A modest suggestion for Christmas

Last updated on: December 2, 2018 at 8:26 pm By Dan Peterson

Several years ago, I published a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God. It was essentially my section from David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond, eds., The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad as Religious Founders, a hefty (and heftily-priced) volume that featured a foreword by the celebrated/controversial Swiss theologian Hans Küng. It’s a simple narrative biography, a pretty straightforward and non-theoretical one, that doesn’t pretend to break significant new historical ground but seeks to tell... Read more

“This most tremendous tale of all”

Last updated on: December 2, 2018 at 8:28 pm By Dan Peterson

We’re again approaching the wonderful season of Christmas. Here in Australia, people are gearing up and decorations are going up for this major summer holiday. I think it appropriate — not least, to get myself into the right mood — to dust off some older Christmas-related newspaper columns. Here’s one, for example, that I published in the Deseret News on 9 December 2010: I often wonder which of the two holidays, Christmas or Easter, is the... Read more

Of matters financial and non-financial

Last updated on: December 2, 2018 at 8:31 pm By Dan Peterson

I have posted a little fundraiser for the Interpreter Foundation on my Facebook page: Daniel’s fundraiser for the Interpreter Foundation *** A few of my especially bizarre anonymous online critics continue to obsess about my personal finances. I posted a bit on this earlier, but I evidently wasn’t clear enough for them. Of course, I can probably never be clear enough for them, and, anyway, they’re convinced, or pretend to be convinced, that I’m invariably... Read more

On baptizing an extraterrestrial

Last updated on: December 2, 2018 at 8:33 pm By Dan Peterson

The Vatican astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, SJ, Ph.D. (who, by the way, delivered a wonderful speech at a March 2016 conference of the Interpreter Foundation under the title of “Astronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance” that’s well worth watching), has recounted an amusing experience with the press: “Except they kept asking me questions like ‘What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?’ Or ‘Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?’ Completely out of... Read more

At the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque

Last updated on: December 2, 2018 at 8:36 pm By Dan Peterson

I missed this item when it appeared on the LDS Newsroom website for Australia: “Daniel C. Peterson to Deliver Religious Liberty Lecture at University of Notre Dame” That lecture is now, as of tonight, in the past. I think that it went reasonably well. (At least I was satisfied with what I said.) I’ll probably post a brief report on it within the next day or so. But not yet. *** Along with... Read more

“I am the egg man. They are the egg men. I am the walrus. Goo goo g’joob.”

Last updated on: November 27, 2018 at 3:57 am By Dan Peterson

In a post yesterday, I mentioned our having had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. I concluded the post as follows: I was amused by the fact that the two young women who waited on us, while they looked Middle Eastern, turned out upon questioning to be from Colombia and Brazil. It reminds me of the time that I went, alone, to a small fast food joint in West Los Angeles called “Falafel King.” The cooks and the... Read more

Keeping kosher in a Lebanese restaurant

Last updated on: November 26, 2018 at 3:51 am By Dan Peterson

My wife and I had dinner this evening — along with Keith Thompson, Elder Robert Dudfield, and the prominent Australian Jewish leader and interfaith activist Jeremy Jones — at the Zahli Modern Middle Eastern Restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. It was an enjoyable evening. Jeremy Jones is a great raconteur who is both exceedingly well connected (he had met earlier today with people from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference) and exceptionally well traveled. We’ve both visited... Read more

“The Spirit of Things”

Last updated on: November 25, 2018 at 9:05 pm By Dan Peterson

I’m just back from pre-recording an interview with Rachael Kohn of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for her ABC Radio National program “The Spirit of Things.” This is, I believe, the third time that I’ve had an interview with her — once before in studio and, on another occasion, at a Sydney hotel down by Darling Harbour. She also came to a conference of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) at BYU once, a while back, and... Read more

A Quick Thought on Scientism and Logical Positivism

Last updated on: November 25, 2018 at 3:00 pm By Dan Peterson

Whew. I have to admit that reading the following took a great load off of my mind. I’ll now be able to go about today’s appointments and obligations in a lot brighter frame of mind: “Our Universe’s Gravity Isn’t Leaking Into Other Dimensions, Physicists Find” *** Many homeowners in Arizona have obviously long since made peace with this idea. Will we in Utah and elsewhere? I confess that I’ve always liked the manicured English lawns... Read more

A Sunday in Sydney

Last updated on: November 25, 2018 at 4:42 am By Dan Peterson

We attended church services today with a Young Single Adult ward that meets in a high-rise building at the southern end of Sydney’s Hyde Park. We had to walk roughly 250 feet from the lobby of our hotel in order to reach sacrament meeting. The sheer toil and epically heroic sacrifice of that journey inescapably made me think of the old Latter-day Saint childrens’ song: Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked.... Read more