Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 232

Are mind and consciousness reducible to events in the physical brain?

    Notes drawn from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010) [originally published in Dutch as Eindeloos Bewustzijn]:   Consciousness, the subjective experience of an inner self, poses one of the greatest challenges to neuroscience.  Even a detailed knowledge of the brain’s workings and neural correlates of […]

Revision 1.5. “The Maccabean Revolt and the Rise of the Pharisees”

    In 175 B.C., aggressive Jewish reformers found an enthusiastic but dangerous ally in a new Seleucid monarch who called himself Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus believed in Hellenism, yes, but he also thought that Hellenism would provide him with higher tax revenues—revenues that he desperately needed in order to keep his many wars going. Casting […]

From the Eight Witnesses

    Some passages about the experience of the Eight Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, drawn from Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014):   According to Lucy Mack Smith, one of the ancient Nephites brought the plates to a nearby grove where “the male […]

“Saving Faith: How Families Protect, Sustain, and Encourage Faith”

    “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble,” Will Rogers (or Josh Billings or Artemus Ward or Kin Hubbard or Mark Twain) is reported to have said.  “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”   With that wise insight in mind, we take a look at actual […]

On “The Sôd of Yhwh and the Endowment”

    This is an interesting article, but it’s also a melancholy reminder of the talent and the insights that we lost when Bill Hamblin passed away, far too young, in December 2019:   “The Sôd of Yhwh and the Endowment”Abstract: Most scholars agree that sôd, when used in relationship to God, refers to the […]

Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer (Conclusion)

    I hereby bring my little trilogy (which began with “Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer” and “A Prolegomenon to ‘Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer'”) to a close with an episode from three decades back.  Perhaps slightly more:   The telephone rang at about 5:00 AM or so.  We had been soundly […]

Revision 1.4 Hellenism

    The records that the Hebrews had so laboriously created would eventually prove to be of great worth to their descendants, helping them understand their own uniqueness and their special covenant rela­tionship with God.[1] New challenges were arising, and these records became invaluable. In the late fourth century B.C., the land­scape of the Near […]

A Prolegomenon to “Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer”

    I first met Elder Boyd K. Packer when he came to Switzerland during a time that I was serving in the office of the Switzerland Zürich Mission.   One of the first things that he did was to take a tour of the mission headquarters.  When he came into my office, he was […]

Getting to Know Elder Boyd K. Packer

    Not long after I had joined the faculty at Brigham Young University, I was asked to meet with Bruce Hafen, who had previously served as the president of Ricks College and as dean of BYU’s law school and who would later serve as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy and […]

Revision 1.3 “Post-Biblical Judaism” B

    For all the talk of a land “flowing with milk and honey,” Pales­tine is a relatively difficult place to eke out a living. Tahiti might have been nice, with fruit just waiting to be picked. Switzerland is far prettier. Even in the Near East, there are places where it would have been much […]