Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 258

The same sociality, but with much better music

    Some notes taken from Brent L. Top, What’s On the Other Side: What the Gospel Teaches Us about the Spirit World (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012).  These come from accounts that he has gathered from various sources:   My ears were filled with a music so beautiful no composer could ever duplicate it. . […]

Fifteen years ago

    My mother died slightly more than fifteen years ago this month, just one day after the anniversary of her birth.  In conformity to my annual tradition, I repost here the remarks that I delivered — very, very poorly — at her funeral in 2005.  (Unfortunately, as one day blends indistinguishably into another during our coronavirus […]

“The Spacious Firmament on high”

    The Sabbath seems — especially during a period when we’re not getting out much — an unusually appropriate day on which to marvel at how very big and grand it all is.  So I borrow here a couple of passages from David Wilkinson, God, Time and Stephen Hawking: An Exploration into Origins (London […]

A Nephite Feast of Tabernacles

    Notes from John W. Welch, et al., eds.  Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017):   And it came to pass that when they came up to the temple, they pitched their tents round about, every man according to his family, consisting of his wife, […]

A Great Early Muslim Woman: Rābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya (1)

    I’m beginning to write up a brief introductory discussion of the great early Muslim mystic Rābiʿa al-‘Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya.  In order to do so, I’m drawing first upon the discussion of her that is given by the late British scholar Margaret Smith (1886-1970) in Muslim Women Mystics: The Life and Work of Rābiʿa and Other Women […]

Steve Davis on Mind and Brain

    Stephen T. Davis is currently Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Claremont McKenna College in California.  Some time ago, I read his book After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015).  Now, I’m beginning to extract notes from it:   Many mental […]

“Ultimate Questions”

    Stephen T. Davis is currently Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Claremont McKenna College in California.  Some time ago, I read his book After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2015).  Now, I’m beginning to extract notes from it:   Professor Davis […]

Copernicus and a Very Old Universe

    I share here two passages that I’ve extracted from my reading of John D. Barrow, The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011).  At the time he wrote the book, Dr. Barrow was a professor of mathematical sciences and the director […]

On criticism of the church’s COVID-19 assistance, and other topics

    It being Friday, a new article — this time, a review by Trevor Holyoak — has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scripture:   “Feast upon the Words of Christ” Review of Book of Mormon Central, “ScripturePlus” (https://www.scriptureplus.org/); The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Gospel Library” (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/p... […]

“Only the best and most serious people”

    After earning a law degree and an MBA at Harvard in 1977, Mitt Romney began his highly successful pre-Olympics and pre-political career in the private business sector as a management consult at, and eventually as the chief executive officer of, Boston’s famous management consultancy firm Bain & Company.  Then, after co-founding it in […]