Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 210

An overflowing cup

    “Tonight: Dan Peterson at the Lethbridge YSA Stake FHE: The Witnesses” This presentation, which I’ve titled “The Witnesses: Sincerity and Reality,” will be a companion piece to the presentation that I gave to people affiliated with the LDS Institute at Stanford University a few weeks ago.  That one was entitled “The Witnesses: Variety […]

At the very end

    I return yet again to Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, Martin Harris: Uncompromising Witness of the Book of Mormon (Provo: BYU Studies, 2018).   This extract comes from a letter written by Martin Harris Jr. to President George A. Smith, dated 9 July 1875: He has continued to talk about and testify to […]

“I became aware of the most powerful, radiant, brilliant white light.”

    In their book Glimpses Beyond Death’s Door: Gospel Insights into Near-Death Experiences (Orem: Granite Publishing, 2005), Brent L. Top and Wendy L. Top cite the case of a man who had a near-death experience when he was the victim of an attempted murder:   I became aware of the most powerful, radiant, brilliant […]

Once Again, a Note on Traditional Arabic Names

    I think that I need to explain traditional Arabic names to the readers of the book that I’m currently preparing for publication and to two classes that I’m currently teaching.  Something like the following will do, I think:   There are certain basic elements in traditional Arabic names.  For instance, there is the […]

“The Design Inference” (Part 2)

    Continued:   According to William Dembski, design can be detected or inferred by using what he terms an “explanatory filter.”  This “filter” checks for signs of contingency, complexity, and specificity, while filtering out the background noise of mere chance and necessity.  If an event or an object exhibits all three of the enumerated […]

Orson Pratt, reacting to the death of Martin Harris

    It seems that I’ll be doing a fireside on Monday evening, 14 September 2020, on the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.  It will be primarily for a Young Single Adults stake in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, but it also may involve other stakes in Lethbridge and even, perhaps, in Calgary.  As I’m currently […]

Revision 4.25 “Contrasting Islam and Latter-day Saint Teaching” (Part 5, Conclusion)

    This focus upon submission to the inscrutable will of God as the characteristic mark of true religion points to Islam’s emphasis upon the omnipotence of God. It is an emphasis that is absolutely fundamental to the religion. It underlies Muslim rejection of the doc­trine of the atonement of Christ and flavors daily life […]

“The Design Inference” (Part 1)

    Philosophers such as Richard Swinburne [of the University of Oxford] have presented muscular inductive arguments from design that do not depend on the fine-tuning argument . . . , but invoke long-known aspects of nature such as the cycles of the seasons, the orbits of planets, the spectrum of colors, the beauty of […]

“‘Shut up,’ he explained.”

    A short literary passage that seems to me increasingly apropos to our culture of rising intolerance and cancellation — see this egregiously silly case, for example — appears at Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrants (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1920), 78:   “‘Shut up,’ he explained.”   That brief sentence comes forcibly to my mind as […]

“The Waters of Mormon, Baptism, the Love of God, and the Bitter Fountain”

    I was really busy yesterday, so I didn’t have time to post a link to the latest iteration of my bi-weekly column for the Deseret News.  But here it is.  This particular installment is unusually autobiographical:   “When the Pope left the Vatican for a meeting of healing: When Pope John Paul II […]