Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 240

“It’s possible to be physically dead while your mind lives on.”

    Pim van Lommel is a well-respected Dutch cardiologist who has become one of the leading authorities in the world on the near-death experience or NDE.  Here I continue with a few notes taken from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).   First, I share a […]

Religion and Health, with Notice of COVID-19

    From the Deseret News:  “Here’s what the science says about the links between religion and health: Scientists say stress levels, healthy habits and community support could be key to beating the virus”   And, continuing in that spirit, I offer a few more items from Paul McFate, 52 Good Reasons to Go to Church, […]

“It really is easier to keep the commandments 100 percent of the time than it is 98 percent of the time.”

    From a devotional address given by the late Clayton Christensen at Brigham Young University on 8 June 2004″   The fourth decision I made for which I am very grateful was also one that I made when I was at Oxford. You may have noticed how high they had to raise this podium […]

“British anti-racism protestors call for destruction of Giza Pyramids”

    I am entirely in favor of meting out severe punishment to policemen who abuse the power that society has entrusted in them in order to do unjustified injury, to exploit, or to oppress.  The death of George Floyd appears to represent such a case, and I will be happy if, the courts having […]

Some hear mere noise, while others hear a tune

    Continuing with some notes from Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009):   The existence of stars rests on several delicate balances between the different forces of nature.  These require that the parameters that govern how strongly these forces […]

She would have been six years old today

    Six years ago today, on 13 June 2014, our first grandchild was born in Orlando, Florida.   She was born in a wing of a local Orlando hospital that had been built with generous Disney donations, and the hospital’s public spaces were decorated everywhere with characters from Disney cartoons.  As it rapidly became […]

Making sense of “surprising” facts

    Some passages from Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009):   The topic of this book is the quest for God in the natural sciences and Christian theology, traditionally known as “natural theology.”  Although this has been a subject […]

“Vaughn J. Featherstone’s Atlanta Temple Letter”

    A new article — this one by Christopher J. Blythe — has just appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Vaughn J. Featherstone’s Atlanta Temple Letter” Abstract: In this essay, I examine a letter written by Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone in 1983 and deposited in the cornerstone of the Atlanta Georgia […]

The Decline of the East

    I have, once or twice, used Daniel W. Brown, A New Introduction to Islam, 2d. ed. (Malden MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) as the principal text for my introductory course on the religion of Islam.  Along the way, I’ve marked a few passages that reminded me of points that I myself wanted to […]

“I know that what I am talking about is true”

    Dr. Suzanne Lundquist, now retired from the Department of English at Brigham Young University, sent some materials to my wife today.  (They’re friends, and longtime members of a small study group together.)  I hope that Suzanne won’t mind that I share the prefatory note that she sent, along with one of the items […]