Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 278

“Discipleship of Yesterday for Today”

    I’m on the road, and I think that I neglected to call attention to this book review, which appeared in the pages of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship on Friday:   “Discipleship of Yesterday for Today” Review of Eric D. Huntsman, Becoming the Beloved Disciple: Coming unto Christ through the Gospel of […]

Unrivalled silliness and conceit?

      I’ve always wanted to visit Sedona, but somehow, prior to today, I never had.  It’s a gorgeous place, though a bit crowded with heavy traffic on this long holiday weekend.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my razor, which remains, accordingly, just as dull was it was before.  (Much like me, I suppose.) […]

Geology and Third Nephi (3): The Time of Darkness (B)

    I share a few more notes here from a significant article that a longtime friend of mine wrote nearly a quarter of a century ago:  Bart J. Kowallis, “In the Thirty and Fourth Year: A Geologist’s View of the Great Destruction in 3 Nephi,” BYU Studies 37/3 (1997-1998).   Dr. Kowallis begins his article with […]

Geology and Third Nephi (2): Santorini and the Land of the Pharaoh

    Yesterday, I cited an account, gathered by Russell Blong, of a catastrophic volcanic eruption (“The Time of Darkness”) that occurred off the northeastern coast of Papua New Guinea roughly three hundred years ago:   See “Geology and Third Nephi (1): The Time of Darkness (A)”   Here’s another item that I’ve drawn from that […]

Geology and Third Nephi (1): The Time of Darkness (A)

    I first met Bart Kowallis when we were freshmen living in Hinckley Hall on the campus of Brigham Young University.  Our paths diverged thereafter.  Whereas I went on to an infamous career of malicious lies and character assassination, Bart chose the road of decency and respectability and genuine scholarship, first earning a Ph.D. […]

An ethos that puts commitment making at the center of things

    On the flight from Salt Lake City to Phoenix last night, I began reading David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (New York: Random House, 2019).  It looks to be an extended argument for, and reflection on, the importance for a good life of strong commitments to one or […]

The Holocaust and the Problem of Goodness

    I wrote this column for the Provo Daily Herald in October 1998:   “A single death is a tragedy,” said Josef Stalin.  “A million deaths is a statistic.”  But a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, gives the lie to the Soviet dictator.  A million deaths is a million tragedies. And […]

A debate on the resurrection of Christ

    I published this column in late April of 2001 in the Provo Daily Herald:   On 2 May 1985, a remarkable debate took place at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia.  It pitted a relatively little known evangelical Protestant professor named Gary R. Habermas against Antony G. N. Flew, a prominent British […]

“How can any intelligent person possibly believe in that?

    I published the little item below in the Provo Daily Herald way back in 2007:   Years ago, while a graduate student in Egypt, I was introduced by a friend to a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo.  After a pleasant conversation, the professor asked what an American was doing in Egypt, […]

Relativism, consciousness, and the sacred

    Here are a trio of passages that I’ve extracted from Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, updated and revised (Wheaton, Illinois; Madras, India; and London, England: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1989):   Relativism sets out to reduce every kind of absoluteness to a relativity while making an illogical exception for its own case. […]