Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 798

“Trump Campaign CEO Cited Mormon Missionary Service To Slam Romney Sons”

    More than once, a strong undercurrent of anti-Mormonism has been obvious on the Trumpist propaganda site Breitbart News.  (And that’s without even looking at the Breitbart reader comments, which can be bloodcurdling.)   Breitbart’s boss, Mr. Stephen Bannon, now heads up Mr. Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.   I’ve already mentioned this item from Breitbart, and [Read More...]

“Corvallis woman who taught at American University reacts to attack”

    Thanks to Kevin Taylor for bringing this item, centered on a member of his Latter-day Saint stake, to my attention:   http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/loca...    

“The contrast between the on-line Mormon world and the real Mormon world”

    I like this little essay very much:   http://www.millennialstar.org/the-con...   Like Geoff B., I’ve never seen or heard anybody rebuked in church for wearing pants.  I’ve never experienced the hellish Church that some critics describe online, dominated by cruel gossip, oppressive patriarchy, gay-bashing sermons, and overt racism expressed over the pulpit.   One quibble, though: [Read More...]

“The Cosmos Might Be Mostly Devoid of Life”

    An intriguing way of looking at the question of biogenesis:   http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...    

On loving and liking

    “We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to like one another.”  Thomas Merton    

Another publication from BYU’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative

    I’m pleased to see that the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI), an undertaking at Brigham Young University that I conceived and founded and with which I was centrally involved until I was obliged to leave it in 2013, has published yet another volume.   Just out is Hunayn ibn Ishaq on His Galen Translations, [Read More...]

“Rethinking Mormons and Porn”

    For years now, critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have chortled with rapturous joy over a report indicating that Utah ranks first in the nation for the consumption of online pornography.   This, they’ve suggested, proves that Mormons are sexually repressed and psychologically warped hypocrites, and that Mormonism is therefore [Read More...]

Have we now received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization?

    Interesting:   http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36248    

“Has the 2016 election produced a political ‘Mormon Moment’?”

    We’re certainly receiving more attention nationally (and internationally) in connection with this election than our numbers (or Utah’s size) would ordinarily warrant:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...    

“That Big List of Challenges in Anti-Mormon Literature”

    A nice essay from Mike Ash:   http://lds.net/blog/faith/big-list-an...   In this context, of course, nice means that, among other things, I completely agree with it.   In fact, I myself briefly addressed the “big list” phenomenon at the 2014 FairMormon conference:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspective...