Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 189

You can help to make an already superb BYU program even better.

    Please permit me to introduce my longtime friend and colleague Dilworth B. Parkinson, who retired from Brigham Young University back in 2017:   After earning his doctorate in Arabic sociolinguistics from the University of Michigan, Dil Parkinson (who had served his first mission in Beirut, Lebanon) founded the Arabic program at BYU, which, […]

At war among ourselves?

    My most recent column for the Deseret News, which appeared this morning, has a vaguely New Year theme:   “More than resolutions: How religious holidays, traditions prompt remembering, reflection: Reflection, coupled with the notion of new beginnings, is at the very core of many religious beliefs and practices, including during Easter, Passover, Christmas, […]

On Witnesses to Extraordinary Events

    For some curious reason, I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the nature, value, and limitations of eyewitnesses testimony.  Here are a couple of quotations on the subject:   The historical reality of a miracle is proved in the same manner that any historical event is proved, namely, by human testimony.  Testimony […]

The Origin of Life on Earth: An Insoluble Problem?

    Among the millions of distinct species on our planet, even the simplest forms of organic life are astoundingly complex.  As the outspokenly atheistic Oxford zoologist and science popularizer Richard Dawkins is said to have observed, the information contained in the DNA of just the cell nucleus of one unicellular amoeba exceeds the information […]

Martin Harris Testifies in Smithfield, plus “Medieval Christian Views of Hebrew as the Language of Magic”

    The Interpreter Foundation doesn’t shut down for the holidays.  On the contrary: Much to the irritated disgust of certain critics, it just keeps producing and publishing, week after week after week.  Today, for example, an article went up in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship by Andrew C. Skinner, under the […]

Does the Existence of the Universe Point to a Creator?

    Why is there anything at all?   Either the universe — by which, in this instance, I intend the ensemble, the totality, of all that exists — has always existed in some form or another, a simple brute fact that requires and admits of no explanation, or it came into existence.  The cosmological […]

Revision 8.9 Students occupy the BYU Jerusalem Center (plus a Christmas wrap-up)

    But first . . .   “Essay #35: Moses 1 in Its Ancient Context: 035. Moses Falls to the Earth (Moses 1:9-11)”   And also this:   As Christmas 2020 recedes into the past, there will for many (and especially for children) an inevitable let-down.  There is so much anticipation of the holiday, […]

“Christmas as Devotional”: Christ appeared in order to reconcile us

    First of all, I wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas!   ***   Cherry Bushman Silver wrote the Interpreter Foundation’s Christmas essay for 2020.  That essay appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   Christmas as Devotional: A Time of Commitment Abstract: Christmas is more than a time for […]

Some favorite music for the season (3)

    I know.  I know.  I already mentioned  Es ist ein Ros entsprungen here a couple of weeks ago.  But it’s so beautiful that I can’t simply omit it from this rundown of favorite Christmas pieces.  I still vividly remember the exquisite thrill that went through me when, many years ago, I first heard it sung by […]

Some favorite music for the season (2)

    “Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfill all that which I have caused to be spoken by […]