Imperfect Prophets and a Great President

    ***   A new installment of Kyler Rasmussen’s Bayesian reflections has just gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   Estimating the Evidence Episode 18: On Imperfect Prophets [Editor’s Note: This is the eighteenth in a series of 23 essays summarizing and evaluating Book of Mormon-related evidence from a Bayesian statistical perspective. […]

Testing the Sincerity of the Witnesses Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer Jr.

    ***   Did you miss these articles when they appeared the first time?   Daniel C. Peterson, “Vast Prairies and Trackless Wilds of Snow: A Good Test of Sincerity” Abstract: Embarking roughly six months after the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 1830–1831 “mission to the Lamanites” faced challenges […]

“Tamid: Zacharias and the Second Temple”

    ***   This article appeared earlier today (Monday) in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   Lisle G. Brown, “Tamid: Zacharias and the Second Temple” Abstract: This essay follows Zacharias’ biography from entering the priesthood till the day the angel Gabriel appeared to him in Herod’s temple. After recounting the procedures to […]

From the city by the Bay

    ***   We spent a few moments on the grounds of the Sacramento California Temple late this morning, having driven across the Donner Pass and down into California’s great Central Valley, and then we enjoyed a quiet late afternoon and early evening walk in Muir Woods National Monument.  (“The clearest way into the […]

Happy Halloween! (“Ways of Remembering the Dead”)

    ***   Here in the United States of America and in more than a few other places, the Halloween season is upon us.  So here is my 2021 Halloween offering, in Meridian Magazine:   “Ways of Remembering the Dead”   With that in mind, I suppose it was appropriate that my wife and […]

“Mine House is a House of Zion and not a House of Babylon!”

    ***   Today, a new article by Loren Blake Spendlove has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Mine House is a House of Zion and not a House of Babylon!” Abstract: In Doctrine and Covenants 132:8 we read: “Behold, mine house is a house of order, saith the Lord God, and […]