“An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning”

Last updated on: August 9, 2025 at 1:31 pm By Dan Peterson

Here’s another Deseret News report from the 2025 FAIR Conference: “‘This is a woman’s church’: Panel discusses lived experience of Latter-day Saint women: FAIR conference discussion explores how service, ministry and worship lift women” At the conclusion of my blog entry from yesterday, I passed on an invitation from Dr. Paul Smith to the pseudonymous occasional Peterson Obsession Board commenter “Physics Guy.” Dr. Smith indicated his openness to an exchange of emails on the topic of remote viewing and extrasensory... Read more

An Invitation to “Physics Guy”

Last updated on: August 8, 2025 at 8:59 pm By Dan Peterson

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New in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: Review of Edward K. Watson, Verifiable Evidence for the Book of Mormon: Proof of a Deliberate Design Within a Dictated-from-Imagination Book (Springville, UT: Brainy Press, 2022). 252 pp.; $32.95 (hardcover). Abstract: Edward K. Watson provides a new twist in the textual evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Drawing upon his expertise in working with argumentative and persuasive essays (collectively known as “structured essays”) and applying... Read more

A report from the floor

Last updated on: August 7, 2025 at 7:43 pm By Dan Peterson

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The Interpreter Foundation’s Thursday chapter reprint has appeared: Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: “All Kindreds Shall Be Blessed: Nephite, Jewish, and Christian Interpretations of the Abrahamic Covenant,” written by Noel B. Reynolds: 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... Read more

My day began in Logan, Utah

Last updated on: August 7, 2025 at 12:08 am By Dan Peterson

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I spoke this morning to a gathering of Seminary and Institute teachers in Logan, Utah, adjacent to the campus of Utah State University. My basic subject — it was a somewhat informal presentation — was the Qur’an’s view of the patriarch Abraham, who is the common father of all of the “Abrahamic faiths” (or of what Arabic-speaking Muslims often refer to as al-adyan al-samawiyya, “the heavenly religions,” which are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). But I also prefaced my presentation... Read more

A Practical Guide to Extrasensory Perception?

Last updated on: August 8, 2025 at 9:45 pm By Dan Peterson

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I recently read an interesting book by Paul H. Smith, entitled The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing:The Secret Military Remote Perception Skill Anyone Can Learn (Intentional Press, 2015). It’s a basic tutorial on, well, remote viewing — which is the alleged ability to perceive information about a distant or unseen target without relying on conventional sensory input but using only the mind. Thus, if it really exists, it’s literally a kind of extrasensory perception. The study of remote viewing... Read more

The Church, Immigration, and Civil Rights

Last updated on: August 5, 2025 at 10:39 am By Dan Peterson

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One of the book-discussion groups to which my wife and I belong is the venerable Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society — that’s the authentic official name, although it’s rarely used — which has been meeting monthly since its founding by a group of junior faculty and graduate students adjacent to the University of California at Santa Barbara decades ago. We met last night, in fact. The focus of our discussion was Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and... Read more

Hot meals for starving Palestinian children in northern Gaza

Last updated on: August 4, 2025 at 9:17 am By Dan Peterson

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I have worried a great deal about the destruction of Gaza and the great loss of life — of men, women, and children, of both the horrifically guilty and the completely innocent — that is occurring there. But I have also been disturbed to watch some people ignore or excuse (or even, in some cases, endorse) the appalling brutality of the surprise 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that precipitated the current disaster. I have no love for... Read more

Eighty Years Ago

Last updated on: August 4, 2025 at 9:25 am By Dan Peterson

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I recall my father expressing mild regret on one or two occasions for having failed to accept an invitation to attend officer candidate school in the Army. He hadn’t intended a military career, and he didn’t want to commit to officer training because he didn’t plan to be in the service for very long. He spent time in the horse cavalry — such a thing still existed in those days — and he was stationed near the border of... Read more

Of Spheres, Spirals, Spindles, and the Divine

Last updated on: August 1, 2025 at 6:16 pm By Dan Peterson

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A new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Why was the Liahona a Sphere? A New Perspective on Its Form and Function,” written by Wanless Southwick and Kyle Kinghorn Abstract: A new, simpler design for the Liahona is proposed, which, if correct, makes the reason for two spindles and a hollow-ball shape perfectly obvious. Previous proposed models of the Liahona usually show horizontal, compass-like pointers inside an open-top ball, but our model... Read more

News about John Henry Newman

Last updated on: July 31, 2025 at 5:40 pm By Dan Peterson

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Things are obviously becoming desperate at the nearly fossilized Interpreter Foundation. They’ve been obliged to resort, in their series of chapter reprints, to a reprint — and, in fact, to a reprint that comes from a distinctly sketchy author: Seek Ye Words of Wisdom: “A Great Leap Backwards: Where Matters Stand Now Regarding the Book of Mormon’s “Secret Combinations,” written by one Daniel C. Peterson: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Seek Ye... Read more

What happened to the first stone tablets of the Ten Commandments?