Defining “Intelligent Design”

Last updated on: June 26, 2023 at 7:49 pm By Dan Peterson

First, though: The discussants for the 18 June 2023 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show were Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Robert Boylan. During the two-hour program, they discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 29, the Restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the Mormon History Association Conference, and the Religious Freedom Annual Review. Their conversation has now been archived, freed from commercial and other interruptions, and made available to you at your convenience and free of charge. The... Read more

“He brought heaven and earth together”

Last updated on: June 25, 2023 at 7:59 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

The latest iteration of the script for our next theatrical film, Six Days in August, arrived earlier today. The film will focus on the succession of the Twelve to leadership of the Church after the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith on 27 June 1844. My wife and I look forward very much to reading it through. We’re on track, I think, to commence initial filming sometime in August. Which sets me to thinking about the relationship between... Read more

Am I there yet?

Last updated on: June 24, 2023 at 11:27 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

I was otherwise occupied yesterday, so I failed to note the appearance of two new articles on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““They Shall Be Scattered Again”: Some Notes on JST Genesis 50:24–25, 33–35” was written by Matthew L. Bowen. Abstract: This article examines the extension of the etiological wordplay on the name Joseph (in terms of the Hebrew verbs ʾāsap and yāsap), recurrent in the canonical text of Genesis, into the JST Genesis 50 text, where Joseph learns about and... Read more

It’s my history, too.

Last updated on: June 24, 2023 at 3:33 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

For a long time, I thought of the history of England, Scotland, and Wales as their history, the history of a foreign country or countries. And, of course, in a very real and obvious sense it is the history of foreign places, relative to me. In another sense, though, it is my own history. Elements of my maternal family lines first appeared in the New World in the late 1600s; most are much more recent than that. In... Read more

Praying with Jane Austen

Last updated on: June 22, 2023 at 5:10 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

I’m a real Jane Austen fan. Once upon a time, in fact, I worried (half seriously or, anyway, perhaps three percent seriously) that my great affection for her novels (and for every movie based upon them or upon her, excepting only and decisively the execrable 1940 Pride and Prejudice, co-written by Aldous Huxley and starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier) might cast doubt upon my masculinity. But I no longer worry: I have a friend who holds the... Read more

Is the Church a hotbed of child abuse? Compared to what?

Last updated on: June 21, 2023 at 5:31 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

Some new items have gone up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Conference Talks: Dualism is Dead! Long Live Dualism! presented at the 2016 Second Interpreter Science & Mormonism Symposium: “Body, Brain, Mind, and Spirit” on Saturday, 12 March 2016, by James E. Faulconer The New Testament in Context Lesson 27: “He Is Risen,” Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20–21 In the 4 June 2023 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, the panel... Read more

Tales of the Gloucester Crypt

Last updated on: June 22, 2023 at 3:36 am By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

Our focus today was on the city of Gloucester, and most particular on the city’s cathedral. When I think of Gloucester, I’m afraid that the very first thing that occurs to me is Richard III, who reigned from 1483 until his death — the last English king to die in combat and the last of the Plantagenet monarchs — at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. Prior to his brief tenure as king of England, Richard was... Read more

A pretty ludicrous counterexplanation of Christ’s resurrection

Last updated on: June 19, 2023 at 4:40 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1890 novel The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes explains his method as a private detective to Dr. Watson: “When you have eliminated the impossible,” he says, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” If a person is determined to disbelieve in the proposition that Jesus rose physically from the dead, if that person dismisses the notion as flatly impossible and unworthy of serious consideration, just about any alternative hypothesis might serve... Read more

The older William Law

Last updated on: June 18, 2023 at 4:32 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

With others who remained of our tour group, we walked up Gloucester Road this morning, then down Cromwell Road past the magnificent Natural History Museum. We turned left on Exhibition Road to the Hyde Park Chapel, where we attended sacrament meeting. I was curious as to whether I would meet anybody there that I knew, this time around. (The first time I attended sacrament meeting at Hyde Park, I ran into Don Marshall. The last time, Governor Gary... Read more

England’s “National Valhalla”

Last updated on: June 17, 2023 at 4:40 pm By Dan Peterson

0 Comments

Well, our tour is at an end, and some of our number have already headed off. All good things must pass. (In this world, anyway.) We did just two stops today, but they were both fairly lengthy, and both focused on extraordinarily important religious sites. (In response to no discernible demand from the general public, I’ll probably post a narrative summary of the overall tour in a day or two or three. After all, this blog serves as... Read more

Which Psalm ends the Book of Psalms with "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord"?