Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 852

“The Biggest Myth About the Big Bang”

    What we don’t know is actually very big and absolutely basic:   http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/...   Posted from Amsterdam, The Netherlands  

For Lena

    Two years ago today, our first grandchild was born in Orlando, Florida.   She was born in a wing of a local Orlando hospital that had been built with generous Disney donations, and the hospital’s public spaces were decorated everywhere with characters from Disney cartoons.  As it rapidly became obvious that Lena would not, [Read More...]

Body and Mind

    “I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity.  This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . .  we have to recognize that we are spiritual [Read More...]

On Orlando today

      We’re all horrified by today’s mass murder in Orlando.   Although I’m about to board an airplane, I feel that I need to make at least a brief comment.   As I write, it seems overwhelmingly likely that this was yet another example of Islamist violence.   This is simply a redundant manifestation [Read More...]

“The Trinity as a contradiction of basic language”

    This is a pretty simple illustration of the logical problem at the core of mainstream orthodox Trinitarianism:   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.c...   One response, of course, is to say “It’s a mystery.”   Fine.  But it remains logically incoherent.   Which is a bit of a problem.   “And this is life eternal,” declares Jesus himself in [Read More...]

BOM Alma 26

    Today’s reading, Alma 26, raises an important issue for those who seek to serve God:   There is no question that sincere, hardworking disciples of Christ have accomplished a great deal, in and out of the Restored Church.  They’ve translated the scriptures, preached the Good News, built churches, founded hospitals, established orphanages, distributed [Read More...]

“They taught with power and authority of God”

    In the 169th scripture roundtable to be posted by the Interpreter Foundation, Steve Densley, Ben McGuire, and Martin Tanner discuss Alma 17-22, which is the focus of 2016 Gospel Doctrine lesson 25:   Scripture Roundtable 169: Book of Mormon Gospel Doctrine Lesson 25, They Taught with Power and Authority of God   We [Read More...]

The Devotion of Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya

    Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya of Basra (AD 717 to AD 801) was a great early mystic of Islam.  Here are four passages from her:   O God! if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship [Read More...]

Wow and gee whiz! Science for a Sunday.

      Unless I’m seriously mistaken, there were no confirmed planets outside our solar system when I was a kid.  We assumed that they were there, but we didn’t know it.  Now we do.   (Of course, we can — just barely — see only the very biggest of them, which is why the [Read More...]

“Resident Aliens”

    A colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive language and life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced. . . . The [Read More...]