“Only the best and most serious people”

Last updated on: April 20, 2020 at 7:10 pm By Dan Peterson

After earning a law degree and an MBA at Harvard in 1977, Mitt Romney began his highly successful pre-Olympics and pre-political career in the private business sector as a management consult at, and eventually as the chief executive officer of, Boston’s famous management consultancy firm Bain & Company. Then, after co-founding it in 1984, he served as the first chief executive officer of the distinct legendary spin-off Bain Capital firm in Boston, which has invested in or acquired hundreds of... Read more

On Anwar Sadat and the Fundamentalists

Last updated on: April 20, 2020 at 7:09 pm By Dan Peterson

I share some further notes from Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, translated by Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2002). These come from pages 81-88: The Gamaat Islamiyya or “Islamic Associations” became prominent in Egypt during the summer of 1973, just prior to Egypt’s “October War” with Israel, with summer camps organized for university students. In 1974, convinced that the threat from leftist students was no longer a serious one,... Read more

“The most beautiful of theories,” vindicated yet again

Last updated on: April 20, 2020 at 7:07 pm By Dan Peterson

Notes from Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (Penguin, 2017): At the age of twenty-five, Einstein sends to the Annalen der Physik three articles. Each was worthy of a Nobel Prize, and more. Each one of the three is a pillar supporting our understanding of the world. (51) Of these, the most generally famous is the second article, which introduced his theory... Read more

“I . . . stood in the presence of John”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 10:47 pm By Dan Peterson

We’re familiar, of course, with Oliver Cowdery as one of the official Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon. But his role in the early events of the Restoration, and his experiences with the divine, were broader than that. Here are some rough notes from a incomplete manuscript of mine: A letter of Oliver Cowdery to Phineas Young, dated 23 March 1846, and sent from Tiffin, Seneca County, Ohio, in which Oliver expresses his wish that, prior... Read more

Solar Eclipses and Terrestrial Coincidence?

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 10:08 pm By Dan Peterson

Three beautiful and related passages from Dava Sobel, The Planets (New York: Penguin, 2006): From Earth, we see the Sun as a blazing circle in the sky, brighter but no bigger than the circumference of the full Moon. The “two great lights,” as the Sun and the Moon are described in Genesis, make a matched pair. For although the Moon measures only one four-hundredth the Sun’s million-mile diameter, it nevertheless lies four hundred times closer to Earth.... Read more

“Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 10:07 pm By Dan Peterson

I share, here, several quotations that I’ve extracted from John H. Walton, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011): We ought . . . to think of creation in terms of functions rather than material objects. (vii) I posit that, in the ancient world, bringing about order and functionality was the very essence of creative activity. I also pay close attention to the ancient ideology of temples to show the close connection between... Read more

“First Presidency has approved humanitarian projects in 57 countries to battle COVID-19”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 12:01 am By Dan Peterson

Some readers will want to add this to their Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” Files. Others, I hope, will want to join in, where they can, in the projects described here: “First Presidency has approved humanitarian projects in 57 countries to battle COVID-19: Church approves 110 global coronavirus aid projects, asks Utah members to help sew 5 million medical masks for healthcare workers” “Latter-day Saints Participate in Global COVID-19 Relief Efforts: Church assists with projects in... Read more

“Kingship, Coronation, and Covenant in Mosiah 1-6”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 12:22 am By Dan Peterson

Here are some notes based upon John W. Welch, et al., eds. Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017): And it came to pass that after king Benjamin had made an end of teaching his sons, that he waxed old, and he saw that he must very soon go the way of all the earth; therefore, he thought it expedient that he should confer the kingdom upon one... Read more

“I will vote for Joe Biden in November. And it will kill me”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 12:30 am By Dan Peterson

This blog entry is a test. I’m curious to see how many Trumpist readers will unfriend me or write nasty notes to me because of its title, without having actually read what I’ve written. As a matter of actual fact, I will not vote for Joe Biden this November. Nor, just to be fair and balanced, am I very likely to vote for Donald Trump. (In the state in which I reside, my vote will probably make no... Read more

Some notes on cosmic “fine-tuning”

Last updated on: April 15, 2020 at 12:34 am By Dan Peterson

I offer here a few passages that I’ve extracted for my notes from Alister E. McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009): Since the seventeenth century, it had been widely assumed that no special initial conditions were required for the emergence of a life-bearing universe. Yet in the last few decades, it has become clear that this is not the case. There has been a... Read more