Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 888

BOM Alma 10

    I’m running out of time right now, but I’ll offer one very quick note on today’s reading, Alma 10:   What can we make of the name Zeezrom?  Does it have any actual meaning?  If so, is that name relevant to the story recounted in Alma 10?   Here’s some brief but informed [Read More...]

“The LDS use of Isaiah 2:2-5”

    Robert Boylan looks at the question of whether Latter-day Saint use of Isaiah’s prophecy about the house of the Lord being built in the tops of the mountains can really refer to the construction of the temple in Salt Lake City:   http://scripturalmormonism.blogspot.c...    

“As Islamism Marches West, Pluralist Muslims Must Stop Its Advance”

    Dr. Qanta Ahmed, herself a Muslim, offers a worthwhile perspective on the problem of extremism within the Islamic community:   http://www.nationalreview.com/article...    

“It’s an Outrage! See? Look How Outraged I Am!”

    Interesting social psychological insight from an experiment at Yale:   http://www.bloombergview.com/articles...   How you too can profit from being indignant!   This may go a considerable distance toward explaining some otherwise puzzling phenomena on the internet, in newspaper and magazine comments sections, and elsewhere.    

“Trans Bathroom Bills Prove Feminism Has Failed My Daughter”

    The photograph accompanying the piece (not the photograph above) is, well, just a slight tad crass.  I apologize for that.  (You can choose not to look.)  But this article says something really important, I think.   Thanks to Cassandra Hedelius for alerting me to it.    

“The Evolutionary Argument against Reality”

    This is, umm, really difficult stuff to wrap one’s head around.  I’m going to have to think about it quite a bit:   The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality   Two initial reactions, though:   1.   Charles Darwin used to worry, from what I’ve read, about whether it was plausible to assume that [Read More...]

On the Devil in Islam

    One of the questions that I was asked at the Phoenix-area events over the weekend went roughly as follows:   In Islam, does Satan rebel against God and attempt to take away the agency of humanity?   The answer to this is “Not quite.”   There is nothing in the Qur’an to suggest [Read More...]

BOM Alma 9

    Two quick notes on today’s reading:   1.   When, in verse 6, the people of Ammonihah proudly demand “Who is God, that sendeth no more authority than one man among this people?” they unwittingly repeat the question of King Noah (see Mosiah 11:27), who unwittingly repeated the words of Pharaoh (see Exodus 5:2).  In the [Read More...]

“Bamboozled by the CES Letter”

    The interesting stuff continues to pour out.  I haven’t seen this one; it was evidently published just today:   https://www.createspace.com/6221667    

Three quotations from Confucius

  We’re headed to Asia in a couple of days, but not to the right part of it for this kind of thing.  So my wife and I very much enjoyed a meal tonight at Chef Gao, in north Orem.  And that put me in the mood:       It does not matter how [Read More...]