Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 84

“Whirr! whirr! all by wheels! — whiz! whiz! all by steam!”

    I’ve been thinking today, as I sometimes do, of the perils of reliance upon translators and translations.  In such pondering, a specific book often comes to mind, Curiously, and although I own a copy of it, even now I still haven’t read the entirety of Alexander Kinglake’s 1844 book Eothen; or Traces of […]

A Deep Dive for Extraterrestrial Life

    I read a really interesting article in the New York Times today, about a recent expedition led by Avi Loeb.  I don’t know how many of you, if any, will be able to access it.  Just in case you can, though, here’s a link to it: “Scientist’s Deep Dive for Alien Life Leaves […]

Visiting a remarkable town in western Wyoming on a remarkable day

    Tomorrow is Pioneer Day — a legal holiday in Utah, but an anniversary that is observed, in one way or another, by many Latter-day Saints beyond the borders of my adopted home state.  (Please see my 21 July 2023 article in Meridian Magazine.)  On Saturday, 22 July, after joining the audience for the […]

“Life as a Probation”

    I’m late in calling attention to it — for the perfectly valid reason that I had no Internet access over roughly the past thirty hours, either because I was on the road between Orem, Utah, and Cokeville, Wyoming, or because I was in a location in Cokeville without access to WiFi.  But I […]

Joseph, the Keys, and the Twelve

    New just yesterday on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: In the Visions of the Night: The Human Brain and Divine Revelation, originally presented by Brant A. Gardner on Saturday, 12 March 2016, at the 2016 Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit.   ***   Hal […]

Belief under conditions of uncertainty

    Earlier today, one of the commenters on this blog — I hope that he won’t mind my describing him as a non-believer — posted the following: When faced with an unresolvable uncertainty, the correct response is agnosticism, not to embrace whatever hope or bias you have. You can want or hope, but the […]

A small tempest about a small temple in Cody

    Two new items went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation today: Come, Follow Me — New Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 31, July 24 — 30: Acts 16–21 — “The Lord Had Called Us for to Preach the Gospel” Once again, Jonn Claybaugh provides a concise but helpful set of notes […]

“Although the seal is hidden, the wax stamped by the seal (hidden though it is) yields clear knowledge of it”

    I posted here a few days ago about Dante and the salvation of the unevangelized. (see “Catholic theology made no such provision”), based upon a reading of Prue Shaw’s Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity.. Here is another passage from Dr. Shaw’s superb book that is relevant to the topic: When Dante makes his […]

“Esoteric Teachings and the Problem of Early Latter-day Saint Doctrinal History”

    Yesterday, I read Barry R. Bickmore, ““Show Them unto No Man”: Part 1. Esoteric Teachings and the Problem of Early Latter-day Saint Doctrinal History,” in BYU Studies 62/1 (2023): 29-60. Dr. Bickmore holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech (more formally, from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University).  He is a professor of […]

It really does, optimally, take two

    Jenet Jacob Erickson , who earned her doctorate in family social science from the University of Minnesota, is an associate professor in religious education at Brigham Young University, where she teaches the Eternal Family (Rel 200) course and the Introduction to Family Process (SFL 160) course for the School of Family Life. She […]