Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 872

A science journalist takes a skeptical look at scientific skepticism

    I don’t agree with him on everything — we diverge pretty widely regarding the last several paragraphs of his article — but the author raises really important issues for discussion:   http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/c...   Posted from Richmond, Virginia    

“What Paper and Wood Tell Us about the Gold Plates”

    Yet another illustration of how assuming the gold plates to be literally real simply makes better and more natural sense of the story of the recovery of the Book of Mormon than does the assumption that there were no such plates:   http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2016/05...   Posted from Richmond, Virginia    

“Editing Out the Bad Grammar in the Book of Mormon”: Video Now Available!

    Not a video of the actual editing process, of course.  That would be boring.  (Editing isn’t much of a spectator sport.)   No, it’s a video of Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack speaking at a recent event on the BYU campus that was jointly sponsored by BYU Studies, the Interpreter Foundation, BYU’s College [Read More...]

“David Petraeus: Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists”

    I couldn’t possibly agree more strongly with the analysis offered in this article by General Petraeus (whose Princeton doctorate in international affairs should probably also have been mentioned after his name):   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...   Incidentally, when we drive to church here in the Richmond area, we pass by a mosque along the way. [Read More...]

“LDS Apologists Daniel Peterson, John Tvedtnes Cleared of Drug Charges from Anti-Mormon Critics: Conclusive Negative Test Results”

    My son called my attention yesterday to this short, decade-old piece by Jeff Lindsay, whom I now hold in even higher esteem (if that’s possible) than I did two days ago:   http://mormanity.blogspot.com/2006/11...   Posted from Richmond, Virginia    

On human perfectibility in this life, from something of a hometown boy

    I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.  Edgar Allan Poe   I published a column on what could be seen as [Read More...]

“Bruce McConkie on the Fallibility of the Chapter Headings [in the Book of Mormon]”

    The chapter heading to Alma 11 talks about Nephite coinage.  Does this commit us to the view that the Nephites had minted coins?   No, it doesn’t.  The chapter doesn’t describe minted coins; the chapter heading is incorrect.   So far as we know, minted coinage originated in 7th-6th century Anatolia.  The Nephites [Read More...]

“What was the biggest storm in our solar system’s history?”

    Hint:  It wasn’t earthly.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswit...   Posted from Richmond, Virginia    

“And again, they were wroth”

    Yesterday, during Sunday school, we read these words from Mosiah 10:12-17 (among many others):   The Lamanites, we’re told, held to “the tradition of their fathers, which is this—Believing that they were driven out of the land of Jerusalem because of the iniquities of their fathers, and that they were wronged in the wilderness by their brethren, and they [Read More...]

The “Near East” and the “Middle East”

    A member of my tour group in Israel — I don’t recall who it was — asked me, at one point while we were walking along, to explain the difference between the terms Near East and Middle East.  The question came at an awkward time, and, anyhow, I decided that it was something [Read More...]