Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 255

From my readings: “Nothingness” in ancient Egyptian thinking

    I continue here with some notes from John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011).  I see them as potentially relevant to such varied topics as the idea of creation ex nihilo, understanding the story of creation presented in the first chapters of Genesis, and properly interpreting the […]

“Can We Trust the Gospels?”

    “See the interior renderings of the Tooele Valley Utah Temple”   ***   I offer here an interesting passage from Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?: Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007).  Roberts, who, at the time his book was published, was senior […]

The beginning of modernity in the Middle East

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

Better Health and Longer Life with Religion?

    I share a bit more from Paul McFate, 52 Good Reasons to Go to Church, Besides the Obvious Ones (Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2004).  These are among the benefits that you might derive from attendance at church (when and if doing so ever again becomes an option!):   Better Personal Health (15):  Church attendance […]

Introducing Ali Shariati

    A bit more from Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2002):   During the 1960s, at about the same time that Sayyid Qutb’s life was nearing its end in Egypt, Iranian Islam was beginning to take shape.  (It was, […]

“Abductive Reasoning”

    I published a blog entry a few days ago entitled “Imagination as a Key Element in Science and Mathematics,” to which what I’ll cite below has considerable relevance.  In response to that entry, two readers called my attention to an essay by the late biochemist, novelist, and otherwise phenomenally prolific writer Isaac Asimov […]

A simple argument for the historicity of Jesus as a miracle-worker

    The article below went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation earlier today:   In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel: Genesis 11: The Tower of Babel Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and […]

“He found himself standing next to his own body.”

    I share here a few brief notes that I’ve extracted from Marlene Bateman Sullivan, Gaze into Heaven: Near-Death Experiences in Early Church History (Springville, UT: CFI, 2013):   When Joseph Eldridge had a near-death experience, he said the first thing he saw was his own body.  “I looked down on my body and […]

The Whitmer Family Prior to the Book of Mormon (B)

    Here are a few more of my notes from Ronald E. Romig, Eighth Witness: The Biography of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2014), 10-18:   The Whitmer family moved to Fayette, New York, in the Finger Lakes area — midway between the northern portions of Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake — […]

“We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon.”

    Contemplating the photographs at the two links below seems to me an appropriate activity for at least a few minutes on the Sabbath:   “Volcano Lightning Storm Won ‘Perfect Moment’ Photography Contest, But Every Finalist Captured the Beauty of Earth”   “Glimpse of God? The Hubble Telescope’s 12 Best Photos on the 30th […]