Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 262

“Passover with Dennis Prager”

    I hope that he and “Prager University” won’t mind my stealing the image above and the text below, but I thought that some of my readers might be interested in watching this tonight (Wednesday night) or even in joining in.  I myself have led several Passover Seders for family and friends and ward […]

Once again, who speaks for Islam?

    I’ve been involved in an exchange over the past couple of days that makes me think it advisable, even urgently necessary, to repost this previous blog entry:   Many people in the West quite confidently discuss Muslim attitudes on the basis of no real acquaintance with either the Islamic world or actual Muslims.   So […]

The “lakam-tuun” of Book of Mormon Omni 1:20

    One of the tasks that I’ve set myself for my COVID-19 house arrest (and, I hope, beyond) is to extract notes from John W. Welch, Neal Rappleye, Stephen O. Smoot, David J. Larsen, and Taylor Halverson, eds., Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, […]

“There is no ultimate meaning for humans.”

    A couple of quotations extracted from Michael Augros, The Immortal in You: How Human Nature is More Than Science Can Say (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017):   I appreciate it when atheists forthrightly declare the implications of their worldview, without sentimentality.  Here, for example, is the late Cornell historian of science William Provine […]

Blaming Islam

    Another trio of extracts from Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam (New York, Boston, and London: Little, Brown and Company, 2010):   The West, and especially the United States, has shown no serious or sustained interest in the Middle East until the last half century.  We tend to be comfortably ignorant of […]

Just a simple fraud?

    Another passage from one of my rough-cut manuscripts:   We’ll first look at various explanations holding that, yes, there was an objective reality [to the plates, etc.], but it was an artifact of fraud.  This is perhaps the most common explanation advanced by skeptics.  As one recent book from a prestigious academic publisher […]

“United Arab Emirates leaders welcome Latter-day Saint temple in series of tweets”

    “United Arab Emirates leaders welcome Latter-day Saint temple in series of tweets”   ***   Most books really don’t change the way I think about things.  Most non-fiction books simply give me some new facts or understandings that fit fairly well with what I already think.  Some, though, redirect my reflections in a […]

“Two kinds of thinkers”

    Newly published on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel: Genesis 8: A New Creation, A New Covenant Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in In God’s Image and Likeness 2: Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of […]

“Celebrating a Very Special Holy Week”

    The item below, from Bob and Gloria Rees, was passed on to me yesterday and, with Bob’s kind permission, I’m sharing it here.  Brother Rees is a retired member of the faculty at UCLA, as well as a former editor of Dialogue and the co-founder and vice president of the wonderful Bountiful Children’s […]

“I can make your job easy.”

    New temples:   Syracuse, Utah Bahia Blanca, Argentina Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Tallahassee, Florida Benin City, Nigeria! Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo!! Shanghai!!! DUBAI!!!!   By the time those last two temples had been announced, I confess that I was in tears.  When the multinational choir came together for “We Thank Thee, O God, […]