Padre no me arrepiento

Last updated on: August 30, 2025 at 2:01 pm By Dan Peterson

“Why God Placed Adam and Eve Under Paradoxical Injunctions: A View of the Garden Scene through the Optics of Communication Theory,” written by Jared Balmer Abstract: This paper investigates the pragmatic aspect of communication between God and our first parents while in the Garden of Eden—the psychological impact of placing them under contradictory injunctions that result in a situation of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” God could not introduce knowledge that, by definition, also involves... Read more

Men and Women and Girls and Boys, etc.

Last updated on: August 28, 2025 at 7:08 pm By Dan Peterson

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Thursday is our day at the website of the Interpreter Foundation for posting reprints of book chapters. Today is Thursday, so we’ve posted the reprint of a book chapter. Please note that today isn’t Friday. But Friday is the day on which we publish new articles in the Interpreter Foundation’s journal. I spell this out here as clearly as I can, so as not to confuse and upset one of our readers, who has previously imagined that, by posting... Read more

Shall we not go on in so great a cause?

Last updated on: August 28, 2025 at 11:07 am By Dan Peterson

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A new article of mine has gone up in Meridian Magazine: “Brigham Young, Race, and Slavery: Reexamining Utah’s 1852 Service Act.” If you can bear to do so, please feel free to take a look at it. Also on the subject of Brigham Young, we were back again today in the Pioneer Memorial Museum in Salt Lake City — the headquarters of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers — for more filming. The footage that we obtain there will... Read more

Good and Faithful Servants

Last updated on: August 26, 2025 at 9:41 pm By Dan Peterson

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On Sunday night, at the recommendation of friends, my wife and I watched a film titled The Way. Telling the story of several people who are walking the famous pilgrimage route Camino de Santiago, it was directed by Emilio Estevez, who appears in it himself at several points, and it stars his father, Martin Sheen. With that recent viewing of the movie on my mind, my attention was caught by this article, which was not — but easily could have... Read more

From the desk of an intellectually bankrupt Mopologist

Last updated on: August 25, 2025 at 2:58 pm By Dan Peterson

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Up today on the immutable and unchanging website of the Interpreter Foundation: “The Interpreter Foundation Podcast — August 14, 2025: Plausibility Structures, Intellectuals, and the Church’s Truth Claims; The Interpreter Foundation Birthday Party During the 14 August 2025 episode of the Interpreter Foundation Podcast, our hosts Terry Hutchinson, Kevin Christensen, and Mark Johnson discussed an article on plausibility on the Times and Seasons blog (https://timesandseasons.org/ and the 13th annual Interpreter Foundation Birthday Party. The audio track is also included... Read more

De mortuis nil nisi bonum

Last updated on: August 24, 2025 at 5:56 pm By Dan Peterson

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“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956) I continue to be hammered over at the Peterson Obsession Board for... Read more

In which I once again object to certain rhetoric

Last updated on: August 23, 2025 at 9:05 pm By Dan Peterson

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On Wednesday last, I posted a blog entry (“On Dealing With “Scum” Who’ve Entered Our Country Illegally”) in which I took issue with an ostensible Latter-day Saint over at the “LDS Freedom Forum” who calls himself “Fred.” I objected to his use of such terms as scum to refer to illegal immigrants to the United States. I’ve since learned that “Fred” has also used words like monkoids and chimps for people who don’t share his particular skin pigmentation, and... Read more

I can easily imagine worse deaths

Last updated on: August 22, 2025 at 12:31 pm By Dan Peterson

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Two new articles went up today on the perpetually unchanging website of the Interpreter Foundation. The first of them is “Death by Chocolate: Considering the Wine Imbibed by the Lamanite Guards,” written by Noel Hudson Abstract: This article examines two instances in the Book of Mormon in which captives escape through the negligence of drunken and sleeping guards. It suggests that details about the wine used to intoxicate the Lamanite guards in the city of Gid provide support for... Read more

A great American thinker on dogmatic scientific orthodoxy

Last updated on: August 21, 2025 at 8:46 pm By Dan Peterson

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Posted today on the static, never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: Paragraphs and Verses in the Scriptures,” written by Kent P. Jackson: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: Studies of the Book of Mormon, Bible, and Temple in Honor of Stephen D. Ricks, edited by Donald W. Parry, Gaye Strathearn, and Shon D. Hopkin. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/seek-ye-words-of-wisdom/. “English-speaking Latter-day Saints... Read more

On dealing with “scum” who’ve entered our country illegally

Last updated on: August 20, 2025 at 5:05 pm By Dan Peterson

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For whatever it may be worth, a video recording of my presentation at the recent 2025 FAIR Conference, which was entitled “Brigham Young and Slavery,” is now available for viewing on the FAIR website. A transcript of the presentation is also available, here. I haven’t read through the transcript yet, but I expect that it’s a bit rough — as such things often are. (I’ve already, for example, noticed Cameron Bagley Fox for our Camrey Bagley Fox.) However, it... Read more

What kingdom did Isaiah prophesy would take Judah into exile?