Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 275

The rise of Comrade Bernie

    It’s increasingly likely that the major-party presidential choice in 2020 will come down to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  I could not possibly be more thrilled to realize that, after all of the expensive sifting of candidates during this round, these are the two best that our republic can propose out of a […]

Remembering Boko Haram’s Dark Vision

    I’ve just finished reading Nina Strochlic, “The Abduction of 276 Nigerian Schoolgirls Outraged the World.  112 Are Still Missing.  The Survivors are Reclaiming Their Future,” National Geographic (March 2020): 84-97.  It’s a reminder of the horrible story that began at about 11:00 PM on 14 April 2014, when truckloads of Islamist militants from […]

“Latter-day Saint Charities Blessed Millions of Lives in 2019”

    “A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.”  (Joseph Smith)   ***   The news offers a plenteous supply just about every day for even the most voracious Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How […]

Evolution and the Church, plus “You’re Going to Get the Coronavirus”

    Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man LDS Statements on Evolution and the Origin of Man Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Science & Mormonism Series 1: Cosmos, Earth, and Man (2016). Abstract:This book section is composed of three parts. The first part contains the 1992 BYU packet […]

A note about this coming Saturday

    Although the Festival’s website hasn’t yet been amended to indicate it, a special closing panel discussion has now been added to the program of the nineteenth annual LDS Film Festival, which is being held throughout this week at the SCERA Center for the Arts in Orem, Utah:   LDS Film Festival 2020   […]

What’s happening with Interpreter?

    Last Friday marked the 396th consecutive Friday on which the Interpreter Foundation has published at least one new article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.  But the Journal is far from the only thing going on at the Foundation.  Here, for example, are three relatively new items that merit […]

The mysterious world revealed by quantum physics

    I’ve begun reading Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness, 2d ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).  At the time they wrote the book, both Rosenblum and Kuttner were members of the physics faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz.   On pages 3-4, Professor […]

An inheritance for all the peoples of the world

    When the first volume of the new Islamic Translation Series was published in 1997, it included my  “Foreword to the Series,” which appeared for years in every one of the Series publications since that time.  In part, that “Foreword” reads as follows:   Brigham Young University and its Center for the Preservation of […]

The Gardens of Paradise

    Last Wednesday, before we headed to the airport to fly back from Arizona to Utah (and also before we lunched at Backyard Taco in Mesa and revisited the fabulous Eddie Basha Collection in Chandler), my wife and I and our friends spent some time at Phoenix’s really good Desert Botanical Garden.  It’s amazing […]

What makes evil possible?

    But, first, here’s something new from the Interpreter Foundation:   “Teachings and Testimony of the First Vision: President J. Reuben Clark Jr. Teaches and Testifies of the First Vision: Part Nine of a Series Compiled by Dennis B. Horne”   ***   My wife and I continue to read a passage every night from A […]