Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 209

Revision 5.4 “Islamic Law” (C)

    Actually, what I have been saying is an oversimplification. It was only gradually that the chain of transmitters, known in Arabic as an isnad, became a required part of a hadith report. For approxi­mately the first century after the death of the Prophet, no special care was taken in the transmission of traditions […]

“Watch the ‘Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses’ Conference This Weekend”

    At 7:00 PM on Friday night, Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Sister Marie K. Hafen will kick off the Interpreter Foundation’s first conference on the Book of Moses, which is being co-sponsored by Brigham Young University’s Department of Ancient Scripture as well as by our sister organizations, Book of Mormon Central and FairMormon.  It […]

“The Design Inference” (Part 3)

    Continued:   According to William Dembski, while both contingency and complexity are required for the inference of design to kick in, neither contingency nor complexity nor even a combination of the two is sufficient to fully justify such an inference.  Both must be present. along with what Dembski calls specificity or specification.   […]

Revision 5.3 “Islamic Law” (B)

    The opposite of sunna, first in pre-Islamic Arabia and ultimately within Islam itself, was bid‘a (“innovation”), which eventually came to mean “heresy” Thus, the Islamic community became a conserva­tive one in which “heresy” was divergence from the established prac­tice of the community. (It might be seen why one sect of Islam claimed for […]

“Taking a ‘Leap of Faith’ in [the late Senator Bob] Bennett’s book on the origins of the Book of Mormon”

    I published this column in the Deseret News on 28 April 2016.  Its publication had been unaccountably delayed for a long time and, when I discovered that delay — I had been out of the country for a prolonged period and had lost track — I pushed it forward as fast as I […]

“For me there is no debate.”

    Douglas Axe studied engineering and molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley and at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he earned his doctorate.  He then did postdoctoral research at Cambridge University in England, followed by a stint as a research scientist there.   Here are some passages that I […]

Revision 5.2 “Islamic Law” (A)

    Making Arabic the language of administration in the empire was part of a larger and very important process by which the Middle East became both Arab and, overwhelmingly, Muslim. The first Arab conquerors had been content to let the old bureaucracies from the Persian and Byzantine states continue to run things. But now, […]

On my father’s birthday

    Today is my Dad’s birthday — as I write, it’s late (I’ve had an exceptionally busy day), but it’s still just barely the right day — and I try to post something about him every year on the anniversary of his birth and on the anniversary of his passing.  I see it as […]

Revision 5.1 “The Emergence of Classical Arabic Civilization”

    Classical Arabic Civilization The late Marshall G. S. Hodgson, one of the greatest Western stu­dents of Islam of the past century, developed an outline of Islamic his­tory that I find very helpful.[1] In it, he distinguishes seven different periods. Let me summarize them here. First, Hodgson states, there was the “Pre-Islamic Period.” It […]

Life on Venus? Intelligent Life on Earth?

    Now this is interesting:   “Phosphine gas found in Venus’ atmosphere may be ‘a possible sign of life’: Astronomers detected signs of a smelly, toxic gas that microbes can make in the planet’s clouds”   ***   I began this Fall term at BYU teaching three classes, two of them online and one […]