Hurrah for Excommunication!

Last updated on: February 5, 2025 at 11:18 pm By Dan Peterson

Well, the click-bait headline worked, as they typically do. 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... Read more

Why CAN’T Mormons Send Flowers?

Last updated on: February 5, 2025 at 2:01 pm By Dan Peterson

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Our 2021 theatrical film, Witnesses, was dedicated to the memory of “Richard Lloyd Anderson, a witness to the witnesses.” Now it comes down to you. One of the many spin-offs of the overall “Witnesses” project is this one, which is available for your viewing: “Episode 17: What is your Witness?” Witnesses of the Book of Mormon—Insights Episode 17: What does it mean to be a witness? How can you be a witness? This is Episode 17 of a series... Read more

“Why the Witnesses Project?”

Last updated on: February 3, 2025 at 5:45 pm By Dan Peterson

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The current issue of the Journal of Near-Death Studies, the official journal of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), to which I subscribe, arrived two or three weeks ago, and I’m finally beginning to read it. It’s dated “Summer 2023,” which seems to make me really late. But, alas, such delays are all too common among small, understaffed, and underfunded academic journals. (This is far from the first time that I’ve seen such a thing.) Anyway, it’s a... Read more

“Witnesses” is now available for free streaming!

Last updated on: February 2, 2025 at 9:20 pm By Dan Peterson

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I’m very pleased to announce that the 2021 Interpreter Foundation theatrical film Witnesses is now available — and will remain available for the duration of the month of February — for free streaming: Watch Witnesses Free! So, whether you saw Witnesses in a theater and would like to view it again, or whether you missed it altogether, you now have the opportunity for the remainder of this month to watch it at no charge. And, in fact, you can... Read more

6DIA is streaming, physicalism is depressing, and I’m right

Last updated on: February 1, 2025 at 7:55 pm By Dan Peterson

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I’ve been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to announce that the 2024 Interpreter Foundation theatrical film Six Days in August is now available for streaming. I haven’t yet checked any of these, so if there are people out there who successfully view the movie at one or more of these sites, I would welcome confirming reports: Six Days in August Streaming APPLE TV https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/six-days-in-august/umc.cmc.4pfakmzvipigmak2q5gpfuz2h GOOGLE PLAY https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Six_Days_in_August?id=ACCyw5JsfR0.P AMAZON PRIME VIDEO https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.6c729c91-7f61-472f-a3f0-8a1769b4a783?tag=justus1ktp-20&token=ADE07EB7B9E7DB86DEEEF0D5D4FC5F0B5FB44D3F SPECTRUM https://ondemand.spectrum.net/movies/28351062/six-days-in-august/ MICROSOFT.COM https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/six-days-in-august/8d6kgwz2d7zb?activetab=pivot:overviewtab FANDANGO AT HOME https://athome.fandango.com/content/browse/details/Six-Days-in-August/3867515 Most... Read more

Who can be saved?

Last updated on: January 31, 2025 at 6:52 pm By Dan Peterson

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“Perspectives on the Soteriological Problem of Evil: Nuancing the “Universalist” Theologies of Henri de Lubac and Joseph Smith,” written by Timothy Gervais. Abstract: Since the discovery of the new world by Christian European explorers during the age of discovery, the increasingly global community of the modern age has confronted Christian theologians with difficult soteriological questions. These questions have caused many Christian adherents to abandon conceptions of a uniquely Christian salvation in favor of theological positions of religious pluralism. Other... Read more

Once again, I must register a political protest

Last updated on: January 30, 2025 at 2:53 pm By Dan Peterson

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Our exit from Afghanistan was badly botched. And America’s abandonment of those Afghans who had helped us there — often at considerable risk to their lives and the lives of their families — has long been a national disgrace and an obvious moral failure, as well as a disastrous precedent that will be remembered whenever we again seek local allies somewhere. Furthermore, alas, the situation isn’t improving: “Trump’s refugee ban leaves Afghan allies abandoned: Thousands of Afghans who aided... Read more

Can you think of any other benefits that I should mention?

Last updated on: January 29, 2025 at 10:56 pm By Dan Peterson

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The Interpreter Foundation’s full-length documentary Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon can now be viewed for free! Please share this link far and wide with friends and family! https://witnessesfilm.com/?ref=undaunted Not infrequently, I read comments from purportedly liberated ex-Latter-day Saints about the glories of churchless Sundays. Instead of attending mind-numbingly dull and repetitious meetings, they claim to spend most of their Sundays skiing, golfing, biking, reading classic books, listening to superb music, perfecting their highly toned bodies through exercise,... Read more

Archaeologically recovering some lectures from Hugh Nibley

Last updated on: January 28, 2025 at 10:47 pm By Dan Peterson

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Here is another resource that you might find of value for your study and/or your teaching of the 2025 Come, Follow Me curriculum — especially as we move, in February, toward consideration of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon: “Episode 18: Is Eyewitness Testimony Reliable?” Witnesses of the Book of Mormon—Insights Episode 18: Is Eyewitness Testimony Reliable? Eyewitness testimony is used around the world in courts of law. But there’s a movement today that calls into question the... Read more

Of Movies, Serious, Unserious, Fun, and Not So Fun

Last updated on: January 27, 2025 at 11:53 pm By Dan Peterson

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Many nights, we watch a film with our granddaughter. We’ve watched all of the classic Disney cartoons and a host of others, some classic and some, well, not quite so classic. We’ve watched Mary Poppins and the live versions of Beauty and the Beast and Mulan and so on and so forth. Tonight, we watched the classic 1938 movie The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains. It’s been quite a... Read more

In the Parable of the Sower, what does the seed represent?