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Sic Et Non

Thoughts on Spy Wednesday

16 hours 28 minutes ago
  Before the Interpreter Foundation altogether disappears (as has been reliably predicted), I would like to call your attention to a few more of its most recent last gasps: Conference Talks: The Priestly Interests of Moses the Levite: 2020 Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses Conference, presented by John W. Welch and Jackson […]
Dan Peterson

“Were You There?”

1 day 13 hours ago
  Some people will be very disappointed by these reports: Deseret News:  “Gallup polling: Latter-day Saints have the highest rate of weekly church attendance: Two-thirds of Latter-day Saints attend church weekly or nearly weekly” Gallup:  “Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups: Three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, led by Mormons at […]
Dan Peterson

I’m happy to see this

2 days 11 hours ago
  This week commemorates the most important week in the history of the world.  Here are some links that might help you to mark it, to remember it, and to ponder its meaning: Christianity Today:  “Why Every Day This Week Is Holy: Christians should celebrate from Palm to Easter Sunday—and everything in between.” “The ‘Lamb of […]
Dan Peterson

“Are religious people happier?”

3 days 13 hours ago
  I think that, this time around, I’ll lead off with something from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.  I mean, this claim, asserted by Dr. Stephen Cranney, is so horrible and so very alarming that it really does cry out for drastic emergency action: “Are religious people happier? The science is […]
Dan Peterson

“Shall we not go on in so great a cause?”

4 days 13 hours ago
  News from along the frontier of religious liberty: National Catholic Reporter:  “Wisconsin Supreme Court makes bad law in religious liberty case” Christianity Today:  “Must Social Service Providers Nix Their Faith to Receive Federal Funds?  Rather than follow the equal protections secured in Supreme Court decisions, the Biden administration opted for a complicated and soul-killing […]
Dan Peterson

“King Benjamin’s Sermon as a Type of Temple Endowment”

5 days 16 hours ago
  With friends, my wife and I attended the open house this morning of the renovated Manti Utah Temple, which was built and first dedicated nearly a century and half ago.  (We were intending to go yesterday, but life intervened.)  For many reasons, the temple in Manti has long been one of my very favorite […]
Dan Peterson

“She already existed before her life on Earth began”

6 days 14 hours ago
  I’ve lately begun reading a new book by Robert Christophor Coppes entitled Impressions of Near-Death Experiences: Quotations from Over 100 Experiencers.  Dr. Coppes is an economist who is now retired from a career spent at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, a French bank, and eventually the Dutch Central Bank, which is roughly […]
Dan Peterson

“In an instant, my heart was touched and I believed”

1 week ago
  Several years ago, before the devastating fire that severely damaged it on 15 April 2019, my wife and I spent a substantial portion of the day in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.  At one place, in the transept to the right of the nave near the southern rose window, we saw a plaque […]
Dan Peterson

Trust the Media!

1 week 1 day ago
    [Ooops.  This week isn’t Holy Week!  For some reason, I keep thinking that Easter is this coming weekend.  But it’s not.  Does anything like that ever happen to you?  My apologies.] This week is “Holy Week,” about which I wrote this column a while back.  (I have fairly strong feelings about Holy Week.)  And […]
Dan Peterson

Brigham Young, Gap-Toothed Mimic

1 week 2 days ago
  On Saturday, here in this very space, I posted a couple of references to the alleged “transfiguration” of Brigham Young that is said by quite a few to have occurred while he was speaking to an outdoor audience of Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Illinois, on 8 August 1844.  (See “Two Witnesses to a Pivotal […]
Dan Peterson

“Douse the glim!”

1 week 3 days ago
  First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of those out there who have ever been Irish, or thought about being Irish, or know somebody who’s Irish, or have heard of either Ireland or St. Patrick’s Day, or who haven’t.  We enjoyed our corned beef, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes today, and I hope […]
Dan Peterson

Two Witnesses to a Pivotal Event

1 week 4 days ago
  Recently, Adam Colvin provided me with copies of two documents from his family history.  With his kind permission, I share portions of them here.  The first extract comes from a “Life Sketch of Simeon Adams Dunn,” compiled by Nancy Dunn Watson: James Dunn, the brother of Simeon, came to their home in Van Buren […]
Dan Peterson

“Premortal Life and Mortal Life: A Fearful Symmetry”

1 week 5 days ago
  A new article has just been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “Premortal Life and Mortal Life: A Fearful Symmetry,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw Abstract: Bodily weakness, along with the varied circumstances into which we were born, provide the essential initial and ongoing conditions that shape the challenges and opportunities of […]
Dan Peterson

“Innovations and Initiatives at BYU and BYU-Idaho”

1 week 6 days ago
  Last night, I was among a group of people who had been invited to a meeting with Elder Clark G. Gilbert, a member of the Seventy, who currently serves as Commissioner of Education for the Church Educational System; Elder Alvin F. Meredith III, who is also a member of the Seventy and who was […]
Dan Peterson

“Objective Public Proof”?

2 weeks ago
  I occasionally use the expression objective public proof.  I’ve recently been asked what I mean by it. Let me take the phrase apart just a bit. “Proof,” as the word is typically used and as I am using it here, is a fact or a piece of information that demonstrates the existence of something […]
Dan Peterson

Some Notes on “Fine-Tuning” and the Multiverse

2 weeks 1 day ago
  The following is basically a close paraphrase or a gloss (for my note-taking purposes) of “A Beginner’s Guide to the ‘Fine-Tuning’ Argument” by Max Baker-Hytch of the University of Oxford.  As always with such notes, I make no claim of originality for what follows but share them because, while I’m taking notes for my […]
Dan Peterson

Offense and Defense

2 weeks 2 days ago
  I think that apologetics, as such, is inevitable.  Stripped of specifically religious elements, it’s merely the defense of a position.  Scholars defend positions all the time, as they should.  So do all the rest of us. Whenever there is disagreement — e.g., over religion, politics, political candidates, even favorite restaurants or best vacation destinations […]
Dan Peterson

One Investigator’s Story

2 weeks 3 days ago
  For many years now, my most devoted atheist commenter here (never a Latter-day Saint) has repeatedly (and repetitiously) asserted that religious claims can neither be examined, tested, nor investigated.  (Which, I’m guessing, is intended to show — in what might perhaps be a kind of folk echo or pop version of once-fashionable logical positivism […]
Dan Peterson

Was Jesus funny?

2 weeks 4 days ago
  I agree with this article, which was written by a Roman Catholic:  “Does Jesus Have a Sense of Humor? Jesus is fully God and fully man. He is like us in every way except sin. This includes having a sense of humor.” It reminds me of the review of a book from another Catholic […]
Dan Peterson

“Oh say, what is truth?”

2 weeks 5 days ago
  Cody Quirk has kindly called to my notice an article about an interesting discovery in Central America:  “Archaeologists in Panama find ancient tomb filled with gold treasure — and sacrificial victims.” Although the site and the golden artifacts that were found by the archaeologists date to a period that is somewhat after the end […]
Dan Peterson
Checked
5 hours 35 minutes ago
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