Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 828

“A Lesson for Newt Gingrich: What Shariah Is (and Isn’t)”

    Professor Noah Feldman, of Harvard Law School, provides a short but very clear and useful explanation here.   I’m politically conservative.  There was a time when I thought highly of Newt Gingrich.  I still believe him to have a number good qualities.  He is, among other things, a trained and often insightful historian (educated [Read More...]

Read It Now: “Editing Out the ‘Bad Grammar’ in the Book of Mormon”

    There’s a new entry from Drs. Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation:   Editing Out the “Bad Grammar” in the Book of Mormon    

The urge to make sense of it all

    “Earth, stars, and the vastness of space; yesterday, today and tomorrow; and the endlessly increasing knowledge of the relation of forces, present an illimitable universe of numberless phenomena. Only in general outline can the universe be understood. In its infinite variety of expression, it wholly transcends the human mind. . . .  In [Read More...]

Nice, Erdoğan, and Newt

    I’ve been otherwise occupied over the past forty hours or so, but, of course, I need to comment, first, on the horror in Nice; then on the coup in Turkey; and, finally, on the emerging horror that is Newt.   1.   Words are inadequate.  And I mean, by that, that mere verbiage [Read More...]

“‘There’s the Boy I Can Trust’: Dennison Lott Harris’ First-Person Account of the Conspiracy of Nauvoo and Events Surrounding Joseph Smith’s ‘Last Charge’ to the Twelve Apostles”

    Having been on the road a lot today, I’m a bit behind.   But it’s Friday!   So, of course, a new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture:   “There’s the Boy I Can Trust”: Dennison Lott Harris’ First-Person Account of the Conspiracy of Nauvoo and Events Surrounding Joseph [Read More...]

Once more on John Dehlin

    I’m told that I hate Dr. John Dehlin, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., and seek to destroy his character.  And, since everybody knows that I’m a viciously hateful person who never writes anything substantive but who specializes, instead, in mean-spirited personal attacks, there’s considerable plausibility to that claim.   In this case, however, it’s not true. [Read More...]

No logical loose ends?

    Dilbert: And we know mass creates gravity because more dense planets have more gravity. Dogbert: How do we know which planets are more dense? Dilbert: They have more gravity. Dogbert: That’s circular reasoning. Dilbert: I prefer to think of it as having no loose ends.  Scott Adams   Posted from Logan, Utah    

National Public Radio: “Mormons Uneasy With Trump Make A Question Of Reliably Red Utah”

    http://www.npr.org/2016/07/14/4858756...   I’m disappointed in the rhetoric attributed to Janalee Tobias in the article.  “Tobias recently described herself on Facebook as a Trump Mormon for ‘Time and All Eternity,'” it says, and she’s quoted as describing those who won’t vote for Mr. Donald Trump as “traitors.”  Such extreme and divisive rhetoric is among [Read More...]

A day in Cache Valley

    One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.  (Psalm 27:4)   We drove up with a friend today to Cache Valley, where, after [Read More...]

“The Book of Mormon and linguistic evolution”

    The latest installment of my weekly Deseret News column to blight America’s cultural and intellectual landscape:   http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...