Revision 3.8 “From Prophet to Prophet-Statesman”

Last updated on: August 15, 2020 at 12:52 am By Dan Peterson

Nevertheless, Muhammad’s transformation from prophet to prophet-statesman had profound consequences for the nature of the religion that was developing—Islam. This is because the nature of his example to the Muslims changed along with his change of role. Christians who want an ideal model to follow look naturally to Jesus of Nazareth as the person who most perfectly embodies their faith. But Jesus never held any political office or exercised any state power, and this fact allows Christians to... Read more

Answers to questions that were submitted after my presentation at FairMormon last Friday

Last updated on: August 15, 2020 at 12:49 am By Dan Peterson

I pre-recorded my remarks to the 2020 FairMormon conference. On Friday afternoon, when my talk went up, I was sitting at home. (We’re trying to be very careful about the COVID-19 virus, not least out of concern for a father-on-law in his 94th year, a 90+-year-old woman that my wife regularly visits, and a good friend who is fighting a serious cancer.). Unless compelled by strong reasons, though, I probably won’t pre-record such a lecture again; I wasn’t... Read more

A scientist/theologian reflects on science and theology

Last updated on: August 15, 2020 at 12:46 am By Dan Peterson

Among the very most valuable of thinkers on science and religion — unlike many writers, especially perhaps unlike many anti-religious ones, he actually knows a great deal about both — is Sir John Polkinghorne, now in his ninetieth year, who is both a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) and a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society. He was a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge until he resigned his professorial chair in order to study for the Anglican priesthood. He was ordained... Read more

Revision 3.7 “Muhammad’s Reception Among the Arabs” (Part 2)

Last updated on: August 15, 2020 at 12:44 am By Dan Peterson

In 622, the Prophet and his followers emigrated from Mecca to Yathrib. This emigration, or hijra, as it is called in Arabic, now serves to mark the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Notice that the calendar does not start with the Prophet’s birth, nor with the beginning of the Qur’anic revelation, but with the emigration to Yathrib. Why? Because Muhammad went from being merely a prophet, a voice crying in the wilderness, to being the leader of a... Read more

My Hope for the Eternities

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 11:07 pm By Dan Peterson

It’s always weirdly fascinating to see how how I’m currently being attacked on a mostly-ex-Mormon-atheist message board that has been significantly devoted to attacking me for its entire roughly fifteen-year history. (To an astonishing degree, I’m their raison d’être. If I didn’t exist, they would have been obliged to invent me. Which, in a very real sense, they actually have.). The question each morning isn’t whether I’ll be attacked as both a ludicrous buffoon and a vicious, angry, unprincipled, and... Read more

Wonderment at the Structure of Cells and the Life-Friendly Universe in Which We Find Ourselves

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 12:25 am By Dan Peterson

Reacting dismissively (of course) to my recent post here under the title of “Was a human-life-permitting universe monumentally unlikely?” the vocal resident atheist in the comments section to my blog has repeatedly pointed out that Douglas Groothuis is not a scientist. Which is true. Groothuis is a philosopher. But John Barrow, whom he cites, is an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. And Barrow is no eccentric. He isn’t alone among scientists in finding... Read more

Revision 3.6 “Muhammad’s Reception among the Arabs” (Part 1)

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 12:19 am By Dan Peterson

Muhammad’s Reception among the Arabs In these early days of his prophetic ministry in Mecca, Muhammad reaped much ridicule but few converts. (Among those who did convert, however, were some of the greatest names in later Islamic history, names such as Ali, Umar, Uthman, and Abu Bakr. We shall meet them all again.) His call to worship the one God, Allah, and to abandon the worship of the false gods of paganism, fell mostly on deaf ears—the more... Read more

“What makes a human can . . . be scribbled on the back of a napkin”

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 12:06 am By Dan Peterson

Here is a passage that struck me when I read Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) a while back: While what makes a human in terms of consciousness remains a bit of a mystery, over the last few hundred years science has revealed the building blocks of the human body in stunning detail. Through scientific endeavour, we now know that a human body is... Read more

“The End from the Beginning”

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 12:03 am By Dan Peterson

Today marks the 420th consecutive Friday on which we’ve published at least one article in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. Now, admittedly, in order to keep that string of consecutive days going we’ve sometimes been obliged to really scrape the bottom of the barrel. Today’s article, the introduction to the thirty-eighth volume of the journal, is a manifest example of just such scraping. But we’ve kept our streak going, and that’s all that really... Read more

Revision 3.5 “Paganism Condemned”

Last updated on: August 9, 2020 at 12:00 am By Dan Peterson

Another common theme beginning in the earliest chapters of the Qur’an is a denunciation of paganism, the worshiping of pagan gods. This theme drew enthusiastic praise from Parley P. Pratt: Mahometanism included the doctrine that there was one God— that He was great, even the creator of all things, and that the people by right should worship Him. . . . On this account, on the simple subject of the Deity and His worship, if nothing more, I... Read more