Nature, Red in Tooth and Sap

Last updated on: November 24, 2018 at 5:02 am By Dan Peterson

Here are some further notes from the northern Queensland rainforest near Cairns: The rainforest can seem tranquil, quiet, and serene. Despite the relative silence, though, there is a constant battle for survival going on throughout the forest. (As a sign standing alongside one of the pathways said, “It’s a jungle out there.”) In the rainforest, light means life. Without it, no photosynthesis. Without photosynthesis, no energy for growth and reproduction. Instead, death. And so, for millions... Read more

In Australia but not even remotely of Australia

Last updated on: November 24, 2018 at 3:42 am By Dan Peterson

One of the more striking experiences that I had during my last trip to Australia prior to this one was a visit to the Lakemba Mosque (aka the Masjid Ali Bin Abi Talib), in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba. I was taken there by the late Elder Paul Sybrowsky (1944-2014) of the Seventy, who, based in Sydney, was serving at the time as the Australia area president for the Church. I’m guessing that this was somewhere around 2010... Read more

Mind-Brain Dualism, Rocks in Upstate New York, and Two New Scriptural Editions

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 8:00 pm By Dan Peterson

The latest installment of the biweekly Hamblin-Peterson column has been published in the Deseret News. It’s not entirely coincidental that the article has something of an Australian connection: “Two knights, the self and its brain” *** The newest article in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture — yes, yes, as soon as I can get to it I’ll make the final decision and we’ll change that subtitle! — has also now appeared. In it, Benjamin... Read more

In and above the real Pandora

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 5:49 am By Dan Peterson

We spent much of Thursday in the northern Queensland rainforest just inland from Cairns, including the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway. And I took quite a few notes while we were there. I’ll summarize a few of them, beginning with this entry. It’s a remarkable place. Signage in the rainforest indicates that the filmmaker James Cameron was inspired by it in his design of the planet Pandora for his movie Avatar — and, if I understood the explanation correctly, that... Read more

A last alert for this coming Tuesday night

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 3:15 am By Dan Peterson

As in other places around the globe, Australia is seeing some very impassioned debates about the status of Islam and Muslims, about whether Islam is compatible with Western notions of freedom, democracy, religious tolerance, and human rights. In just the interval since I’ve been here, for instance, a state funeral was held for Sisto Malaspina, the Italian immigrant and cafe-owner who was stabbed to death as the randomly chosen victim of an Islamist knife attack: “Sisto Malaspina... Read more

Held Captive in Cairns

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 3:32 am By Dan Peterson

Travel and its vicissitudes being what they are, we drove this afternoon from Port Douglas to Cairns in order to catch our early evening flight back down to Sydney, but our flight was canceled. Major dust storms in the Sydney area have wrought havoc with air traffic. So, instead, we’re spending the evening in Cairns, still in Queensland. Happily, we were able to get a room overlooking the Trinity Inlet, and we’ve been watching a multitude of beautiful... Read more

In praise of excommunication

Last updated on: December 6, 2018 at 4:45 pm By Dan Peterson

Well, the click-bait headline worked. Gotcha. First of all, let me make it plain that I’m saddened by excommunications. I don’t, as one very small pod of my somewhat unhinged personal critics pretend to believe, rejoice when people are excommunicated. More precisely, though, I’m saddened by the acts of immorality, the abandonment of once-treasured covenants, the loss of spiritual confidence and trust, the angry rejection of Church leadership, the repudiation of central teachings of the Restoration, or... Read more

“Round as an orange, my lad!”

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 5:56 am By Dan Peterson

We were in an area of the rainforest of northern Queensland today that, according to what we read and although we never saw them, has a resident family of tree-kangaroos. We looked. Too bad we missed them. (Apparently most people do. They’re somewhat reclusive, and hard to spot.) In a similar fashion, although he’s quite visible and extremely vocal, my blog has a resident devotee of scientistic atheism. (I’m not sure exactly what to call him in... Read more

Compulsory tithing?

Last updated on: November 23, 2018 at 6:10 am By Dan Peterson

A few days ago, after I had posted an item about plans to build a new high-rise office building in Salt Lake City, one disaffected former Latter-day Saint managed to turn the discussion—as almost always happens in such cases—to the damnably wicked biblical expectation and practice of tithing, reaffirmed in latter-day revelation. Latter-day Saints, he argued, aren’t really free to choose to tithe or not to tithe, because, without being full tithe-payers, they won’t be counted as... Read more

“Deluded by worldly life”

Last updated on: November 22, 2018 at 3:22 am By Dan Peterson

Further notes on which I’m working: Here are some additional examples from the Qur’an of the opposition between “this world” or “this present world,” on the one hand, and, on the other, “the hereafter” (as at 10:24, 70; 12:101; 13:34; 14:27; 16:30, 41, 109, 122), between “the life of this world” and “the life to come” (10:7-8; 13:26; 14:3) or “the world to come” (17:10) or “the one to come” (16:107): “Those who do not expect... Read more